Poor Snarl. He's perhaps the only Beast Wars toy to be something of a misfire. Whilst the likes of Armordillo are pedestrian and uninspiring, Snarl is just terrible, unfortunately.

His alternate mode is supposed to be a Tasmanian Devil. I'ts not. It's a very angry squirrel with bat ears. On top of a very bizarre looking design, Snarl has one of the most undignified attack features : pressing the trigger under the tail launches the rest of the body forward. Basically, he farts his tail off. Brilliant.

Sometimes, a slightly off looking beast mode (Cheetor, Dinobot) is compensated for by a decent robot mode. Sadly, Snarl falls short here too. In trying to do something different with Snarl's transformation, Kenner's designers perhaps over reach themselves. Whilst the sequence is a clever one, with the back of the beast splitting in half and the rear legs tucking inwards, it's the front where it all goes a bit pear shaped. Splitting the head in half and moving the halves out to the sides and down and around form the robot mode legs. A clever twist, you may think. Until you see what it results in. Snarl's beast head is so massive that it gives him the sort of weird looking platform shoes that even Elton John would think twice about wearing. Worse still, they look cack when viewed from the inside, with that weird toothed strut poking out to balance him. Only the nice jaw/ torso gets it right, with a muscle definition cleverly sculpted into the beast mouth.

The resulting robot is an uncomfortable looking arrangement of limbs and animal parts. It looks like a cross between an abbatoir and Eartha Kitt's wardrobe. Horrible. The tail becomes...well I don't honestly know what. A draught excluder that you plug into his forearm.

A rare disappointment in the Beast Wars line, Snarl is the very last figure you should be looking for. Even the pointless Micro Playsets have more going for them than this...effort.

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