I got a pre-ship notification from Big Bad Toy Store earlier in the week, and I wasn't expecting this guy until today, but he ended up showing up yesterday. I ain't complaining, though! Always a delight to come home from work and find a package on my doorstep, especially when it's in front of the right building!

So, I'll just reiterate that I've wanted great, big Dinobot toys for a really, really long time. The characters are huge in the cartoon, at least a head or two taller than Optimus Prime and Megatron, but their equivalent G1 toys were disappointingly normal-sized (Swoop is arguably kind of tiny, honestly) and no official updates have really done the characters justice, except maybe for the Masterpiece version of Grimlock. But he's a lonely Dinobot with no friends to play with. The Power of the Primes editions were a welcome addition to the neo-G1 ranks, and long overdue, but they were likewise kind of puny.

I love that we're living in a day and age where Hasbro deems the Dinobots sufficiently popular among the unwashed masses that they're willing to mass-market fifty-dollar versions of (eventually) all five characters. To me, that's HUGE. We've come such a long way since the days where they were afraid to cater to the fan base because they didn't think it would be profitable. Sometimes I suspect that it's actually the fan base who is carrying the toy line now. I mean, we all collectively coughed up four and a half million dollars for Unicron, and that was just for one toy. But I digress.

So, Slag. He's officially Dinobot Slug, a necessity because he can't keep borrowing Snarl's name like he's done in the past, but he doesn't want people in the United Kingdom to think he's being exceptionally rude. So, Slug it is.

The package biography blur is as follows: "DINOBOT SLUG excuses himself as he stomps over a crushed QUINTESSON PROSECUTOR," referencing his most comical moment in the 1986 movie. His backdrop is called "Mockery of Justice" and showcases the walls of the Quintesson courtroom. One supposes you could amass enough of these to build your own cardboard playset.

I knew Slag was going to be a Large Boi™, but I was not prepared viscerally for how he would look and feel in my hands. He's like a third-party Masterpiece toy or something. Hell, Takara doesn't even have to do a Masterpiece toy now. They can go home now and enjoy their sushi. In robot mode, Slag is eight inches tall at the head, with the dinosaur head adding another inch or so. He's styled after his cartoon colors, which includes deviations from the G1 toy like light grey upper legs, no dinosaur legs in evidence attached to his robot legs, and a robot head and face that are entirely red. (The cartoon was a little inconsistent about coloring Slag, but I think the front of his cheek guards are actually supposed to be grey. But, it always looks like a coloring mistake, so I don't blame Hasbro for not going that route.) Box photos suggest they were originally planning a metallic silver for the dinosaur frill and horns, but in the end they went with a light grey, which pleases me.

His articulation is great, with shoulders that swivel (ratchets) and swing out to the sides, double-joint elbows, swiveling wrists and waist, an articulated head, hips that move three ways (including ratchets), double-joint knees (also ratchets), and of course those ever-pervasive ankle tilts. No pegs for blast effects, but he's got peg-holes in his back and shoulders and the sides of his legs and the bottoms of his feet, so he's totally C.O.M.B..A.T. ready (which delights Slag to no end. Him, Slag, like fight, yes? YES!) His dinosaur tail, which just hung impotently on the G1 toy, is tucked away a bit better on this version and is far less obtrusive. He comes with his rifle (painted metallic silver) but no sword to speak of (I'm sure the third-party guys will come to the rescue on that front eventually).

So transformation is more or less G1 with a few extra twists (literally). The robot legs still form the dinosaur's rear haunches, but you rotate the waist and fold up the knees so that the robot toes are pointing behind him. There are a second set of fake robot toes so they can still form the little humps on his back. Unlike the G1 Slag toy, cartoon Slag has no visible dinosaur legs attached to his robot legs, so this was accomplished for the new toy by having the dinosaur legs tucked away and folded up inside his lower legs for robot mode. On the G1 toy, you opened the dinosaur jaw and the robot head was plainly visible, but for this version they accomplished some Masterpiece Inferno style ladder magic through which the robot head is hidden entirely. Also, Slag is one of those characters with color-changing metal in the show (the dinosaur's lower jaw is yellow, but it changes to grey when it forms the chest plate for robot mode) so there's a second, fake chest plate to accomplish this. It sounds like disingenous trickery, but it actually works really well.

