On Sunday, September 26, 2021 at 5:31:58 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> Saw these today at Walmart. Bought them on sight (and got a set for ViceGripX). They haven't been solicited to any of the online retailers, either (BBTS, Entertainment Earth, nobody has a listing for these toys right now, including Hasbro Pulse). It's all very strange. It's like they don't exist, and yet I'm holding them in my hands.

It's like you live in the future, or something. I'm almost always a month or so behind you in terms of toys.

> SHADOW PANTHER
>
> It's arguable that Shadow Panther is no longer "really" Ravage, since we're actually getting a Ravage toy later this year as an online PulseCon exclusive.

The yellow on the shoulders, even if part of the original toy, also argues against it. Ravage isn't yellow, he's chicken, to paraphrase Nobel laureate Bob Dylan.

> It's weird that this toy was sold at retail. Typically, Hasbro has shunted most of the redeco toys of lesser-known characters to retailer exclusives or sold through Hasbro Pulse. You'd think Shadow Panther would have joined the ranks of Hubcap and Bug Bite and the rest.

He does seem like one of the least essential toys to make it to retail, and I'm honestly a bit surprised that you bought him.
> As a robot, Shadow Panther is mostly black, with shockingly yellow shoulders and some silver painted deco on his legs. The original toy has a dual head, which could switch from the normal robot head to a mid-transformation "mutant head," and so the helmet on this version is sculpted to resemble the mutant head. (This itself is at odds with the original Shadow Panther bio card, which talks about how he deliberately styled himself to look like Cheetor so he could trick the Maximals.) He's got a purple Predacon symbol tampographed on his right forearm.

I don't know whether Shadow Panther is very dumb, or whether he just has a very low opinion of the Maximals, if he thought he could pass himself off as Cheetor. Unless Cheetor makes a habit of dressing in Blackface. I guess it was a different time.

I do wish they hadn't used any yellow plastic, and just painted his shoulders silver. It would make the inevitable custom as my departed and beloved skinny one-eyed tuxedo cat better.

> In panther mode, Shadow Panther is basically all black, from head to toe. Even his teeth and the inside of his mouth is black. He's got bright red eyes, and of course there's a smattering of visible yellow hinge parts and a little bit of visible painted silver components. Mostly, though, black cat is black. He still has the incredibly fragile tab that connects his beast mode to his beast neck, which I'm sure will pop off after I try to transform him a couple more times. (Mine broke on Cheetor the same day I got him, I'm pretty sure.)

My Cheetor broke his leg -- one of the joints was super tight, and didn't loosen with use.

> I guess Hasbro had to try and resell this toy to us *somehow* since they weren't planning on using it as Tigatron (he's getting his own Voyager-class toy later this year).

I kind of wish they went out in left field for this and gave us Arcee as a pink panther, or some other insane and ridiculous redeco. If nothing else, it would have been a better Arcee than the last Arcee (Siege? Earthrise? Both?), and then required the even more ridiculous Paradron Medic green panther.

> WASPINATOR
>
> So, I love the Generations Waspinator from 2014. Love it, love it, love it. It's a fantastic tribute, probably one of the best Beast Wars toys they've ever done. After Kingdom was announced, I knew that if they attempted Waspinator again, it would be almost impossible to outdo their previous attempt. So their solution, I guess, was to not even try.

That's pretty unfairly harsh.
> Robot mode is slightly under five inches (the Generations toy was about a half-inch taller). In the show, Waspinator was the same height as Cheetor and Airazor, but shorter than Dinobot and Megatron, so in broad strokes they got it right. In theory, he's got a light-pipe function for his eyes, but in practice the plastic is so thick that it doesn't work well. He comes with one accessory, his stinger gun.
>
> So what this toy has going for it that the Generations toy does not is a somewhat more generous heaping of paint applications. The circles on his shoulders are painted yellow finally, and he's got lots of color on his robot head and face that the 2014 toy lacked—he's got painted yellow teeth inside his robot mouth, and he's actually got the black-and-yellow stripes painted on his robot helmet antennae.

He also has the translucent purple on the eyes, and a better shape to the wings, and holds together a little tiny bit better around the beast head so the robot head doesn't poke out. Unless I am mistransforming my Generations mold (currently I have the Botcon Waruders out, because I really wanted them and now they are here...).

He can adjust his beast antenna, and the mandibles, and generally has a more expressive beast face.

> At the same time, the colors aren't right. He's hypersaturated, with a really vibrant Michaelangelo green that seems like a bad fit. Also, the wings and eyes (both bug eyes and robot eyes) are a translucent purple. I really don't know what screen shots Hasbro was studying, but Waspinator didn't have purple eyes and wings. He looked this way in Transformers: Animated, but surely they weren't using *that* for reference, were they? Anyway, his eyes should be blue. I don't like the purple.

