I was looking around for something to review and it hit me: we’ve never covered this gem from the Fall of Cybertron line. Granted, he was referred to here, and his other versions were reviewed here and here but not the Japanese version. Which is amazing! Ludicrous! Me PABLO SMASH!
Fall of Cybertron is a pretty cool game and my son’s burned through it multiple times. He’s kind of bored with the game these days, but every once in a while he’ll pick it up and play with it. I can see why. While the vehicle modes are Cybertronian in design, the ‘bot modes are almost pure classic Generation One. The times I’ve played I spend most of my time looking at the characters in ‘bot modes and not playing the game.
In the game they got the Dinobots right, both in dino modes and in their robot modes, in my humble opinion. I love the size and scale of them all, especially Grimlock. His dino mode is huge — huge! He’s bigger than a house. And it looks good, incorporating Cybertronian looks that fit and make sense. His robot mode, while small — yes, it is small — he shrinks and is a great update of the classic look.
TakaraTomy’s version of the classic ‘bot is fantastic. Yes, it’s a paint variation of the mold that was linked to before, but this one has a more classic look to it. The abdomen and waist is painted red like the old G1 figure, and he has gold in all the right places. It’s a beautiful paint job on the figure and one that really stands out.
Sadly, that is where the love of the figure stops. I have this guy displayed in robot mode since I’m not loving the dino mode. All the size and coolness of the game’s dino mode seems to disappear on the toy. The dino mode is really small and doesn’t move or pose very well. The hind legs are locked into place at the hip, there is no rotation forward or backwards. I’m armchair designing here, but I’m certain there must be a better way to make these hips useful. For now, he’s a bit of a lump of plastic. And his chest is wide open due to the transformation, which looks silly. Great paints, though.
His ‘bot mode is better. Not great, mind you, but much better. His really hollow chest still bothers me and I know that there is an add-on (reviewed here) that will improve the ‘bot mode quite a bit and it is one that I’ve considered.
It’s a good figure and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants a good, solid G1 styled Grimlock in their Classic (CHUG) collection. If scale is an issue, there is always the Masterpiece version, which I know, scale-wise, will work for any Transformers classics collection.
