Spittor remains a frog, he's still blue but a much lighter colour than before. Gone is the projectile stinger/tongue replaced by a solid but removable tongue. Inside his mouth on the underside of the upper jaw is his Predacon Spark Crystal. Along the centre of his back are two pieces of lime green chrome - the one back at the back lifts up on a strut forming a claw. I'm not sure what it's for - energy weapon of some sort ? The eyes are also chromed this time in pink. The back is yellow with black stripes. We've got some dark blue on the upper legs, under side and the jaw which opens. The legs are ball jointed at hip & elbow with the front legs ball jointed at the ankles but the back legs just have a bending joint here.
TF: Look at the toy so the head is facing to your legs. Pull the whole back panel (not just the claw) up & back. Lower the jaw and raise the head. Fold the panel in the side of the mouth closest to you out so it covers the side of the beast revealing the robot head, then fold it up so the head looks skywards. Swing the head round towards you so that the middle of the body swings over the base of the back. Reposition the toy in your hand so you're looking at the beast head on the left again. Fold the panel with the robot head down so it's looking out the front of the chest. There are beast legs behind the toy - fold down the panel they are attached to so the legs form the robot legs. Fold the lower jaw up onto the robot's back. Fold the feet down and rotate so the three toes face forward. Position the arms. Peg the tongue into the robot's bottom as a tail or into the hand as a mace/morning star.
A truly demented / Hunchback style robot mode with the head on the chest (connected by a ball joint) and huge shoulder pads. But with the addition of the long gangly limbs - front beast legs are the robot legs while the rear ones form the arms - somehow this all works. A very, very good toy and a great update.
Here's what I said about Slapper in 2001: I've said before that a repaint can make or break a toy - here we have both extremes in one box. I think one of the first reviews I did was for the original later TM2 Basics so I'll just concern myself with the paint jobs:
Slapper (Frog, formerly Spittor): A great red colour scheme (yep - a TM2 version of our TM Repaint Spittor) makes this toy look very attractive - far better than the bright light blue of the original.
Buy them if you're missing the originals, like the red frog repaint or find them cheap."
Of course we never did find them cheap in the UK as toy retailers had cooled massively on the Mega size and never sold any of the RID megas. Big Red Robot Theory gains another piece of evidence - another toy improved by a red repaint. As I mention above the toy uses the colour scheme that first appeared on the BW Basic Spittor repaint that we in the UK got with a Video, so it's sort of nice that TM Spittor gets the same repaint. The eyes are now chromed in green, the head chrome is orange and the claw chrome is blue - is this the most different colours of chrome used on a TF toy ? All the dark blue plastic is now black. The Spark Crystal is pink.
It's a top, top repaint !