Grimlock is the only Dinobot to have been done previously in Hasbro's Generations ranges. In fact he's been done twice: In the second Classics wave as
a deluxe that I have all sorts of issues with THE LOWER LEGS ARE THE WRONG WAY UP AND SHOULD BE WIDER AT THE BOTTOM and as a
Fall of Cybertron Voyager which makes for a better Grimlock than the Classics toy. His head was also mode last year as
Titanmaster Clobber and along the way there's been various other versions in various other lines. The problem is few of them compare well to the original or his
Masterpiece, effectively the original upscaled with added articulation which is what I think fans really want with their Classics toys.
Grimlock comes boxed in robot mode, with a pair of Prime Armours and his Enigma of Combination.
The Enigma is a non transforming block of plastic roughly the same size and shape as a Titanmaster's head mode. It has a blank head sticking out the bottom, and tab sticking out the back the same size and shape as a Titanmaster heel spur. You can attach it to Titans Return toys as a static forward facing head. Grimlock's is silver with a red dot in the middle. I'm not that impressed with it to be honest. Although I don't think the Primemaster robots are as good as the Titanmasters some value would have been added to this by making it transform into a miniature robot even if they had to recycle the body!
The Enigma, or a Primemaster or a Titanmaster can fit in the slot on Grimlock's Prime armour: the cover guns from the deluxe Prime Armours can too but lacking the heel spur they won't secure. There's a 5mm peg hole underneath the Prime Armour, another towards the back of the top and one on the rear plus a 5mm peg on a side to side ratcheting pivot. The name suggests they're designed to be used as armour but all they do is sit there looking bulky. The ones on Starscream can at least be used with his weapons but these are all the weapons Grimlock has!
For the purposes of this review I want to start with the Dinosaur mode: bring the legs together and fold the tail tip down behind it. Split the chest in two straight down the middle then fold each half out to the sides, down and then back together round the upper legs: tabs on the side of the legs lock onto slots on the inside of the chest halves. Fold the hands into the forearms and the "wings" closed round the exposed body spine. Fold the dinosaur head over the robot head.
Modern dinosaur theory suggest Tyrannosaurus Rex had a horizontal body, and this Grimlock can achieve that pose just fine. But I'm a traditionalist and want my Grimlock in a more upright Godzilla pose and he can do the too by rotting the legs back a couple of ratchet clicks and bending the tail back at the robot knees by the same amount.
From the front, the T-Rex mode looks like a slightly wider version of the original Grimlock, with the head being a highlight. His jaw opens, his tiny dinosaur arms are ball jointed at the shoulders and his legs turn at the hip & bend at the knees. The hips also bend to the sides but that was no use here. Early pictures were at pins to hide the rear of the toy, prompting fear of a square tail end. It's not, there's a distinct point to it but only after a distinct jump down from the blocky section of his legs that makes up most of the tail. It could have been worse, but it could have been so much better with a more smoothly sloping tail. A pair of Titanmaster pegs can be found on the base of the tail and another pair is on a panel halfway up his back. The back of the dinosaur body is a bit of mess with lots of red, gold, black and silver grey parts mixed together. On his gold neck there's a slot, used to secure the neck in other modes. Here it's exposed and it's exactly the right size for a Titanmaster heel spur to fit in, enabling a Titanmaster to ride him. This can be also used to store his Enigma of Combination in Dinosaur mode. The mouth opens and there's a designed slot for the Enigma there too but since Enigmas have the same tab as a Titanmaster heel spur you can stick disembodied Titanmaster Heads in hi mouth as if he's just ripped them off a body. The only place you can really mount the Prime Armour in this mode is the side of the legs, which makes him look very wide indeed!
Returning to robot mode is easy enough, with the possible exception of pulling out the fists - there;s a groove on the back of the hand you can get a finger nail into though. Be careful when joining the chest halves up though and don't rely on the small pegs at the front to hold it together: the black body core has a tab on each side at the back which needs to sit in a slot on the body halves. A good tight connection there now will save you some grief later in combined mode.
Grimlock's robot mode is undeniably Grimlock, but it's a case of having got the basics right but a lot of the detail could be better. The head is fabulous, they've nailed his vaguely Prime-like black head with red visor down to a tee. I'd had plans to see if a 3p could come up with a way of integrating Titanmaster Clobber but I much prefer this head sculpt. The head is on a ball joint.
The look of the chest is a bit odd: they've gone for the clear plastic with gold paint underlay used for parts where the original Dinobots were chrome under clear plastic. Grimlock's chest was straight gold chrome however and the clear plastic gives it an strange colour. It also means his chest panel, previously clearly defined as the only bit of the chest which was clear plastic over chrome, blends into the rest of the chest. Perhaps they might have used a darker background here rather than the gold paint, to make it stand out more? There's a clearly discernible line down the front of his chest, used in the transformation when the chest splits in two. I can see it's function but not sure I can see why they've done it that way instead of having the chest fold down to the front as a solid unit. I'm guessing it's to be different for difference sake but it's unsightly here and can cause problems in his torso mode. There's also two odd looking vertical slots on his chest which are used in combined mode but they impact the look here.
