Beast Machines tank Drone
The local Toys R Us recently remodeled, and they must've cleared out their back room as well,
because not only did I find an Inferno (you can check out his review if you want), but a variety
of Beast Machines stuff was there as well. Among them was Tank Drone, which was the only BM toy I
actually bought from there (I was going to buy the lone Night Slash Cheetor, but I didn't have enough
cash on me, and he was gone next time I went there).
Of course the major (and possibly the only one) draw of the Tank Drone is its show accuracy.
Many fans cried foul when the original mega Tankor came out since it resembled nothing of its
show counterpart, so as a sorry of sorts Hasbro made the basic sized Tank Drone. You may remember
these guys from the show as the ones who always got blown up by the Maximals yet never managed
to do any blowing up themselves (except when they were the ones blowing up...nevermind).
Anyway, Tank Drone comes in tank mode, which is free rolling and a pretty neat looking little
tank. It also houses a very ambitious gimmick for any size, but especially for a basic. Essentially
you can push down on the back of his cannon and the gear attached to his wheel and the gear in
the cannon will catch, which causes the barrel to rotate and fire (similar to BPOP's mechanism). It's
pretty neat, but the missile can only be loaded one way, so you need to peer into the cannon to
get it lines up right, and the missile is pretty touchy, and fires pretty far, and seems drawn to
hard to reach spaces and piles of clothes and such (as are most missiles).
Transformation is not too complicated, with the toughest part being getting his head into
the right position. The joint it's on is really, really tight, and you need to use some of
the ol' excessive force to get it in the right spot. When I first transformed it, I was afraid I
was going to snap the joint.
Robot mode looks okay, but is essentially a brick. The only ball joints are the arm sockets
and the head, and they are so limited in their ball jointyness that they might as well both be
swivel joints. Also, his cannon is supposed to be able to flip over his shoulder (like the
big Tankor), but his shoulders get in the way, though you can flip up his back panel
so it's perpendicular to his body and the cannon will be over his shoulder. If you want to
fire the missile, just spin the gear on the bottom of the gun. Also worth note is this
Tankor has the proper tread legs and feet, so he doesn't have to walk around like the big
Tankor toy (because, as we all know, walking is for suckers).
Overall this toy has a lot of potential, and a pretty neat feature, but it suffers from
having a lame robot mode with the poseability of a G1 Transformer. I bought mine for $6.50 at
TRU, so I wouldn't recommend paying any more than that. Really $5 is an ideal price, but it
also comes down to if you want a more show accurate Tankor as well.
