Death's Head
27-08-11, 06:44 AM
The second wave of Beast Wars figures saw the 'flip-change' gimmick dropped from the majority of the Basic size class toys. This was quite a pleasing development, as it added a bit more play value to the Basic sized figures. It also allowed for some more complex transformations for some of the figures in this size class. That's not the case for Drill Bit though.
Drill Bit is a bol weevil. These beetles were notorious in parts of America, where their prevalence and choice of food stuffs decimated the cotton industry by the 1920s. They are also quite ugly looking things. Save for the purple limbs and proboscis, Drill Bit is an accurate representation of the real thing. There's a good use of transparent plastics on this toy, with deep orange plastic ridges on the back poking through the brown paintwork.
The figure also has a pretty cool action feature - from underneath the beast mode, a drill rotates around. Pushing the bug along causes the drill to rotate! Good fun.
Drill Bit's transformation is pretty straight forward, but also a little bit fiddly. Essentially, the robot mode legs swing down from underneath the beetle and clip into place. The robot arms are clipped in place inside the shell. They unclip and swing out to the sides and the chest of the robot swings down from the back of the beetle. The insect legs swing backwards out of the way. Or at least they would, did they not have too huge pegs on them that get in the way of the robot mode hips. There seems to have been some oversight in development of this toy as these pegs are unable to clip onto anything, despite clearly being meant to.
The robot mode is a fairly decent Basic sized toy. It's nothing out and out flashy, but works well. The robot face is suitably fierce looking, the drill arm makes for an interesting weapon and the translucent orange plastics work well with the purple limbs. Only a lack of structural integrity lets Drill Bit down. He feels like he should all clip snugly together, but he doesn't and his torso feels very unstable as a result. These engineering niggles do work against Drill Bit, and let an otherwise good figure down.
464465466
Drill Bit is a bol weevil. These beetles were notorious in parts of America, where their prevalence and choice of food stuffs decimated the cotton industry by the 1920s. They are also quite ugly looking things. Save for the purple limbs and proboscis, Drill Bit is an accurate representation of the real thing. There's a good use of transparent plastics on this toy, with deep orange plastic ridges on the back poking through the brown paintwork.
The figure also has a pretty cool action feature - from underneath the beast mode, a drill rotates around. Pushing the bug along causes the drill to rotate! Good fun.
Drill Bit's transformation is pretty straight forward, but also a little bit fiddly. Essentially, the robot mode legs swing down from underneath the beetle and clip into place. The robot arms are clipped in place inside the shell. They unclip and swing out to the sides and the chest of the robot swings down from the back of the beetle. The insect legs swing backwards out of the way. Or at least they would, did they not have too huge pegs on them that get in the way of the robot mode hips. There seems to have been some oversight in development of this toy as these pegs are unable to clip onto anything, despite clearly being meant to.
The robot mode is a fairly decent Basic sized toy. It's nothing out and out flashy, but works well. The robot face is suitably fierce looking, the drill arm makes for an interesting weapon and the translucent orange plastics work well with the purple limbs. Only a lack of structural integrity lets Drill Bit down. He feels like he should all clip snugly together, but he doesn't and his torso feels very unstable as a result. These engineering niggles do work against Drill Bit, and let an otherwise good figure down.
464465466