Phil's
Terrorcon Cutthroat
Review


Cutthroat

Cutthroat is a sort of Dinobird monster thing, with a green body, purple wings & tail and cream head & legs. The head bends forward, as does the neck, but be careful not to bend the neck too far forward or you'll expose the robot head. The wings bend back at their base and the legs turn. The tail is held in by a peg so that can turn too as well as bend at it's base. The body has an odd feature, not documented in the instructions, where the lower half can bend back about 20 degrees in beast mode. I'm not 100% sure why such a joint is there. For a 1987 toy this is a beast mode packed with articulation and it beats that of Terrorsaur, released nearly ten years later, hands down.

You may have noticed that I've not been giving repaint ideas for the Terrorcons. That's because in the most part they're unique beast modes that don't lend themselves to easily identifying with other characters. But Cutthroat could easily become Swoop (green becomes red or blue, silver for the cream and purple) and I imagine that Cutthroat substituted/was repainted in a few UK Dinobot collections missing that vital character.

Transformation: Fold the wings back and raise the arms which come out of the sides of the body. Fold the head & neck forward. Remove the tail. Fold the legs back, though like Sinnertwin you could just fold them down to form a Centaur mode. Pull down on the legs and stand. Place the tail in his hand as his carries double-barrelled magnetizer gun.

The green & cream colour scheme continues in robot mode for the lower legs & chest and upper legs, arms, beast head on chest and robot head respectively. He's the only Terrorcon limb robot with full length arms but due to being attached to the wings near the body it needs to avoid the hinge so the joint for it is mounted lower on the arm than looks quite right. The wings sticking out of his back can't be folded forward without loosing the arms. They are quite weighty there but his folded back beast legs provide adequate heel spurs to prevent him toppling backwards. His beast head looks great mounted on the chest and can be folded up as a sort of battle helmet. The upper body can, using the joint described above, bend back about 20 degrees at the waist. It's got as little use here as it had in beast mode.

Cutthroat also serves as a limb for Abominus:

Arm Mode: Beast mode, with the robot head folded out the front of the body. I'd keep the robot legs retracted but your mileage may vary. The wings can be folded back or left out. Folded back makes you want another Cutthroat to balance the looks on the other side though! Peg the fist into the hole on the bottom of the toy.

Leg Mode: Beast mode, but fold the best head forward. Fold the wings back, peg the foot into the toy's base.

Fine dinobird mode, good robot within the limitations of being a Scramble City limb and a decent limb in either mode. One of the first Transformers to incorporate it's robot mode gun in alternate mode.

Cutthroat was sold in the west in 1987 as Terrorcon TR-3. He was sold in Japan as Transformers toy D-82 and also available in the D-84 Abominus giftset which wasn't released in most western countries. Italy, however, lucked out here and did get it!


Email Philip

Phil's TF Review Page