Dave's Animorphs Rant: Ultra Visser-3 Comments on Electronic Tri-Rex I bought Ultra Visser-3 at Wal-Mart yesterday (Wal-Mart seems to be the only place carrying these "last gasp" Animorphs), but do not plan to buy the Tri-Rex. My comments on that will be based on the picture of it on V3's box. CAPSULES Visser-3: Big. Complex. Hyper-poseable. Looks like nothing much in any mode. Instructions pretty useless. Mildly recommended, mainly for fans of big stuff or Animorphs completists. $19.96 at Wal-Mart. Tri-Rex: Big, nice-looking T.rex mode. The three kid-components are incredibly sad and lame, however. No comment on the electronic gimmick, since I didn't buy the toy...and I recommend you not buy it either. RANTS YEERK: Visser-3 Comes boxed in a "standard" Ultra-sized box, with loads and loads of twist-ties and several rubber bands to keep him more or less in position in the box. My main problem with this toy is conceptual...none of the modes really looks like anything "fixed," so it's impossible to tell just from looks when you're done transforming. The Hork-Bajir looks vaguely like a Hork-Bajir, the Andalite looks almost nothing like an Andalite, and the Inferno Beast bears a faint resemblance to the Mega Visser-3's Inferno Beast. With so little requirement to look like anything specific, transformations are largely arbitrary, a matter of finding places for enough tabs and pegs to go so that the result is stable. Hork-Bajir mode: I've never encountered this race in my limited exposure to the books and TV show, although they did get the head down pat as far as I can tell. Despite all the twist-ties, though, it's not transformed correctly in the box, or on the box. The instructions show a greyscale version of the proper configuration, but it's hard to tell exactly what goes where. I'm presuming, for this review, a largely bipedal stance, with wide "shoulderpads" and the Andalite hands plugged into slots on the chest (there seems no use for those tabs on the hands in either of the other modes, so it must be here). In a stable, somewhat hunched over posture, the Hork-Bajir is 9" (23cm) tall. From snout to tail, this S-curved body takes up 13" (33cm) of length, slightly more if straightened out. The legs alone are 5" (13cm) long, and each arm is 9" (23cm) long. Each arm has something like half a dozen joints in it, and each leg has five. The head is pretty much locked in position (VERY stably, I might add) by the pegs and tabs on its crest and the Andalite hands, but the mouth can open can close. The tail is segmented in the same manner as TM1 Megatron's, with small and limited ball joints. However, I've found that if one joint pops apart, it never really stays together again after that. }-/ The toy is black, yellow and red, with a little green on the beak. It's mostly made from rigid plastic, a welcome relief from the gummyplas that forms much of the bodies of other Animorphs. The central claw on each hand fires as a missile, something that's a little tricky if you leave the claws loaded while transforming the toy. On each forearm are three blades which can fan out. Andalite Mode: To get this, you basically fiddle with the shoulders of the Hork-Bajir and put it down on all fours, then transform its head into the centaurian upper body of the Andalite, moving the shoulderpads out of the way. This is the only mode even remotely correct in the box photos. The result looks like an Andalite wearing a body three times too large for its upper torso. Roughly 12" (30cm) long and 7.5" (19cm) tall, the launching claws are the forelegs of its quadrupedal section. The arms have ball joint shoulders, swiveling wrists (not that the hands can hold anything, being molded onto the backside of triangular chest pieces) and swivel-and- hinge jointed elbows which can bend back 180 degrees for purposes that seem unrelated to any of the transformations. The shoulderpad pieces from the Hork-Bajir just sit there like wings or something. Inferno Creature Mode: Okay, here's where the pathetic instructions and the box pictures both fail. Getting to this mode is a challenging and/or frustrating exercise in trying to guess what various so-far-unused pegs and holes are for. The hardest part is getting the Andalite upper torso part to become the insectoid abdomen of the Inferno Creature, then hooking the tail into that. The height of my best-guess transformation is 8" (20cm), with a general hunchbacked look and the long neck of the Mega Visser-3's Inferno Beast mode. Presuming that the Mega version is faithful to what the Inferno Beast is supposed to look like, this guy's got a lot of backpack kibble going on. A lot of trouble for not much result. Overall: This toy certainly has a few advantages over previous Animorphs. Rigid plastic, secure peg-and-slot stabilization of modes, ratcheting joints, etc. But its main problem is ingrained from the moment of conception...it doesn't really look like anything recognizable in any mode. Add to this the really horrible wordless instructions typical of Animorphs, and it becomes more frustrating than interesting. Also, the tail keeps breaking apart. If you like big monster/dragon toys, you might want to check this out, but it's not something to lose sleep over if this toy never makes it to your area. ANIMORPH: Tri-Rex Okay, I'm working from pictures here, so there's a lot of stuff I can't comment on. But what there is to comment on is enough to convince me not to waste my money on this turkey. I'll start with the good point. It looks to be a rather good T.rex toy, easily as big as Ultra Visser-3. Now to start slagging it. The toy splits apart into three components, none of this looks even remotely human aside from its head. The head and forelegs of the T.rex become Jake, who has the forelegs as his own legs, the skull as most of his body and lots of kibble hanging off. The rear legs and belly of the T.rex become Marco. His arms are the T.rex's legs, and even folded up they could allow him to stand without his feet touching the ground. He also has reptilian legs, but this time for no good reason. That was one place they could have tried to make the figure look human, since most of his body is hidden in the combined mode. Finally, Cassie gets to have the tail, which forms her left arm. Her left arm is rigid and two to three times longer than she is tall. Her right arm is a mass of spinal kibble with a hand stuck on it. And, again, she has reptilian legs for no good reason. As one might expect given the extreme kibble of the "human" modes, the individual components have no transformed modes of their own. This is strictly a Power Rangers Zord combination, with the components having only "solo mode" and "combined mode." The sad thing is, this toy only sucks so hard because it's an Animorph. By this I mean that if it was three robots making a robotic T.rex, it might actually be pretty cool. The hulking arms on Marco would look good on a robot designed for hand combat, and Cassie could use her long tail-arm as a missile or something. And the individual components might even be able to transform on their own, too. But by keeping to an organic T.rex and the vain attempts at human components, it just looks lame. Dave Van Domelen, hasn't found this week's Tacomorph yet....