Undermine
Beast mode is a spinosaurus,
and is one of the best beast modes I've ever seen on ANY Transformer. Holy
CRUD, this mode is awesome. The proportions are spot-on, there's great
techno-organic mold detailing all over the place, and the color scheme
is just right for a dinosaur transformer-- different shades of green, with
some nice metallic detailing to show off Undermine's mechanical parts.
His hand claws look especially wicked-- I love that splayed position they're
molded in. His head is also molded just perfectly, and when you open up
his mouth for him to give a "roar", it looks totally natural, not rigid
like on many beast Transformers with such articulation. Undermine's other
articulation in this mode is at the shoulders, hips (at two points), knees
(at two points), and ankles, plus three points of articulation in the tail,
so you can get some pretty mean poses out of him. The only things I don't
like about this mode is that the robot head is a bit visible behind the
neck, but it's not much of a robot head anyways, so I'm not as concerned
about it as I would be otherwise. The part where his tail connects to his
main body is also a bit loose, so his tail comes off a little easier than
I'd like. When you plug in his Cyber Key to the back of his fin, a ramming
sword flips out so Undermine can have another sharp edge to thrust at his
opponents in this mode-- not outstandingly cool, but certainly not a bad
gimmick, at least in this mode.
In robot mode, however,
we find out the price for such an awesome beast mode-- a lanky robot mode
that seems largely thrown together as a second thought. The "head" is almost
non-existant, consisting of just the dinosaur fin with a small gold
helmet on the bottom of the front side with two red eye slits. There's
no mouth or faceplate to speak of. Plus, activating the Cyber Key gimmick
in this mode looks awkward, as he has a big sword coming out of his forehead,
ick. His chest is skinny, so the dinosaur arms are hanging off the shoulders
to try to give the chest the appearance of having more mass, but this totally
does not work, it just looks like Undermine has a pair of extra arms on
his shoulders. I wouldn't mind the arm-claws made from the halves of his
dino head much, if the detailed, solid-looking halves were facing outward,
but they're not-- instead, the more visible side of his arms in this mode
are mostly hollow, with several pegs and a few bolts visible-- it loks
rather ugly. He also doesn't really have elbows, it just goes from his
uppper arms to his claws. Plus, Undermine can't hold his (rather cool)
tail-mace in his hands, it fits into a slot on the top of his claws, with
looks a little odd. At least his waist and legs look alright, though. His
articulation in this mode, besides the same leg articulation mentioned
in dinosaur mode, also consists of movement at the shoulders, two points
of movement at his claws/elbows, and due to his transformation, he's able
to move at the waist back-and-forth, so he can "look up" using this odd
point of articulation.
Even though his robot
mode looks very weird and slapped-together, I can't bring myself to give
Undermine too low of a score due to his incredibly awesome beast mode that
sets a high standard for future beast TFs' alt modes. There are better
beast TFs in Cybertron, to be sure, but none have a better beast mode than
Undermine-- just also be aware that few have WORSE robot modes than Undermine,
as well.
Review by Beastbot