Home Special Features Evolution Revolution: A Beast Era Retrospective
Quickstrike
Height: 9.5 cm to top of head (robot mode); 22cm overall length (beast mode with outstretched tail)
Articulation: 16 total points - Ball joint head; Left arm 4 points: Ball joint shoulder, ball joint elbow, double-hinged claw; Right arm 7 ball jointed segments; 2 points each leg: ball joint hip, ball joint knee; Plus additional articulation relevant to beast mode.
Colors: Molded clear yellow, brown, orange; Painted metallic green, brown, red.
Accessories: N/A
Author: ExVee
Yet another Maximal protoform turned to the Predacon side, Quickstrike has a significant difference from those who came before him: he was never reprogrammed. Having only had his activation code altered by remote, Quickstrike's natural slant towards cruelty and violence made him an excellent and willing Predacon recruit, with no idea of his intended nature. Arrogant and boastful, Quickstrike fancies himself the strongest fighter in the Beast Wars. However his limited intelligence, betrayed in no small part by his bizarre speech patterns, finds him of little use except as an extra able body for whatever the plot of the day happens to be, sometimes regardless of who exactly is doing the plotting.
YEEHAW! Here comes poison!"
Like with the first season of Beast Wars, Japan imported and localized our second and third seasons of Beast Wars and aired them all together as Beast Wars Metals. For the first half or so of the related toys, Takara kept up their pattern of altering the colors and deco layouts of Hasbro's toys to generally make them more in line with the animation appearance. While we'll see more drastic examples of the changes that resulted later on, for Quickstrike it's a pretty simple difference. The only thing added over the Hasbro release of Quickstrike is paint apps for the robot eyes. Metals Quickstrike was available in two ways. First of course in a tiny box all by himself, and then in Versus packaging with Takara's version of Transmetal Airazor. It's not really important that the two characters never actually even met.
Beast Mode
Like Silverbolt, Quickstrike is notable for being a fairly elegant combination of two very different animals. The effective blending of two beast forms would be a sadly common problem for the entirety of the sub-line's short life. As a combination of a scorpion and a cobra, Quickstrike favors the scorpion side more heavily. Though overall realism here is kind of gone out the window anyway, you can see that the designers were improving in many aspects. There's quite a distinct difference between Quickstrike and the previous scorpion-based Predacon, where excepting the snakey elements, Quickstrike comes across as a more credible scorpion instead of a stinging lobster.
In fact, the only outright snake part is the tail, which is a lot like someone grafting the head and a portion of a cobra's body onto the back of a scorpion. The tail has numerous ball joints, which is certainly a boost to the posability of the toy, but has long term consequences. The ball joints are known to wear down over time with use, and while Quickstrike may not suffer from any of the disintegration diseases that afflict some other Beast Wars toys, the tail will eventually become a useless floppy pile if extreme care is not applied. Well, either that or some super glue. And with this many ball joints, that's turning into an all day project!
Quickstrike's cobra-head-stinger thing has a feature besides time-bomb ball joints - an opening jaw that at least on my example emulates a real snake handily in that it very easily pops off its hinge. Of course, this one has no need to swallow prey larger than itself, and is more the result of the plastic tolerances. Aside from this, Quickstrike's cobra head houses the gimmick of the toy, a "venom" squirter. Mind, it's only toxic to Scraplets, since it's just a water sprayer. The entire hood of the cobra is basically hollow, and the underside is softer plastic to make the "bladder". This would work probably as well as any average water squirt gimmick in Transformers save for one slight oversight: The nozzle the water comes out of is pointing right into the back of the fangs, and as a result the water can't shoot in a stream. It hits the teeth and more or less just splatters from there.
It's worth noting as well that at the base of the tail you pretty much can't escape some of the robot mode coming through visibly, at least from the sides. Basically no matter what you do, you can't effectively hide the robot head from being visible under the back half of the body unless you're looking at the toy from above. It's not a deal breaker, but considering how well otherwise the toy settles into a total beast mode appearance it's a little disappointing to find the one little thing spoiling it.
