Phil's Beast Wars Armadillo
Beast Wars Neo Bump and
Robotmasters Psycho Orb Review


Armadillo

Armadillo is another one of the early Beast Wars basics.

He was in the first wave to reach the UK in 1998. If my Ani Mutants Optimus Primal box is to be believed there was a previous wave of Terrorsaur, Iguanus, Razorbeast and Rattrap with Slapper, Insecticon & Armadillo joining them for the basic case that reached the UK at the start of 1998. He was also the first TF to be deleted in the UK when Airazor, Clawjaw and Razorclaw were introduced. (an interesting aside - it's one of the 2nd set of toys that gets the chop when the deluxe assortment upgraded as well. But I'll talk about that when I review Cybershark/Sharpedge in a few weeks time)

Armadillo is an armadillo (no surprise there). He's mainly orange with grey as the upper limbs and tail up through the strut in the flipchanging mechanism. There's also grey paint on the back of the beast and the claws. The eyes are black. I've checked on Wikpedia and the photo there showed an Armadillo as being a mixture of brown and gold. The front legs bend at knee and hip, back leg at the hip.

TF: A Flipchanger. Pulling up on the tail and unlocking it from the slot in the back it extends into causes the head to fold back under the beast and the robot legs to extend out the end. Turn the beast over and stand - the beast's underside is now the front of the robot.

Robot is dominated by the beast head mounted in the middle. The beasts front legs serve as the arms, whereas the robot legs are new but in the same grey upper limb, orange lower limb combination as the arms are. The beast's back legs are revealed to be mounted in the sides of the shell to weapons. The leg on your left is connected to a morning star (the chain is sadly a molded unit) whereas the one on your right is a laser gun. These are removable, and when pulled off the legs can be flipped round revealing a peg that fits into the back of Armadillo's hand. The weapons just sit on the back of the hands instead of in them and they do look a little odd there as he has no standard fist - just the beast claw. Head: same comment as per the rest of the BW basics, why is the lightpipe filled in ? This time they've used a redish pink to paint the front of the eyes whereas the back panel is the same colour as the rest of the head. The faceplate is the same grey used on the claws.

Overall: Adequate basic. Could do with a better colour scheme - Snapper's springs to mind as it works well on Crazybolt too.


Bump

A couple of years later Armadillo came back in Beast Wars Neo. The original version was only available in a playset containing a volcano base along with Snapper but this one was available by himself as C-38 Bump or in VS-38 with Bazooka. He's a simple paint swap - dark red for orange, a lighter grey for the grey plastic and silver for the grey paint. The eyes are bright green in beast mode, as they are on the robot face. (I'm actually sitting here with all 3 versions of the mold in front of me - Bump arrived today and I've just transformed him for the first time while writing this !)

The orange and grey together look a little flat. This colour scheme is considerably more vibrant. The better of the two.


Psycho Orb

Then five years later Armadillo came back for a third go - this time as a Destron and one of two Beast Wars basic recolours in Robotmasters. Orange becomes brown, grey is a different lighter shade again and the entire back of the beast is painted gold. The eyes are a yellow mildly tending towards green. TF reveals a grey faceplate, lilac eyes, a traditional Destron badge on his collar and some gold detail on the lower leg. Much more authentic yes, but it looks so boring and plain.

Psycho Orb comes with an additional weapon: he has what looks like a shield or a breast plate in clear green energon. There is a bar over the top with pegs at each end that fit Psycho Orb's "hand" as do the moveable peg underneath. There's also a hole underneath the shield big enough to take a standard larger peg or minicon port. This is the centre piece of the Robotmaster Destrons combined energy weapon: The spears from the flip changer jets plug in each side at the top while the post hole at the bottom takes the morning star from Wrecker Hook. The combined weapon looks odd, but it's just a bit of fun.

Overall: Think I prefer Bump.


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