It's my first United toy! And probably the only one I'll ever own from the first wave, due to the incredibly diverse (and uninteresting, at least to me) character selection. Wave two promises to be a lot more interesting. But, for now, Tigerhawk.

The packaging includes the "40 Years of Transformers" logo which I presume will be emblazoned upon all of the 2024 product.

For those who have never seen Beast Wars (and shame on you if you haven't), Tigatron and Airazor were effectively written off the show during season two, mostly due to hardware limitations regarding how many characters Mainframe was able to animate at once. They both fell into a trap set by the Vok aliens and were captured, subsequently fused together into a weird cat/bird hybrid, and the combined Tigerhawk entity was sent back to prehistoric Earth, temporarily acting as a liaison for the Vok. He was sold as a Transmetal 2, but apparently Hasbro was uncertain as to whether the toy was actually going to be released, as they ordered him killed off exactly one episode after he was introduced.

The original Beast Wars toy from 1999 was not an awful toy, though it suffered from some vestigial design elements. Some of the larger Transmetal 2 toys had vehicle modes that were inspired by the vehicle forms for the original Transmetals, but evidently Tigerhawk's vehicle form was neutered, never alluded to in the instructions or packaging despite the clear presence of wheels on the toy.

So the new version, as with all the Beast Wars tributes we've gotten from Kingdom and Legacy, is based more closely on the CGI version of Tigerhawk, making him more screen-accurate than the vintage release. Where the older toy was a dirty white color complemented with blue paint, the new version is a bright white, accented with a darker blue-purple color that's more authentic to his CGI appearance. (He has no chrome, just some semi-metallic paint.) Where the talons formed a large chunk of the original toy's chest, in the show the talons were sort of draped over his shoulders like decorations, and the rest of his chest had random circuit-like details. The new toy recreates this very accurately. Robot mode stands at 7.5" in height.

The head sculpt is great, and features the sort of half-furry, half-feathery head design from the original toy and the CGI model. It's dead on. I can totally hear Blu Mankuma's voice coming out of him when I look at him. "I am Tigerhawk—emissary for the Vok! Your form has changed, but I know you, Megatron..."

The toy comes with two feather weapons (they were launching missiles on the original toy) that can plug into his wings and complete them, or be held like cudgels similar to Fuzor Silverbolt's old weapons. He's also got two cannons which are meant to plug into his wings as well, but they can be equipped in his robot hands if you want. When attached to the existing gun pieces in his wings, they can swing up and be used as wing-mounted cannons in either mode. Finally, he's got a dual-barreled gun meant to connect to his arm. (On the vintage toy, he was sculpted asymmetrically, with his right forearm having a permanent set of dual barrels attached.)

Articulation is pretty standard—he's got bicep swivels (but no wrist swivel), a rotating pelvis (the feather loincloth can pivot up to allow for dynamic poses), extremely limited ankle movement (like about ten degrees), ankle tilts, and a good range of shoulder movement. The armor on each shoulder has a little trap door that will open if you want to extend his arms all the way out to his sides. The wings don't move a whole lot, just hinged at the base and another mid-wing hinge, and a swivel for the wing tips.

To transform him, the entire toy basically explodes and turns inside-out. The robot chest halves swing out to allow the bird talons to come out, the robot hips split in half so that the robot legs can form the front tiger claws, and the robot head tucks into the robot chest. Almost comically, the claws that are the robot feet tuck away and are replaced by slightly larger claws for beast mode. I typed that quickly enough, but I'm vastly oversimplifying this big, involved 43-step process.

Weirdly, the robot chest halves completely envelop the little cockpit that is mounted to his right shoulder. The original idea was that it was supposed to contain a little pilot, a "spark avatar" or whatever they were going to call it. Strange that they would hide it altogether. Well, anyway.

In beast mode, he stands around 4" tall at the head with a majestic 16" wingspan. The tiger's lower jaw opens, but the head is more or less fixed in place. You get a little bit of up-and-down movement, but you have to unlock the robot arm that the tiger head is attached to in order to accomplish this. The rear digitigrade talons are articulated at the hips, knees, ankles, and toes, though they lack ratcheting joints, are very skinny, and don't like to support the weight of such a big and heavy toy. If you bend them at the knee as far as they'll go, they will hold the toy up, but not if you try other poses.
The front legs are far stronger, and have ratchets in the front shoulders (which are the robot hips).

In this mode, the cannons can flip up and can "fire" (they don't shoot anything) and the wing tips can also swing forwards so that the feather missiles can also "fire" (they don't launch). You can even load the feather missiles into the cannons if you want, but they're not launching unless you yank them out and make the sound effects with your mouth. The small dual gun is, according to the instructions, supposed to connect to the robot arm on the undercarriage, which becomes the tiger's crotch. I'm not saying it's a pee-pee gun, necessarily, but it's totally a pee-pee gun.

There are subtle traces of the Transmetal 2 asymmetry all throughout the toy's design. For example, one of the beast mode front claws is technological while the other looks organic. The tiger's head has one chiseled, robotic cheek but the other cheek is furry. The bird talons and the heel struts for robot mode are the same way. Fun little details.

This is a very serviceable update. I kind of miss the launching missile gimmick, but I understand its omission in a collector-based toy line. The lack of strength and support in the rear talons is pretty much the toy's only flaw, and even that can be mitigated easily enough.

Something tells me they're probably going to get to all the major on-screen Beast Wars characters, eventually, which I'm fine with. I will buy them.

Zob (I imagine the wife is secretly delighted that I'm not buying nearly as many toys this year)