As a triceratops, he's just tremendous. About ten inches long, from head to tail, and roughly five inches in height. His front triceratops legs enjoy all the same articulation of his robot arms, and the rear legs have a working hip, knee, and ankle joint (though these joints are used to collapse the legs into themselves, so you can only get so much useful movement before it starts to look weird). The tail and head are locked in place, but the jaw opens. There's a single point to mount a flame blast effect inside his mouth (he doesn't come with one, but the third party guys will surely come up with something suitably incendiary at some point).

He's colored more like the Sunbow character than the G1 toy, with grey triceratops horns (the 1984 version had red horns) and bright blue eyes. The triceratops horns are painfully and obviously hollow, but luckily they pop off readily, so they will be easy to swap out if the third-party guys do replacements. He's a little more square-shaped than the G1 version, but for some reason the lack of curvature suits this character so it doesn't bother me like it's bugged me with previous toys (PotP Hun-Gurrr and Grimlock). Or maybe it's the medication I'm on.

And so we come to Daniel Witwicky, the pack-in figure that came with Slag. He's about three inches tall and in the exo-suit from The Transformers: the Movie, and features articulated shoulders and hips, both on ball joints. The face dome, which is translucent in the movie, is opaque on the toy, so you could easily imagine this as being a figure of Spike Witwicky or Jessica Morgan instead, if you prefer. (Takara managed to do a clear dome when they sold the similarly-sized SCF version of the exo-suit. Just sayin'.) Since it doesn't transform, the arms are designed a bit better than the exo-suited figure that came with Masterpiece Bumblebee 1.0, which had some design concessions made.

The problem is that Daniel, much like the Wheelie figure that came with Studio Series Grimlock, is permanently posed in a seated position. He's designed to prop up on Slag's shoulder in robot mode or straddle Slag's neck just behind the frill in triceratops mode (which is itself a little disingenous, since Studio Series is purported to feature screen accuracy and yet this never actually happened on-screen). Daniel is perpetually squatting which means he cannot achieve a standing pose, making him more an accessory than anything else and nearly worthless as an action figure. C'mon, Hasbro, all it would have taken was a knee joint. Well, I'm sure the third-party guys will save the day, because they always do. (Maybe he can come with a cesium salami as well.)

There are a few pieces that are held on with plastic knobs instead of metal pins, like the "wings" for the robot mode or parts of the folded-up dinosaur tail assembly. They tend to pop off frequently, and I thought we'd moved past that stage in Transformers toy design a long time ago. But, that and the hollow triceratops horns are my only real complaints about the toy. For the most part, he's exactly the sort of very large, heavily cartoon-influenced Slag toy I've always wanted to own. Bring on the rest! I can't wait for Sludge and Swoop and, yes, even poor, maligned, hardly-in-the-movie-at-all Snarl.

Zob (still trying to Tetris the hell out of the storage room to try and create more space)

