Snarl's beast mode is a robotic triceratops, and a definite homage to G1 Slag (the robot's no longer named Slag because it's become a common Transformers curseword). This mode is quite close to flawless, and shows off the Animated aesthetic perfectly. I particularly love the smooth black lines on the triceratops face and tail, the transparent red horns (though not so much the nose-- what is he, Rudolph?), and the circuitry lines on his head crest. The red/black designs on his upper legs also fit in well with the Animated look and help give a bit more diversity to Snarl's paint job, to boot. I'm not sure why they painted only the front of his head crest gray, though-- it looks odd having the outline and the back of it red. I would've just molded it in gray plastic, it would've made more sense that way. The top of the robot head sticks out entirely too obviously from Snarl's back in this mode-- by far my biggest complaint about this mode-- but other than that, there are no real robot extras, so no problems there. His club weapon can't be stored in this mode, though, which irks me. Snarl's articulation in this mode includes movement at the mouth, the base of each horn, and back-and-forth at the hips and knees of each of his four feet.
    Snarl's robot mode is where most of his points get taken off in his overall rating, though there are some definite things to like about this mode, which I'll get to first. For one the proportions give Snarl a lot of personality-- I love how his arms are longer and winder than his legs, and his incredibly stocky body and very unique/well-done head sculpt just ooze a "big dumb caveman" personality. Of course, giving Snarl a lava-club, which can be held in one of his hands, only enhances this aspect of the toy. I also quite like how the tail splits into two halves and rotates upwards to "frame" the robot mode at the shoulders, thus enhancing the look instead of just looking like random beast mode kibble. Little flame-parts also pop out of his shoulders in this mode, which is a cool little gimmick. As far as articulation goes, he does fairly well in this area, too-- he can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows, at the thumb on each hand as well as the four fingers (which all move as one part), and at the hips (at two points) and knees. So he's not extremely posable, but it's certainly enough to "get the job done", as it were. However, there's some pretty noticeable downsides to Snarl, and pretty much all of them have to do with his main body-- simply, I hate how it's constructed. It's almost entirely hollow, and it shows, either through gaps in his side red pieces, the fact that he has pretty much no waist, or looking at him from the backside. His waist piece actually connects considerably in front of where his hips come together, which looks really odd from a side view. Also, his triceratops head folds up in a really awkward manner on his chest, not really melding into the overall shape of the toy at all. Removing the thing altogether and sticking it on his back would have been a preferable option to this, where it just hangs off his chest as the most blatant extra in the entire robot mode.
    Snarl has the best alt mode of any of the Dinobots, but his robot mode suffers for it, as the main body looks and is hollow and his beast and robot heads stick out and are rather blatant in both modes. He does have a very unique look befitting of the Animated toyline, though, and he's far from a terrible toy-- he's just not the cream of the crop.

Review by Beastbot

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