To Transform: Fold the lower part of the rear legs over the middle part. Find the hips and fold the section they're attached to up towards the wasp head rotating the legs at the hips as necessary. pull the front pairs out to the sides and extend the robot arms, positioning at the shoulders. Pull the wasp head down towards the robot's chest, then separate it down the middle, slide to the sides and lock it into the sides of the robot chest. Pull his stinger out of his abdomen to form his gun - if you look in his wings there's a missile in each for the gun to use - sadly the stinger can't be reversed in the abdomen so he can fire missiles out of his backside. The resulting robot shows a lot of grey that wasn't there before: head, chest & upper arms. The head is lightpiped - *FINALLY* a Beast Wars toys with a working lightpipe ! I was getting fed up after reviewing all those basics ! The eyes are made of the same colour plastic as the wings. The articulation is excellent - ball joints at the knees, hips and shoulders, a bicep just below the shoulders and a fore and aft fold at the elbow + the neck and an additional fold forward at the shoulders as part of the TF - ha Marvel Legends: TFs had that joint before you did !
Waspinator is one of the few early Beast Wars toys where the mutant head gimmick works - so much so that his mutant head is the one you're most familiar with, the one with the wasp's features mapped onto a normal head. The head swap is more involved than on the other 2 toys I've reviews today - they are different heads, hence why the gimmick works so well. To swap them: unlock the wasp head halves from the robot chest, fold the chest piece forward & down and the back piece backwards and down. Then push on the head - either forward or back - so the entirety of the contents of the chest cavity pivots about half way down - the original head will swing into the bottom of the chest cavity from where the new head will appear.
He has a weapon in robot mode - if you pull the stinger out of his bottom it can be used as a hand weapon. It's a missile launcher, and the missiles are found concealed within the wings.
Overall: Very nice toy. Decent wasp mode - even if the robot legs are a little obvious. Fabulous robot mode with 2 good heads. Recommended.
Waspinator appears in Japan as D-03 or in VS-03 with Cheetor. Changes are minimal between US and Japanese versions.
No, this is a review of the original US BW Buzzsaw (The US bit is important as we'll see) As far as I know there's no plans for a re-release. I did own one of these but it was sold in the pay for the wedding purge. The arrival of Boldfang last week prompted me to see what I could find, and low I did get a complete one rather cheap.
BW had a major repainting phase at the beginning of 1997 to bolster the toys ranks. Waspinator, Cheetor and Tarantulas each got new forms with the Predacon repaints helping to even the sides up (was the Dinobot toy originally meant to be an actual Predacon toy ? Cheetor, Rhinox and Wolfang vs Waspinator, Tarantulas and Dinobot ?). There's a couple more repaints later - Dinobot becomes Grimlock, and Terrorsaur Laserbeak, with a remoulded Wolfang as K9. Then there's Airazor and Razorclaw with the Videos in the US (that Razorclaw repaint is beautiful), Clawjaw and Spittor in Europe and a couple of repaints under the same name for TMII Dinobot and Prowl before we get to the nightmare that is Fox Kids.
Buzzsaw is one of the BW repaints that never saw a European release. However, unlike Tigatron and Blackarachnia (the other 2 early repaints) he's not in the cartoon so maybe it can be forgiven. Slightly. The remoulded K9 and repainted Laserbeak did show up, but Grimlock didn't either. Unless you happened to be in Toys R Us during Christmas 1998 and found one of the ones that they imported.
Looking at the original Waspinator from which this toy's repainted it's a straight colour swap: Dark Green becomes a Bright Yellow, Olive Green a brighter Green, Grey becomes Purple and the clear parts turn Clear Green. You'd expect this to be a car crash toy in terms of colours but it really does work looking very attractive. The robot head looks especially good.
Unlike Waspinator the mutant head gimmick works doesn't work so well here - it's a big purple lump which makes it suffer in comparison with the robot head - Purple outer casing, yellow face plate and green lightpiped eye visor., The head swap is more involved than on the other BW toys - they are different heads, hence why the gimmick works so well on Waspinator. To swap them: unlock the wasp head halves from the robot chest, fold the chest piece forward & down and the back piece backwards and down. Then push on the head - either forward or back - so the entirety of the contents of the chest cavity pivots about half way down - the original head will swing into the bottom of the chest cavity from where the new head will appear.
This is one of my favourite repaint toys. And yet I think a trick was missed here - the toy is soooo close to being a Beast Wars Bumblebee - change the grey and purple to black, and then make the wings the beautiful deep blue otherwise seen on the otherwise awful Fox Kids Waspinator and you're there. But at the time this toy came out there was - with the exception of Dinobot a clear Mammal/Bird and Insect/Reptile/Dinosaur division between both sides. This would be broken by the Japanese Shadow Panther black repaint of Cheetor.
Overall - Waspinator's a good toy to start with, and this repaint superbly updates the toy turning it into a completely different character.
And it looks awful. There's some bad repaints in the Fox Kids line but Waspinator is one of the worst. Most of the green and all the grey becomes a gold/yellow colour. The black back, green body & beast head are now a lilac blue colour ! Eyes are red. And it looks foul ! I'm convinced Hasbro must have been at home to a cockup in the painting department that day. If the blue had been on the previously grey bits and all the blue bits were the gold/yellow then it might have worked. Ditto if the blue was just gold/yellow (and then we'd be most of the way to the Waspinator as Bumblebee repaint mentioned above. About the only thing the toy does right are the lightpipes, wings and the missiles - gorgeous in a dark blue.
Avoid unless you want the wings to go on original Waspinator !
We don't usually talk about Bio Notes. But Waspinator's is an all time great:
"WASPINATOR not know why he even here! MEGATRON boss WASPINATOR around, and all WASPINATOR ever get for it is blown to pieces! WASPINATOR sick of being stockpile of parts for MAXIMAL rat-bot's collection! WASPINATOR has big plans! Big plans that don't concern stupid BEAST WARS! From now on, WASPINATOR on his own!"
Superb. I challenge you to read it and not hear his voice talking to you.
Waspinator is the only one of the 3 I no longer own the original of. But going by what I can remember and checking with some pictures online the deco changes are thus: His dark green plastic now has a metallic sheen to it. His grey plastic is now a paler metallic green. His olive green plastic is now a sandy olive colour. His clear plastic has acquired a slight lilac tinge and while still transparent in the wings is sufficiently more opaque to stop the light pipe eye gimmick from working. There's been some yellow detailing added especially some superb work on the antennae and feelers on the mutant head. The black panel on his back has a white and purple Predacon symbol that points to the rear of the beast mode and downwards in robot mode.
Waspinator is one of the few early Beast Wars toys where the mutant head gimmick works and they've done a superb job enhancing it for this release - first casting it in green plastic and then adding yellow and black highlights to it. Top marks here. The robot head has a yellow face with a visor painted in metallic blue, and a green helmet with a crest and horns to the side. Superb looking, and a shame it doesn't get more exposure.
Overall - good toy to start with, superbly updated & decoloured, with the best bio note of all time. Get it.
As for a recolour - well an updated BW Buzzsaw would be nice.