As we'll see later Polar Claw wasn't always known by this name, but he's always been sold as such. He's a polar beast, mainly white in colour but with some red and black from robot mode showing through. He's pretty stationary in Beast Mode - the rear legs being part of the gimmick, and the ball joints on the front hip being limited by the rod attaching them to beside the robot's head. By folding the front legs forward until the connecting bar is straight out the sides of the bear you can get full ball jointed movement at the shoulder but that then mean the legs are projected out to the sides by about 1cm.
I mentioned the back legs being part of a gimmick: Pull back on them and the beast mouth opens bearing his fangs. Both his front legs contain gimmicks but only his left leg allows it to be used in robot mode. There's a small lever in the side of the leg - pulling it back cases the front of the leg & the foot to flip up and a robotic jump out of the legs. All well and good, but might have worked better if it had been the beast foot that leaped forward and the top of the legs was part of the mechanism.
TF: From beast mode fold up the toes on the rear legs, fold the back of the legs down to form the lower legs, fold out the robot toes. Straighten the back legs out the back of the beast - you'll probably need to pull one leg first and then the other. Extend the front legs to the sides by pushing forward a little, fold out in front of the beast and then point them upwards. Split the underside of the beast in two and fold to the sides to form the arms. Swing the lower arms in 90 degrees at the elbows. Flip out the hands. Fold down the black piece of plastic covering the robot's waist and lower chest. Fold down the panel in the robot's back from the best head backwards. Fold the beast head forward and down into the robot's waist in the process bringing the robot/mutant head out the back of the robot. Fold the panels up. Position the front beast legs so they're pointing over the robot's shoulders with the feet forward.
Resulting robot is quite chunky, with the majority of the revealed red and black being on the chest. His knees bend as do his hips - the latter being connected to limited ball joints. Both shoulders and elbows are ball jointed and the wrists fold up as part of the TF. The head turns, but turning it through 180 degrees switches form the all red (with black eyes) beast mask to the black helmeted yellow faced robot mode. The top of the head pushed in - it does nothing in this mode but is a key part of the biting gimmick in beast mode - the back legs (now robot legs) move a part in the hips that presses on the top of the robot head which in turn open the beast mouth. The robot fore legs sit on ball joints to act as shoulder cannons. The left one is still the claw firing forward gimmick. The right one has a trigger that fires the entire foreleg forward which then auto TF's into a bat - the first creature reuse in BW (The original basic Optimus Primal was a bat) This bat has spring loaded wings that can be bent in at where they join the body and midway along the wing. The bat can be held, or reversed to form a cross bow like weapon.
Overall: Ok beast mode, with 2 gimmicks that work. OK robot mode which is a tiny bit hindered by the robot hips being involved in the beast gimmick. It's not a bad toy..... but you compare it to Ultra Op, the original deluxes and basics and it feels a little like a weak ling in the chain. It's good, but it's not as special as the toys around it somehow. And certainly doesn't command the money that it's case brother Scorponok does ! (My word, there's a toy that needs a reissue)
The base colour for this recolour is grey, with the hands, part of the fold down chest panel and lower robot legs being yellow and the remaining robot pieces mainly being a dark blue/dark grey colour. The mutant face is black with red eyes, the robot helmet is red, with a yellow face plate and painted on black eye mask and beard.
It's an OK repaint, but it feels a bit of a cheap copout at the tail end of Neo which had produced some excellent new molds especially since his VS partner is a toy as great as Killerpunch is ! Possibly not worth the trouble of tracking down.