At long last, the popular
Beast Wars character Dinobot gets a badly-needed toy update! In beast mode,
Dinobot is still a velociraptor, but significantly streamlined when compared
to the original Beast Wars toy. It's considerably
more lean and avian-esque in its stature, while still looking as powerful
as a raptor should. The mold detailing is very well-done, giving all of
Dinobot's beast parts a very organic, leathery dino-hide look to them--
particularly on the head and arms. His tail is also molded in a slightly
askew position, so that it doesn't look so unnaturally ramrod-straight
as it did on the original toy. However, one major thing bugs me about the
look of Dinobot's beast mode, and it bugs me quite a bit since the 10th
Anniversary toy of him got this wrong as well-- namely, his color scheme,
while still fitting for a velociraptor (at least, that's how it looks to
me), is STILL OFF. Dinobot in the show was light brown with dark brown
stripes, not visa versa. It's aggravating that they've come so close to
giving Dinobot a true update, but left that major detail unfinished. Dinobot
also has some robot mode extras, though none of them are nearly as bulky
or mode-ruining as they were on the original toy. His robot mode lower
arms are quite obvious sticking out of his stomach, and though they help
Dinobot look "bulkier" but adding mass to his stomach, they're still obviously
his arms. Some other, minor robot parts can be seen in this mode, such
as the upper robot legs on the inside of his beast mode upper legs and
the robot feet on the backside of his raptor feet. In this mode, Dinobot
can move at the mouth, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles-- so he's not
super-posable for a dinosaur, but certainly adequate in that category.
Most of the effort
in Dinobot's redesign, though, clearly went to his robot mode. It's clear
that the designers went out of their way to make Dinobot as show-accurate
as possible (at least when it comes to the mold), with a spot-on face mold,
good "light piping" on the eyes, some nice "ribs" on his lower stomach,
and a physique similar to how he looked in the show-- the velociraptor
arms sticking out of his shoulders are the only blatant beast mode extras.
His proportions are great, though his arms could stand to be "bulked up"
a bit more like they were on the show. There are two things about this
new design that I particularly like-- one is how the "fleshy" parts of
his upper legs move on down to his lower legs with little spiky "bone"
pieces flipping out of them to surround and bulk up his lower legs, just
like
on the show! A totally unneeded, but very cool little extra there. Another
cool thing about him is his hands-- namely, if you want, you can have them
in the pseudo-dino-claw form that he has in the show, but if you want him
to have more normal hands and be able to hold stuff, just flip the hand
pieces around and voila! There they are! In addition, Dinobot has a faction-change
gimmick rooted in the lore of the show-- flip around the small square bit
on his dino-head-chest to switch his faction symbol from Predacon to Maximal
and back again! Just like with the beast mode, though, Dinobot does has
some definite flaws in this mode, the most egregrious of which is his weapon.
It's made up of his entire tail section (which is larger proportionally
compared to his body than on his original toy), and it's one of those weapons
that just weighs the figure down and is so darned cumbersome it's just
better to leave it off and out of the way. His tail splits into three sections,
though they don't spin at all-- instead, the whole big thing acts as a
missile launcher that fires off a missile that can double as his traditional
sword. However, the sword itself is also pretty underwhelming-- it's entirely
transparent orange plastic-- not silver at all-- and given the overly rounded
nature of the top and its shortened length to fit inside the launcher,
it looks more like some kinda lollipop than an actual sword. Very unfortunate,
given that the sword and spinning shield were two of Dinobot's bit trademarks.
Also, his dinosaur head doesn't fit very snugly in his chest-- it and his
shoulders tend to flop around a little. And, just like in his beast mode,
Dinobot's color scheme-- while decent in and of itself-- isn't accurate
to his show version. Instead of a tannish brown he has more of a pale yellow
on his robot bits, in addition to purple replacing dark blue on this toy.
Dinobot's articulation is pretty decent, though-- he can move at the neck,
shoulders (at two points), elbows, at the base of his dino-claw fingers
(with the outer three claws treated as one pice and the inner two claws
treated as one piece on each hand), and at the hips, ankles, and knees.
Universe 2.0 Dinobot
is quite a decent update-- certainly better than Universe
2.0 Cheetor-- though he does come with a few drawbacks, such as the
blatant arms in beast mode, the loose chest/shoulders and underwhelming
weapons in robot mode, and his frustratingly "off" color scheme. However,
these caveats aside he's a pretty darn good toy with plenty of things to
like about him, and a must pick-up for Beast Wars fans.
Review by Beastbot