Death's Head
18-09-11, 04:26 PM
So, Masterpiece Grimlock, then. Is he? I hear you ask, well sit down, gentle viewer, and I shall spout forth and wax lyrical upon this slightly diminished mighty warrior.
Visiting my local (ish) Toys R Us, I was disappointed to find Grimlock poked away on the bottom shelf, sandwiched between the more impressive looking Battle Ops Bumblebee and the underwhelming ‘Meeting At Nemesis’ ROTF Repaint box set. Grimlock sat sadly in his tiny plastic prison, looking small and inadequate next to Bumblebee, who in his prettier looking HFTD box (which admittedly, is also the size of a small bungalow on the outskirts of Purfleet), bellowed his presence loudly from the bottom, with packaging designed to capture your attention, shouting ‘Try me’, ‘I do this!’, ‘and this!’ and loads of other hyperbole about the toy. Grimlock could only look on sadly, hoping that collectors would take pity on him in his strange, wedge shaped packaging, which I looked at and pondered thusly: “Christ, he’s tiny” and also “bet he’s a right pain in the arse to get out of that economical packaging.”. And so it came to pass.
For a toy aimed at collectors, Hasbro sure have given us the shaft in terms of packaging. Though there is indeed a nice piece of art and an abridged version of his old Marvel Comics bio, the box has to be pretty much destroyed to get Grimlock out of it. Although I’m not much of a MIB fan, if a toy has a box, I will keep it, but Grimlock’s just deserves throwing out. It’s awful. I like what they’ve tried to do, minimising the packaging and so on, but it just looks like Grimlock is any old TF toy and not one warranting any special treatment. Annoying, considering how much effort goes into packaging up those lurid collector club exclusives.
So after a good 15 minutes of careful removal of the packaging, stands Grimlock. He’s a very nice looking update of his 1980s counterpart, just with more movement and articulation. His legs can do walking and stomping, his head turns (a full 360 degrees at that) and he can open and close his jaw. You can twiddle the top of his skull around to change the eye colour. I’m not fussed for this, but it’ll no doubt keep the cry babies happy who have to have these things look just like they did on TV, because, like, this sh*t matters maaan (no it doesn’t). Ooh! Grimlock can wiggle his tail as well, which is kind of cute. Switching Grimlock to robot mode is surprisingly simple – he follows the same layout as his 1980s toy, but isn’t perhaps as slick as Animated Grimlock’s updating of this same sequence of moves. He flips into place pretty well, and I like the touch of having the Autobot symbol rise up in his chest (nice). My only points of criticism are as follows;
• His torso/waist doesn’t ‘click’ into place making him feel a bit loose and unsteady.
• The tail halves similarly do not clip into the inside of his legs, which is understandable, as this would quickly knacker the chrome, but again, they just feel a bit loose hanging in place there.
Grimlock’s robot mode is an impressive looking brute, with a nice range of movement. The articulation is something else though, particularly where his legs are concerned. Oddly, ratcheting joints have been placed at the knees. Now, this is fine. As a slightly top heavy toy, Grimlock does need some sturdy joints to stand up. However, at his waist, we just have those standard smooth moving cube joints (which facilitate transformation and rotation of the legs, I get that). This means that if you try to do some cool poses with Grimlock, his legs invariably end up moving out to the sides and he ends up doing the splits before toppling over. It would have been better to use those more sturdy, clicky-clicky ratcheting joints that RiD Ultra Magnus and sundry other toys have used here. I can’t see that it would have ramped the toy up that much in cost, but then maybe as a ‘collector toy’, he’s not likely to be played with, so scrimping on such features can be gotten away with.
Grimlock has a nice light up sword gimmick, which I do like. It was a feature I thought was pretty cool on Generation 2 Laser Prime (who also has more sturdy hip/ legs!) so it’s nice to see it trotted out for a premium figure, despite what most other folk will tell you (he can’t move his fingers! OMG! What a total jip! Etc etc!). He also comes with his crown, from his initial ill-judged tenure as Autobot Leader, which is fine, if you like these add on bits of ‘character’, mine is spoilt by a massive burr where it’s been taken off a sprue and wont be used much anyway, so its not that much of a big deal.
I’m very happy with the toy. He’s a nice, bulky toy with some fun features and demands to be played with, rather than mouldering on a shelf. He’s not brilliant, by any stretch, and those looking for the complexity of other Masterpiece toys will be disappointed. His small stature also robs him of the presence he should have as a Dinobot and there’s those engineering niggles which do spoil him, but I have to say you get your money’s worth out of him. I am also so glad I did not pay the horrendous import prices for either of the Takara versions; accessories and superior packaging aside, Masterpiece Grimlock really isn’t worth shelling out more than the sixty quid of the US version.
