Strafe (The pterodactyl)
I'm more excited for this guy than some of the others here (except Prowl) and unlike some others, I have no problems with the dual heads. Rule of cool, screw it.
First, a note on the packaging. I opened mine and he fell right out of the bubble; not a single twist tie or plastic tabby thing in sight. Kinda strange.
Robot Mode: I liked this a lot more once I figured out his legs unfolded from how they were packaged. I got him out and was shocked at how much stubbier and shorter he was than I'd remembered seeing. Once I compared to box pics I figured out my idiocy.
86 has a long-standing hatred of "sideways hands," as in, any TF where the arms bend inward at the elbow and doesn't have wrist articulation. He claims it limits poses; I say you just have to be creative. Unfortunately, this is one case where I sort of agree--I can't see a way to make him holding the crossbow look good. Thankfully, he looks cool with his swords, so I don't care! His head is kind of "knighty" and I'm guessing this is a theme amongst the Dinobots. Neat!
The rubbery tails are a bummer, at least how they're pre-posed, but I managed to twist them around his legs and that looks kinda cool. Also, given the choice of "swooped to the side" or "straight down," I think I'd choose the former, since with the latter, the tails would eventually be raised up in his beast mode.
I love, love, love his huge wingspan, it makes the toy feel way more massive than he actually is. JT complained a bit about how the beast mode heads don't really have a specific place to go; this bothered me until the idea of the heads being semi-sentient or at least active (kind of like BW Megs' beast mode head in S1, sometimes) and suddenly he became hilarious and awesome. Imagine him quipping some snarky comeback at Grimlock, and then the heads laugh or screech in agreement. Imagine him locked up with a Decepticon and suddenly the heads leap out and bite him, holding him down while Strafe stabs the shit out of him. That's awesome.
Toransuform! Unfortunately, Strafe suffers from "jet TF syndrome." Fiddle with the legs a little, peg the arms underneath the wings, move the heads (cockpit) around, and you're done. Simple enough to learn and execute, I guess, so that's a good point.
Beast mode: Pretty good...from above. The heads don't extend as far out as I'd like, and there's not quite a good pose for him to be "standing" in. I guess he's kinda fun for flying poses and that stuff, though, and I'm sure he'd look cool with one of Prowl's fancy Japanese stands.
All in all: Get him if you're excited for him. I'm not disappointed in his robot mode at all, and the two heads don't bother me in the least.
Slug (The triceratops)
These names are stupid.
Slug comes packaged in dino mode, which is welcome; I really don't like when they do robot mode packaging, takes away a lot of the magic of TFs. He doesn't really have anywhere to store his swords, except two gaping holes in the sides of his belly, but that looks...strange. Maybe they could work like a kind of jousting side blade or some shit; or kind of like the blades on the Liger Zero from Zoids. Either way, there's no way to store them that isn't obvious, so.
He's articulated decently and is a pretty good scale; he's shorter than my Battle Blade Bumblebee from 2010 but significantly taller, and encountering an animal as big as a car is still pretty fucking big. The whole gimmick with the Dinobots in TF4 seems to be Autobots riding them into battle, so I figured I'd actually give it a shot, and surprisingly it works pretty well. Here's ROTF Sideswipe riding him:
https://twitter.com/OnslaughtSix/status ... 04/photo/1
It doesn't work as well with some larger figures, though, like BBBB. His legs are just too long.
Toransuform! Fairly intuitive. The back panel thing with his beast tail doesn't seem to have anywhere to go; I can't decide if I like it more hanging down or folded up. His beast front legs don't seem to have anywhere specific either, I just turned them around until they looked good to me. Turning him back to dino mode is actually a lot less painful than it needs to be, the only major "this part needs to hook to that part but it doesn't want to" bit being some tabs on his lower legs designed to peg to his back plate thing, and that's kind of not required so much. Even with the new "kid-friendly" lines freeing up Generations/standard Deluxes to be "more complex," I'm finding that they really aren't that hard to do, which is a welcome change from the last movie lines.
Robot mode! I gotta say, I wasn't expecting his chest to be so scrawny--big triceratops dude, I figured he would be just as bulky, kinda like Guiledart. Once again, his head is knighty, this one kind of resembling certain jousting helmets (furthering my joust comparison above). He's super well articulated, with lots of solid cool dynamic poses available, like holding back a sword and being about to swoosh forward. Definitely like him.
At full height he's about the same size as ROTF Sideswipe, and head-to-head he's a little taller than Strafe. His weapons are alright; they're definitely unique sword designs so that's cool. I also dig his colours--the massive amounts of colours on the Dinobots in this toyline are a super welcome change from some of the past Movie toylines. I'd like to see you guys argue that somehow a purple robot Triceratops is incredulous, though.
Slug is definitely a buy, everything about him is solid. I can't say he's worth $15 on his own, but no Deluxe is--there are many toys from years past that I would have passed on if they were $5 more, but that's just how the industry is so I can only compare him to his peers. This is a toy that can stand strong with most of the other Movie toys or even Generations, if you're that kind of guy. If all the Dinobots are as good as he is, I'm going to find myself a broke man, and if he's a sign of the rest of the AoE toys, then I want more. He's everywhere right now, so go grab him if you've been waiting.