Grimlock's back again as a robotic T-Rex. Generally, this mode looks pretty good, and is definitely recognizable as Grimlock, right down to the gold band around his neck. The overall color scheme is admittedly a bit dull, however, as two shades of gray with a bit of black and gold admittedly aren't all that eye-catching. Still, it's Grimlock's classic color scheme, so I can hardly blame the toy designers for that. I do like the black paint wash used on the main body, however-- it really helps to bring out Grimlock's ample mold detailing. Grimlock's overall proportions are pretty good, though I really don't like the way his head is sculpted. It took me a while to figure out what looked so "off" about it, but I finally did-- it's the puffed-out "cheekbones". They really make Grimlock look odd, especially since tyrannosaurs never had cheeks like that. That, combined with the all-too-flat forehead, makes Grimlock look more like an angry gremlin than a T-rex, if you're just going by his face. For a dinosaur mode, Grimlock has pretty good articulation-- he can move at the shoulders, the jaw, up-and-down at the neck, side-to-side at four seperate points at the tail, and three points at the hips, two points at the knees, and at the ankles. He can even rotate at the waist, especially rare for a dino Transformer. However, his hips aren't really held to his body by much at all, so they tend to come undone from the body really easily. I do like how his gun-sword begs into his back in this mode, however-- who said having a dino mode meant Grimlock couldn't have any long-range weapons? Grimlock's allegiance rub symbol is on his main body, on the left side.
    In robot mode, Grimlock looks rough 'n tough, with bulky arms and a very nice head sculpt with excellent light piping for the visor. (It could have used some paint detailing, however.) The asymmetrical transparent red bulb on his chest is also a really cool detail, as well. He has articulation at the head, shoulders (at three points), elbows, waist, hips, knees, and ankles-- however, it's restricted a bit by all of Grimlock's kibble, especially when it comes to the legs. And that's Grimlock's biggest problem-- in the effort to give him a unique transformation, the designers made his transformation a bit overly complicated, and instead of improving on the original G1 design they made the design much more kibbly. I really don't like his there's shells of his dino body around his lower legs, or how his dino feet hang off the back of his hands. Normally I wouldn't have any problem with his feet being made from his dino head, but the jaws don't flatten out all the way to give Grimlock flat feet-- they're slanted, which makes Grimlock's stability a bit less than it would have been otherwise. There's also several little panels that just hang off his backside, without pegging into anything. In addition, his shoulders (hips in dino mode) still don't peg into his body nearly as well as they should, though I've been told that this has been fixed to a limited extent on later releases of the toy. As for his weapons, his tail whip is admittedly pretty lame and un-whip-like, though at least it can store easily on his back. His bayonet missile launcher is pretty cool, though I wish the hand peg could rotate to the bottom of the weapon so that the sword portion of the weapon could actually be used as a sword instead of just a "poker". The missile launcher can also store on Grimlock's back in this mode, though all the little aforementioned panels can get in the way a bit.
    Classics Grimlock is a bit of a dissapointment-- his dinosaur mode looks cool, except for the oddly-shaped head, but his robot mode is way too kibbly. It actually is worse than the original G1 toy in several ways. My least favorite of the "mainline deluxe and voyager" Classics toys, though he's still not an outright bad mold, just fairly mediocre.

Review by Beastbot

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