Buzzclaw
Height: 9cm height in Beast Mode, 10cm head height in Robot Mode
Articulation (Robot Mode): 12 points total - ball-joint head; 2 joints each arm: ball-jointed shoulder and elbow; swivel waist; 3 joints each leg: ball-jointed hip and knee, hinged foot.
Colors: Molded translucent orange and pearlescent green. Painted clear red, yellow, deep metallic purple, metallic blue, and white (teeth).
Accessories: Pincer weapon, Shield.
Author: RAC
Part mantis, part lizard, Buzzclaw has all of the makings of a ferocious but sly warrior. In beast mode Buzzclaw crushes his enemies with spiny pincers and venomous mandibles while a powerful tail lashes out to land his surprised prey on their backside. As a flying robot Buzzclaw generates lethal ion discs from his forearm-mounted stilettos, paralyzing his victims and rendering them helpless. Generally stoic and silent, when it comes to the business of battle, Buzzclaw is arrogant, resourceful, and intent on the job at hand.
Interesting note here: the ion discs and the "Quick Attack Specialist" part of his function out Buzzclaw as a possible upgrade of Manterror, a Predacon from the previous year. To my knowledge this makes Buzzclaw the only Fuzor to be related to an existing figure. In fact, I went looking to see if there was a lizard-based Saboteur amongst the Preds, in the hopes that he was two previous characters fuzed together. Sadly, near as I can find no such character exists.
Beast Mode
Buzzclaw is a Fuzor, a cross between a mantis and some unspecified lizard-thing, in a configuration that looks perfectly suited to stomping Tokyo. The wings in particular look more leathery and reptilian than insectoid here. They're also apparently installed in reverse relative to what the instructions would have you believe. When you go by those the painted sides face inwards in both modes, so I switched them.
Articulation's fair in this mode- especially for a Beast Mode! -with the arms ball-jointed at the shoulder and hinged at the threatening-looking part of the forelegs, which I could not locate a proper scientific name for, so I guess they're just forelegs. The lizard-legs, though stubby, have ball-joints at the hip and knee, probably because these become robot arms. The transformation joint for the ankles also gives them decent leaning ability, so you can get pretty much any stance that the tail will stand for. The wings are ball-jointed, and there's a large green switch on the back- push it in, and the arms will wave about in a way that only reinforces the impression that I saw Godzilla fight one of these once.
Transformation
It's an easy to follow transformation with the only hard decision whether you just swing the accessory parts out of the way, or pull them off outright. I usually do the former. You'll see bits and pieces of reused techniques- the rotating shoulder joints from Dinobot, the fold-up feet on the Robot arms from Terrorsaur- no real surprises, but everything works quite nicely.
Robot Mode
His head looks kind of sunken into the torso, thanks in part to the swiveling flank-panels- kind of like on Dinobot. The face reminds me of Inferno somewhat, and there is also some slight resemblence to Manterror, but when you get down to it this is a relatively generic Beast Wars toy face in the "ugly" mode. It doesn't help that the head is translucent orange with some red sprayed on- they're similar enough, and translucent enough, that you can't make out a lot of details. The eyes aren't even painted, but the red's not enough of a contrast to really make the orange eyes stand out. All you can make out from a distance of more than two feet is a white grimace against an indistinguishable red-orange background. It would've been nice to see the eyes being blue, like on the mantis face.
Which of course, makes up the torso of the figure- where have I seen that before? In fact, with the exception of the entirely removable accessories/kibble hanging off the back, Buzzclaw's Robot Mode could work for just about any other Basic Beast Wars figure I've seen. I really shouldn't be complaining, because it's an articulation scheme that works very well, and it's impressive that they've managed to adapt it to so many different Beast Modes and transformations. But at the same time, a reliable but generic figure of a character who has no significance to you translates to being kinda dull.
The head gets unrestricted swivel but not much tilt, due to the neccessities of transformation. Unlike any of the other Basics I've handled so far, Buzzclaw gets a waist, which also gets a full 360 degrees! The ankles are pretty much intended only for transformation and Buzzclaw can't really lean into a pose. Everything else is a standard ball-joint, and gets the same 360-swivel and 90-degree tilt. If you have his accessories attached to his back, he tends to tip even with the fairly long feet- but you can cheat and use the tail to keep him upright if you like. If you're equipping them as weapons, he likes to tip forward instead- but the good news is that those ankles that don't lean also keep him from leaning forward as much as he might. Also, the joints are stiff enough to not drag the arm down with that pincer thing- nice!
Accessories
This is probably the best solution to the ages-old "kibble" problem: make it all detachable and turn it into accessories! The mantis wings and claws detach to become a large, springloaded claw weapon, and the lizard tail detaches to become a shield. The claw weapon is neat, putting me in mind of a larger, more advanced Pinchgun. It's designed to be held either-side-up, so I tend to have Buzzclaw hold it wing-side-down so the wings aren't in his face. It's massive- from tip to wing to tip of claw it's longer than Buzzclaw is tall, but as I said, his shoulder and elbow joints are pretty much up to the challenge, even if balancing him can be tricky. The shield is a simple affair, attaching itself securely to a peg on Buzzclaw's left forearm. It argues with the lizard foot sometimes, but can be readjusted with no problems.
When Buying Loose
Why bother? Carded, he'll likely run you little more than he did in 1998. But if you do go that route, the most likely pieces to be missing are the Robot Mode head, and the kibble accessories- the former is the biggest concern, because you'll know if the latter are missing. It might not hurt to ask or check how the arm joints are doing, too, since they have to hold up a pretty substantial chunk of plastic.
Closing Remarks
Buzzclaw, engineering-wise, is universally positive. There's nothing the toy tries to do that it fails at, and nothing it does wrong. It doesn't particularly try to do anything exciting or new either, but the fact that all the kibble resolves into weaponry is really nice too. I find the figure somewhat uninspiring, but Very Good all the same. He's pretty cheap, and if you have a 4" tall Godzilla lying around, I'd definitely say go for it.
-RAC
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