I got this in the mail from Hasbro Pulse, as well as my box of three MOTU Lady Slither toys from Mattel Creations for a custom project. (Apparently, a lot of Lady Slither toys have been shipped to consumers missing key parts of the toy—the weapon or the belt or even a piece of the action figure itself! It's like somebody at the factory has been ransacking packages before they ship out. I'm so thankful mine arrived intact and complete.)

Anyway, this was the last of the six Dinobots I needed to complete Baby Volcanicus. Am I going to always refer to the Core-class Dinobots as the Baby Dinobots? Yes. Yes, I probably am.

Baby Snarl came with his stego backpack packaged separately, tied down with a stretchy band, along with his sword tucked away in a corner of the cardboard tray. I have grown nostalgic about accessories packaged in little plastic baggies.

In robot mode, Snarl stands at about 3.75" tall. Considering the size class and budget, they did an astonishingly good job of matching his colors. He's made mostly of grey and gold plastic, with a red-painted chest, black-painted fists and head and Diaclone cockpit, silver-painted face, and blue eyes. Just about the only color mapping they didn't do was that his upper legs are grey instead of black. (His lower legs are actually made of gold plastic, but the toes and dinosaur plates and dino legs were left unpainted while the rest is painted silver). There's a pentagon-shaped spot on his chest for an Autobot symbol, but they didn't do the tampograph. You'll have to find a Toyhax sticker or something.

His articulation is shockingly good for such a tiny toy. Ball-jointed hips, hinged knees, ball-jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, a swivel at the mid-section (it's more like a swivel ab than a swivel waist), and a rotating head. The dinosaur tail halves are actually mounted on top of his shoulders rather than on his back, but they create the right silhouette anyway. He comes with a grey sword, not red, because this is based on his cartoon colors, and cartoon Snarl was based partly on a Diaclone-era toy with chrome parts, rather than the flexible break-resistant stuff they ended up using instead.

(It's ironic that every single Core-class Dinobot has gotten his own dedicated mold, being inessential toys that aren't part of the "true" neo-G1 collection, and yet they couldn't be bothered to do the same with Breakdown and Bombshell, who ended up with recycled parts and suffered badly because of it.)

Transforming him involves swinging the tail halves closed over his face, folding up the robot arms to make the dino legs (he's on his elbows when he's in stegosaurus mode), and folding up the robot legs to make the front of the dino (the toy takes a cue from the Studio Series '86 Leader-class version, with the dino head halves tucked inside the lower legs). I had to use some serious Excessive Force™ to fold the robot legs up. I actually thought I was going to break him.

Dino mode is about 3.5" in length and he stands less than two inches at his highest point. He suffers from the same incredibly short and stubby tail of the Studio Series '86 toy, and his dino head is really low to the ground to the point of almost touching it. Some strange proportion choices. The forelegs are completely immobile, and in fact are jus a couple of big ol' five-millimeter ports disguised as stegosaurus legs. His sword can stow on his underside in this mode, using the rectangular tab in his Diaclone cockpit.

You don't have to pop off his backpack to go from robot to dino mode, but you do when transforming him into a Baby Volcanicus leg. Leg mode is basically robot mode with the arms coming together so that the shoulders touch and cover the chest, while the legs are tucked behind his back. The stego backpack forms toes, of sorts, by clipping to the robot forearms.

Fully formed, Baby Volcanicus stands at about 6.25" at the head. With Slag as the upper body, Sludge as the lower body, Grimlock as the left leg, Snarl as the right leg, Swoop as the right arm, and Skarr as the left arm, he's a fairly uniform comglomeration, mostly grey with a few gold and black bits, and one alarmingly red leg (Snarl). For a combiner, his articulation isn't terrible, since he's got enough moving pieces to have functional elbow joints (Swoop and Skarr's knee and hip joints) and a swivel waist (you can thank Sludge for that) and working hip and knee joints (though Snarl and Grimlock are awfully bulky and limit the range of knee movement considerably). The head and shoulder joints for Volcanicus exist inasmuch as they're five-millimeter pegs plugged into peg-holes, but they pop out without much provocation.

He needs a good weapon, though. I gave him the sword from Studio Series '86 Snarl (because I got a red Nonnef sword for Snarl instead) and it looks pretty good in his hands. But, considering it cost me $72 to build the complete toy, it's really rather tiny. He only comes up to Studio Series Snarl's mid-section. Smol boi is smol.

