Beast Wars Transmetal 2 Tigerhawk

Ah yes, the illegitimate son of Airazor and Tigatron. Well, the merged form of the two. Whatever. I never understood that part of Beast Wars, and the character was in barely three episodes, but the toy seemed to get some good reviews, so I decided to pick it up. Somehow I lucked out and an eBay auction only went up to $12.50 (though I had to pay $10 for shipping from Canada), so I got a considerable discount for a MISB toy even by retail standards. Neat.

At any rate, Tigerhawk's beast mode is that of a Tiger with wings. Actually, it's really a TM2 Fuzor instead of just a TM2, given the two beast modes. While I think this mode could be better, it's still pretty good, but the main problems are in the body which is really a jumble of robot parts that aren't in use.

Tigerhawk is, of course, loaded with nifty gimmicks. For one his wings have a ton of firing and spring loaded mechanisms. Pull back a green lever on his back and his wings will fall into a horrizontal position, deploy two launchers and fire missiles from them. Pressing buttons on the ends of his wings will deply two more launchers and you can fire missiles from those as well.

The major problem with the wing mehcanisms is limiting the positioning of the wings. There are only a few poses you can put them in without having missiles fly all over the place, and if you want them horrizontal you need the ends folded down unless you want the launchers deployed at all times (and those babies are on one hell of a hair trigger).

He also has some nifty retracting talons on his rear legs. Push the button on the bottom of them and they'll close on your finger. The talons aren't overly strong though. They can pick up little more than a pen or marker, and that's if you manage to get the talon to close around it. It's easier to pre-close them and then stick whatever he's grabbing into them after the fact.

Tigerhawk also has a helmet of sorts that makes him look a lot like Battle Cat (from Masters of the Universe) when it's on. Oh yeah, and before I forget, you can pull out his missile launchers, though it's not overly useful to do so in this mode, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.

Transformation is pretty frickin complicated, but not impossible without the instructions by any means. Just need some patience. A lot of stuff flips and moves and Tigerhawk even does the classic Fuzor maneuver where his front beast legs become his robot legs (Bantor and Silverbolt do this, and possibly others), further supporting his Fuzor heiratage.

Robot mode is very cool, and pretty dead on with the show version save for a few color differences (the purple has been replaced with blue on the toy). The gimmicks all still work, though the missile launchers are pretty useless as they can only fire stright up now. However, the removeable ones can be held in his left hand, so not all is lost. He can also hold his feather missiles in either hand as well for some melee action.

As far as poseability, Tigerhawk is hindered a bit by some kibble and his wings, but for the most part he's pretty good at it. He has only hinge joints for his knees, but his upper legs have swivels to make up for it and making his legs very poseable combined with the ratcheting universal joints on his thighs.

His arms are somewhat inhibited by the kibble on his shoulders and the realtive tightness of them as well. They also only have four joints between the two. A fairly unrestricted ball joint on each elbow and a double hinge on the shoulder which makes up, essentially, another ball joint. Of course the bulkiness of the tiger head and cockpit on his shoulders as well as the wings doesn't allow them to move with too much grace, but they get the job done fairly well.

Amazingly Tigerhawk is also able to stand with his wings folded up behind him. It creates considerable backpack weight, but if you position his legs right he has little problem standing that way.

Oh, and a final note, his tiger head has a blue tounge for some reason. I guess beast mode likes eating blueberry candy.

Overall this is an excellent toy. The flaws are made up for with the buttload of neat gimmicks and the overall coolness of robot mode. If you can find one for $25 or less pick it up by all means. I wouldn't go any higher than $30 unless you really, really want it.