Hammerstrike
Beast mode is a technorganic
hammerhead shark. This mode is VERY nice, and is definitely eye candy.
The blue and transparent orange go extremely well together, as do the bone
white and purplish copper. There is also a lot of technorganic detailing
in most places, especially on the transparent orange parts, creating a
very nice visual effect. Not only does this mode look great, it's also
pretty darn posable for a sea creature. Most sea creature alternate mode
can only move in a few places, but Hammerstrike can move in several; his
jaw can open and (at least partially) close, his side fins can move up
and down individually, most importantly, his whole shark tail can swish
from side to side, a feature not seen in any previous fish alternate modes.
This allows for some great "lurking" poses. My only complaint about this
mode is the poor "spark-action" gimmick. By pressing down on the spark
crystal on the top of Hammerstrike's beast head, a hammer-shaped piece
of plastic pops out about a quarter of an inch from the rest of his head.
Um... and this signifies WHAT, exactly?! An extremely odd gimmick, if you
ask me. Also, the dark blue transparent plastic used for the spark crystal
is a tad TOO dark. It's extremely hard to make out the Maximal allegiance
symbol in it, even in bright light.
Robot mode is... well...
can we even call it a robot? It looks like some shark...stick...thing.
This mode is very poorly designed, and definitely a disappointment when
compared with the great shark mode. For one, the head is very odd-looking.
It just looks like a pair or eyes, with some kind of odd, drooling mouth
underneath them that doesn't appear closed. Also, there's a VERY noticeable
gap between the head and the chest plate. This is partially filled in by
Hammerstrike's skinny "backbone", but it does a poor job of filling Hammerstrike's
frame out. Also, Hammerstrike's arms are very poorly constructed indeed.
It's entirely too obvious that they're just the halves of the shark upper
body and jaw, with a fin hanging off of the "arm". They're also very two-dimensional
and flat, and the closest thing to "hands" on these arms is two very odd-looking,
flat claws behind the jaw pieces. Yet another major downside to this mode
is that it's rather fragile, especially in the thin, flat arms. In fact,
while transforming Hammerstrike from beast mode to robot mode one time,
one of the shoulder ball joints actually cracked in half! Needless to say,
it's nearly impossible to repair a ball joint correctly, so I was forced
to buy another Hammerstrike. So, just a fair warning to anyone who has
or wants this figure: BE CAREFUL, especially around those shoulder ball
joints. Make sure not to apply too much pressure to that area when transforming
the guy. Another, albeit less minor downside, to this mode is that it's
hard to get Hammerstrike to hold his hammerhead head (his "warhammer")
in a correct position in this mode. For him to hold it easily, he has to
hold it with the two halves of the hammer pointing horizontally, making
it look like some kind of weird gun. One of the worst parts about this
downfall is that it wouldn't have taken much to fix this problem- just
a little extra notch in the plastic on one side of the warhammer. This
mode does have some good things about it, though. Hammerstrike's shoulder
pads, combined with the fin halves on his shoulders, look pretty cool (although
it is odd that the Maximal insignia is only printed on one shoulder pad
and not the other). His legs are also very posable, and, although his feet
are rather flat and two-dimensional, he can stand up remarkably well on
them. The "light piping" effect in the eyes also works well in both modes.
Hammerstrike has a fantastic
shark mode, but it's all negated by his very bad robot mode. You can get
it if you want, but it's pretty easy to find a better transformer out there.
Review by Beastbot