Dave's Transformers Prime Rant: Voyager Grimwing Grimwing (Ursagryph) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Prime/VGrimwing While the previous Grimwing toy, a Kre-O set, looked like a pretty generic dragon, they've mined some pretty obscure teratology for this toy's altmode. An ursagryph (a term that predates the toy) is like a griffon, but instead of a lion's hindquarters it has a bear's. I'd originally stuck this toy in a box of stuff to be reviewed after I settle in at my new job in Missouri, but then I found the Megatron retool and decided that rather than starting another box of To-Be-Reviewed, I'd swap Megatron for another toy and review that toy. Grimwing, being the only totally new mold among the Voyagers I had in the box, got tagged. CAPSULE $18-25 price point (found for $18.96 at Walmart). Grimwing: Robot mode looks good but has serious torso stability issues. Transformation is pretty simple, beast mode is decent. Extra points for obscure altmode name. Weapon partner is weird and not very effective, but the fiction helps a little. Mildly recommended. RANT Packaging: Same as previous Beast Hunters Voyagers, with Ultra Magnus (retool) as the co-sell. His story continues from Dreadwing, who wasn't even in the same assortment, but who I bought from HasbroToyShop and will have waiting for me at my new office (along with two volumes of MST3K DVDs, an issue of Super Stupor, several credit card bills, and assorted other stuff). CHAPTER 15 The higher he soars into the unfamiliar sky, the more his mind clears. GRIMWING remembers his time in the Hyperevolution Chamber. He remembers the "lessons" fed directly into his brain by SHOCKWAVE. But he also knows there must be more to the world into which he has been reborn, and he is determined to discover it. That's when his highly sensitive optics spot a Cybertronian signature on the ground below. Judging by the size and power of the stranger, he knows it must be a brother warrior - a kindred spirit. "Yes! Fight!" screeches BLACKBEAK, but GRIMWING shakes his head. "No. We seek knowledge, not battle. For now," he says, and banks, descending towards the distant stranger. So, while the weapon partners have looked like distinct entities for much of Beast Hunters, this is the first time I can recall one actually being a sapient being (Ravage aside). A non-transforming Targetmaster, if you will. Since the story continues in Ultra Magnus's chapter, I'm guessing he's the mysterious stranger. PREDACON: GRIMWING Series 2: 004 Altmode: Ursagryph Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: Kre-O Previous Mold Use: None Gimmick: BLACKBEAK grapple launcher Function: Blackguard Motto: "My honor is PREDACON honor." The most honorable warrior among the PREDACONS, GRIMWING seeks glory through chivalrous combat with a worthy foe! STR 10 INT 9 SPD 8 END 10 RNK 9 COUR 10 FRB 9 SKL 9 Avg 9.25 BLACKBEAK * Semi-intelligent companion to GRIMWING. Does not always offer the best advice. * Fires a powerful claw that grips and crushes targets. * Can fly and fight independent [sic] of GRIMWING. Packaging: Five rattan strings on the robot mode, Blackbeak is held into a secondary tray by two strings. Well, one string holds it in, the other holds it closed. Mine was slightly mistransformed, with the inner part of the pelvis pulled out in its beast mode configuration. Not sure if that's endemic or idiosyncratic, though. Robot Mode: A burly but still fairly human-proportioned winged warrior, with a sort of "hawk man" (not Hawkman from DC Comics) vibe, with the raptor head in the center of the chest. This one isn't based on any previous Transformers character, as far as I can tell, although his forehead crest is reminiscent of Energon Mirage/Dreadwing's. While he has a BW Dinobot sort of personality, they didn't try to evoke any of that character in his appearance (unlike Beast Hunters Ratchet, who looks a lot like Transmetal II Dinobot). The toy is covered with molded Cybertronian glyphs (ursaglyph!), because of course a species that predates the rise of civilization on Cybertron will be covered in graffiti. I guess the language was passed down from Primus directly. 6.25" (16cm) tall at the head, 7" (18cm) at the tops of the wings if you leave the wing-claws folded down. The wingspan is 7" (18cm). The color mix is medium-dark gray, dark teal, and two different neon greens, plus a little bit of yellow, silver and sky blue. Dark teal plastic is used on the hands, head, torso sides, outer hip sockets, feet, upper arms, and a piece at the center of the wings. Kelly green plastic is used on the collar area, wrist roots, and pelvis core, plus the trigger of Blackbeak. A yellowish neon green plastic is found on some bladed pieces on the shoulderpads, the lower beast jaw, the wing-claws and the stirrup-shaped heel spurs, as well as the lower jaw of Blackbeak. A somewhat lighter and matte yellow-green plastic is used on the grapple missile, the roots of the hip joints, the ankle struts and a hinge for the wingpack. Everything else is medium-dark gray plastic. Neon-ish kelly green paint is used on the feathers of the wings, and the horns on the beast head. Neon green paint (pretty good match for the plastic) is used on the wrist cuffs, kneespikes, forehead tuning fork crest, belt deco, and two swiveling plates on the chest (which are basically dipped in the paint). The face and beast beak are painted silver, and the top of the beast head (which is where a cockpit would be on a classic seeker) is painted sky blue. The robot eyes, beast eyes, and Blackbeak's eyes are all painted yellow. Blackbeak's beak is painted black, amazingly. A black Predacon symbol is printed on the left pectoral plate, and the glyphs molded onto the fronts (undersides) of the wings are painted yellow. The head is on a ball joint, the waist does not turn (the extending inner pelvis piece would make that problematic anyway). The shoulders are pretty stiff universal joints, but the torso doesn't hold together stiffly enough to let you move them without risking the whole upper body coming apart. There's swivels in the upper arm and just below the hinge elbows, plus the wrists are swivel-and-hinge universal joints. The thumbs are hinged to swing between hand and paw modes. While the hips look like ball joints at first glance, they're actually fairly stiff universal joints. There's swivels in the upper thighs, and hinge knees. The