On Friday, August 27, 2021 at 9:52:36 AM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> I got a pre-ship notification from Big Bad Toy Store earlier in the week, and I wasn't expecting this guy until today, but he ended up showing up yesterday. I ain't complaining, though! Always a delight to come home from work and find a package on my doorstep, especially when it's in front of the right building!
>
> So, I'll just reiterate that I've wanted great, big Dinobot toys for a really, really long time. The characters are huge in the cartoon, at least a head or two taller than Optimus Prime and Megatron, but their equivalent G1 toys were disappointingly normal-sized (Swoop is arguably kind of tiny, honestly) and no official updates have really done the characters justice, except maybe for the Masterpiece version of Grimlock. But he's a lonely Dinobot with no friends to play with. The Power of the Primes editions were a welcome addition to the neo-G1 ranks, and long overdue, but they were likewise kind of puny.
>
> I love that we're living in a day and age where Hasbro deems the Dinobots sufficiently popular among the unwashed masses that they're willing to mass-market fifty-dollar versions of (eventually) all five characters. To me, that's HUGE. We've come such a long way since the days where they were afraid to cater to the fan base because they didn't think it would be profitable. Sometimes I suspect that it's actually the fan base who is carrying the toy line now. I mean, we all collectively coughed up four and a half million dollars for Unicron, and that was just for one toy. But I digress.
>
> So, Slag. He's officially Dinobot Slug, a necessity because he can't keep borrowing Snarl's name like he's done in the past, but he doesn't want people in the United Kingdom to think he's being exceptionally rude. So, Slug it is.
>
> The package biography blur is as follows: "DINOBOT SLUG excuses himself as he stomps over a crushed QUINTESSON PROSECUTOR," referencing his most comical moment in the 1986 movie. His backdrop is called "Mockery of Justice" and showcases the walls of the Quintesson courtroom. One supposes you could amass enough of these to build your own cardboard playset.
>
> I knew Slag was going to be a Large Boi™, but I was not prepared viscerally for how he would look and feel in my hands. He's like a third-party Masterpiece toy or something. Hell, Takara doesn't even have to do a Masterpiece toy now. They can go home now and enjoy their sushi. In robot mode, Slag is eight inches tall at the head, with the dinosaur head adding another inch or so. He's styled after his cartoon colors, which includes deviations from the G1 toy like light grey upper legs, no dinosaur legs in evidence attached to his robot legs, and a robot head and face that are entirely red. (The cartoon was a little inconsistent about coloring Slag, but I think the front of his cheek guards are actually supposed to be grey. But, it always looks like a coloring mistake, so I don't blame Hasbro for not going that route.) Box photos suggest they were originally planning a metallic silver for the dinosaur frill and horns, but in the end they went with a light grey, which pleases me.
>
> His articulation is great, with shoulders that swivel (ratchets) and swing out to the sides, double-joint elbows, swiveling wrists and waist, an articulated head, hips that move three ways (including ratchets), double-joint knees (also ratchets), and of course those ever-pervasive ankle tilts. No pegs for blast effects, but he's got peg-holes in his back and shoulders and the sides of his legs and the bottoms of his feet, so he's totally C.O.M.B.A.T. ready (which delights Slag to no end. Him, Slag, like fight, yes? YES!) His dinosaur tail, which just hung impotently on the G1 toy, is tucked away a bit better on this version and is far less obtrusive. He comes with his rifle (painted metallic silver) but no sword to speak of (I'm sure the third-party guys will come to the rescue on that front eventually).
>
> So transformation is more or less G1 with a few extra twists (literally). The robot legs still form the dinosaur's rear haunches, but you rotate the waist and fold up the knees so that the robot toes are pointing behind him.. There are a second set of fake robot toes so they can still form the little humps on his back. Unlike the G1 Slag toy, cartoon Slag has no visible dinosaur legs attached to his robot legs, so this was accomplished for the new toy by having the dinosaur legs tucked away and folded up inside his lower legs for robot mode. On the G1 toy, you opened the dinosaur jaw and the robot head was plainly visible, but for this version they accomplished some Masterpiece Inferno style ladder magic through which the robot head is hidden entirely. Also, Slag is one of those characters with color-changing metal in the show (the dinosaur's lower jaw is yellow, but it changes to grey when it forms the chest plate for robot mode) so there's a second, fake chest plate to accomplish this. It sounds like disingenous trickery, but it actually works really well.
>
> As a triceratops, he's just tremendous. About ten inches long, from head to tail, and roughly five inches in height. His front triceratops legs enjoy all the same articulation of his robot arms, and the rear legs have a working hip, knee, and ankle joint (though these joints are used to collapse the legs into themselves, so you can only get so much useful movement before it starts to look weird). The tail and head are locked in place, but the jaw opens. There's a single point to mount a flame blast effect inside his mouth (he doesn't come with one, but the third party guys will surely come up with something suitably incendiary at some point).
>
> He's colored more like the Sunbow character than the G1 toy, with grey triceratops horns (the 1984 version had red horns) and bright blue eyes. The triceratops horns are painfully and obviously hollow, but luckily they pop off readily, so they will be easy to swap out if the third-party guys do replacements. He's a little more square-shaped than the G1 version, but for some reason the lack of curvature suits this character so it doesn't bother me like it's bugged me with previous toys (PotP Hun-Gurrr and Grimlock). Or maybe it's the medication I'm on.
>
> And so we come to Daniel Witwicky, the pack-in figure that came with Slag.. He's about three inches tall and in the exo-suit from The Transformers: the Movie, and features articulated shoulders and hips, both on ball joints. The face dome, which is translucent in the movie, is opaque on the toy, so you could easily imagine this as being a figure of Spike Witwicky or Jessica Morgan instead, if you prefer. (Takara managed to do a clear dome when they sold the similarly-sized SCF version of the exo-suit. Just sayin'.) Since it doesn't transform, the arms are designed a bit better than the exo-suited figure that came with Masterpiece Bumblebee 1.0, which had some design concessions made.
>
> The problem is that Daniel, much like the Wheelie figure that came with Studio Series Grimlock, is permanently posed in a seated position. He's designed to prop up on Slag's shoulder in robot mode or straddle Slag's neck just behind the frill in triceratops mode (which is itself a little disingenous, since Studio Series is purported to feature screen accuracy and yet this never actually happened on-screen). Daniel is perpetually squatting which means he cannot achieve a standing pose, making him more an accessory than anything else and nearly worthless as an action figure. C'mon, Hasbro, all it would have taken was a knee joint. Well, I'm sure the third-party guys will save the day, because they always do. (Maybe he can come with a cesium salami as well.)
>
> There are a few pieces that are held on with plastic knobs instead of metal pins, like the "wings" for the robot mode or parts of the folded-up dinosaur tail assembly. They tend to pop off frequently, and I thought we'd moved past that stage in Transformers toy design a long time ago. But, that and the hollow triceratops horns are my only real complaints about the toy. For the most part, he's exactly the sort of very large, heavily cartoon-influenced Slag toy I've always wanted to own. Bring on the rest! I can't wait for Sludge and Swoop and, yes, even poor, maligned, hardly-in-the-movie-at-all Snarl.
>
>
> Zob (still trying to Tetris the hell out of the storage room to try and create more space)

