The dinosaur raptor - insanely popular at the time of this toy's debut due to Jurassic Park - has articulation at his hips, thighs, knees, rear legs claws, shoulder and elbow. His tail spins if you push the button on it ! This version is mainly pink, with a brown painted ridge down the back and some clear orange on the underside of the beast. Which, and lets be honest here, looks not much like the underside of a Raptor and more like a pair of robot legs and feet folded up that the designers couldn't make fit anywhere else.
To TF: Bend tail up, Remove tail and fold base onto back. Unpeg robot legs and fold below body. Rotate 180 degrees at robot knee and fold out feet. Push on dino thighs rotating sides of body 180 degrees so that the thighs become the robot shoulder. Rotate dino legs just below thighs to form robot arms. Open the Mutant head (effectively a battle helmet down the middle) to reveal Dinobot face. Split tail in two down middle to form spinning weapon and remove sword. Mount both on hands.
The resulting robot shows off a lot more of the clear oranger - on the legs, body (behind dino head) and the Mutant Head mask. I don't mind the mask too much but lots of people did object to it so you'll see loose ones turning upo without it. It's important to note that the eyes on Dinobot don't have the lightpipe gimmick activated even though (IIRC) there's an orange block in the back of the head.
Plenty of articulation at ankle, ball and socket at knee and hip, shoulder - fore and aft and to the sides, bicep and elbow.
An important note is that the hands do not exist - the weapons peg into a hole between the claws and face outwards. So he can't hold his sword horizontally - a remould to accommodate a side peg would be nice. The rest of the tail becomes a pretty useless spinning weapon. His shoulders also don't secure onto anything in robot mode - they rest on the folded up tail base.
A high demand character at the time - he's a dinosaur and he's in the cartoon - Dinobot was usually one of the first toys to go. He was one of the first BW dlx toys I bought along with Cybershark from the Toystack in Ealing. It's worth having, though there's plenty of variations to choose from as we'll see.
Grimlock is mainly a straight colour swap on Dinobot. The pink becomes white, and the clear orange becomes gold (I don't recall any tales of GPS affecting Grimlock though) The brown striped pattern is gone replaced with black uneven spots. TF'ing him reveals a very dark blue helmet with a white face plate.
There's a minor remold that's carried forward to all subsequent Dinobot/Grimlock versions (and it's descendants) in that the chest piece under the head is flattened to provide a panel for a rub sign to stick to
It's a lovely repaint and well worth getting
The pink is now a dull goldy bronze colour - except for the robot shoulders, upper legs and beast arms which are the very dark brown used instead of the clear plastic. The stripe is red, and the helmet is painted gloss black with a red face plate.
It all comes together to form a colour scheme that I've come to think of as a very good repaint !
He was sold in a 2-pack with Swoop/Terranotron,
Dinobot is brown - where previously pink - brown, with darker brown markings and darker brown thighs, arms and underside Maximal symbol on his left thigh. Some pink parts and all clear orange parts are now cast in the brown.
The robot mode reveals a lot of painted blue and green detailing not previously visible - and the blue used to cover the face plate is very jarring and monochrome. Having said that it is the colour used on the TV show - just a bit brighter here. It doesn't help his face lacks the shape of the TV version, instead being shaped more like Grimlock's. Why they used it for the inside of the spinning weapon as well I don't know.
So overall - Nice paint job on beast mode, maybe slightly flawed on the robot due to using the bright blue. Problems with hands and shoulders continues from previous versions.
Futrue Repaints: Obviously a re-release of BW Grimlock would be nice - briefly and gloriously available in the UK through Toys R Us in the run up to Christmas 1998. Perhaps a silver/grey G1 Grimlock homage ?
There are also 2 remolds to Dinobot one of which is availible in 2 different colours: See my Hardhead/Dinotron review for one, the other being the Cyberbeast Thrustol that I hope to cover in the future.