Phil's Beast Wars Snapper Review


Beast Wars Snapper

Snapper is one of the few Beast Wars toys never to have any form of repaint. He was part of the second US wave of Basics and as such is one of the last toys to have a flipchanging gimmick. He appears in Japan with Armadillo as part of the VS-X1 Volcano Base set.

Snapper is a turtle, mainly green but with a slight yellow pattern on his shell. There's some red visible on his back leg which is hinged by a ball joint at the hip and before the flipper. The front legs move up and down a bit, and the jaw opens. By teasing the flipchanging gimmick you can get the head to move in and out.

TF: Push down on the tail, which folds onto the robot's chest extending the robot head out the beast's bottom, pulling the beast head in and pushing the robot legs out in front of the beast.

Robot mode reveals a lot more of the red on upper limbs and body though the robot head is green still. He has yellow eyes painted over the end of an aborted lightpipe gimmick - you can see where the clear plastic would be in the back of the head. Standard BW Basic articulation of ball jointed knees, hips, shoulder, elbows and neck with some bonus bending ankles.

A square portion of shell immediately behind the robot's head detaches to form the robot's weapon. From it you fold out a tri barrelled gun which can either be pegged onto the forearm or reattached behind the robot's head to fire over the head or point straight up. Unlike the on other two "plug the weapon into the forearm cos we have no fists" BW Basics (Armadillo and Snarl) here the weapon looks reasonable probably because it's covering the robot's hand giving the impression it's being held.

Overall: OK beast, nothing special it the articulation stakes - slightly bellow par in fact - but the usual cracking BW robot mode full of articulation, a good contrasting colour scheme and a decent weapon. Recommended.


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