The probability that these guys will be sold by Hasbro a second time in different colors, as the Dino Force from Japan, is extraordinarily high. I don't hate the idea. But, I do hope that they use completely different toys if we ever get a Monstructor... or at the very least, I hope we get some substantial remolding to turn them into monsters rather than dinosaurs!

Zob (gonna go do some Lady Slithering now)

In article <1eb7ba92-baca-4c3b-bec3-37d3dc9eb282n@googlegroups.com>,
Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
>The forelegs are completely immobile, and in fact are jus a
>couple of big ol' five-millimeter ports disguised as stegosaurus legs.

They aren't even that, they're purely decorative sockets. They're too
big for 5mm pegs (and the smaller ankle sockets are bigger than 3mm).

Dave Van Domelen, thinks the robot mode is the best of the Core Dinobots
and might buy a second to keep in robot mode if he ever sees them on the
pegs.

On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:07:38 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> I got this in the mail from Hasbro Pulse, as well as my box of three MOTU Lady Slither toys from Mattel Creations for a custom project. (Apparently, a lot of Lady Slither toys have been shipped to consumers missing key parts of the toy—the weapon or the belt or even a piece of the action figure itself! It's like somebody at the factory has been ransacking packages before they ship out. I'm so thankful mine arrived intact and complete.)
>
> Anyway, this was the last of the six Dinobots I needed to complete Baby Volcanicus. Am I going to always refer to the Core-class Dinobots as the Baby Dinobots? Yes. Yes, I probably am.
>
> Baby Snarl came with his stego backpack packaged separately, tied down with a stretchy band, along with his sword tucked away in a corner of the cardboard tray. I have grown nostalgic about accessories packaged in little plastic baggies.
>
> In robot mode, Snarl stands at about 3.75" tall. Considering the size class and budget, they did an astonishingly good job of matching his colors. He's made mostly of grey and gold plastic, with a red-painted chest, black-painted fists and head and Diaclone cockpit, silver-painted face, and blue eyes. Just about the only color mapping they didn't do was that his upper legs are grey instead of black. (His lower legs are actually made of gold plastic, but the toes and dinosaur plates and dino legs were left unpainted while the rest is painted silver). There's a pentagon-shaped spot on his chest for an Autobot symbol, but they didn't do the tampograph. You'll have to find a Toyhax sticker or something.
>
> His articulation is shockingly good for such a tiny toy. Ball-jointed hips, hinged knees, ball-jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, a swivel at the mid-section (it's more like a swivel ab than a swivel waist), and a rotating head. The dinosaur tail halves are actually mounted on top of his shoulders rather than on his back, but they create the right silhouette anyway. He comes with a grey sword, not red, because this is based on his cartoon colors, and cartoon Snarl was based partly on a Diaclone-era toy with chrome parts, rather than the flexible break-resistant stuff they ended up using instead.
>
> (It's ironic that every single Core-class Dinobot has gotten his own dedicated mold, being inessential toys that aren't part of the "true" neo-G1 collection, and yet they couldn't be bothered to do the same with Breakdown and Bombshell, who ended up with recycled parts and suffered badly because of it.)
>
> Transforming him involves swinging the tail halves closed over his face, folding up the robot arms to make the dino legs (he's on his elbows when he's in stegosaurus mode), and folding up the robot legs to make the front of the dino (the toy takes a cue from the Studio Series '86 Leader-class version, with the dino head halves tucked inside the lower legs). I had to use some serious Excessive Force™ to fold the robot legs up. I actually thought I was going to break him.
>
> Dino mode is about 3.5" in length and he stands less than two inches at his highest point. He suffers from the same incredibly short and stubby tail of the Studio Series '86 toy, and his dino head is really low to the ground to the point of almost touching it. Some strange proportion choices. The forelegs are completely immobile, and in fact are jus a couple of big ol' five-millimeter ports disguised as stegosaurus legs. His sword can stow on his underside in this mode, using the rectangular tab in his Diaclone cockpit.
>
> You don't have to pop off his backpack to go from robot to dino mode, but you do when transforming him into a Baby Volcanicus leg. Leg mode is basically robot mode with the arms coming together so that the shoulders touch and cover the chest, while the legs are tucked behind his back. The stego backpack forms toes, of sorts, by clipping to the robot forearms.
>
> Fully formed, Baby Volcanicus stands at about 6.25" at the head. With Slag as the upper body, Sludge as the lower body, Grimlock as the left leg, Snarl as the right leg, Swoop as the right arm, and Skarr as the left arm, he's a fairly uniform comglomeration, mostly grey with a few gold and black bits, and one alarmingly red leg (Snarl). For a combiner, his articulation isn't terrible, since he's got enough moving pieces to have functional elbow joints (Swoop and Skarr's knee and hip joints) and a swivel waist (you can thank Sludge for that) and working hip and knee joints (though Snarl and Grimlock are awfully bulky and limit the range of knee movement considerably). The head and shoulder joints for Volcanicus exist inasmuch as they're five-millimeter pegs plugged into peg-holes, but they pop out without much provocation.
>
> He needs a good weapon, though. I gave him the sword from Studio Series '86 Snarl (because I got a red Nonnef sword for Snarl instead) and it looks pretty good in his hands. But, considering it cost me $72 to build the complete toy, it's really rather tiny. He only comes up to Studio Series Snarl's mid-section. Smol boi is smol.
>
> The probability that these guys will be sold by Hasbro a second time in different colors, as the Dino Force from Japan, is extraordinarily high. I don't hate the idea. But, I do hope that they use completely different toys if we ever get a Monstructor... or at the very least, I hope we get some substantial remolding to turn them into monsters rather than dinosaurs!
>
>
> Zob (gonna go do some Lady Slithering now)

