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interests / alt.toys.transformers / Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy Colors" Terrorsaur

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* Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy Colors" TerrorsaurZobovor
`- Re: Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "ToyGustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats

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Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy Colors" Terrorsaur

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Subject: Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy Colors" Terrorsaur
From: zmf...@aol.com (Zobovor)
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 by: Zobovor - Sat, 6 Aug 2022 15:13 UTC

The Buzzworthy Bumblebee toy line may indeed have begun as a celebration of All Things Bumblebee, but at this point it's expanded and ballooned to the point of absurdity. There's no connection whatsoever between Bumblebee and any of the Beast Wars characters who have been stuffed into the assortment at this point.

These guys weren't super high on my want list, but I saw that other people were finding them, and then I fell into the #FOMO trap once again. The Target web site had them available, which saved me the trouble of hunting for them (it was hard enough just tracking down the Creatures Collide 4-pack). So, I spent money and now I have some wrong-colored Beast Wars characters.

HEROIC MAXIMAL DINOBOT

So, back when the Beast Wars toys made their initial debut, they included a velociraptor among their ranks, because Jurassic Park had introduced them into the public consciousness and were still quite popular, and the name Dinobot was already owned by Hasbro, and the guys at Kenner weren't shy about throwing around existing trademarks when it suited them (SEE: Insecticon; SEE ALSO: Snarl, Razorclaw, Rampage, Inferno, etc.) Nobody really knew at the time that Dinobot as a character was going to achieve a near-legendary status. And now we have a naked version of him.

When they were developing the CGI models for the characters, though, the saturation on the toys was almost universally cranked down by several notches.. So, the flesh-colored Dinobot ended up being more of a pale brown color in animation. This toy, on the other hand, is an attempt to go back to the character's roots, as it were, and presents him in an approximation of his original Kenner 1996 color scheme.

I will say as a caveat that the original toy was not quite this pink. I think the Hasbro team may have been looking at grainy Internet photos for reference again. An authentic 1996 Dinobot was more of a mauve color. This toy, as many have said, looks more like raw chicken. But, nobody could argue that it's too similar in appearance to the Kingdom release.

It's weird, because we've had redeco versions of the Kenner toy trying desperately to match the CGI color scheme desite the radically different-looking toy design (like the Telemocha version from Japan), and now we've got toys specifically designed like the CGI models, but are being colored like the old toys. It's like the bizarro universe Telemocha.

Also, the instruction booklet for Dinobot still includes a Predacon symbol. Mistake, or a deliberate reference to his true heritage?

So, robot mode is alarmingly pink with an opaque orange color for the legs. The original toy had translucent plastic, but I imagine that would have been a bit too fragile for this release, which has many more load-bearing parts. They used the toy-based robot head from the Grimlock release (blue mask, no visible teeth), which further cements the tribute to the original Kenner version of Dinobot. Some mutant head halves hanging off either side of his head would have been cool, but I doubt he could have transformed properly with those in the way.

They didn't quite fix the wobbly pelvis on this release. It's not quite as wobbly as my Kingdom Dinobot, but it's still quite noticeable. His sword is painted white, which means the tip of his dinosaur tail is inexplicably white this time instead of purple. They had a paint budget to spend, dammit, and they were going to use it whether it made sense or not!

Dinosaur mode is just as pink and fleshy-looking. The stripe deco is meant to evoke the Kenner toy as well—they didn't just use the same tampographs as they did during Kingdom. They painted his dinosaur eyes yellow (an artifact of the Kenner toy) and they also painted his toe claws white (a paint application that didn't exist on the original release). They fixed the color-matching problem of the Kingdom toy, which had gold-colored ball joints (the hip joints for robot mode) right in the middle of the dinosaur body; on this release, the ball joints are pink, the same color as the rest of him. The undercarriage robot legs even serve as a tribute to the old toy, which had a bright orange "rib cage" made of robot leg parts.

This is an utterly inessential toy, but it's the closest allegory to "Diaclone Universe" Beast Wars we're ever likely to get. Not every character is going to get a "toy colors" release, of course, but Dinobot was just different enough that he fascinated me, in the same sort of way as a train wreck. A train wreck carrying a payload of frozen chicken breast.

EVIL PREDACON TERRORSAUR

I honestly suspect that Mainframe was given unpainted prototypes of early Beast Wars toys when the time came to develop CGI models based on those toys.. It would certainly explain why Megatron's helmet was black instead of silver, or why Terrorsaur's helmet was red instead of blue.

Terrorsaur is arguably one of the toys who changed the most drastically when translating him to animation. They cheated and made his gigantic wings disappear entirely for robot mode, and in the cartoon series he was red and grey instead of red and black. The blue deco present on the toy was absent completely from his CGI model.

So, rather than the undersaturated red that we got with the Golden Disk version of Terrorsaur, this is a brightly saturated red, very much in synch with the Kenner release, that uses black as a secondary color. He probably should have had black upper arms and upper legs as well, but I imagine the way the toy was molded may have prevented this (unless they wanted to commit to additional paint applications). The robot fists and ankles are cast in blue plastic; the robot head and shins are painted in blue.

While the toy is designed to allow you to tuck away the wings, and the wings are themselves removable, I suppose a true toy version of Terrorsaur would just have gigantic wings protruding from either side of his back, which is certainly possible to achieve with this toy.

Beast mode is bright red with a very bright green speckled pattern painted on the pterodactyl's head and back and tail. As with Dinobot, it's a different deco pattern than the one used for the Golden Disk release.

