(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 original Beast Wars Waspinator toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original Beast Wars Waspinator toy here.)

    Thrustinator sure is a blast from the past! This mold hasn't been used since the 2006 "10th Anniversary" Edition, and even then... well, this is half a new mold-- at least for an American audience. This toy is basically half "normal" Waspinator and half "meched-up" wasp-- nearly all of the new details are taken from the Japanese Beast Wars "cyborg" Dirgegun. Basically, the mold differences are: 1. More technological wings, with miniature fans detailed on the inside and a sharp, knife-like look to them overall; 2. The left half of the beast face has been changed to look very cyborg-esque in appearance, with very mecahnical details and even a bar across the "eye", along with a sharp metal mandible; 3. The blaster has been changed to have more mechanical detailing; 4. There's a large gun now on the upper back which can be rotated forward to hold one and spring-launch of the two missiles (still stored in the bottom of each wing); 5. The middle of the robot chest now has mechanized detail, with the Mutant head "flip feature" removed; 6. The left upper leg has mechanized detail on it; 7. The right lower leg has sharpened, mechanized details on it. It makes for a pretty incongruous figure, which is why it was such an incredibly GENIUS move by FunPub to take this mold and make it half-Thrust, half-Waspinator, as a post-Beast Machines body for the character (which is a MUCH better idea than the weird wasp-with-Thrust-head appearance he had at the end of the show). The Waspinator parts of this toy are colored largely how you'd expect, looking fairly similar to his 10th Anniversary Edition, but with the green plastic a bit lighter and more milkier. This actually works, as it provides a slightly better contrast against the other colors now, and it looks close enough to still be show-accurate as well. There's no yellow plastic either, with all of the yellow painted on (mostly on the stripes on the abdomen), and some minor bits of the yellow replaced with either more green plastic or a bit of light milky gray. The light milky gray is rather bland, but is used very sparsely, and honestly makes a little more sense since Thrustinator is more "mechanized" than Waspy. He's got normal silver fists, as well as a yellow eye now for his normal bug face to help it "mesh" with the Thrust colors better. Unfortunately there's no paint at all on his normal wasp "back leg/robot foot", which I suppose is understandable given all the other paint on him, but is still a bummer. The mechanized Thrust parts are mostly a fairly light fuchsia-- it's a pretty good plastic color and goes quite well with the yellow paint used on the gun, abdomen, and wasp head. Less so with the green, but they're supposed to sort of clash a bit, that's the point of the toy. I do wish the fuchsia plastic blended better with the fuchsia paint on the wings and head, though, as the latter is a noticeably darker, more metallic shade of the color. I do love the smoky gray plastic used on the wings, helping to blend in the mechanical details with the semi-translucent nature of wasp wings (and it fits the color scheme well, too). There's also tons of silver and yellow details on the fuchsia parts to really bring out all that mold detail on the "new" parts, which all looks great.
    Beyond the Dirgegun mold changes, Thrustinator has a new headsculpt, which is incredibly well-detailed and sculpted, and a perfect amalgam of Waspinator's and Thrust's heads. It looks really messed up, which it well should. The bug eye on the left, the Thrust eye on the right, the mandible on the right, the Thrust vent on the left, the central head vent with the bug antennae on the sides of it-- it all looks so wonderfully ugly. My only issue here is that the detailing on the back half of the head was clearly meant to be painted with some stripes of Thrust-y fuchsia, but was kept unpainted green for whatever reason, which is a bummer. Also, although not a mold change, many of the ball joints are noticeably looser on this toy than on my various previous copies of the Waspinator mold-- kinda annoying, but nothing some floor polish can't fix.
    Thrustinator is just an absolutely ingenious move by FunPub, all the more ingenious given that all the "cyborg" molding from Dirgegun actually fits THIS idea better than it did the original toy in Japan! The fusing of the two color schemes-- and the character itself-- is brilliant, and that wonderful headsculpt is the cherry on top. Although the mold may not be all that great by modern standards, the concept is just amazing, and this is one of my favorite Club exclusives of all time (and definitely my favorite concept from among the subscription service 2.0 figures).

Review by Beastbot

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