Paralon (RID 2015) [Toys "R" Us Exclusive]
Beast ModeRobot Mode
Allegiance: Decepticon
Size: Warrior
Difficulty of Transformation: Medium
Color Scheme: Purple, dark dull semi-metallic purple, light milky gray, and some yellow, red, dark metallic purple, dull pinkish purple, and silver
Rating: 8.6

(NOTE: Because this is a repaint, this is not a full-blown review. This mainly covers any changes made to the mold and the color scheme, and merely compares it to the RID2015 Scorponok toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of RID2015 Scorponok here.)

    Paralon is a purple scorpion. Is it realistic? I suppose it's within the realm of possibility... though I'm not going to Google it to find out. Real arachnids give me the creeps. Anyways, particularly in beast mode there's a LOT of purple on this guy, alternating between a fairly straightforward shade of purple and a darker, fairly dull shade of purple that is nonetheless semi-metallic, as it has a bit of glitter in it. These colors complement each other pretty well, though I could've done with a bit more contrast-- say, making the medium purple lighter or something. The other somewhat major color is that very blah, boring shade of light milky gray plastic, and is used for the upper legs and arms, most of the head, and the sword. Thus, even though it's present, at least it's overpowered substantially by all the purple. There is one more shade of purple on Paralon, used as paint-- it's a dark metallic shade, roughly as dark as the dark dull semi-metallic plastic but... well... not quite as dull. It's used on the top of the head, the sides of the lower robot arms, the stinger, and a bit on the face. There's a few highlight colors, as well, to help pep up some more purely purple areas of the toy. First, there's a few bits of yellow on the scorpion claws and stinger, as well as on the robot chest, in those RID2015-typical divot details. There's some red used for the eyes (or visor) in both modes. There's some silver on the robot face. And finally, there's a dull pinkish purple color used on stripes on the sides of the robot arms as well as on the abs of the robot mode. All of these colors pop pretty well against their surroundings, though they're not significant enough parts of the color scheme to really add much to it overall. (Of course, the pinkish purple also complements the other shades of purple around it, as well.)
    Paralon has a new headsculpt, and it's fairly reminscient of how Beast Wars Scorponok's head looked on the old TV show, but with a larger forehead. That is, there's a visor, a "normal" mouth, and what look like singular fangs on the sides of his head and exoskeleton-like details on the middle of his forehead and down the sides of it above his visor. It's a pretty cool callback without being slavish to the original toy, though unfortunately it's not quite show-accurate, with Paralon's head on the show being a bit simpler and without such a big forehead.
    Paralon may not be as realistic-looking as RID2015 Scorponok with his primarily purple color scheme, but he still looks pretty good, with three different major shades of purple to help distract from the bit of blah milky gray plastic he also has. He's got a fair number of accent colors as well, though I wish they were a bit more apparent in scorpion mode, as he's a bit too much "all purple" in that mode in particular. The new headsculpt is a nice callback, too. Recommended slightly over RID2015 Scorponok, if you want to pick one or the other.
 

Review by Beastbot

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