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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur

SubjectAuthor
* Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden DiskZobovor
`* Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class GoldenGustavo Wombat
 `* Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden DiskZobovor
  `- Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden DiskTravoltron

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Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur

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Subject: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk
Collection Terrorsaur
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Thu, 3 Feb 2022 03:42 UTC

Terrorsaur was originally available for pre-order in September 2021 with an expected ship date of March 2022, but I guess he was ready early, since he arrived on my doorstep today.

Previous toys I've ordered from Amazon have usually shipped in an additional shipping box, but this one showed up with my address label right on the Hasbro SIOC box.

A word of caution about opening this toy. As with a lot of recent releases, there was no plastic used in the packaging. The toy was just tied down to the inner cardboard tray. I pulled Terrorsaur off along with his gun and the golden disk accessory, and threw the rest in the trash. It didn't dawn on me until after I looked at the instructions that there were actually two more parts, which were hidden inside a tiny piece of tissue paper that was taped to the back of the cardboard tray. It didn't even dawn on me that this was important!

Anyway, Terrorsaur is an extensive remold of Kingdom Airazor. It makes sense, from a financial perspective, to take one bird-shaped toy and turn it into another (roughly) bird-shaped toy. The same basic transformation scheme was reused and some of the same engineering ideas, but the toy is almost completely remolded. The same robot fists, forearms, knees, and ankles are used, but everything else is new.

In pterodactyl mode, Terrorsaur has a nine-inch wingspan, with leathery, wrinkled wings instead of Airazor's feathery ones. The original 1996 toy had some bright green spots on its back and tail, but the colors in CGI were a bit more muted, so the spots are represented here in brown, and they're very understated. As per his TV series appearance, this version of Terrorsaur has a bright orange beak, which opens, and is lined with tiny white teeth.. It's very different-looking from the vintage toy, but it's accurate to the show. For once, they didn't try to redesign the beast face into something more realistic-looking (not that anybody knows for sure what a pterodactyl would really look like). He's nice and cartoony.

The beast configuration isn't perfect. His legs sprout from the middle of his torso, rather than somewhere near his pelvis. But, I like his wing articulation (they have the same number of hinges, in the same positions, as the wings on Airazor) and his head can also pivot and swivel. Much more articulation than the 1996 version. Also, the original version had legs that plugged into the undersize of the wings, which was utterly ridiculous. You can even kind of stand him upright, and while it's not perfect, it's better than anything the vintage toy can do.

His gun can plug into the underside of either of the wings, using a little rectangular tab. There's not much reason to do this, and it looks weird. It's certainly not as clean as the weapon storage on the old toy.

His transformation is pretty much the same as Airazor, as far as the manner in which the robot fists are tucked into the sides of the body and the way the beast legs unfold into the robot legs. Where Airazor's beast head ends up on her chest, Terrorsaur's pterodactyl head folds up onto his back.

As a robot, he's got two little silver painted blades meant to plug into the sides of his forearms. You can leave them there in beast mode as well, which is probably a good idea since they're super tiny and easily lost. He can equip his rifle (painted gunmetal with an exposed red tip) but unfortunately does not have his shoulder cannons. He's got a tiny Predacon symbol tampo-printed on his right forearm.

Even though the original Terrorsaur was red and black, the CGI version of him was red and silver. So, the toy is accurate in that respect. The color mapping isn't completely right, though, since his upper arms and upper legs and the spikes on his toes should all be painted silver as well, and they're not. (The red helmet is correct in this case. The old toy had a head that was painted blue, but the Mainframe animators were probably working from an unfinished toy prototype whose head was unpainted.) He's designed with details that are meant to suggest the visible C-3PO wiring that connected his upper torso to his lower torso in the show. Also, I do love his face sculpt. He's wearing this evil, obnoxious smirk, which is so in synch with the character from the series.

So, the size of Airazor's wings were cheated a little bit for her robot mode, and Hasbro was able to approximate this by allowing her wings to partially tuck into themselves on the Kingdom toy. For Terrorsaur, his design was cheated outrageously, in which the gigantic pterodactyl wings (which didn't even move on the 1996 toy) disappeared in their entirety, only to be replaced with tiny little decorative pop-out wings on his shoulders. There's no way Hasbro would have been able to capture this in a twenty-dollar toy. The official instructions show his wings just hanging off his back.