713714715
Visiting my local (ish) Toys R Us, I was disappointed to find Grimlock poked away on the bottom shelf, sandwiched between the more impressive looking Battle Ops Bumblebee and the underwhelming ‘Meeting At Nemesis’ ROTF Repaint box set. Grimlock sat sadly in his tiny plastic prison, looking small and inadequate next to Bumblebee, who in his prettier looking HFTD box (which admittedly, is also the size of a small bungalow on the outskirts of Purfleet), bellowed his presence loudly from the bottom, with packaging designed to capture your attention, shouting ‘Try me’, ‘I do this!’, ‘and this!’ and loads of other hyperbole about the toy. Grimlock could only look on sadly, hoping that collectors would take pity on him in his strange, wedge shaped packaging, which I looked at and pondered thusly: “Christ, he’s tiny” and also “bet he’s a right pain in the arse to get out of that economical packaging.”. And so it came to pass.
For a toy aimed at collectors, Hasbro sure have given us the shaft in terms of packaging. Though there is indeed a nice piece of art and an abridged version of his old Marvel Comics bio, the box has to be pretty much destroyed to get Grimlock out of it. Although I’m not much of a MIB fan, if a toy has a box, I will keep it, but Grimlock’s just deserves throwing out. It’s awful. I like what they’ve tried to do, minimising the packaging and so on, but it just looks like Grimlock is any old TF toy and not one warranting any special treatment. Annoying, considering how much effort goes into packaging up those lurid collector club exclusives.
So after a good 15 minutes of careful removal of the packaging, stands Grimlock. He’s a very nice looking update of his 1980s counterpart, just with more movement and articulation. His legs can do walking and stomping, his head turns (a full 360 degrees at that) and he can open and close his jaw. You can twiddle the top of his skull around to change the eye colour. I’m not fussed for this, but it’ll no doubt keep the cry babies happy who have to have these things look just like they did on TV, because, like, this sh*t matters maaan (no it doesn’t). Ooh! Grimlock can wiggle his tail as well, which is kind of cute. Switching Grimlock to robot mode is surprisingly simple – he follows the same layout as his 1980s toy, but isn’t perhaps as slick as Animated Grimlock’s updating of this same sequence of moves. He flips into place pretty well, and I like the touch of having the Autobot symbol rise up in his chest (nice). My only points of criticism are as follows;
• His torso/waist doesn’t ‘click’ into place making him feel a bit loose and unsteady.
• The tail halves similarly do not clip into the inside of his legs, which is understandable, as this would quickly knacker the chrome, but again, they just feel a bit loose hanging in place there.
Grimlock’s robot mode is an impressive looking brute, with a nice range of movement. The articulation is something else though, particularly where his legs are concerned. Oddly, ratcheting joints have been placed at the knees. Now, this is fine. As a slightly top heavy toy, Grimlock does need some sturdy joints to stand up. However, at his waist, we just have those standard smooth moving cube joints (which facilitate transformation and rotation of the legs, I get that). This means that if you try to do some cool poses with Grimlock, his legs invariably end up moving out to the sides and he ends up doing the splits before toppling over. It would have been better to use those more sturdy, clicky-clicky ratcheting joints that RiD Ultra Magnus and sundry other toys have used here. I can’t see that it would have ramped the toy up that much in cost, but then maybe as a ‘collector toy’, he’s not likely to be played with, so scrimping on such features can be gotten away with.
Grimlock has a nice light up sword gimmick, which I do like. It was a feature I thought was pretty cool on Generation 2 Laser Prime (who also has more sturdy hip/ legs!) so it’s nice to see it trotted out for a premium figure, despite what most other folk will tell you (he can’t move his fingers! OMG! What a total jip! Etc etc!). He also comes with his crown, from his initial ill-judged tenure as Autobot Leader, which is fine, if you like these add on bits of ‘character’, mine is spoilt by a massive burr where it’s been taken off a sprue and wont be used much anyway, so its not that much of a big deal.
I’m very happy with the toy. He’s a nice, bulky toy with some fun features and demands to be played with, rather than mouldering on a shelf. He’s not brilliant, by any stretch, and those looking for the complexity of other Masterpiece toys will be disappointed. His small stature also robs him of the presence he should have as a Dinobot and there’s those engineering niggles which do spoil him, but I have to say you get your money’s worth out of him. I am also so glad I did not pay the horrendous import prices for either of the Takara versions; accessories and superior packaging aside, Masterpiece Grimlock really isn’t worth shelling out more than the sixty quid of the US version.
713714715