Death's Head
23-08-11, 08:39 AM
As is the nature of Transformers, Polar Claw aims to bring to the table for the Maximals the same kind of features that Scorponok does for the Predacons. Unfortunately, he doesn't manage to match Scorponok for execution and fun. Whilst the beast mode is a nicely sculpted anmd detailed if slightly too bulky effort (thanks to those cumbersome robot arms on the belly), Polar Claw's various gimmicks work against him.
Standing Polar Claw on his hind legs in beast mode causes his mouth to open and a set of rather sharp teeth to emerge. Sadly, the fixed head leaves him staring at the sky which makes him look a bit silly.
Polar Claw has a straight forward conversion process. The robot legs fold out of the beast mode hind legs, the front paws fold over the back and the robot arms swing out from underneath and out to the sides. Unclipping the ears of the bear reveals the robot mode torso which swings up and around and clips in place. The reversable head contains an equal match of beast and robot parts so it's up to you to decide which is the best one (i like the grey/yellow one as it breaks up the sea of red and white).
The robot mode is quite bulky and stocky looking, but unusually for the range, doesn't have quite so much articulation. Alhough the arms and head are able to move about freely, the legs have limited articulation, bending at the knees only. They can move at the hip, but due to the teeth barring gimmick, tend to move in tandem and with some resistance. The internal trigger mechanism for bearing the teeth feels like it's being moved in ways it doesn't appreciate which makes me worry the feature can be damaged without much effort.
As with Scorponok, Polar Claw has some spring loaded features. One of which will no doubt have gone off by the time you've got to this stage - if not before. The left claw houses a pop out striuking claw...thing. It's housed inside the leg and is only supposed to go off with a touch of the trigger, however the springs are so tightly wound that it frequently goes off and is a bit of a pain to lock back in place without it frequently going off. Whilst launching the bat from the right leg is easily executed, it suffers from some balance problems and quickly tailspins down to the ground. Again, due to a lot of tight springs, folding it back up and reattaching it to the leg is a bit of a task.
Due to these design flaws, Polar Claw is unfortunately destined to be one of the toys that gets a little neglected. As he is also mostly white plastic, you can also look forward to him yellowing with age, as mine has now started to do.
344345346347
Standing Polar Claw on his hind legs in beast mode causes his mouth to open and a set of rather sharp teeth to emerge. Sadly, the fixed head leaves him staring at the sky which makes him look a bit silly.
Polar Claw has a straight forward conversion process. The robot legs fold out of the beast mode hind legs, the front paws fold over the back and the robot arms swing out from underneath and out to the sides. Unclipping the ears of the bear reveals the robot mode torso which swings up and around and clips in place. The reversable head contains an equal match of beast and robot parts so it's up to you to decide which is the best one (i like the grey/yellow one as it breaks up the sea of red and white).
The robot mode is quite bulky and stocky looking, but unusually for the range, doesn't have quite so much articulation. Alhough the arms and head are able to move about freely, the legs have limited articulation, bending at the knees only. They can move at the hip, but due to the teeth barring gimmick, tend to move in tandem and with some resistance. The internal trigger mechanism for bearing the teeth feels like it's being moved in ways it doesn't appreciate which makes me worry the feature can be damaged without much effort.
As with Scorponok, Polar Claw has some spring loaded features. One of which will no doubt have gone off by the time you've got to this stage - if not before. The left claw houses a pop out striuking claw...thing. It's housed inside the leg and is only supposed to go off with a touch of the trigger, however the springs are so tightly wound that it frequently goes off and is a bit of a pain to lock back in place without it frequently going off. Whilst launching the bat from the right leg is easily executed, it suffers from some balance problems and quickly tailspins down to the ground. Again, due to a lot of tight springs, folding it back up and reattaching it to the leg is a bit of a task.
Due to these design flaws, Polar Claw is unfortunately destined to be one of the toys that gets a little neglected. As he is also mostly white plastic, you can also look forward to him yellowing with age, as mine has now started to do.
344345346347