Dave's McBeast Rant:

     Happy Meal Packaging
     Transmetal Scorponok
     Transmetal Dinobot
     Transmetal Blackarachnia

CAPSULES

     Packaging: Sad.  Cruddy bags.  I'm told there's at least two varieties,
but have only seen one.
     Scorponok: Very nice vehicle mode, not too bad in beast mode, albeit
pretty unposable.  Worth getting.
     Dinobot: A bit of a mess color-wise, with gimpy arms.  Robot head
turns, although it's kinda ugly.  Marginally worth getting.
     Blackarachnia: Nice poseability in robot mode, good transformation, but
that is NOT BA's face.  Maybe I can fix it.  Anyway, worth getting.

RANTS

Packaging:

     McD's has ditched the cardstock boxes in favor of more hypocritical
"eco-friendly" stuff, in this case recycled paper bags with lousy printing
jobs.  The bag has My Little Pony stuff on one side, and BW on the other,
showing lame line drawings of the three beast forms and Dinobot's robot mode.
Compared to these bags, the previous McBeast packaging was downright sharp.
I may not even bother scanning this sorry bag.

Scorponok:

     Not bad for a 75 cent toy (if you buy it without the meal).  Bronze
metallic claws, red body and tail, greyish purple legs.  A dash of hot pink
paint for the beast eyes and yellow paint for the robot eyes.
     The beast mode has very little undercarriage junk, and while not really
poseable, it looks pretty good.  The design fits in with the general
principles of the other Transmetals, although without the third mode, of
course.  It stands very stably on its 8 scorpion legs and two robot legs.
     Transformation is extremly simple, as might be expected.  You fold the
legs down (the scorpion legs are attached to the robot legs) and pull the
claws apart then stand the robot up.
     The robot mode isn't particularly poseable either, since the shoulder
joints only move up and down, although the legs do move independently at the
hips, which is something, I suppose.  Fur/muscle/scale patterns are all over
this mode, and he's even got hands molded into the underside of the claws in
the same way Micromasters had hands.  It doesn't really look much like the
original Scorponok, but it's not too bad either.
     Suggested Vehicle Mode: Flip legs out without moving claws.  It bears a
slight resemblance to a dragster, with wheels on the hips and the scorpion
legs becoming exhaust pipes.

Dinobot:

     This toy has a blue body, tail and legs, a metallic green dino head and
gold metallic arms/chest.  The blue is just dark enough to kinda wash out the
detailing of the body, and the green is a bit on the garish side, although
it's probably the closest this line comes to vacuumized metal like on the
"real" Transmetals.
     Beast mode is better than I thought on first glance.  The head's a bit
too organic-looking and the color clash is bad, but the pose is about right.
Very stable.
     Transformation is similar to G1 Grimlock's in that you flip the dino
head back and swing out the chest to form "wings".  But the robot arms are
molded on the inside of these wings, being far less convincing than even
Scorponok's arms.  The lower body doesn't really change, although I suppose
you could change the posture from slightly hunched over to fully upright.
     Robot mode is iffy, mainly because of the lame arms.  Poseability is
so-so.  The tail gets in the way of standing it upright, so you get a
hunched-over robot.  One surprise was that the head turns, something rare for
McBeasts.
     Suggested vehicle mode: Drill tank.  Push the legs back too far, open
the "wings" and leave the head alone.  You'll notice the hips become wheels,
and if this were a real toy with multiple joints, the tail tip would
straighten.  The result is a sort of weird drill-tipped tank.  If this were a
Deluxe Transmetal, wheels might be stored inside the chest or the "wing"
pieces as well.

Blackarachnia:

     Orange spider legs, purple robot head, metallic blue spider head and
abdomen, purple robot legs.  Definitely designed to be Blackarachnia, since
there's an hourglass pattern on the abdomen.  The metallic parts are less
shiny here then on the other two toys.
     Beast Mode is a little dubious in that it has three body parts like an
insect, not two like a spider.  No real undercarriage junk, although from
underneath you can see all the robot parts.  Supports itself completely on
the spider legs.
     Transformation is surprisingly close to that of the original
Blackarachnia toy.  The spider head folds down to become the chest, the legs
(which have knees) unfold from inside the abdomen of the spider, the spider
legs are attached to the arms.  The one departure is that the arms are
pointed towards the rear, like in Insecticon's transformation.  The main
difference between this transformation and that of the original McBeast
Beetle is that there are notches in the abdomen so that the legs can be
straightened, rather than having a robot mode that looks like it's trying to
sit down.
     Robot mode has arms that swing out to the sides, and legs which bend at
the knees and swing forward at the hips, giving this toy the most joints of
the line.  The big problem with the robot mode is the hideous face, which
looks almost nothing like the real thing.  Tiny feet make it hard to keep
standing in robot mode.  Blackarachnia has the largest robot mode of the
three toys, being almost as large as a Regular Beast.
     Suggested vehicle mode: As suggested by NeoTrent, the best bet is a sort
of thresher.  In spider mode, pull out the arms so that they're at 90 degrees
from normal spider position.  Then, without unbending the robot knees, rotate
the legs so that the robot feet's bottoms point straight up, and the knees
look like rear wheels.