Scourge
(Cybertron)
Scourge's beast mode
is a wingless dragon. This mode is absolutely fan-tastic. The proportions
are great, and there's tons of techno-organic detailing covering almost
every square inch of the Jungle Planet ruler. (And because he's a Planet
ruler, his Cyber Key has gold paint on it instead of silver.) He's also
got tons of little decorative crests to play up his "royal ruler" persona,
like on the sides of the head and the backs of the shoulders. (And his
face couldn't BE more evil-looking in its sculpt.) He has decent articulation
in this mode-- he put his legs into any position you can reasonably expect,
his tail can move up and down at two points, and his jaw can open and close.
I would've really liked some neck articulation, but at most points this
would have been impossible due to his transformation. Another minor complaint
is that there's small yellow panel on the underside of his chest doesn't
really hook into anything, so it's really easy to accidentally move it
out of its place and thus make Scourge's chest look less solid. His color
scheme is generally fairly good-- the red, orange, and charcoal gray go
together very well. The transparent purple seems rather out of place, however,
and I would've toned down the amount of yellow on him, since I think red
works better with a dragon than yellow. He's got a smorgasbord of paint
apps, though, so no complaints there. As for Scourge's gimmick, it's pretty
cool. First off, press the sound buttom at the base of his neck without
his Cyber Key plugged in to have Scourge's head light up and have him emit
a screeching/roaring sound. It sounds very cool. Insert the Cyber Key into
its slot on his lower back, and a classic "G1 transforming" sound is emitted
while two additional dragon heads swing to the front, while the head lights
up again! Alas, they don't really move much-- the can move the heads up
and down, but that's about it. Their jaws can open, but they're spring-loaded
to close as soon as you take their hands off of them-- same with the movement
at the base of their necks, which makes both points kinda useless. I also
am dissapointed that they don't fire missiles out of their mouths-- a toy
this big needs some missiles, dangit! Also, if you press the aforementioned
sound effect button with the Key inserted, a "shot firing" sound is emitted
from Scourge, with the same head light-up action as mentioned earlier.
Scourge's robot mode
looks pretty good, but my main complaint with it is that Scourge has the
very basic transformation of "stand me up, flip my head" with only a few
minor changes. Something that's been done so much and is so simple shouldn't
have been repeated on such a large toy-- his modes look too similar. His
articulation is also sub-par for an Ultra-- he can move at all the usual
places minus the waist, but much of those places can only move in one direction,
front-to-back. Only the elbows and ankles have side-to-side movement. This
also limited articulation in the arms makes it hard for Scourge to hold
his axe in a cool pose-- which is a shame, since such a big ol' axe looks
really really awesome. His head sculpt also looks pretty nice-- large fangs
protrude from the bottom of his mouth, emphasizing his savage-ness, and
he has a rather organic-looking face when compared to most other Transformers.
The two side dragon heads carrying over onto the shoulders of this mode
is also a neat feature. However, one feature I'm not too big on is the
waist piece that drapes almost down to his knees. If it wasn't molded at
a curved angle, it would've been able to pass as a caveman-style loincloth,
but as is, it just looks kinda weird. As for the rest of Scourge, since
this mode is so similar to his beast mode, my comments from that mode carry
over to this one in those areas.
Scourge is a pretty
cool-looking Transformer, but he is far too simplistic for an Ultra, so
his two modes look too similar. He has some cool gimmicks and details to
partially override this downsides, however, so I recommend him if you want
a big beast Transformer.
Review by Beastbot