As opposed to most reviews, I'll be starting with Steelbane's robot mode first, since so many of my comments about his beast mode relate to this mode. Steelbane's general design is based off one of the many robot knights in the movie that don't really speak much, but instead serve as soldiers. The core design is pretty darned awesome, with some great proportions-- generally humanoid, but with very large shoulder panels and what look like gauntlets on his hands. The whole motif really looks like a robot wearing additional medieval-era armor, and this is definitely where the focus of this whole design is. The curvy decorative designs are all OVER the place on this toy, especially on the chest plate, which has an impressive bunch of intricate medieval-style shapes showing chest details, abs, and even a long skirt piece that looks like a sword. His headsculpt looks like he's got a helmet around it with the faceguard retracted up on the top, with little "slits" on his forehead that are clearly meant to be seen as the helmet eye-slits. He does have a more "normal" robot face underneath, complete with eyes and a light silvery blue faceplate. Steelbane also comes with a soft-plastic sword with a ridiculous amount of mold detailing in it, to the point where it looks like it was carved from an old ancient tree. Of course, Steelbane has to have an alternate mode, and it's where we get to the "extras" in this mode. The largest and most obvious aren't really a big deal-- the large dragon wings and front feet hanging off his back-- and actually frame his figure and add to his overall silhouette, even if they aren't accurate to the movie. They can also splay out to the sides, with the metal-looking wings being able to rotate at two different areas where they meet the dragon arm, so you can give him an impressive wing span. The downside to these wings, though, is that they make him a bit back-heavy, and his heels aren't big enough to make him all that stable. This is exacerbated by perhaps the biggest downside, at least of this mode-- Steelbane's ball joints are HORRIBLY loose. It's VERY difficult to get him to stand up by himself, here. After several coats of floor polish on the balljoints he's much more stable, but still, I shouldn't have to do that to a figure out-of-the-box (especially that many coats). Steelbane also has his dragon head and tail hanging behind his lower legs in a slightly unsightly manner, but those are relatively minor extras. The color scheme for Steelbane is very earthy, as befits his "ancient knight" schtick. He's got a lot of that blah light milky gray plastic on him, but thankfully much of it is mostly covered up by a very nice, detailed dull tannish yellow "paint/time wear" wash on his lower legs, chest, and much of his arms. It REALLY helps to make the piece. There's also some dull pale brown on his feet, head, hands, and around his skirt, and it's painted on the wing "membranes" as well. The paint colors really come together well on the chest, with a lot of silver there, along with some metallic silvery blue (which also extends to the shoulders). This is certainly one TLK toy that is NOT lacking in paint apps, let me tell ya! There's also a bit of dark aquamarine plastic-- mostly on the back side, which you can't really see in this mode. Overall it's not a very exciting color scheme in terms of the colors themelves, but very much so when it comes to just HOW they're applied, given all the weathering effects and such. For articulation in this mode, Steelbane can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points if count the shoulder armor as one), elbows (at two points), elbow rotation, and movement at the hips, knees (at two points), and ankles. Thus in theory he's pretty poseable, though you need to bulken up those ball joints with polish before you can get him into some cool poses.
    Unfortunately for the designers of Steelbane's movie model, he's a Transformer, which means Hasbro had to shoehorn in an alt mode, and, man... you can tell this thing definitely was secondary to the robot mode. The transformation is certainly unique, with the body doing some interesting things like having the outer "core" split and rotate in pieces around the inner "core", but ultimately the beast mode is questionable. It's a dragon technically, but it's a VERY skinny dragon, like... a dragon-deer? Or something. He's extraordinarily lanky, with the neck in particular just being too absurdly long. They're formed from the robot legs-- obviously, given that the feet just hang there unceremoniously on the top of the neck and tail. Ugh. The BEAST legs aren't actually bad-- the rear legs are made up out of the robot arms, but with the gauntlets folded out to become the feet, and the front feet and wings are of course those large pieces on his back in robot mode. However, the body is incredibly gappy, and not solid at all. The wings I guess are meant to cover up a lot of it from the sides, and from the top, you've got a little bit of shoulder armor in the front, and the sword pegs onto the top of the body to (completely ineffectually) cover up the interior pieces you have to rotate around the inner core to transform the toy, but... it's all just not remotely convincing. Given how little everything locks into place and all the gaps, I checked multiple times to make sure I had transformed him correctly the first time-- I was like, "oh, this CAN'T be it. I've gotta be missing something". But I wasn't. Given that so little of the toy is visible in this mode that isn't visible in robot mode, Steelbane's colors don't really change much here-- there's a bit of that aforementioned dark aquamarine plastic visible on the back and neck, but it doesn't add all that much to the scheme. The only paint apps exclusive to this mode are the red dragon eyes and the light silvery blue paint app on the top of his long-snouted head, but that's it. For articulation in this mode (at least movement he's "SUPPOSED" to have, beyond the weird ways you can move the body via the transformation), Steelbane can move at the jaw, at the base of his horns (all horns as one piece), at the neck (at four points), at the shoulders (at two points), front knees, at the base of each wing (at two points), at the hips, rear knees (at two points), and the tail (at three points).
    Steelbane is a very nice medieval robot figure, with lots of mold and paint detailing, great proportions, a unique look, and great posability (assuming you shore up those loose balljoints), but he's not a good Transformer. His dragon alt mode is just all kinds of awkward and ill-proportioned, with the wings and legs being the only halfway decent portion. If you get him, probably best to just leave him in robot mode.
 

Review by Beastbot

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