The arms are generally really good too: they look good from the front, though from the back there's a little bit of bulk behind the forearms, which is used to house the Combiner Wars sockets for the combined form's arms. The shoulders turn and swing out to the sides, he's got a bicep swivel and double bending elbow. 5mm peg hole hands allow him to hold his Prime Armour as weapons, via their 5mm peg, there's another 5mm peg hole on the outside of the wrist to mount them on there, and a 5mm peg too if you want the gap facing out. If I'm picky I'd say I'd like 5mm peg holes on his shoulders like the FOC version does. The problem here is the Prime armour are his only weapons: Starscream also has his null rays which can be hand held, plugged into his arm and plugged into his Prime Armour. Grimlock has nothing: no Galaxial Rocket Launcher, no Twin "Stunner" Lasers, no Energo Sword. Nothing! Even the Fall of Cybertron Voyager did better than that, having a sword. The temptation is to steal that sword and get hold of another ArtTek Rex Blaster but I think the unstated insinuation here is that you're meant to use the Primemasters Decoy suits other mode as his weapons. Cloucburst/Micronus twin Gatling gun would be a possible substitute for his twin gun, but they're in red so Cloudburst's probable repaint/remould as Waverider
, accidentally revealed through the cancelled Grand Pretender shell, would work better. But the problem here is Grimlock's sword and twin gun are so iconic that something looks missing when they're not there!
His waist is picked out in red, looks good and rotates where the wide belt piece meets the thinner groin. I'd have cast the D shaped hip pieces that turn at the waist and the legs swing out to the sides on in black rather than red so they blended in with the upper legs. Similarly the knees, with a low thigh swivel at the top and a bending joint at the bottom, are also red where they would have blended in better as black. Since the patchwork quilt that was Titan's Return Hardhead's upper legs I'm getting quite picky about hips, thighs and knees all being the same colour!
Then there's the lower legs..... Well they got the colour right. From the front they're straight up and down, no spreading to the sides and only a poorly defined foot at the bottom. It spreads a little to the back, the only area where most Grimlock legs are reasonably flat! Not only are the lower legs the wrong shape they're also too short. In a straight standing pose the top of POTP Grimlock's head is level with the line above the chest box on FOC Grimlock, who is a full inch taller. Although the upper legs could be a bit longer most of this difference comes from the lower legs which are far far too short. Looking straight at the toy the proportions between his top and bottom half look very strange: It almost seems like he has a Deluxe's legs on a Voyager's body! Since the legs also caused problems as the tail in T-Rex mode this is an all round design fail and in my opinion they should have stuck to the fold the lower legs over the upper legs approach that worked for the original and the Masterpiece. I know *why* it's been done like this, in order to accommodate the very visible Combiner Wars sockets in the sides of the ankles but there's two or three examples here of Grimlock also being a combiner core that have seemingly harmed the Voyager figure, which is a shame because Power of the Primes Swoop and Slug re great and hide their Combiner role REALLY well.
In both modes it looks more like the original Grimlock than any other mainline non Masterpiece Grimlock toy, but still falls short on the details. The legs needed to be bigger and better and it needed weapons. The Grimlock design is iconic and they got it so right the first time that any messing with it is obvious and none of the messing here is for the better. Yes it gives him a new function but this is the first really good go at a Generations G1 Grimlock for a few years and you can't help feel that it falls slightly short of the mark.
Every since 5 member combiner teams were introduced in 1986 fans have wanted a Dinobot combiner. I can remember the subject coming up regularly in the UK comic's letters pages. Japan got a Dinosaur combiner in 1989 in the form of
Dinoking, albeit a Decepticon one. Hasbro combined Energon
Swoop &
Grimlock in 2004 to form
Mega-Dinobot and then paired a new Dinobot,
Grimstone, with 5 dinosaur drones in Power Core Combiners. So there's been some skirting round the subject for years.
The initial set of Power of the Primes leaks in July 2017 showed the Dinobots and the presence of several other combiners in the range leg to speculation they would combine. Volcanicus was announced at the Hascon Transformer Brand Panel, shown as a resin prototype at a private function at the same event, and revealed in colour at New York Comicon 2017 where it was also on display.