I understand why they went in this direction for a redeco, but it almost seems like a wasted opportunity. We could have gotten Lazorbeak or Fractyl or somebody instead. At least it would have been a new character to add to the collection instead of Yet Another Terrorsaur. But, I guess there's nothing to preclude that from still happening in the future.

Zob (off to Las Vegas again for a week, so wish me luck)

Re: Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy Colors" Terrorsaur

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Subject: Re: Zob's Thoughts on Buzworthy Bumblebee Naked Dinobot and "Toy
Colors" Terrorsaur
From: pork.not...@gmail.com (Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats)
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 by: Gustavo Wombat, of t - Sat, 6 Aug 2022 20:54 UTC

On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 8:13:11 AM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> These guys weren't super high on my want list, but I saw that other people were finding them, and then I fell into the #FOMO trap once again. The Target web site had them available, which saved me the trouble of hunting for them (it was hard enough just tracking down the Creatures Collide 4-pack). So, I spent money and now I have some wrong-colored Beast Wars characters.

Good, good. Peer pressure works.
> HEROIC MAXIMAL DINOBOT
>
> So, back when the Beast Wars toys made their initial debut, they included a velociraptor among their ranks, because Jurassic Park had introduced them into the public consciousness and were still quite popular, and the name Dinobot was already owned by Hasbro, and the guys at Kenner weren't shy about throwing around existing trademarks when it suited them (SEE: Insecticon; SEE ALSO: Snarl, Razorclaw, Rampage, Inferno, etc.) Nobody really knew at the time that Dinobot as a character was going to achieve a near-legendary status. And now we have a naked version of him.

Velociraptors had feathers, so he has been plucked.

> I will say as a caveat that the original toy was not quite this pink. I think the Hasbro team may have been looking at grainy Internet photos for reference again. An authentic 1996 Dinobot was more of a mauve color. This toy, as many have said, looks more like raw chicken. But, nobody could argue that it's too similar in appearance to the Kingdom release.

He's a little too pink for raw chicken. I think he's more of inflamed, plucked, live chicken.
> It's weird, because we've had redeco versions of the Kenner toy trying desperately to match the CGI color scheme desite the radically different-looking toy design (like the Telemocha version from Japan), and now we've got toys specifically designed like the CGI models, but are being colored like the old toys. It's like the bizarro universe Telemocha.

I really like the idea behind this, but sometimes the execution is unfortunate. This and "original character art" Blackarachnia might have been better if they just went in an entirely different direction.

> So, robot mode is alarmingly pink with an opaque orange color for the legs. The original toy had translucent plastic, but I imagine that would have been a bit too fragile for this release, which has many more load-bearing parts. They used the toy-based robot head from the Grimlock release (blue mask, no visible teeth), which further cements the tribute to the original Kenner version of Dinobot. Some mutant head halves hanging off either side of his head would have been cool, but I doubt he could have transformed properly with those in the way.

I would have liked metallic paint on the robot legs, to catch the light and suggest the translucent plastic a bit more.

> They didn't quite fix the wobbly pelvis on this release. It's not quite as wobbly as my Kingdom Dinobot, but it's still quite noticeable. His sword is painted white, which means the tip of his dinosaur tail is inexplicably white this time instead of purple. They had a paint budget to spend, dammit, and they were going to use it whether it made sense or not!

Front leg claws would have been nice, but instead we have a bit of exposed bone on the tip of the tail.

> Dinosaur mode is just as pink and fleshy-looking. The stripe deco is meant to evoke the Kenner toy as well—they didn't just use the same tampographs as they did during Kingdom. They painted his dinosaur eyes yellow (an artifact of the Kenner toy) and they also painted his toe claws white (a paint application that didn't exist on the original release). They fixed the color-matching problem of the Kingdom toy, which had gold-colored ball joints (the hip joints for robot mode) right in the middle of the dinosaur body; on this release, the ball joints are pink, the same color as the rest of him. The undercarriage robot legs even serve as a tribute to the old toy, which had a bright orange "rib cage" made of robot leg parts.

It really is amazing how much love and care went into creating this truly horrible color scheme.

> This is an utterly inessential toy, but it's the closest allegory to "Diaclone Universe" Beast Wars we're ever likely to get. Not every character is going to get a "toy colors" release, of course, but Dinobot was just different enough that he fascinated me, in the same sort of way as a train wreck.. A train wreck carrying a payload of frozen chicken breast.

You say he is inessential, but have you posed him with your Kupworthy Kup riding him? Kup rides the plucked proto-chicken. It's like a scene out of a terrifying story that keeps Daniel up at night.

> EVIL PREDACON TERRORSAUR
>
> I honestly suspect that Mainframe was given unpainted prototypes of early Beast Wars toys when the time came to develop CGI models based on those toys. It would certainly explain why Megatron's helmet was black instead of silver, or why Terrorsaur's helmet was red instead of blue.
>
> Terrorsaur is arguably one of the toys who changed the most drastically when translating him to animation. They cheated and made his gigantic wings disappear entirely for robot mode, and in the cartoon series he was red and grey instead of red and black. The blue deco present on the toy was absent completely from his CGI model.

The CGI model is a lot nicer looking. Maybe they just went with what looked better on TV.

> I understand why they went in this direction for a redeco, but it almost seems like a wasted opportunity. We could have gotten Lazorbeak or Fractyl or somebody instead. At least it would have been a new character to add to the collection instead of Yet Another Terrorsaur. But, I guess there's nothing to preclude that from still happening in the future.

Given how hard it was for people to get the Golden Disk Terrorsaur, and the problems with the one wing falling off, I'm glad that we are getting Yet Another Terrorsaur.

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