man wtf

So, like, there were these four dinocassette guys who were only ever released in Japan, right?  Four dinosaurs who transformed into mini-cassettes, and each pair combined into a bigger robot, much like Squawkbox and Slamdance.  These were super hard to get even in Japan when they first came out, and they were never reissued or, really, mentioned ever again.  And so you can imagine these guys went for a pretty huge price on the secondary market!  If you could even find them! 

(let's set aside that these four guys were not very good)

(look, they're dinosaurs, and we can't have them, so we don't really care how good they are)

In the past few years, there'd started to be some knockoffs of these guys.  They were, like, you know, AVAILABLE, unlike the actual original toys, so lots of people jumped on them.  Enough jumped on them that even the knockoffs go for a crazy price.  We're talking hundreds of dollars.  For cassettes.  Knockoffs of cassettes.

So for San Diego Comic-Con this year, Hasbro was apparently all sure let's throw two of these guys (Dile and a bizarro Zauru, named Uruaz) into a set with a golden Camaro live-action movie Bumblebee.  Now, the original molds are clearly lost, and so these toys were recreations.  Hasbro took the original wooden two-ups (back when Transformers did wooden test shots at larger sizes and then shrunk) and did their best to recreate them faithfully.  

Now, uh, there are some hiccups.  

I'm pretty sure some of the surface detailing is based on, well, the knockoffs themselves.  The wooden two-ups wouldn't have had any sculpted detail -- they'd just be a demonstration of the transformation engineering -- and so the sculpt itself would need to be copied from somewhere.  But the surface detail of the SDCC versions seems to have more in common with at least one of the iterations of knockoffs rather than the original, actual toys.  The face doesn't have a mouth, for example.  Another difference between the knockoff and the original is that some sculpted hashmarks are put in different places on the biceps, and the SDCC Uruaz's hashmarks match the placement of the KO Zauru.  So, uh, whoops.

Another whoops: the feet of the combined robot are fucked up.  One is hinged higher than the other for no reason.  It just is.  It doesn't affect stability, but it looks goofy as hell.

When you combine regular-style Dile and Zauru, you call that guy Legout, but I don't think Hasbro's told us what the combined form of Dile and Uruaz is.  Maybe it's Legtou or Gelout.  

This is still a crazy gift from the gods, regardless.  Toys that are so rare you can't even buy them for an unreasonable price are now available again for like $60 (including a Bumblebee nobody wants or cares about).  

A second set (exclusive to Entertainment Earth) with a different Bumblebee will include Uruaz in his original colors properly as Zauru and a reverse-colored Dile to complete the set.  Yeah, they gave them both evil twins and then split them up so you have to buy both to get properly-colored original guys and a set of reverse-colored evil twins.  (and ultimately two bumblebees you probably don't want)

But, like, you can still combine the two from each set, so to most folks it probably doesn't matter too much.  It's still these molds, released officially, all insane-like.

Live-action Grimlock is, uh, sort of there in the movies!  He's in about 2% of Age of Extinction, during which Optimus brutally beats him until he submits and then rides him around town a little, and then he's also sort of in The Last Knight, where I think he disappears like a third of the way through.  

Thankfully, a giant robot T. rex toy is something that sells itself on its own merits.  

If you have any other movieverse Grimlock toy, throw that thing in the garbage.  This is it.  This is what you wanted.  What were those other previous movieverse Grimlock toys even thinking?  They are mere boys in the world of men.  

Studio Series Grimlock is large and massive.  In robot mode he's a little taller by a smidge than the usual Leader Class, and also pretty wide.  And he looks amazingly decoed, even though he's really mostly the same plastic color all over and most of him is covered with a metallic green paint wash.  It's the incredible sculpted detail and the beefy proportions that make him look impressive, and to the eye it cheats him even bigger than he already is.

It does some weird yet impressive stuff in service of making him look as much like the movies' CGI model.  There, he has a full dinosaur head on each shoulder.  Like, a copy-pasted entire Tyrannosaurus rex head, even though he transforms into, you know, a single-headed Tyrannosaurus rex.  All of his earlier toys unsurprisingly split the head in half for transformation and put each outward-facing head on each shoulder.  This toy says nah.  He has both full heads.  But only one actually transforms into his actual Tyrannosaurs rex head.  The other splits open and integrates into his tail.  