However, the swinging portion of the wings are held on loosely with a peg and can be popped off very easily. With those parts out of the way, it's possible to fold up the remainder of the wings pretty neatly. They don't disappear completely, but it's an option for a more compact look if you don't like the wings poking out to either side. The box images show the wings mounted with metal rivets, so I think this change was made *specifically* so you can remove the wings and improve the look of his robot mode. (Sadly, there's probably no way for the third-party guys to add those little decorative wings to his shoulders. There's no place to plug them in.)

Additionally, Terrorsaur comes with a copy of the Golden Disk, the same mold as one of the two that came packaged with Mainframe/Teletraan I of Autobot Ark fame (one side has alien Vok symbols; the other is marked "The Sounds of Earth," so it's like a mash-up of two disks). Terrorsaur can't meaningfully interact with the disk (I don't think he even ever held it at any point during the Beast Wars cartoon) and it's not even mentioned in his instructions, so I feel like it was a last-minute addition, perhaps as an attempt to justify this toy being part of the Golden Disk Collection in the first place. It's the only one of the four sets to actually come with one.

I like this guy a lot more than I thought I would, considering he was reportedly just a reuse of the Airazor toy. At $22.99, I'm very happy with him.
The changes made are most welcome, at least in my view, and he's also one of my favorite Beast Wars characters so I'm glad to be able to add him to my collection. Pterodactyl hot wings!

Zob (it's crazy that I've got an entire Hasbro shipping box filled up with modern-era Beast Wars toys!)

Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur

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From: gustavow...@yahoo.com (Gustavo Wombat)
Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers
Subject: Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden
Disk Collection Terrorsaur
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2022 07:02:34 -0000 (UTC)
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 by: Gustavo Wombat - Fri, 4 Feb 2022 07:02 UTC

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> Terrorsaur was originally available for pre-order in September 2021 with
> an expected ship date of March 2022, but I guess he was ready early,
> since he arrived on my doorstep today.

> A word of caution about opening this toy. As with a lot of recent
> releases, there was no plastic used in the packaging. The toy was just
> tied down to the inner cardboard tray. I pulled Terrorsaur off along
> with his gun and the golden disk accessory, and threw the rest in the
> trash. It didn't dawn on me until after I looked at the instructions
> that there were actually two more parts, which were hidden inside a tiny
> piece of tissue paper that was taped to the back of the cardboard tray.
> It didn't even dawn on me that this was important!

Thanks! I didn’t bother reading the instructions and also overlooked those!

> Anyway, Terrorsaur is an extensive remold of Kingdom Airazor. It makes
> sense, from a financial perspective, to take one bird-shaped toy and turn
> it into another (roughly) bird-shaped toy. The same basic transformation
> scheme was reused and some of the same engineering ideas, but the toy is
> almost completely remolded. The same robot fists, forearms, knees, and
> ankles are used, but everything else is new.

I’m surprised that he feels so much beefier than Airazor/Skywarp. If I had
a cooking scale I would weigh them, but he feels heavier and way more
solid.

> In pterodactyl mode, Terrorsaur has a nine-inch wingspan, with leathery,
> wrinkled wings instead of Airazor's feathery ones. The original 1996 toy
> had some bright green spots on its back and tail, but the colors in CGI
> were a bit more muted, so the spots are represented here in brown, and
> they're very understated. As per his TV series appearance, this version
> of Terrorsaur has a bright orange beak, which opens, and is lined with
> tiny white teeth. It's very different-looking from the vintage toy, but
> it's accurate to the show. For once, they didn't try to redesign the
> beast face into something more realistic-looking (not that anybody knows
> for sure what a pterodactyl would really look like). He's nice and cartoony.

I think we might actually have some impressions of Pterodactyls. They were
not actually cartoony. The heads and bodies were likely covered in
pycnofibers, and there is vigorous debate as to whether those are
precursors to feathers. So, they were likely fuzzy or feathered beasties
(and possibly warm blooded).

