(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 AoE voyager Grimlock toy. For a review on the mold itself, read the review of the original AoE voyager Grimlock toy here.)

    The oft-used AoE voyager Grimlock mold gets one last use out of it for The Last Knight, and for the most part this toy uses the same colors and shades as the other AoE Grimlock toys that were repainted for TLK. Many TLK toys suffer from a lack of paint, but not this Grimlock-- he's got oodles of silver paint all over, to the point it's probably about tied with dull, milky brownish gray plastic for being used the most on the toy-- and the latter is used on just about every blatantly visible t-rex part (at least as the base)! This gives Grimlock's beast mode in particular a nice mix between earthy tones and metallic tones. The other major color (charcoal black) used on Grimlock is more visible on his robot mode parts, like his upper legs and fists-- though it's also used on his tail/weapon and some other minor parts as well. The three colors together definitely make for a more movie-accurate paint job than his mainline AoE toys, though his later Studio Series toy showed just how inaccurate this sculpt is compared to the final model in various aspects (particularly beast mode). There's a bit of light milky gray used on the toy-- yes, that really blah shade that I hate. That said, i'ts only used on a few minor places, like the robot feet and the robot face. This unfortunately means many of the details on the face are "washed out" from the shade, but otherwise it's a minor downside at best. Interestingly, there's another plastic color, but it's used rather sparingly-- jsut on his lower t-rex jaw and robot waist piece, as far as I can discern. It's a milky silvery brown shade, about halfway between the silver paint and the milky brownish gray plastic-- I suppose used to give a bit of extra shine to places where Hasbro couldn't spare the paint. There's a bit of color used here-- red on the t-rex eyes and some moderately light blue on the robot eyes-- but it's not nearly enough to keep this from being a very monochrome color scheme.
    No mold changes have been made compared to the AoE voyager toy.
    The TLK Premier Grimlock toy fits a veeerrry particular niche-- do you want a toy of movie Grimlock that's nice and shiny silver, but not SO shiny it uses chrome, like on some of the exclusive AoE releases? AND do you NOT particularly care about 100% (well, maybe 95%) movie accuracy? Then get this version. If you're more into movie accuracy, then the Studio Series Leader version of this design released all of half a year later will fulfill your wants better. Which is a shame, because even though it's monochrome, it's still a very shiny color scheme and one of the most paint-happy toys in the entire line.
 

Review by Beastbot

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