Zob's Thoughts on Hasbro Selects Deluxe-Class Tricranius Beast Power (Yes, That's His Name)

[Zobovor]

I'm expecting several packages at the moment (Kingdom Red Alert, X-Men Sentinel, etc.) so I wasn't quite sure what was inside the box on my doorstep when I got home from work today. Turns out it was the mighty Tricranius Beast Power!

Seriously, that's what his name is, according to the packaging. Tricranius Beast Power. I'm going to use his full name exclusively from this point forward, and I expect you all to do the same. Ahem.

The packaging for Tricranius B. Power is different than the other Hasbro Selects releases. The white sticker sealing the box is the same, but the box itself is decorated with a Maximal symbol, and black-and-white artwork representing jungle foliage and trees and vines and things. New, from Dagobah Selects! (Where Ractonite was packaged with his right arm poking out of the dinosaur mouth, Tricranius wears the dino mouth as shoulder armor, pointing up.)

Also, there's full-color artwork of Tricranius Beast Power on the inside top flap. I wonder if there was a miscommunication, and artwork was commissioned for the character because somebody thought he was going to get regular retail packaging? And then they printed it on the inside of the box, because they already paid the artist to paint it, so why the hell not? (This is so backwards. Plain brown box on the outside, and gorgeous colorful painting inside. What's the opposite of trying to entice consumers, exactly? Because this is it, right here.)

I'm not convinced any of these bone guys are robots. Robots aren't made of bones. Therefore, he doesn't have a "robot mode" per se. In humanoid mode, he's identical in design to Ractonite (when the clock strikes half past six, baby, it's time to head for golden lights!) but he's made of molten lava. He's mostly translucent red plastic, some of which is spray-painted yellow, with select parts a glossy black (like the rib cage and a lot of the limb connector pieces). It's really a gorgeous look. I was prepared to hate this toy (I basically only bought it for the blast effects) but actually it's rather stunning. Much more attractive than the other boring bone-colored ones.

The dinosaur mode has been modified, so that instead of a styracosaurus skeleton, he's a triceratops skeleton. The difference is the lack of the pointed ridges behind his head, replaced with a bony frill, with the removable spikes from Ractonite shunted down to the lower forehead on Tricranius B. Power. The rest of the dinosaur mode remains the same, but the tail and horns feel more bendy and rubbery than on Ractonite. Again, though, the colors really make it a completely different toy experience. It reminds me a lot of the Dinozaurs toy line by Bandai from about twenty years ago, from which I own a single toy because it was too gorgeous not to own (the purple Dino Mammoth), which also used translucent parts.

The three weapon loadouts in the instructions are the same as the ones for Ractonite. This time, though, I was able to get the nose horn off cleanly. Actually, it was the large horns I had trouble with, this time, but I think they were just stuck on with paint—they popped off after a little bit of wiggling them back and forth.

Like the Centurion Drone, the good Mr. T.B. Power comes with an accessory pack, Hasbro's second set so far. There are nineteen blast effect parts, nine pink and ten light teal. (The Hasbro Pulse web site photos really don't do them justice. I thought they were going to be a pale blue and a reddish color, but they're much more vibrant in person.) We've seen all these blast effects before in previous toys. For the blue ones, we get the blast and the ring piece that originally came with Blowpipe; the blast and twisty trail that came with Trenchfoot (two separate pieces); and one pair of the three-stage blast effects that came with Jetfire. For the pink ones, we get two of the 'splody blasts that came with Soundbarrier, and the remaining seven are duplicates of the parts that came with Omega Supreme (which are the same as the ones that came with Rodimus Prime).

I saw somebody on Twitter talking about how they had ordered two Tricranius B. Power toys just so they could get a second set of blast effects, which would give them four of the same-colored rocket thrust effects for the Autobot Ark. That seemed like an awesome idea, so now I've ordered a second one. I know, I'm awful. But I love blast effects.

It's unfortunate that we're reaching a point where it appears the blast effect compatibility is gradually being phased out, or at least not as much of a priority as it was during the beginning of Siege. Tricranius B. Power himself, for example, has no three-millimeter pegs, and can only use the blast effects that can plug into a five-millimeter hole (which allows him to use most, but not all, of the ones he's packaged with). I would have personally found it more useful to get a larger sampling of single-piece blast effects instead of the ones designed to stack together, since the stackable ones are heavy and tend to weight down smaller toys (or just fall off under their own weight).

But, I like the blast effects enough that I was willing to spend $30 on this set. And I got a cool dinosaur, too, so that's something.


Zob (forgot to take my phone to work today... I had nothing to do while in the restroom and it was sad)