No indication of color that I know of. We actually know the colors of a few
feathered dinosaurs — there’s an iridescent black-blue that ends up being
distinctive in fossils.

Anyway, we have no DNA, and the Beast Wars folks likely didn’t have DNA, so
they were guessing.

> The beast configuration isn't perfect. His legs sprout from the middle
> of his torso, rather than somewhere near his pelvis. But, I like his
> wing articulation (they have the same number of hinges, in the same
> positions, as the wings on Airazor) and his head can also pivot and
> swivel. Much more articulation than the 1996 version. Also, the
> original version had legs that plugged into the undersize of the wings,
> which was utterly ridiculous. You can even kind of stand him upright,
> and while it's not perfect, it's better than anything the vintage toy can do.

The beast legs are just the lower part of the robot calves though, right?
So they are sort of near the pelvis.

> His gun can plug into the underside of either of the wings, using a
> little rectangular tab. There's not much reason to do this, and it looks
> weird. It's certainly not as clean as the weapon storage on the old toy.

If he came with two guns though… symmetric guns under the wing would be
better than accuracy

> As a robot, he's got two little silver painted blades meant to plug into
> the sides of his forearms. You can leave them there in beast mode as
> well, which is probably a good idea since they're super tiny and easily lost.

They could also be heel spurs.

>
> Even though the original Terrorsaur was red and black, the CGI version of
> him was red and silver. So, the toy is accurate in that respect. The
> color mapping isn't completely right, though, since his upper arms and
> upper legs and the spikes on his toes should all be painted silver as
> well, and they're not. (The red helmet is correct in this case. The old
> toy had a head that was painted blue, but the Mainframe animators were
> probably working from an unfinished toy prototype whose head was
> unpainted.) He's designed with details that are meant to suggest the
> visible C-3PO wiring that connected his upper torso to his lower torso in
> the show. Also, I do love his face sculpt. He's wearing this evil,
> obnoxious smirk, which is so in synch with the character from the series.

He really is great. That head is perfect.

> However, the swinging portion of the wings are held on loosely with a peg
> and can be popped off very easily. With those parts out of the way, it's
> possible to fold up the remainder of the wings pretty neatly. They don't
> disappear completely, but it's an option for a more compact look if you
> don't like the wings poking out to either side. The box images show the
> wings mounted with metal rivets, so I think this change was made
> *specifically* so you can remove the wings and improve the look of his
> robot mode. (Sadly, there's probably no way for the third-party guys to
> add those little decorative wings to his shoulders. There's no place to plug them in.)

The left wing end on mine just falls off. It’s disappointing because
otherwise this is a great toy. I’m going to have to build up or expand that
mushroom peg, as it is almost a cylinder. If I try to bend it open, it it
just going to snap? Do I boil my Terrorsaur first, to soften the plastic?
Make Pterodactyl Soup?

> Additionally, Terrorsaur comes with a copy of the Golden Disk, the same
> mold as one of the two that came packaged with Mainframe/Teletraan I of
> Autobot Ark fame (one side has alien Vok symbols; the other is marked
> "The Sounds of Earth," so it's like a mash-up of two disks). Terrorsaur
> can't meaningfully interact with the disk (I don't think he even ever
> held it at any point during the Beast Wars cartoon) and it's not even
> mentioned in his instructions, so I feel like it was a last-minute
> addition, perhaps as an attempt to justify this toy being part of the
> Golden Disk Collection in the first place. It's the only one of the four
> sets to actually come with one.

Can’t meaningfully interact with it? Have you tried having him bite in in
beast mode?

> I like this guy a lot more than I thought I would, considering he was
> reportedly just a reuse of the Airazor toy. At $22.99, I'm very happy with him.
> The changes made are most welcome, at least in my view, and he's also
> one of my favorite Beast Wars characters so I'm glad to be able to add
> him to my collection. Pterodactyl hot wings!

It’s so close to being a great toy. If that damned wing would stay on.

> Zob (it's crazy that I've got an entire Hasbro shipping box filled up
> with modern-era Beast Wars toys!)

