Grimlock

Height: 12cm to top of hips (beast mode); 16.5cm to top of head (robot mode)

Articulation: Beast Mode - 6 points in legs; Robot Mode - 20 total points: Swivel neck; 5 points each arm - ball joint shoulder, hinge elbow, hinged fingers, hinged thumb; Swivel waist; 4 points each leg - universal hip, hinge knee, post-knee swivel

Colors: Molded grey, gold, maroon, black, clear blue, beige, clear orange (accessory only); Painted maroon, gold, silver, black (accessory only)

Accessories: Sword

Release Data: Released in the United States in June 2008 at a suggested retail price of US$19.99.

Gallery: 21 images

Author: ExVee




Grimlock more than lives up to the reputation of his Tyrannosaurus Rex mode. Ill-tempered, powerful, and always ready for a fight, he loves to throw his weight around. He likes the way the ground shakes as he stomps around, and the way people scatter when he roars. He's happiest on Dinobot Island, where he can stomp and roar to his Spark's content, shattering trees with his tail, and breathing jets of flame into the sky. Every once in a while, though, he prefers to find the biggest, most powerful Decepticon he can, and smash its chassis to pieces.

A little AllSpark is a dangerous thing. Well, that and human scientists out to benefit mankind. Combine the very energy of Transformers life itself with such a scientist who thinks giant dinosaur robots make a good tourist attraction, and you're just kinda hosed, dude. At least Sumdac isn't the one who built flamethrowers into these amusement park exhibits...



Beast Mode


We are of course no strangers to T-Rex Transformers, (Noooo...) and especially not blatant robotty ones. Grimlock over the years has had a variety of toys, and not always of the dinosaur persuasion. One alternate universe fellow going by this name was even a steam shovel ...or was he a backhoe? This new universe comes complete with its own somewhat verbally and rather less-moderately intellectually challenged Dinobot Commander, once more with appearance based on Big Grim.

Like 2006's Classics update, Grimlock adopts the modern interpretation of the Tyrannosaur stance, straight-backed runner instead of upright tail-dragger. Grimlock's unarticulated neck reinforces this ideal, since in any other posture he's watching the clouds drift by. Though everything as part of Animated has been cartoonified more than one might think plausible for a series of toys with this complexity, Grimlock's head has an exaggeratedly enlarged lower jaw not entirely unlike what you might find if somebody bolted part of a steam shovel onto Grim's face. ...actually, wasn't that the gimmick for a James Bond villain? A button on the back of Grimlock's neck makes the jaw open, though the span is only about half an inch, partly due to how far the jaws overlap when closed. Grim has clear plastic and a light-piping set up for his eyes in this mode, but unless you're holding a directed light source very close to the "in" panel, this ends up being mostly theoretical. Doesn't really work all that great even if you've got an LED light an inch away from it, either.

For being a Voyager toy, Grimlock has a surprising lack of articulation in this mode, failing to have neck jointing, or even a simple ball-joint shoulder for his little arms. Strictly speaking, they are articulated, though this is meant strictly for transformation. Employed otherwise, and Grimmy looks a bit like he's up to some dastardly scheme well beyond his IQ. In fact, the only articulation available in this mode is in his legs, and it's a bit questionable anyway. As often occurs in bipedal beast forms, the jointing in the legs can vary from mildly useless, to critical failure point. In my case, I have a bit of both at work since my particular example of the toy suffers a loose right ankle hinge which will more often than not lead to the beast mode slumping to the side. Setting this failure aside, there's not a whole bunch you can get out of these joints. Grim is incapable of balancing on one foot in any attempt I've made, and crouching is mostly useless since the center of balance ends up forward of the feet, or the head ends up pointing the wrong direction. Presumably you could balance Grimlock with one foot atop a fallen Decepticon, but that's about it.

Though at first glance Grimlock's tail seems disproportionately short and decidedly stubby, it's actually not too far off from the length of the G1 toy's tail relative to its main body. Utterly useless for balance? Yes. Possible homage to the original toy? Could be...



Robot Mode

For once, it helps to check with the instructions during the first transformation. You're not likely to break anything otherwise, but some elements of the disposition of the dino head and upper body may be lost on you otherwise. It's actually a pretty elegant system once you do it the right way, and really shores up a few loose piece in the robot mode. The legs-to-arms transformation has known issues: The currently shipping run of Grimlock has some poor fit of the black shin pieces into the thigh blocks, generally resulting in slight seam stretching, or in more extreme cases, visible bulging of the grey panels. There is no quick and easy fix to this. While there's no apparent indication that this is a fatal problem so far, you'll want to exercise care all the same. It'll take a little work at first, but it's not hard to carefully work the shins into the space in the thigh for the correctly proportioned robot arms.

Just like in T. Rex mode, Grim's robot head looks rather in mind of any given incarnation of GutsMan with sharper teeth. I can't say for sure whether it's intentional or I got a specimen of a bad assembly job, but my Grim has a rather lop-sided jaw. The jaw is indeed glued in place, and has no articulation. This Grimlock is, mostly by virtue of media portrayal, among the first Grims to use this basic design to have an actual mouth in robot mode. The light piping for robot mode works out considerably better, reacting with decent strength even under minimally-focused light. Grimlock's impression of Baron Ünderbheit leaves the range of motion of his neck somewhat impaired. For one thing, in beast mode there's no way to not have his robot face peeking out the bottom of the dino neck. In robot mode, the effective range is around 90 degrees from one end to the other before the jaw runs into Grimlock's not inconsiderable collar.