So to form the torso of Volcanicus, start with Grimlock's robot mode. Fold the T-Rex head up covering the robot head. Leave the hands folded in, don't be tempted to turn them in. Turn each arm in 90° at the bicep so the outer side of the arm faces forward. Raise the arm 90° out to the side. Fold both elbow joints on each arm down 90° so the forearm is under the shoulder: there's a tab under the shoulder and a corresponding slot on the forearm that need to connect. Check the tabs at the rear of the chest are securely connected. Fold the wings on Grimlock's back forward so the slots in their underside meet the tabs on what was the top, now the rear, of the shoulders. Pull the armour plate on his backside away from the waist. Rotate each lower leg out 90° at the thigh swivel. Bend the hips out 45° and the knees in 45°. Rotate the waist 180°. Fold the armour plate down into a lower position than it was sitting before. Pull the waist away from the body, down & forwards, exposing a hinged joint and two tabs which went up into the body. Fold the body forwards 90° so the waist tabs lock into the slots on his chest. Fold the grey panel on what was Grimlock's back forward 90°. Fold the red panel behind that, at the rear of the top of the torso, back 90°. Fold the grey panel forward a further 90°, bringing Volcanicus' head up & out with it and tab the grey panel into the back of the T-Rex neck. Fold the red panel at the rear back down. Fold the head down onto the chest. Choose which Power of the Primes deluxes will be your legs, attach Grimlock's Prime Armour to them as feet and slide into place. Peg the legs' Prime Armour into 5mm peg holes in the sides of Volcanicus' chest.
I suspect the default configuration for my Volcanicus is going to be Sludge & Slug, remoulds of each other, as the legs and Snarl &
Swoop as the arms. But as of Power of the Primes Wave 1, when Grimlock was released, there's only Swoop & Slug available. In order to make Volcanicus look as Dinoboty as possibly at this stage I'm using them as the arms with substitutes Tigatron & Unit-3 serving as the legs. They were on my Botconicus combiner mainly made up of Botcon and TFCC spares paired with Grand Scourge. However it's other two limbs Terrorsaur & Fractyl have been half inched to give Starscream an all jet combiner they were the easiest to get hold of.
Be careful attaching the arms: the downward movement and, in Slug's case, the weight can cause the shoulder tabs to pop out the wings. If the tab between chest half and black core isn't good Volcanicus will completely collapse at this point. The weight pulling down here at Volcanicus' shoulders looks like it will eventually be pulling on the chest halves which as we've seen are clear plastic. Really this feels like it need a larger longer tab at the front, possibly a 5mm peg, and a second connection at the back onto the wrists. I've had Volcanicus for 4 days now and unfortunately I've had to retab the shoulders nearly everytime I've touched the toy and especially if I've moved the arms. Now I'm used to combiner toys with shoulder problems: Combiner Wars Optimus Prime, Motormaster & Hotspot all have slightly suspect shoulders which cause things to pop off if moved in a certain way. But here I could see the chest halves distorting under the weight if not properly secured. Worrying.
Fortunately things are a lot better functionally lower down the toy. The legs are like Optimus Prime/Menasor but without the locking plate holding them in a fixed position. The knee/hip ratchets are excellent so you've got the option of going between shorter widely spaced legs, longer legs closer together or anything in between. You also have the option of spreading the legs to the sides thanks to the rocker joint in the ankle.
Then there's the look of the toy. I quite like it actually, with some reservations. Most combiners with a unified colour scheme looks good and we know the Dinobots silver grey, red, gold and black works. Yes it is perhaps a little spoilt by the very visible blue on Swoop which is peaking out from the shoulder. I like the T-Rex head folded forwards on the chest, less keen on it looking out, don't think it looks too bad with the jaw opened and the Enigma inserted. For comedy, replace the Enigma with Titanmaster! I'm not as bothered by the way the body tapers in in the middle as some people are: we've seen similar on other combiners. The thin lower body can be bulked out by spare Dinobot Prime armour attached via 5mm peg holes in the sides of the chest. I am bothered by the square holes either side of the Dinosaur head, cut outs on the top of the Grimlock chest to enable the folding down to the side hinges to pass through in Dinosaur mode. Using a 1985 style Grimlock chest would have avoided this problem. The head is great, a beefed up Grimlock with a silver chin strap and gold crest.
Like Grimlock, Volcanicus has no real weapons to speak of. The Dinobots hand weapons look tiny on him so I'm guessing you're meant to be using the Primemaster weapons with him. Unfortunately as soon as you give Volcanicus a weapon and raise an arm the familiar lean forward seen on many combiners is visible. There's nowhere for the Primemasters to stand in this mode though which is a shame: The waist plate is too close to the waist to use and even then the head would be hidden with the T-Rex head/jaw folded down. A couple of pegs on the shoulders or in front of the neck would have been nice.
I like the concept of a Dinobot combiner and , bar the holes in the chest, I quite like the look of the combiner, but the shoulders really don't work functionally and are desperately in need of reinforcement which is a major down point and a great shame because the Grimlock Voyager feels compromised in order to make him a combiner, which in turn is the complete opposite to the deluxe where I don't think they'd have been much different.
I want desperately to like this toy but through beast, robot and combiner the overall feeling is Could Have Been Done Better.
