Dragonstorm is loosely based on his model in the movie in his three-headed dragon mode, but it's certainly not remotely as slim as he is in the movies. No, Mega 1-Step Dragonstorm here is a bit chunky, with a relatively short body length-wise, and extremely thick back legs. His front legs are a bit more proportional, but the dragon heads are a touch oversized, and the wings are a bit too short and oddly thick as well. Oh, and there's a HUGE trigger coming up out of his backside, which is used for his transformation. Of course, it makes his transformation easy, but then there's the fact that it's just... THERE in this mode. The robot arms are also pretty obvious, hanging out below the main body without clipping into anything or even really meshing with the actual bottom of the dragon body above them. The tail on the back end is a bit puny, but it's also a removable whip-style weapon, so I'll cut it some slack for that. The mold detailing is full of "thorn-like" details all over the main body and lower neck-- accurate to the movie, but a bit more simplistic. Even the parts that aren't directly "thorny" certainly have a jagged edge to them, like the teeth and mouths of the three heads, the front claws, and the the tail details. The rear feet have the most intricate detailing, with some ornamental details on the front in addition to the usual thorny details. For a color scheme, Dragonstorm isn't at all accurate to the movie-- he's almost entirely a charcoal black, giving way to some red plastic on the tail, beast heads, and some minor connector parts and the like on the body. Oddly, some of the red is plastic and some of it is paint, with the paint quite noticeably lighter than the plastic. There's also a bit of bronze plastic on the trigger button and on the butt, with a shiny version of the color used on some paint on the upper tail and feet details. For articulation in this mode, Dragonstorm can move side-to-side at the knees and up-and-down at the tail. He also has some head and wing articulation-- hold down the trigger button and push forward, and the wings will flap up and his main head will lunge forward, opening its maw. The problem is, the wings are on very flimsy hinges and come off incredibly easy-- especially not good given the young age range this toy is aimed at. The main head lights up a purple light bulb in the mouth, which you can shine on other mainline 1-step TLK figures to show their "Cyberfire" UV paint apps. It's pretty cool-- as are the red lights that light up at the base of the two side heads. When you activate this motion, there will be a robotic "activating" sound emitted from the toy, along with a vaguely monster-ish sound. (There is a slider button on the top of the body where you disable the lights and sounds if you so wish.)
    To transform Dragonstorm, hold in on that trigger button and push it backward, and the toy auto-transforms, with some red lighting up around the robot head and a transforming sound emitted from the toy along with one of three phrases: "Knights Unite!", "Bear witness!" and "Convert (my?) form" (kinda difficult to tell with that last one). (Transform him back and you'll get a reverse-transforming sound, along with either "Arise, champions!", "Feel the force of our fire!", or "Three heads are better than one!".) Press on the orange button in the middle of his chest in this mode, and you'll get one of several different phrases: "Protect the staff!", something in alien-ese, "Burn!", "We are sworn to protect!", "'Tis our sacred vow!", "Quintessa, stand down!", "Protect the Autobots!", "Away, vile beast!", "For Cybertron!", or "By the will of the Autobots!". Therein lies all of Dragonstorm's various electronic gimmicks, and I like how they're pretty cool without being all that invasive (or at least it seems so). The robot mode proportions, on the other hand, could use some work. It's just a straight shot down from the chest to the hips to the legs, making his midsection look rather fat (at least for a Transformer, that is). His head is also pretty tiny proportionally, which doesn't look that great. His arms are a bit on the small side comparatively, and worse, the shoulders are spring-loaded a bit, meaning they don't actually sit flush against the body-- they can't, in fact! Weighing one down by having it hold his tail-weapon in his fist helps some, but the arm position still looks incredibly awkward, and given the angle, makes it look even more like he's too thick in the midsection. The wings hang off the sides of the stomach as opposed to the shoulders, and the front dragon legs and dragon head hang off the upper back-- though at least they're out of the way. The detailing in this mode is still a bit "thorny" on some spots like the sides of the chest and hips, but there's a lot more decorative, scaly armor amidst all the angles-- particularly on the sides of the shoulders and lower arms, as well as the hips. There's also some "spike pads" on the knees. His chest detailing is rather interesting, with some hollow "rib"-like details in the center, leading up to the rather unique head, which has two "normal" eyes, a round head with lots of thorny-like details, a red fiery "mask" around his eyes, a "jewel" in his forehead, and a silver faceplate with little vent bits in it. There's also PLENTY of paint in this mode, with lots of fiery red around his waist and hips, as well as on his knees and some red plastic on his mid-arms. There's also lots of bronze paint-- on the claws, waist, chest, above the knees, and on the feet. This certainly makes this mode a lot more colorful than his beast mode, and he actually looks pretty good color-wise for this mode. For articulation, he can move at the elbows (at two points), and technically out at his shoulders, though that's on that dumb spring hinge so it'll snap back into its default place without pressure.
    Mega 1-Step Dragonstorm's got some pretty cool electronic features and noises, and his robot mode has some pretty awesome paint apps. All of his various heads (dragon and robot) are detailed very well, too. However, when it compares to proportions he's pretty awkward in both modes, his arms are angled horribly in robot mode and obvious in beast mode, and his wings come off at the drop of a hat (the latter is the main thing keeping me from recommending him even for little kids). Definitely not worth the whopping $80 (U.S.) for him-- and he's not THAT big either, way smaller than the Stomp 'n Chomp Grimlock toy from AoE.
 

Review by Beastbot

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