These are all very samey and I am unlikely to ever get anymore so I am just lumping these all into one ball of commentary. Transformers often has these sort of weird sublines going where the characters have some sort of gimmicky style. This one in particular is pretty odd, and way less interesting in any combination with anything mainline. I feel like its part of why it didn’t seem to do great on sales.
Basically, these are very, “you’ve seen one you have seen them all.”. It doesn’t help that this particular gimmicky style is kind of ugly. Initially I picked up a 5 pack of Beast themed toys. I suppose on a side note, counting these is weird, because it takes two to combine and make the gimmick work, but they are individual bots. Every set has at least two, themed to match each other. I later picked up 3 more sets of two on clearance. Individually I have the following, each pair is a set, Skorponok wad the “bonus” in the 5 pack and has no partner.
- Optimus Prime
- Ultra Magnus
- Megatron (G1)
- Shockwave
- Laserbeak
- Terrorsaur
- Megatron (BW Gator)
- Skullcruncher
- Optimus Primal
- Apeling
- Skorponok
Each bot consists of a cubish body, and a large cylindrical head on a spring that can spin. They all have some basic hinge shoulder “articulation”, but otherwise there isn’t anything else. Some, mostly the beasts, have flipping parts on the robot backside. Megatron and Shockwave have gun accessories that peg on to the back of the robot/top of the vehicle.
I am tempted to drill a small hole in Megatron’s arm to attach the gun to, except his design is such that he doesn’t sit flat, so the gun is kind of needed to work as a tripod leg in the back.
The gimmick is that the heads sort of, mesh together on top, and you push two of these together and give a little twist to make a vehicle or animal. Prime is a red cab truck front, Ultra Magnus makes a trailer rear. Megatron Gator and Skullcruncher make a little crocodile, etc. The connector is universal, so can orient them out of alignment, but none of them really work as anything that way. It also means you can… “swap” them, hence Swapticons. I’m personally, not a big fan of mix n match gimmicks. Sticking a pterodactyl head and wings on a Scorpion butt is not really my jam.
I kind of wish the heads had a way to sort of, lock closed. It feels like being able to use the individual bots as sort of, mini half vehicles would have helped make the line more interesting.
The styling is kind of fun, its all short and goofy, the face art stickering is particularly goofy with its exaggerated expressions. If you are into gimmicks it might be worth trying a set or two, if you can get them cheap, but otherwise there isn’t a lot going on here with this line.
