Death's Head
02-01-12, 08:12 AM
For what turned out to be the final series of Beast Wars toys, Kenner launched the Transmetal 2 figures. These toys featured more organic, realistic silhouettes than any of the preceding toys in the range. The Transmetal 2 range pushed the previous years’ popular Transmetal concept, the difference here being that the robotic and organic parts were much more mixed together in the creature’s bodies giving a powerful looking hybrid. They looked a lot more savage and raw than anything that came previously.
Sonar was amongst the first to emerge in the Basic size class. In common with most of the initial wave of Transmetal 2 figures, Sonar has a great sculpt and superb detailing, but lacks the pizzazz of later figures in the range. A large blue bat, Sonar features an opening jaw and moveable legs in beast mode. As a sort of ‘attack mode’, part of his left wing can swing out as a blade weapon, though it looks a bit silly. Looking closely at the figure in this mode, there is a nice ragged look with pieces of organic tissue giving way to exposed circuitry and mechanics. It’s really nice designed but ultimately let down by a slightly flat and dull looking colour palette. The glorious red chrome and neon green decals do what they can against the sea of blue, but aren’t sympathetic to the surrounding colours.
The transformation for Sonar is outwardly simple, but the sequence with the robot legs is a bit of a fiddle, as they are tucked up inside the bat body and have to be swung out and around as if they are on a trapeze. The beast head splits in half to reveal the robot head, but in a moment of ill judged design, the front of the bat head moves inside the robot body which leads to constant chipping of the chrome and paint on this section. The arms simply unclip from the wings and the chest swings into place from the rear of the bat in conjunction with fiddling about with his legs. The robot mode is decent, but not one of my favourites. The dominance of the blue clashing with that red chrome chest isn’t helped by two few of the additional silvers and browns coming to the fore in this mode. The tan coloured right leg doesn’t help matters either, looking like it’s come from another toy entirely. The quality of sculpt just about shines through. The head sculpt is a quite grisly looking thing, all snarls and teeth - particularly for a Maximal- and those huge bladed hands are excellent, if unfortunately a bit too static to be posed in any decent fashion.
As one of the first out of the gate, Sonar is unfortunately not a great advert for the line. There’s a good idea on paper and a good attempt to make the transformation less obvious than you’d expect, but he doesn’t match some of the earlier Basic sized figures for quality, let alone the Transmetal figures that appeared previously.Better things are to come.
13001301
Sonar was amongst the first to emerge in the Basic size class. In common with most of the initial wave of Transmetal 2 figures, Sonar has a great sculpt and superb detailing, but lacks the pizzazz of later figures in the range. A large blue bat, Sonar features an opening jaw and moveable legs in beast mode. As a sort of ‘attack mode’, part of his left wing can swing out as a blade weapon, though it looks a bit silly. Looking closely at the figure in this mode, there is a nice ragged look with pieces of organic tissue giving way to exposed circuitry and mechanics. It’s really nice designed but ultimately let down by a slightly flat and dull looking colour palette. The glorious red chrome and neon green decals do what they can against the sea of blue, but aren’t sympathetic to the surrounding colours.
The transformation for Sonar is outwardly simple, but the sequence with the robot legs is a bit of a fiddle, as they are tucked up inside the bat body and have to be swung out and around as if they are on a trapeze. The beast head splits in half to reveal the robot head, but in a moment of ill judged design, the front of the bat head moves inside the robot body which leads to constant chipping of the chrome and paint on this section. The arms simply unclip from the wings and the chest swings into place from the rear of the bat in conjunction with fiddling about with his legs. The robot mode is decent, but not one of my favourites. The dominance of the blue clashing with that red chrome chest isn’t helped by two few of the additional silvers and browns coming to the fore in this mode. The tan coloured right leg doesn’t help matters either, looking like it’s come from another toy entirely. The quality of sculpt just about shines through. The head sculpt is a quite grisly looking thing, all snarls and teeth - particularly for a Maximal- and those huge bladed hands are excellent, if unfortunately a bit too static to be posed in any decent fashion.
As one of the first out of the gate, Sonar is unfortunately not a great advert for the line. There’s a good idea on paper and a good attempt to make the transformation less obvious than you’d expect, but he doesn’t match some of the earlier Basic sized figures for quality, let alone the Transmetal figures that appeared previously.Better things are to come.
13001301