Searching Google images, I see screenshots where he had anything from blue to silver to purple, depending on the light. I really like the translucent plastic for the beast eyes, by the way, it looks amazing.

> Also, the placement of his insect legs in robot mode is wrong. Waspinator is supposed to have two bug legs poking out of his forearms. The Generations toy has an additional leg poking out of his robot legs (which isn't quite right, since on the 1996 toy, the robot legs actually formed really big, thick rear insect legs). For Kingdom, they switched it around, so he's got one bug leg poking out of eah arm and two out of each leg. I mean, it's obviously not a huge deal. But the bug legs go where the bug legs go.

I don't like the legs on his legs. They get in the way a lot more, and since they are so THICK, and the joints are so tight, they don't want to move anywhere. Sure, if you want to be careful, you can have them touch the ground to give him six feet in robot mode (like training wheels), but they still get in the way and then look really dumb.

> It would be like designing an Optimus Prime toy with wheels on his shoulders. That's just not where they go.

Armada Optimus Prime pulls it off very nicely, while still unmistakably being Optimus Prime. He looks powerful. He looks great.

Waspinator doesn't have as iconic a look, though, so it just breaks the illusion to change much.

> Finally, the aesthetics in general are off. The Generations toy managed to capture the look and feel and physical proportions of the CGI model rather well, even including things like visible faux ball-and-socket joints in the ankles. The Kingdom toy seems like an amateurish caricature by comparison. It has no panache. It lacks verve.

You can't flip out his stinger, and he looks a little... chunky. It's been a few years, and I'm sure I'm looking a bit chunky too, though, so I'm a little forgiving. (actually, I think I was probably around my heaviest when the Generations toy was released, but that bit of information ruins the joke, such as it was)

> Transformation is kind of fidgety. There are lots of hinges and swivels and things whose purpose is to contort his body into the closest wasp shape they can manage. As with the 1996 toy, the stinger gun plugs into the abdomen to complete it. There's no real way to get a robot to fold up into a wasp without a ton of undercarriage junk. They do what they can with what they've got to work with.

It's almost the same transformation as the Generations toy, but somehow fidgety-er.

> (Since Waspinator was a character who was routinely dismantled in the show with alarming regularity, I was hoping the toy could be similarly disassembled. You can slip the arms off the bicep mushroom joint, and the fists can likewise slide off. The head is on a ball-and-socket joint so that will pop off cleanly, and the upper legs are also on mushroom joints. The antennae and wings will come off as well, as will the insect legs connected to the robot legs. That's about as far as you can get without popping out pins.)

It would have been nice if he was done like Studio Series Kup, and you could swap limbs. I mean dumb, but nice. I would love it, anyway, and if Kup can get that treatment after just one scene, Waspinator deserves it.

> Wasp mode ends up ... the wasp legs are thick and stumpy, more like tree trunks than insect legs. Priority seems to have been given to provide them the strength to support his weight, regardless of aesthetics.

Basil stems, not tree trunks. I do like the expressiveness of the robot head though.

> Also, rather than the simple, clean yellow-and-black stripe pattern he had in the show, they went with a funky stripe pattern that was probably modeled after a real-life wasp. Of course, this isn't what Waspinator looked like in CGI, so it fits the character poorly, regardless of how authentic to real life it might be.

> He's not completely awful. He's better than the 1996 toy, certainly. He's just not nearly as good as the other Waspinator we already got.

I think the 1996 toy has a lot of charm and stands on its own, while this feels like a mildly different variation on the Generations toy. I might rank them Generations, then original, then this. But they are all pretty good.

(The Dirge-Gun remold of the 1996 toy for BW2 was amazing, by the way, so it is possible my feelings for the 1996 toy are because of comparing it to the BW2 toy -- I love seeing toys get modified and changed like that, and like having every version)

> I wouldn't be shocked if we get this toy again in 2022 as Buzz Saw (the legacy redeco of Waspinator, done in yellow and black). It's either that or do a tribute to the insanely ugly FOX! Kids redeco, but honestly if I'm going to buy this toy again, I'd prefer it to at least represent a different character.

The Botcon Waruders have a BugBite inspired member, and a few others.

But really, I want them to stick a piranha head onto him and give us the Injector homage that no one has been asking for. Somewhere, there is a toy store that still has a wall of Injectors.

As it is, I don't regret getting this Waspinator, but if I ever start pruning down my collection, I expect that he would be the Waspinator that goes away.