Semi-Random aside: I’ve decided that Maximal Skywarp is a sniper, and that
he flies up to secluded spots to perch above a Decepticon position and then
shoot them when they aren’t expecting it. Like a hero does. But he needs a
rifle — a nice long one, which can ideally fold so he can “carry” it in
beast mode (peg it into the backs of his beast legs, really). I’m currently
using Rodimus Prime’s rifle, but it really should come from some shitty toy
that doesn’t deserve it’s weapons. Any suggestions? Rodimus is sad that he
just has a sword.

Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur

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Subject: Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk
Collection Terrorsaur
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Fri, 4 Feb 2022 17:25 UTC

On Friday, February 4, 2022 at 12:02:36 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Thanks! I didn’t bother reading the instructions and also overlooked those!

Yay! I did some good in the world. Now I can go kick a puppy or something and not feel completely awful about it.

> I’m surprised that he feels so much beefier than Airazor/Skywarp. If I had
> a cooking scale I would weigh them, but he feels heavier and way more
> solid.

Oh, I actually do have a tiny digital scale. It won't weight anything more than 500 grams, though. It will consistently weigh Airazor, but not Terrorsaur. So, we conclude from this highly scientific experiment that he floats like a duck, and thus is made of wood, and is therefore a witch.

> I think we might actually have some impressions of Pterodactyls. They were
> not actually cartoony. The heads and bodies were likely covered in
> pycnofibers, and there is vigorous debate as to whether those are
> precursors to feathers. So, they were likely fuzzy or feathered beasties
> (and possibly warm blooded).

I think it's astonishing how many dinosaur discoveries we've made lately. Like, these guys have been buried for tens of millions of years and yet we're still going, "Hey, found an entire nest of dinosaur eggs with baby dinosaurs still inside" or "oh, look, found an entire dinosaur preserved so now we know their skin texture and color." At this rate, it's only a matter of time before they find live dinosaurs at the bottom of the ocean.

> Anyway, we have no DNA, and the Beast Wars folks likely didn’t have DNA, so
> they were guessing.

I just dislike how they try to put realistic animal faces on the new Beast Wars toys, because that's not what the characters looked like. Terrorsaur actually looks like himself for once.

> The left wing end on mine just falls off. It’s disappointing because
> otherwise this is a great toy. I’m going to have to build up or expand that
> mushroom peg, as it is almost a cylinder. If I try to bend it open, it it
> just going to snap? Do I boil my Terrorsaur first, to soften the plastic?

I would recommend taking some super glue (the gel kind, not the watery runny kind) and applying some to the outer edge of the mushroom peg. Let it dry completely and then reassemble. Folks also use Future brand floor polish for this sort of thing, but I can't personally vouch for that.

> Can’t meaningfully interact with it? Have you tried having him bite in in
> beast mode?

I don't want to teach him that it's okay to just go around biting things!

> Semi-Random aside: I’ve decided that Maximal Skywarp is a sniper, and that
> he flies up to secluded spots to perch above a Decepticon position and then
> shoot them when they aren’t expecting it. Like a hero does. But he needs a
> rifle — a nice long one, which can ideally fold so he can “carry” it in
> beast mode (peg it into the backs of his beast legs, really). I’m currently
> using Rodimus Prime’s rifle, but it really should come from some shitty toy
> that doesn’t deserve it’s weapons. Any suggestions?

Maybe the gun from Titans Return Perceptor? There's no reason for a scientist to have a sniper rifle.

Zob (I mean, he can already blow Devastator into pieces using his microscope lens, so...)

Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk Collection Terrorsaur

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From: travolt...@defender.uni (Travoltron)
Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers
Subject: Re: Zob's Thoughts on Amazon-Exclusive Deluxe-Class Golden Disk
Collection Terrorsaur
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 by: Travoltron - Sat, 5 Feb 2022 18:35 UTC

On 2/4/2022 9:25 AM, Zobovor wrote:
> Maybe the gun from Titans Return Perceptor? There's no reason for a scientist to have a sniper rifle.

Yes, that weapon doesn't suit him. I gave Siege Sideswipe's missile
launcher to Perceptor. It works great.

(My Lambos all have 3rd party weapons.)

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