My work got to the point we had all 6 baby dinos at once, my coworker had been buying them all individually, built micro-canicus once and got bored with it and sold them all.
It's really just as blocky as G1 Monstructor

So far I just got swoop and don't really need the rest. I'm fine with the POTP if I absolutely need my Dinobots to combine,

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 10:31:45 AM UTC-4, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 26, 2023 at 6:07:38 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> > I got this in the mail from Hasbro Pulse, as well as my box of three MOTU Lady Slither toys from Mattel Creations for a custom project. (Apparently, a lot of Lady Slither toys have been shipped to consumers missing key parts of the toy—the weapon or the belt or even a piece of the action figure itself! It's like somebody at the factory has been ransacking packages before they ship out. I'm so thankful mine arrived intact and complete.)
> >
> > Anyway, this was the last of the six Dinobots I needed to complete Baby Volcanicus. Am I going to always refer to the Core-class Dinobots as the Baby Dinobots? Yes. Yes, I probably am.
> >
> > Baby Snarl came with his stego backpack packaged separately, tied down with a stretchy band, along with his sword tucked away in a corner of the cardboard tray. I have grown nostalgic about accessories packaged in little plastic baggies.
> >
> > In robot mode, Snarl stands at about 3.75" tall. Considering the size class and budget, they did an astonishingly good job of matching his colors. He's made mostly of grey and gold plastic, with a red-painted chest, black-painted fists and head and Diaclone cockpit, silver-painted face, and blue eyes. Just about the only color mapping they didn't do was that his upper legs are grey instead of black. (His lower legs are actually made of gold plastic, but the toes and dinosaur plates and dino legs were left unpainted while the rest is painted silver). There's a pentagon-shaped spot on his chest for an Autobot symbol, but they didn't do the tampograph. You'll have to find a Toyhax sticker or something.
> >
> > His articulation is shockingly good for such a tiny toy. Ball-jointed hips, hinged knees, ball-jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, a swivel at the mid-section (it's more like a swivel ab than a swivel waist), and a rotating head. The dinosaur tail halves are actually mounted on top of his shoulders rather than on his back, but they create the right silhouette anyway. He comes with a grey sword, not red, because this is based on his cartoon colors, and cartoon Snarl was based partly on a Diaclone-era toy with chrome parts, rather than the flexible break-resistant stuff they ended up using instead.
> >
> > (It's ironic that every single Core-class Dinobot has gotten his own dedicated mold, being inessential toys that aren't part of the "true" neo-G1 collection, and yet they couldn't be bothered to do the same with Breakdown and Bombshell, who ended up with recycled parts and suffered badly because of it.)
> >
> > Transforming him involves swinging the tail halves closed over his face, folding up the robot arms to make the dino legs (he's on his elbows when he's in stegosaurus mode), and folding up the robot legs to make the front of the dino (the toy takes a cue from the Studio Series '86 Leader-class version, with the dino head halves tucked inside the lower legs). I had to use some serious Excessive Force™ to fold the robot legs up. I actually thought I was going to break him.
> >
> > Dino mode is about 3.5" in length and he stands less than two inches at his highest point. He suffers from the same incredibly short and stubby tail of the Studio Series '86 toy, and his dino head is really low to the ground to the point of almost touching it. Some strange proportion choices. The forelegs are completely immobile, and in fact are jus a couple of big ol' five-millimeter ports disguised as stegosaurus legs. His sword can stow on his underside in this mode, using the rectangular tab in his Diaclone cockpit.
> >
> > You don't have to pop off his backpack to go from robot to dino mode, but you do when transforming him into a Baby Volcanicus leg. Leg mode is basically robot mode with the arms coming together so that the shoulders touch and cover the chest, while the legs are tucked behind his back. The stego backpack forms toes, of sorts, by clipping to the robot forearms.
> >
> > Fully formed, Baby Volcanicus stands at about 6.25" at the head. With Slag as the upper body, Sludge as the lower body, Grimlock as the left leg, Snarl as the right leg, Swoop as the right arm, and Skarr as the left arm, he's a fairly uniform comglomeration, mostly grey with a few gold and black bits, and one alarmingly red leg (Snarl). For a combiner, his articulation isn't terrible, since he's got enough moving pieces to have functional elbow joints (Swoop and Skarr's knee and hip joints) and a swivel waist (you can thank Sludge for that) and working hip and knee joints (though Snarl and Grimlock are awfully bulky and limit the range of knee movement considerably). The head and shoulder joints for Volcanicus exist inasmuch as they're five-millimeter pegs plugged into peg-holes, but they pop out without much provocation.
> >
> > He needs a good weapon, though. I gave him the sword from Studio Series '86 Snarl (because I got a red Nonnef sword for Snarl instead) and it looks pretty good in his hands. But, considering it cost me $72 to build the complete toy, it's really rather tiny. He only comes up to Studio Series Snarl's mid-section. Smol boi is smol.
> >
> > The probability that these guys will be sold by Hasbro a second time in different colors, as the Dino Force from Japan, is extraordinarily high. I don't hate the idea. But, I do hope that they use completely different toys if we ever get a Monstructor... or at the very least, I hope we get some substantial remolding to turn them into monsters rather than dinosaurs!
> >
> >
> > Zob (gonna go do some Lady Slithering now)
> My work got to the point we had all 6 baby dinos at once, my coworker had been buying them all individually, built micro-canicus once and got bored with it and sold them all.
> It's really just as blocky as G1 Monstructor
>
> So far I just got swoop and don't really need the rest. I'm fine with the POTP if I absolutely need my Dinobots to combine,

