Since I no longer have to link my blog posts to my comics, what with having a real RSS thing now, should I still post these blog posts at update time?  I guess I could do them at any time of the day, really.  But hey, let's have tonight's at update time, for old time's sake.

(Update time is midnight EST now, in case you ain't noticed.  Bet you were refreshing for an hour, weren't you?)

Anyway, I promised some images of Beast Wars II Thrustor, and here they are.  I bought one back when he first came out, and he was really awesome then and he's really awesome now.  So why did I get rid of him if he's so awesome?  Well, I was trying to ensmallen my toy collection and it's not like I have a Beast Wars II display.  He'd probably never see the light of day, despite his awesomeness, so I sold him.  Little did I know that a decade later I'd have a new need for him.

So let that be a lesson, kids.  Don't sell any toys because you might want them later to fulfill some weird unforeseen compulsion.

Thrustor was the first retool of the original Dinobot toy and by far the most extensive of the two.  Sure, Hardhead got a new robot head, a new beast head, and new legs, but that's small potatoes compared to Thrustor!  Thrustor's an asymmetrical "Cyborg Beast."  Half of him is robotic and the other half organic, but never the same half.  So he's got an organic left dinoarm and a new mechanical right dinoarm.  His right dinoleg remains unchanged while his left dinoleg has mechanical parts. His head is retooled to be half mechanical as well.  He's got new robot thighs, a new inner robot body, and a new tail that looks like it could kill you just by pointing in  your direction.

His tail is no longer just any ordinary rotate blade.  Instead of a sword being concealed inside it, there's a spring-loaded clawed missile.  There's a saw sculpted into the launcher, but it sadly doesn't spin.  The halves of the tail still do, of course, and it looks way more threatening with all the additions.

He's got an entirely new weapon, as well.  Since he doesn't have the old segmented tail sword anymore, he's given a new serrated blade.  Instead of storing inside the tail, it stores in between his robot legs while in cyborg-raptor mode.  I like to keep it pointing out and forward in this mode.  It reaches just beyond his jaws.

This toy is by far the best version of the original Dinobot mold.  The toy's biggest weakness was its primitive, First Wave Beast Wars sculpt and the prominence of his robot legs in beast mode.  The retooling negates or at least reduces both of those.  He's a cyborg raptor, so he can have as many mechanical chunks hanging off his chest as he wants, and the newly sculpted cyborg parts obscure how dorky the original raptor mode looks.  Plus, again, the better, spring-loaded rotate blade and the extra serrated blade.

It's a crime, really, that neither Hasbro nor Takara ever redecoed this version of the toy.