While Transformers distribution tends to be consistently terrible across Portugal, I was pretty positively surprised to find that our Papagaio Sem Penas stores actually seem to have released their Cyberworld figures earlier this month, more or less at around the same time of the toyline's international street date. Point and case, a few weeks ago I managed to find Snarl on one of the aforementioned Papagaio Sem Penas stores - so; to inaugurate the toy review component of this blog, here goes a quick one!
Starting with Robots in Disguise, it seems that most modern cartoon-based Transformers toylines are oriented to an at least somewhat younger audience compared to the older days of Animated and Prime, and this is often reflected in the toys: broadly speaking, the majority of Transformers cartoon toylines have become simpler and blander over the years, with only the occasional Deluxe-sized figures tending to have the full range of engineering and articulation that you'd expect from "real" Transformers, which is unfortunate. Cyverworld seems to be yet another franchise on the same style, and as a result, being an adult collector, I wasn't exactly dying of hype for either the show or the figures... And yet, once I saw pictures of the first batch of toys earlier this year, I also couldn't help but at least really like the look of some of the characters, with Snarl in particular sticking out as a very cool reimagination of his classic design. But then again, considering all the aforementioned budget limitations that the designers were left to work with, is the toy any good? Lets' check it out!
The first thing that sticks out to me when looking at this packaging is that... God, it looks bland.
I mean, look, I'm not necessarily going to complain about the "exposed" plastic-less aspect of newer packaging because sure, reducing plastic waste is good and all. What bothers me, however, is the fact that Hasbro is going back to the flat red-on-white blandless of mid 2010s Transformers packaging (or the equally tasteless red-on-black for the Generations figures), especially considering how the previous Earthrise and even Cyberverse toys had a much more involved modicum of graphic design.
Does the packaging looking bad intrinsically change anything about the toy itself? No, not really. Does it still hurt my soul to see such a lifeless packaging regardless? Yes it does, I am in pain and I hate it, and the blame lies squarely on Hasbro.
Thankfully this pain is stripped away once he's ripped out of the packaging, because Snarl's robot mode looks really cool. I love the design direction that they went for with this guy, and I especially love his color scheme: the introduction of orange almost reminds me a little bit of the Predacons (the Predaking-forming Predacons from Generation 1, not the Beast Wars ones) but I don't think that's to his detriment, if something; it actually makes him stand out a lot more across the many decades of reimagined Dinobots that usually just sticked to grey with a few splashes of yellow and red.
I feel like the only problem I have with this robot aesthetically are his legs: frankly, I'd have preferred if they were maybe just a little bit beefier, to give him some of that extra Dinobot bulk. A lot of figures in this toyline, especially those in the Cyber Changers class, seem to be more on the thin side, and that's fine for a lot of characters... Just not so much for a Dinobot. Still, all-around, a very appealing design nonetheless, and one I'm definitely satisfied with.
His only accessory is a little tail-mace thing, which is simple but effective. His articulation, as with all other Cyber Changers figures, is limited by the lack of elbows, which is a shame, but at least you can still pull *some* posing with what it gives you: legs, knees, and arms are better than the absolute nothing that figures on this price point tended to have a few years ago, I guess.
He's very similar in scale to third party Legends figures, which is interesting. Considering how the "cross-compatibility at scale" aspect is a pretty big feature of the Cyberworld toyline, the fact that Hasbro seems to have reached the conclusion that this would be the best size to build an entire toyline around probably suggests that third party manufacturers were onto something when they too decided this was a pretty neat scale that they'd now spend over a decade building products in bulk for.
He has an Automorph-like partial auto-transformation, which is neat... What isn't neat, though, is the rather pitiful result of that transformation.
Sadly, my general satisfaction with Snarl really ends where its beast mode begins: much to my disappointment, this dino just looks like ass. The proportions are pretty terrible, the front legs feel excessively big and in contrast the rear legs feel excessively small, and all-around, he's just not very good in this mode. I'll give credits to one thing that I wasn't expecting to see: he has a hinged jaw, not something uncommon in Transformers toys with but definitely something uncommon in figures this cheap and basic. Otherwise... Yeah, this dino mode sucks.
So, while Snarl isn't anything too special and could definitely benefit from elbows and a more refined dino mode, he is still neat and I do find myself satisfied with him overall. Then again, whether or not a product is worthwhile cannot ever be dissociated from its price, and thus; the question lingers: is this a good value for the MSRP of 10 "eurodollars" in the west?
Well... On one hand, he's certainly an improvement over most of the one-step changer type figures that started to get released under this same price point since 2014's Age of Extinction. Then again, maybe a comparison with the lowest-common denominator isn't the most flattering, so... What about its value compared to older smaller pre-Age of Extinction figures? For the above comparison, I picked 2007 Legends Barricade, a figure with an MSRP of $4 (in the rounds of $6 today adjusted for inflation) and 2009 Scout Dirt Boss, a figure with an MSRP of $8 (in the rounds of $13 today adjusted for inflation). At $10 dollars, you'd expect the Cyber Changers to feature something of an intermediary value between the inflation-adjusted $6 of older Legends and $13 of older Scouts... And I mean, he kind of does: arguably, he's a bigger and slightly more complex figure next to an older Legends toy, and a similarly-sized but slightly less complex figure next to an older Scout, thus; the $10 dollars price tag seems perfectly adequate.
Do I still wish he had some goddamn elbows? I do, but by all measures, this is not a terrible value. Whether in terms of price or just in terms of the toy itself being good, I am ultimately pretty satisfied with Snarl, even if I would love to see this design being made in a larger scale with a more substantive budget. For my first Cyberworld toy - a toyline that I wasn't particularly excited about otherwise - I can't say that I'm disappointed!
No comments:
Post a Comment