Dave's Animorphs Rant:

     Jake/Grizzly Bear

     Jake/Bear and Cassie have been trickling into stores for the past few
weeks.  Thanks to the Pegspace Menace, *everything* will be trickling into
stores for a while.  I don't know if these toys will remain rare like the
original blue-eyed Cheetor or if they'll come out in decent quantity once
Star Wars stops taking up 50% of all action figure space.  Jake/Tiger seems
hard to find, so the Bear may have replaced it in case assortments.

CAPSULE

     Very good, solid beast mode, nice transformation, so-so human form,
extremely silly "wereform" head.  Not quite as good as Cassie, but still
Recommended.  $9.76 at Wal-Mart

RANT

     I refuse to list the "My Name Is" bit anymore in my reviews.  They just
suck so incredibly hard, and all seem to bring the message "you can only find
courage by becoming something other than what you are."  Bah.  The
instructions continue to be completely wordless and almost completely
useless.  

     "Human" Mode: As you'd expect from a bear morph, it's pretty stocky with
a pretty big backpack.  4.5" (12cm) tall, all the proportions are close, but
no cigar.  Except the head, which is way too tiny, being smaller than the
hands.  Jake the pinhead!  Like most of the Animorphs, his feet are animal
paws, and he has metallic clothing painted onto his front.  While not as
ludicrous as Marco, this Jake still has some trouble looking human, much less
like a teenager.  There's a serious floppy-factor in his torso, with things
barely held in place by stiff hinges.

     Wereform: The snap-on claws are a bit better than gloves this time,
since the upper part pegs into the forearm and then the claws fold down from
this part while paw pads fold up from the other side of the forearm.
Unfortunately, the right claw unit doesn't stay on well in "stowed" mode
because the paw pad gets in its way.  They're both pretty stable once
deployed, however, and look like really nasty jai alai cestuses.  
     The head flips much like Cassie's does, with a trigger to let the mutant
head flip out.  It looks like a pig's head.  It's the saddest mid-morph face
to date, especially since the front is almost totally flesh colored.

     Transformation: Another case of folding inside out to reveal the beast
head hidden in the torso, but with a lot more elegance and nifty stuff than
previously seen.  Panels actually snap together and around things so that not
only is the figure extremely stable in this mode, the only human bits left
visible are the fingertips you can see through the paws.  About the only
quibble I'd have with it is that it makes the bear tail look like it's on
upside down until you look really closely at the plastic molding.

     Bear Mode: Looks nice, except for the usual exaggerated forepaws common
to all four quadrupedal Deluxes (if you put Cassie's claws on).
Unfortunately, the price for great stability is crappy poseability.  The rear
legs have only one effective joint each, and the front legs can't reach most
decent poses without falling apart (the claw fold-downs are the one floppy
part of the bear mode).  The head only swivels up and down a tiny bit, and
doesn't look down enough for the "on hind legs" pose that is one of the few
the toy can manage.
     The molding and colors are great except for the gratuitously metallic
claws, and while there's lots of seams from the transformation, the bear
parts cover everything.  On all fours it's 3" (8cm) high at the shoulder and
4" (10cm) from snout to tail.  Up on its hind legs it manages about 4.5"
(12cm) tall.

     Overall: I'd call this one the second best of the Deluxes, and that *is*
damning with faint praise (i.e. don't compare the "recommended" rating above
with my Transformers ratings).  I'd still say just get Cassie unless you're a
fan of the line already.

     Dave Van Domelen, also got his Hello, Kitty tarot deck in the mail
today, and it's sufficiently disturbing (check out the webpage at
http://www.sizer.org/tarot/tarot.htm for more on it)....