Dave's BW Neo Rant: Bazooka (Basic) Well, it took a little over six months from the time I ordered it, but astrotoys.com finally got Bazooka in stock and shipped it to me. CAPSULE Bazooka: Essentially unposeable beast mode curved into an "action pose" like Cybershark II. Interesting transformation which provides a fair amount of challenge in going from robot to beast. Decent robot mode. Recommended. RANT DESTRON: Bazooka STR 7 INT 5 SPD 3 END 9 RNK 6 COUR 6 FRP 5 SKL 6 Avg 5.875 As with all BW Neo toys, this is packaged in a box rather than on a card. However, unlike earlier BW Neo, this box doesn't have a corner lopped off. Guess they decided it was too expensive to make those nonstandard boxes. Anyway, the "special feature" window on the side of the box shows Bazooka whacking Bump (Armordillo recolor) on the head with his tail gimmick, heh. Beast Mode: An Ankylosaurus magniventris (the last bit means "large sided" and refers to the spines along its sides, a feature not all Ankylosaurids possess), Bazooka is mainly orange with pine green spines, dark brown legs and a white bone club. Fused into a "turning to the left" pose, it's 6" (15cm) from snout to club tip, 2" (5cm) high and 2.5" (6cm) wide. While each leg has a ball joint hip, there's really only one pose possible for the beast mode, much like TMII Cybershark. Undercarriage junk is somewhat of a problem, as his robot chest is just sort of slung under his body. The beast mode holds together pretty well, except for the head, which isn't locked into position or anything, and can flop out. There's two gimmicks in beast mode. The first uses one of the spines on the side of his head as a lever to open the mouth a little. However, the spring on mine isn't set correctly or something, and the lever does almost nothing. The second is his tail club smash. You lift the tail up until it clicks, then push one of the back spines to make it snap back into position, clobbering someone. However, ankylosaurids swing their tails side to side, not up and down, losing some points on accuracy. Transformation: Transforming to robot mode is almost trivial. Pull out all the robot bits and move some panels around, ta dah. It's going the other way that's hard, so look VERY carefully at where everything is before you start transforming for the first time. The legs and feet fold up in a very specific way to just barely fit inside the armored shell. It took me several minutes to figure out how to get them back in, although I was able to do so (some have complained that it is impossible...they exaggerate, obviously). One thing that bugs me about the transformation to robot mode, though, is that there's really no way to fold the beast legs out of the way, and they just hang there and block stuff. Also, the head doesn't snap into position, so it's easily knocked back into the cavernous back. Robot Mode: A little under 4" (10cm) tall at the head, a little over that if you include his shell poking up as a backpack. In many respects he's a typical BW Neo Shellmaster, with huge chunks of beast mode hanging off his back and shoulder...the only parts of his beast mode that are necessary for robot mode are his rear left leg and his beast head. You can trivially remove the armor plates and construct a three-legged headless dinosaur from them. However, his inner robot is nice and robust, unlike the spindly Break, for example. And there's some mechanical detailing inside one of his shell pieces that helps his appearance in robot mode (although some paint would be nice on it). Both his beast mode gimmicks work in robot mode, although it's kinda hard to position the tail for an attack, what with the other shell piece getting in the way (and swinging the other piece out of the way looks kinda bad, since he has a hollow back). Additionally, he has a small brown axe/gun that stores in his tail (and forms one of the spines on the tail, a little extra they didn't need to do, so it's nice). It has two handles, so it can be held as either an axe or as a gun (or as an axe held to block). Overall: Well, it's a Shellmaster ("revealer" style Transformer), and the beast mode is pre-posed and unposeable, but it's still a nice toy. It looks good in both modes, has more than its fair share of gimmicks for a Basic, and it's a nice challenge to transform back to beast mode. Probably not worth the $16 I ended up paying ($6 in shipping), but keep an eye out for it. Dave Van Domelen, notes that he wrote his review of Killerpunch (from the same order) on August 12, 1999, and it's January 27, 2000 now. If he hadn't agreed to partial shipments....