shape of the kneespikes means the legs can't fully straighten, so he's always in at least something of a crouch. The ankles are ball joints on the end of hinged struts, although the struts really just have two positions: robot and beast. The heel struts are hinged and stiff enough to support the figure. The wings can fold back on hinges, but do not have swivels to spread out or furl, they just have the one level of extension. You can lift the whole wingpack up on a transformation hinge for a more dynamic flying-in-robot-mode look. The wingclaws are on swivels. Generally very good articulation, although the shoulderpads get in the way of some poses and the fact that the torso doesn't really snap together firmly can lead to frustrating while posing the figure. The hands can hold 5mm pegs loosely, but their jointed nature means Blackbeak is pretty loosely held. There's also 5mm peg holes on the forearms, and one at the center of the wingpack suitable for stowing Blackbeak. Note, one fan fix for the instability of the chest is to open the beast mouth all the way, shove the head down as far as it'll go, and then rotate the light green chest panels up and inward to clamp down on the top of the beast head. On mine, that doesn't improve stability enough to be worth the awkward appearance (i.e. the Predacon symbol now being sideways). I get nearly as much stability out of catching the inner corners of the chest panels behind the horns, which leaves the chest panels much closer to the box-depicted angle (so that the Predacon symbol is close to right-side-up). Unfortunately, there's really nothing other than hinge friction holding the torso together, all of the chest panel clipping tricks are minor improvements and do nothing to keep the shoulders from pulling to the sides. Undocumented Feature: The green shoulderpad pieces are not glued on, they're merely pegged on. With 5mm pegs. So you can make them hand-held blades, mount them on the forearms (yeah, it looks dumb, but you CAN do it), or just set them aside if you think they're getting in the way too much. Weapon: Blackbeak is a pretty weird partner. A robo-vulture (or Skeksis) head bigger than Grimwing's beast head, with a couple of backswept spines at the back of the neck segment, then a 5mm rod handle at the rear underside. Now stick a sort of crab-claw-ish grapple missile in the mouth, for Blackbeak to vomit out. The missile is connected by 8.25" (21cm) of black string to a small gray panel that sits loosely in a gap between the tailspines. Hm, looking at the missile again, I think it's like a robotic mantis that gets barfed out of a mecha-vulture's mouth. Weird. The firing mechanism is the ball-shooter "cyberjet" style, but very weak. And if the string isn't lined up just right, it provides enough drag to keep the missile from even getting out of Blackbeak's mouth. Obviously, with only 8" of string involved, there's no point in making the launcher TOO strong, but it'd be nice if it did more than dribble out. The upper and lower jaw pieces are hinged so that they're forced open when the missile is fired (whether or not it actually makes it all the way out, and they can be manually opened when the missile is in place. Due to the earlier-mentioned problem with the hands, it works best mounted on a forearm. The swivel between elbow and forearm definitely helps here. It doesn't quite manage a credible "Laserbeak perched on Megatron's forearm" look, but I suppose it tries. While the canonical storage has the string wrap around the trigger, it doesn't stay on very well that way. It's just long enough to do a figure-8 wrap around the tail spines and then put the cover back in place, though, and that's a bit more stable. Unfortunately, the cover doesn't snap in place no matter what you do, hence the rattan string holding it on in package. I grabbed a leftover clear band from some other toy and wrapped it around the lid, it's not like I expect to fire the missile now that I'm done reviewing. :) Transformation: Pretty simple, actually. Rotate the robot head into the beast neck and swing the whole thing up, pull the pelvis down, fold the flanks inward and snap the beast torso together (it has all the pegs that robot mode doesn't have), then scrunch up the legs and tweak the arms. Boom. You can place Blackbeak on the back or on the rump, or leave it off. Beast Mode: So, how does an ursagryph differ from a regular griffon? Mainly in the lack of a lion's tail, instead we get a stubby little tail. The hindquarters are also a bit beefier than might be found on a griffon. Of course, since this is a mecha-ursagryph, there's turbine fans molded into the joint positions along the wings. Wingspan is the same as in robot mode, since it can't be altered. From beak to tail-tip it's 6" (15cm) long, although the hind legs extend a bit past the tail even in a compact crouch. With the pelvis core pulled out, there's more of the kelly green plastic visible, otherwise the coloration is pretty much as described in robot mode. Pretty much as you'd expect from an "arms and legs become forelimbs and hind limbs" transforation, really. The hind legs gain an extra hinge where the shins break open, otherwise roughly the same articulation as robot mode, although a bit more restricted by the quadrupedal stance. The beast head is on a ball joint at the end of a hinged strut, and the lower beak is hinged (although I need to use a tool to open it, there's no purchase for my trimmed fingernails). The forepaws can't hold anything now, but there's a second 5mm peg along the spine exposed when the pelvis is pulled out. So you can mount things either between the wing roots or on the butt. A light enough weapon could probably be held in the beak, but it'll tend to swing down. If you put Blackbeak on the rump, its spines look like proper tail fins for Grimwing, although the missile can't fire due to the lower jaw being pressed against Grimwing's back. If you put it in the upper back position, it looks kinda stupid, but can fire. Overall: Do I like the mold enough to be tempted by the Darksteel redeco coming up as a Target exclusive? Nah. Too many problems with the torso in robot mode. But I do think it's a decent Voyager, and recommend getting either this one or the Darksteel deco. Dave Van Domelen, kinda hoping he DOESN'T find any more Transformers in the next two weeks, what with all the packing for moving to Missouri....