Night
Viper
Beast mode is a cobra.
(Question: If his name is Night VIPER, why is he a cobra? Ah, well.) All
things considered, this mode is actually quite good- it's very hard to
get a humanoid robot to transform into a long, thin, flawless snake. The
tail is long- at least four times as long as the snake body is wide- and
can move at almost any point. The points of articulation are irregularly
space, however, as it becomes the legs in robot mode. The main snake body
however (which is a flaw to begin with, as snakes just consist of a head
and a long, long tail), is relatively big when compared to the snake tail.
This detracts from the mode alot, but I don't let it detract as much, considering
the choice of the alternate form. The robot hands are also quite visible
on the lower part of the snake body, which is a little downside, and the
extra flaps of skin a cobra has on the sides of the front part of its body
are on the back of the main body section, not the front, which is rather
odd as well. The action gimmick is, if you press on the back part of Night
Viper's head, his head lunges forward a little (by a little, I mean about
a centimeter) in a striking attack. Kind of weak, but still effective.
To re-set the striking action, you merely push the head back into the position
it was in beforehand, and it locks in place. The spark crystal is located
by opening up a small panel located on Night Viper's back in this mode.
Robot mode is very niiice.
A rather creative transformation- the snake tail is pulled through the
waist halfway and folded in half to become the legs. It is this creative
transformaion, however, that has been the downfall on some Night Viper
toys. On some toys, as with mine, the waist eventually wears down a bit,
and the legs may flop out of their intended position more than desired.
This also can sometimes occur with the snake head and neck, which is located
on Night Viper's back in this mode; the screw that connected it to the
main body can sometimes become too loose, and cause the snake head to flop
down undesirably. Despite these few design flaws, however, this is a pretty
good mode; great articulation and detailing, and they managed to fix the
cobra flaps of skin to the sides of Night Viper's arms, making them look
kind of like arm-mounted shields. A bonus feature about these "shields"
is that the right one can flip out a nice, curving scythe blade, which
one can easily imagine slicing through Vehicons with ease.
A very nice transformer
in robot mode, and decent in beast mode, considering the choice of beast
forms. Highly recommended.
Review by Beastbot