Beast Wars Inferno
While wandering around a local Toys R Us around a month ago I popped into the Transformers
section only to discover the usual lot of rancid Animorphs and old Beast Machines stuff (the
RID stuff was there too, but in a different area). However, I decided to dig and pulled out
a shiny, new (well, it was really more dusty and old, but still...) boxed Inferno. Now,
I knew these guys were shelf warmers back in Beast Wars hay-day, but this was a bit too
much. So I bought it and now I'm reviewing it (no duh).
In beast mode Inferno is a really big ant. I mean, even for a mega sized toy he's
quite large. He's mostly made of an odd sparkley red transparent rubbery sort of plastic, as
well as regular solid red and solid black plastic. He suffers from the same non-flying-bug syndrome
as Quickstrike and Scorponok in that his body weight is more than his legs can handle so he walks
on his belly more than anything else. Inferno isn't as bad as the others however, only his
massive (and heavy) abdomen drags.
Transformation isn't too tough, tough you may have some problems with what to do with his robot legs.
The key is to remember to rotate his waste 180 degrees otherwise his feet are backwards and
his abdomen is in the front which looks, erm, well, you figure it out.
In robot mode Inferno is cool, but shaky. You'll have to do a bit of shifting at times
in order to get him to stand since his butt probably weighs more than he does. Also, the
slot where you place his gun is on the wrong side of his hand, so if you want him to hold his
gun while bending his elbow his gun is on the bottom of his hand, not the top.
Also, just like in the show his abdomen opens up to reveal his ass-jets (insert fart
joke) and the blades even spin like in the show (with a mechanism similar to Dinobot's tail
shield). That, along with the firing weapon and missiles, is pretty much all he does. Kind of
short on features for a mega, but oh well.
Another problem with robot mode is his head. It has an annoying tendency to fall off. This
may be why the animators and writers of the show had him decapitated so many times (including
his introductory episode). However, that aside, Inferno is a very cool toy to have, and a must
if you're collecting everyone in the show (and probably the one that will set you back the least).
Go find one yourself, no doubt there are more sitting on the shelves somewhere (but don't hold me
to that).
