Phil's Beast Wars Neo Sabreback,
Beast Machines Dinobot Striker,
Robots in Disguise Dinobot Snarl
and
Universe Dinobot Striker Review


Beast Wars Neo Sabreback

Sabreback is a Stegosaur Dinosaur. The original version of the mold is mainly grey with purple and blue stripe details on his back and green spines. All 4 legs bend at the knee, hip and ankle, but the back 2 legs are somewhat limited in their movement by the body (IE No movement possible)

All the Neo Destron toys have a third "trap" mode. In Sabreback you pull the tail off it's pegs and then fold the tail connected to the spines up above the dinosaur's head. Pull down on the spine under the tail, and the tail opens up - the under spine tab should lock this in place open. The open tail becomes a plant, a sort of venus flytrap, but it's hard to trigger it to close as a trap.

TF: Pop the tail off it's pegs and disconnect from the spines. Straighten the rear legs out and fold the backs of them down to form the robot legs. Stretch out behind the beast. Fold the lower part of the beast's side panels down beside the robot hips. Pull the front legs apart from the body bringing the upper side panels with it and exposing the skull inside the beast head. Fold the skull and base of the spines forward onto the front of the beast. Rotate the revealed head through 180 degrees. Fold the side panels up 90 degrees so the dinosaur head is pointing up. Fold the body up at the waist joint so it's straight, and then push down to lock. Bring the arms and shoulders forward and lock them onto the body. Fold the skull down onto the robot chest so it locks into and covers the spark. Rotate the body panels on the back so the beast head halves now point down. Fold the spines down onto the back, folding them out to the sides so they lie flat on the back. Fold the front legs out to form the arms, fold the toes back and fold the hands out. Lock the tail open as per the trap and place into the hand as a weapon.

Resulting robot has an Inca priest look with the shape of the head and the loin cloth and the exposed yellow and red. Lots of the robot parts are done in silver and grey. His legs bend at the ankles and knees, there's ball jointed hips, rotating waist, a rotating head that's severely limited by the spines hanging from it down the back. Ball joints are at the shoulders, there's a bicep swivel and the arms bend at elbow. Fold the beast skull on the chest up to reveal a pink purple spark.

Another Neo dinosaur with a complex TF. Great looking in both modes


Beast Machines Dinobot Striker

All I said at the time was "Dinobots are all neo toys - repainted in nice bright and metallic colours. Not too bad." Striker gets a mainly gold colour scheme for his body, with yellow and orange stripes round the spines. The spines themselves are bright orange, with the robot parts picked out in 2 shades of grey blue. His Dinobot spark is coloured green. I think the colour scheme here isn't quite as good as Sabreback's.

Robots in Disguise Dinobot Snarl

Yeah it's obvious that this mold should be Snarl, just like the Triceradon mold is Slag. Snarl's colourscheme is more silver grey with orange fins, so in that way he could be considered as being closer to the original Dinobot colourscheme. I don't have the toy but I'm assuming the spark is covered by an Autobot symbol.

Snarl was sold in a two-pack with Slapper.


Universe Dinobot Striker

Universe Striker is coloured mainly in green, with some olive/brown pieces making it look much more realistic. Spoilt a little by the black, silver and red patterns along the spine. I don't own the toy, but it's a lovely repaint.


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