Let’s start with this statement: I have not seen Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters. My kids watch it, love it, talk about it, but for some reason I haven’t started watching it. As such, I know nothing about this character. What I do know is that he bears an incredible resemblance to Transformers Galaxy Force (Cybertron) Flame Convoy (Scourge), and that is super cool. I loved Galaxy Force. Yes, I watched the fan-subs and skipped Cybertron, and I enjoyed every last bit of it. When I saw that a new Flame Convoy was being released in Prime: Beast Hunters, I was thrilled!
Both my kids were all over this figure out of the box. My oldest watched Prime: Beast Hunters religiously and my youngest just loves dragons and monsters and stuff. At one point I wasn’t certain if this was going to end in tears or an all-out fist fight, but luckily it ended with my youngest unpacking and my oldest transforming.
Predaking here is the same concept as Flame Convoy (Scrourge), a dragon with three heads, only this time with wings. I really like his beast mode; it’s a great sculpt and a great design, and the articulation is really solid. There are no problems posing the beast mode or with the leg joints being floppy. They are not using the same joints as the robot-mode legs. I am disappointed as the one we have has floppy wings; they fall over constantly. Otherwise, a great dragon mode and I love how all the dragon heads have articulated jaws.
The robot mode is, again, another solid figure. Tons of articulation with a lot of play value; however, there are some downsides. He suffers from loose leg joints! Nothing worse than loose knees and loose hips — they sink ships, you know. I think this is one of the few figures that I’ve seen that has a swivel neck and a hinged head on a transformer. In other words, it has some decent and solid articulation.
The transformation is surprisingly simple. I was expecting an amazing amount of complexity, but I only had to refer to the instructions once and even then they didn’t help me. The back legs were pointed backwards and this was a problem resulting from a wrong turn at the waist. Easily fixed and whammo bammo! The figure was back on track for a perfect transformation.
The tail detaches and becomes a sword. This is a really good idea, but it doesn’t attach to the hand very well. The hands are made of softer plastic or rubber and the sword falls out. The extra heads attach to the forearms and become guns, and there’s a neat little lever that you can use to launch a missile out of his mouth. These are good accessories and they are fun to play with. As you can see, they allow Predaking to keep Ultra Magnus busy.
Again, not having seen the new Prime: Beast Hunters episodes, I’m not able to tell you if this is an essential character. But as fan of Galaxy Force figures and as a fan of transforming dragons and monsters, I can definitely recommend this figure as one for your collection!
You can still pick him up on Amazon.com and BigBadToyStore.
You can discuss this figure further on the fwoosh forums.