Sounds great - would yoy rank him above or below SS86 Grimlock, a figure that elicited a sigh from me, but has since become a personal favorite?

It does feel disappointing to need 3rd parties to correct flaws that Hasbro could have easily fixed themselves.

On Friday, August 27, 2021 at 2:40:06 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> Sounds great - would you rank him above or below SS86 Grimlock, a figure that elicited a sigh from me, but has since become a personal favorite?

I like Grimlock a lot. He's one of my favorite modern toys. Slag is definitely in that same vein. I'd rank them about equally. I have not yet compared the two together (rearranging the collection means not all the boxes are immediately accessible) but I think I'm bothered less by Slag's minor issues than I was with Grimlock's (the dark chest shield that you can barely see through).
> It does feel disappointing to need 3rd parties to correct flaws that Hasbro could have easily fixed themselves.

I'm kind of two minds about this. Yes, it's a shame that so many toys require "fixing" to bring them up to snuff. But, at the same time, I recognize Hasbro is a business and they have budgetary constraints and things to worry about. Slag is arguably a toy they're not going to be able to redeco endlessly to recoup costs (I can't say with dead certainty that I would spend fifty bucks on a green G2 version). Also, at least there's usually a third-party option to remedy a lot of issues. I love that the choice exists.

Zob (my 13-year-old son and I like to make fun of G1 Slag for holding his sword sideways, so the only way he can attack is to bonk enemies on the head)

On Friday, August 27, 2021 at 7:52:36 AM UTC-6, Zobovor wrote:

> The triceratops horns are painfully and obviously hollow, but luckily they pop off readily, so they will be easy to swap out if the third-party guys do replacements.

So I got my Slag upgrade kit from Nonnef Productions today. It consists of two replacement triceratops horns, a sword, and a replacement head for robot mode.

The horns snap together, and you can super glue the parts together if you want. There's a left side, a right side, and a ring base to each horn, so they approximate the shape of the stock parts very well. They are available in red (if you like the Hasbro toy look) or a grey color. They ones I got are a darker grey, closer to Slag's arms and legs than the lighter grey used elsewhere on the toy. Nonnef suggests you glue the replacement horns in place, but I like to have options, and they clip on about as securely as the original horns, so it's really not necessary.

The sword is also three pieces and consists of assembling the hilt by sliding the parts onto the sword grip. They can be rotated so you can build a sword like the G1 toy, with Slag striking enemies with the flat end of the blade and conking them on the head, or you can turn the crossguard so he can actually cut things. The sword is available in either all-red, or you can get one with an orange blade and black crossguard.

Finally, there's a replacement robot head, in black with red eyes, meant to evoke the look of the G1 toy. It's designed pretty much identically to the stock head. It also comes in three pieces, with the red eyes a separate part that needs to slide into the head before you snap the parts together. I had to carve some of the assembly pegs down because it was a really tight fit. Nonnef advises cutting the pegs on the stock head to remove it, but I was able to just pop it off the ball joint without any trouble. I guess I can see the appeal of the toy-based head, but he's already colored like the cartoon everywhere else, so it almost seems out of place. I'll stick with the red helmet, I think.

The kit is $14.99 plus shipping, or you can order just the sword or just the horns for $5.99 (which means you can get the full kit, if you want, but also get a sword or pair of horns in an alternate color).

Zob (I think Snarl is the only Dinobot in the cartoon who actually carries a sword, which I guess means Nonnef is going to have to supply the Studio Series version with a gun)