That's my question - I have the POTP Dinobots, plus an oversized knockoff set, and I can't quite see the value in paying more for less accurate Dinos....

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 7:09:47 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:

> That's my question - I have the POTP Dinobots, plus an oversized knockoff set, and I can't quite see the value in paying more for less accurate Dinos...

I like wrong-sized versions of things. I really enjoyed collecting the World's Smallest Transformers, at least until the supply dried up, and the Core-class toys tickle me in the same kind of way, just on a slightly larger scale. And these are the toys that properly scale with the Titan-class characters.

Zob (Core-class Beast Wars characters would be a hoot, too, because they would accurately scale with the neo-G1 toys)

On Saturday, September 30, 2023 at 11:53:07 AM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 27, 2023 at 7:09:47 PM UTC-6, Codigo Postal wrote:
>
> > That's my question - I have the POTP Dinobots, plus an oversized knockoff set, and I can't quite see the value in paying more for less accurate Dinos...
> I like wrong-sized versions of things. I really enjoyed collecting the World's Smallest Transformers, at least until the supply dried up, and the Core-class toys tickle me in the same kind of way, just on a slightly larger scale. And these are the toys that properly scale with the Titan-class characters.
>
>
> Zob (Core-class Beast Wars characters would be a hoot, too, because they would accurately scale with the neo-G1 toys)

I do have some of the 3rd party WST Dinos - essentially miniaturized versions of the G1 toys, complete with chrome and consumer-applied stickers, and they *are* magnificent. Hasbro could make a pretty penny if they committed to a Legends-class rollout of full casts/teams - Legends is popular in part due to space constraints, and 3P Legends are starting to be as expensive as MP used to be - Hasbro could make a killing. I assume Core is a very profitable size class for them, though I could be wrong (Voyager class is where I feel we as consumers get the most bang for our buck).