Grim's arms at least make functional use of the articulation present in the dino legs. In absence of a pre-elbow swivel, the shoulders are on large ball joints which are given a little room to swing forward or back, helping to make up for the lack of articulation. Because of the compression the limbs undergo during transformation, the figure's elbows end up relatively low on the arms. The arms end up somewhat ape-like, hands hanging down lower than the figure's knees. Even the functional part of the elbow is roughly level with the waist swivel. On my toy, the same loose joint in the right leg that makes standing the beast mode difficult also ends up failing to carry the weight of the sword. Following suit with most Animated toys, Grimlock abandons the 5mm peg system, and has hands with articulated fingers and thumb. The fingers and thumb can close, and are able to grasp some lighter weight weapons and accessories using the 5mm pegs or similar thickness handles. Grimlock's heavy accessory is designed to work with a handplug system, but that'll be covered more in a bit.

The reason for the figure's less than impressive stature are fairly evident upon examination of the torso. Besides how obviously wide the upper body is, roughly a third of the beast mode winds up folded into wings and other useless kibble for the robot mode. While the means of using these extraneous chunks to lock the torso together for robot mode is fairly inventive, and the useless dino-head hanging off the body is itself some level of nod to the original, I can't help but wish some of this had been engineered to contribute to the overall size of the toy. Actually, there's even another bit of reference to G1 Grimmy, in the large, tech-detailed piece of clear, colorless plastic as a chestplate, topped off with a silver Autobot insignia right in the middle. The waist swivel is unrestricted, though the shape of the lower torso gets you edges that stick out if the waist turns too far. There's a bit of a "stop" in the swivel to help it catch at the natural rest point. It's a good move since the swivel is somewhat loose, but the catch itself is just barely strong enough to stop Grim's upper body from swinging in the breeze, so to speak.

The shape of the figure's thighs combined with an eight-point ratchet (stops every 45 degrees) pretty much negates the usefulness of the joint since it can only go to the first point on the ratchet. This fact also largely kills the value of the knee joints, unless you want to make the figure do the squats. Grimlock can successfully squat thanks to really large feet, giving the figure very good stability ...which is sadly almost worthless because of how restricted the legs have wound up. Crud. Plus, for some reason, there's a swivel joint just after the knee. I have no idea what actually useful purpose it might serve.



Paint and Deco

Some of the gold paint doesn't cover quite as completely as you'd expect, but that seems just as much a result of the shape of the problem areas as it is any potential lack of interest by the paint department. Of course, there's little excuse I can find for some of the gloppiness on the gold part of the neck. But on the other side of the coin, the entire surface of the robot chest has a very nice, even, and consistent coat of gold paint that can almost fool you into thinking it was molded in color. There's no paint edges on any visible part of this piece, and you actually have to disassemble the torso to find bare plastic at all.



Accessories


-Sword

First off, while several call-outs on the package reference a "flame-breath" application, there's really no way to do such a thing. The closest you might get is wedging the hilt into the jaws. But then it just looks like, y'know, somebody jammed a sword in his mouth. The format of the package call-outs suggests to me that at some point in the development a piece of the sword was intended to be removable and actually do the stated job, perhaps even convincingly. What we're left with is a lack of communication between divisions and obsolete package copy. Shame.

So, the sword can be taken one of two ways. I prefer the cartoon idea, which makes it look like a big wad of just starting-to-cool lava: cracked, dark surface layer, with blasting hot orange-yellow glow from within. The toy seems to want to more appear as a column of flame set upon a handle. Whoever was in charge of the toy's paint masks seems to have leaned more to the former concept, since the first few "flames" on the blade have a progressively lighter black overspray, with the top most plumes fully bare. An all-or-nothing attitude might have served better here, and I'm somewhat tempted to go over the whole thing myself with some extra black paint.

As I noted above, the sword uses a handplug rather than relying on the tenuous grip possible with the figure's articulated fingers. This isn't just a stability choice, though. There's a small trigger in the sword's plug that matches another pin in the socket of the right hand. When the hand is turned across a catch in the wrist, several little "flames" pop out from the sides of the sword. It's actually a reasonably neat, and generally well-executed gimmick. The only bad point is that in my experience the toy has to start at an unnatural looking position before being rotated 90 degrees to arrive straight up with the flames "igniting". The flames can later be retracted again by pulling back on a tab in the middle of the broad side of the sword. Using said tab to deploy the flames is a short, straight road to the land of broken dreams toys. In other words, don't you do that.

By the way, the sword can plug equally snugly into the left hand, but lacks any mechanics to drive the gimmick on that side.



Closing Remarks

How can you not like a Grimlock? The worst that can happen is to be completely indifferent to one. The worst thing I can say about this Grimlock is that he's not extraordinary in any way. What he is, however, is a solid toy that does not attempt anything ambitious, and basically seems to try to focus on being the best animatronic-horror-gone-wrong that it possibly can be. heck, I'm down with that. Lack of imagination may not be a good dish to serve every day, but once in a while, it's certainly preferred to the fallen-souffle of gimmicks gone wrong. For a character of note like Grimmy, I think I'm happy with something that just knows exactly what it's doing.

Grimlock ranks a solid Good.

-ExVee, 7/2/08