Amazingly, all of Quickstrike's beast mode articulation isn't just limited to the tail. While the eight legs are pretty much entirely static, blessedly boosting the stability of the beast mode immensely by the way, the arms are pretty well jointed. With full ball joint shoulder and elbows plus both halves of each claw being hinged, Quickstrike has a respectable range here. The claw hinges are too weak to actually hold any substantial, though if you had a little newspaper, maybe... Anyway, while decidedly scorpion in design, the claws have paint apps that could be seen to make the claws vaguely resemble stylized snake heads.
Quickstrike's scorpion head, while on a hinge, is not really articulated in any way useful to the beast mode. Like with Scorponok before, the head isn't really any kind of representation of a real scorpion's head and seems more generic-buggy shape.
Transformation
As befits a Basic, the transformation is pretty simple overall. The claws become the legs, and the tail forms one arm while all eight scorpion legs go to the other arm. Quickstrike's Energon Chip rubsign is also only accessible during transformation, though after so many years, I doubt many of them still work well anymore.
Robot Mode
Well, at least it isn't the typical claws-as-arms robot mode. Actually, using the tail and bug legs as the arms is a good way to get away from the almost cookie-cutter scorpion robot style. The snake arm has all the benefits of the tail's articulation. The only drawback is that the arm is longer than the robot mode is tall. It's either going to be dragging along side Quickstrike, or it'll need to be posed bent to some degree. On the other hand... hm, maybe I should choose a different phrase there. The upside of this is that the snake arm is long enough and articulated enough that Quickstrike can be posed talking to his snake head. Comedy!
The other arm has a standard ball joint shoulder and elbow before getting to the really freakjob forearm. Most of it is comprised of the scorpion legs, which now form a hideous eight-fingered claw. Of course the individual fingers are unposable as the legs were. What you do get here is a pretty stiff hinge for either half, making the claw able to grasp small objects with surprising strength. He'd probably make a great Mini-Con catcher, for instance.
The robot head is a simple ball jointed affair. Though the way the head stores for beast mode leads to a certain problem of the head not exactly wanting to sit level in robot mode. It tends to favor the opening to the figure's left side where the head tucks down into. And then on the odd chance you do get it sitting right, it's really easy to brush past the head and knock it off kilter again. The head itself is a pretty simple design, meant to look vaguely bug-ish in a similar fashion to first year Beast Wars Mutant Heads.
The legs retain all of the articulation present from their time as the beast mode forelimbs. Not only does it give Quickstrike at least an average level of posability in the legs, but the absolutely huge feet formed from the claws make for fantastic stability. They can easily offset any balance problems the large, relatively heavy tail-arm would otherwise present. The joints in the feet themselves are not really useful for posing, and I find sometimes the hinges are weak enough that the claws will try to flop closed if the weight of the figure is lifted off of them. It's not any kind of problem while posed, but it might get a little bothersome in the middle of trying to pose the toy.
Paint and Deco
As noted in the intro paragraph, Metals Quickstrike has additional paint on the robot head compared to the Hasbro release. This consists mostly of a few extra applications of green around the cheeks, and some red for the eyes. The Hasbro version has a much simpler paint operation, with a green "mask" around the eyes which are the base plastic color. Since in both cases Quickstrike's head is made from clear plastic, the Hasbro version would have a form of light-piping through the unpainted eyes which is lost on the Takara version. Since neither variety is particularly more expensive, you can basically choose which option you prefer here.
Closing Remarks
Quickstrike's toy is mostly popular because it was represented in the second and third seasons of the cartoon. I can't help but suspect that it was one of the two Fuzors chosen for that because it does so well to combine the elements of both source animals in its beast mode. The problem with the tail joints evetually loosening to uselessness is something to keep in mind, but Quickstrike is a pretty solid Basic all by itself even without the personality the show developed for the character. As for whether to go with Hasbro or Takara, it's totally personal preference. There's no differences besides the amount of paint on the head. Metals Quickstrike is that much closer to the show appearance, but Hasbro's has a light-piping effect with the unpainted eyes.
In either version, I think Quickstrike is Very Good and only gets better with the show's personality.
-ExVee
All figures, toy lines, and the characters they represent are Copyright and Trademark their respective owners. All reviews and photographs contained herein are the property of ExVeeBrawn and RAC. The opinions expressed herein are those of ExVeeBrawn and RAC, and do not represent the opinions of any manufacturers, or copyright or trademark owners.
©figurereviews.com 2005-2011