The tail is also formed out of his right arm (which ends in a spikey ball) and his coattails.  These three elements -- the head halves, the coattails, and the arm -- sort of loosely form a pretty good tail shape.  It's a better solution than the usual approach, which is "oh hey look, actually this tail pops off and becomes a weapon!"  It's interesting and fun AND it means that a third of the toy's mass isn't being used for a weapon -- it all becomes robot mode, baby.

In dinosaur mode, Studio Series Grimlock is the best thing my kids have ever seen.  I kind of have to keep it out of view or they go nuts.  (I, of course, let them handle it with supervision, I'm not a monster, but I can't have them being crazy for hours of the day.)  I don't blame them, because it's a great stompy dinosaur toy.  The only thing I think is missing is I wish its head could turn side-to side, or even up or down at all.  The transformation prevents it, but I still feel a need for it.  This is why Beast Wars Tenth Anniversary Megatron is still one of my favorite Tyrannosaurus rex Transformers -- the full neck articulation.  

As with the other Studio Series toys, it comes with a cardboard display stand/background.  It's less appealing paired with this toy than the others only because Grimlock is so large.  He barely fits against the backdrop in robot mode, and his dinosaur mode is entirely too wide to fit onto the stand.  But this is damning with faint praise.  He's a large toy, posed on his bent knees to even fit into the packaging, and this is ultimately good.

Beyond those small complaints, there's very little wrong with this and so much right.  It justifies the entire Studio Series line all by itself.  

The Transformers live-action movies are over a decade old now, so we're getting a new ... commemorative(?) toyline in Studio Series.  It seems to be taking the place of last year's The Last Knight toyline on store shelves (you gotta maintain your retail footprint), and towards the end of the year it will eventually encompass toys related to December's Bumblebee The Movie or whatever its specific title is.  

Among Studio Series' strengths, seen from a distance, is that it goes back and gives a few older characters newer, better, more appropriately-sized toys.  A Leader Class-sized Blackout, for example.  A new Leader-Class-sized Grimlock that's actually based on his finalized screen appearance and isn't a half-chromed awkward curiosity.  A Revenge of the Fallen Megatron that's not bizarrely teal.  

Another strength is that... extraordinary lengths (for Hasbro) have been traversed to make each toy roughly in scale with the rest of the line while in robot mode.  That means that despite Bumblebee and Ratchet both being Deluxe Class toys, Bumblebee is a very small Deluxe and Ratchet is more on the large size.  So, bravely, Hasbro is trying to sell some smaller toys at us for the same price as the bigger dudes, but altogether, the toyline will look nice standing up in a row.

(also there's a cardboard display thingy inside)

Weaknesses?  Let's talk about Ratchet.  

Ratchet is a completely new toy, though he transforms pretty similarly to the last Ratchet toy, the Deluxe Class Dark of the Moon version, which was recently done up in fancy paints by Takara in their "Transformers Movie The Best" line.  Studio Series Ratchet does not compare favorably to The Best Ratchet in the paint department.  There are some areas that TB Ratchet underperforms, to be sure -- he has no shin paint, for example, nor are his flashers painted -- but overall, TB Ratchet just looks better than SS Ratchet.  Actual movie CGI Ratchet's face is more gunmetal than green, but SS Ratchet's head is mostly unpainted green plastic, and the likeness strongly suffers for it.  

Studio Series Ratchet also has trouble staying together in vehicle mode.  His roof railing stuff is rubbery plastic, and it has trouble laying flat across the roof, even though there are pegs to plug in.  It just wants to bend outwardly.  (Also, since it is one long rubber piece, it hangs off his back like a cape, rather than being able to be folded up and tucked away.)  Additionally, the panels on the sides of the vehicle which are formed from his shins have trouble staying pegged in, and they like to puff out.  It is very annoying!

Things that are better about him?  I love that the light and piping stuff is finally included on his shoulders.  In recent Ratchets, they were fine with just leaving his wheels up there unadorned, but on Studio Series Ratchet you can rotate the wheels around in robot mode to display his proper kibble.  I also like that his buzzsaw weapon is included.  It'd been a while.  And, yeah, it's appealing that he's a larger Deluxe than usual.  Plus he's a very bright green!  Movie Ratchets are often a desaturated yellow or a gross pea green, but this one is properly sunny-looking.

I bought him because I like Ratchets, and this was a completely new tooling.  It's hard to strongly recommend him otherwise.