Cutthroat
(Power of the Primes)
Cutthroat is one of those toys where I really went back and forth between "do I do a partial review of it as a remold or a full review as a completely new toy?" Eventually I erred on the side of doing a (mostly) completely new review, as the vast majority of the toy has been remolded, but there are some definite similarities to PotP Swoop, so if you're not familiar with my thoughts on that toy/its peculiarities, you might want to read that review before you read this one. Anyways, in beast mode Cutthroat is a kind of robotic pterodactyl-like monster-- honestly, he's easily the least "monsterish" out of all of the Terrorcons, and could easily pass as some sort of pterosaur if you wanted to (which explains why he's a very extensive remold of Swoop). Unlike Swoop, though, Cutthroat can stand more upright, due to him having more sizeable legs on the sides of his body-- however, if you tilt him too far forward in this mode it's impossible to get him to look like he's not crouching downards, given his head can't look all the way up. He's got very angular, roboticized wings that don't even have a hint of organic-ness in them, and truth be told are a tad too slim/small to be believable wings for this creature. The head is sculpted very nicely, kind of a cross between a normal bird face and a pterodactyl, what with the crest coming off the top of the head-- but it does have a more "normal"-sized beak and some robotic feather-like details near the back. He also has a short tail that hangs off the back end. Most of the body is, unfortunately, a bit too obviously his robot mode folded up, as from the front you can clearly see the arms folded up on the sides of the top half, as well as the details that obviously become the robot abs, knees, and feet lower on the body. The legs are definitely pretty bird-like, with large talons near the front and a "vulture-like" look to the rest of them, with several general robotic details. The color scheme for Cutthroat is primarily a dark bluish green on the body; some pale tan on the legs, head, and part of the body; and a pale shade of purple on the wings and part of the head. All in all, it's a pretty unique color scheme, with the tan actually looking a bit flesh-like and contrasting against the dark green very well, while the purple contrasts nicely with them both and makes him look pretty Decepticon-y as well. There's some silver paint on the claws, red on the eyes, and some dark purple near the front of his head. What's interesting is that the purple paint is of a noticeably different shade than the plastic, being a bit more bold and reddish, almost fuchsia-like, yet it's barely used at all. Huh. (The rest of the paint is used primarily for robot mode, so I'll talk about it then.) Cutthroat has four ports for a Prime/Titan Master to stand on-- two near the back end of the base of each wing, and another two near the top of his lower green body section. You can also plug in his Prime Armor on his back between his two wings in what is definitely one of the better ways to store this obvious combiner hand, and Cutthroat also comes with a two-barreled gun with two different-sized handles, allowing it to be plugged into multiple different spots on the figure. For articulation in this mode, Cutthroat can move at the wings (at three points), up-and-down a bit at the neck and jaw, and at the hips, knees, and the base of his tail-- pretty decent for an animal of this kind and size.
During his transformation, you can definitely see how Cutthroat is based off of Swoop, even if the details on like 90% of his parts are different. Just like Swoop, the beast head comes down on the chest, leaving the robot head visible (though on my copy, at least, the beast head comes off its small pivot points rather easily during transformation); the robot arms fold out from the side of the beast body; the wings fold up some; and the legs rotate out and down from the lower portion of the main body. The main differences between Cutthroat and Swoop are that Cutthroat's legs fold more straight down, instead of curling up on his back for beast mode, and that the beast legs and tail halves simply fold up on the sides of the lower legs. This makes the lower legs look a bit less elegant, particularly when it comes to those beast legs, as they're REALLY obvious. The beast head on the chest is hollow on the top-- necessary for transformation, but making his chest not look as solid as it should be. Otherwise, the proportions are pretty good, making Cutthroat look on the lithe/slim side, but still within normal range of a TF. The arms-- at least mold-wise-- are taken directly from Swoop and are identical, as are the upper legs, Prime armor, combiner port on the back, and the knee hinge pieces. Still, they could have made almost the enitre main body and wings the same, and they didn't, so there's a lot more remolding done than the bare minimum, here. The details on the legs are quite eye-catching, with some angular silver-and-blue shapes on the lower portions, and some skinny kneecaps of the same color with a bit more of that purple paint below them. The sides of the chest/abs have some generic robotic detailing, but it's definitely different than on Swoop, and the waist has some nice red detailing on it. There's also some more silver paint on the upper sides of the chest, and some dark blue-green near the wrists. The headsculpt is pretty nice, with three square headcrest bits on the top and a line connecting them all on the forehead, and a "normal" silver face with a rather neutral expression and two red eyes. That said, as good as all of this looks, so much of it is similar to the beast mode I feel a bit more should have been changed. It's basically the beast mode with longer legs, a couple of obvious beast bits folded up, the arms folded out, and the head switched out. So many of the details and color breakup are the same. As with other PotP deluxes, you can tab on the "Prime Armor" onto the front of the chest, but it doesn't look good at all and is best ignored. For articulation in this mode, beyond the wing articulation already mentioned, he can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows, inwards at the wrists, waist rotation, and at the hips (at two points) and the knees-- so pretty good, overall, and he's quite well-balanced.
