So, Beast Wars, eh? I may have started my Transformers fandom with Generation 2, but Beast Wars is what sealed my fate. I recently rewatched the 90’s CGI Cartoon that saved the franchise, and while it may not be the deep, serious drama people sometimes pretend it was, it’s still incredibly well written, performed, and even well-animated, despite the dated graphics. It has a whole nostalgic place in the culture outside of the rest of the brand, and there’s people out there who aren’t Transformers fans usually, but are here for Beast Wars, and I love it. I especially love that it’s getting a near-complete Season 1 cast update in the recently-launched Kingdom line, which was a surprise for everyone after the first and second parts of the War for Cybertron trilogy were pretty staunchly made up of G1 cast members.
I didn’t own this one as a kid, but my cousin did (and still does), so I’ve handled it enough to compare it here.
Speaking of that recent rewatch, it was thanks to my partner pointing it out that I realized that Rattrap is the best Maximal. As played by Scott McNeil, this grubby, rude, snarky survivalist was a sharpshooter, demolitions expert, and spy, all rolled into one, and frequently the most competent person in the room, when he could be bothered to stick his neck out. His original toy, like most Beast Wars basics, was pretty great, excellently poseable, with a nifty hidden buildable gun, and a spring-loaded autotransform that didn’t swallow up the toy, like modern one-step changers. When the design was updated into a Thrilling 30 Deluxe in 2014, it was less good. That figure’s kind of overcomplicated and messy, and has basically sat on my shelf untouched since it came out. So, this new release has a lot to live up to, and a lot to surpass. For a bit of 2021 pandemic realness: No one in my region’s going to stores right now, I ordered him off of the EB Games Canada website instead. Let’s have a look at the little vermin.
Robot Mode
Rattrap’s a “Core-class” figure, a new smaller size in Kingdom, that’s more or less marking the return of the Legends-class size that ran from Thrilling 30 through to Power of the Primes. Certainly, he’s smaller than the old Beast Wars figure. In fact, my first impression of him was that he was surprisingly tiny! That’s hardly a bad thing, though, as he wears his size (or lack thereof) well, I think.
In this picture: Me trying really hard to get his scale across.
Like the rest of the Kingdom Beast Wars updates, this sculpt’s pretty accurate to his Mainframe CGI model, with only a few compromises for engineering and aesthetics. This is to say that he’s a little humanoid robot with an animal-parts backpack, and a beast head on his chest, like so many of his generation. A few things are different here and there, like how his lower beast legs make up his lower robot legs instead of going on his backpack, but it looks right, and is way closer than his two previous efforts. One thing about his show-accuracy that amuses me in particular is the sculpted (but not real) ball joints on his wrists.
“Eyyyyy!”
I will say this, I don’t think they quite nailed his headsculpt. Something about the shape and lines on his face feels a bit off, but it’s still 90 percent there, and includes all of the important weirdness of his design, like his rat teeth and his exposed silvery brain. Looking at the renders on the packaging, I think it’s just a consequence of casting the design in physical plastic.
Skulking about.
This is also a pretty well-painted figure for his size and price point. He’s mostly grey and bronze, like he should be, with bits of silver, red, and pink painted on. I particularly like the tiny little Maximal symbols on his forearms. The only bits of color that I miss from his CGI model are the bronze on his torso, instead of solid grey this version has. But once again, it’s close enough, and looks right.
Despite being composed of a lot of ball joints, Rattrap’s very sturdily-built in his robot mode, and has no problem staying standing or posed. But there’s one notable exception: His shoulders. The shoulder joints themselves are fine, but they’re attached to a panel that moves on a transformation joint halfway down his backpack, and this panel isn’t secured at all, by a peg or anything else, meaning as soon as you move his shoulders, they come out of place.
This is the position they get pulled down to whenever you mess around with his shoulders.
The good news is that it’s tight enough that they don’t come undone when he’s standing there, but the bad news is, they’re going to come out pretty much any time you move his shoulders.
You’re going to move his shoulders a lot, because he’s incredibly, impressively poseable. Beast Wars was the era where ball-jointed articulation became the standard, and Rattrap keeps that torch, using ball joints on his shoulders, elbows, hips, knees and ankles, on top of a standard swivelling head. Most interestingly, he has funky ball joints halfway down his shins, for his transformation, that serve to make his legs even more bendable. The only things he’s lacking are a waist joint, and swivelling wrists, both of which aren’t really standard at this size, and I only miss because of how extra-expressive the rest of the articulation is. Probably most importantly for his character, he can cross his arms pretty well, something a lot of Transformers can’t do.
Rattrap’s lone accessory is a grey gun, sculpted to resemble the one he used on the show, though the sculpt is broken up by tabs on either side of it for storage. He can hold his pistol just fine, and I can forgive those tabs, because they let him stash his gun on his back, mimicking the trick used on the show where he’d reach behind him to draw his weapon out of thin air.
If he was missing anything, I’d say that I wished he had his flip-open, bomb-stashing arm panels that he used on the show (and that the otherwise-not-great Thrilling 30 toy had), but, again, this guy’s small and inexpensive.
He’s also a lot-better looking.
The other curious omission on him is that he doesn’t have any of the War for Cybertron weapons-mounting ports that are usually a part of this line, with his hands also being too small to interact with those accessories. It reads like their priority was just on making a Good Rattrap, no matter whether he kept the toyline’s main gimmick, which, y’know, fair.
It turns out his gun works well with War for Cybertron blast effect, though.
Transformation
On one hand, this is an extremely involved transformation for a figure this size, especially compared to the one-step spring-loaded original, but on the other hand, it’s not a frustrating experience, like the Thrilling 30 one. It’s just got a lot of steps to it, even though, broadly, you’re following the classic scheme of flipping up the beast head (on a surprisingly ratchety joint), closing the sides of the backpack to make his body, and cramming the robot bits in the middle.
Something that I really appreciate about this transformation scheme is that there’s a lot of tabs that go into specific holes, and they seem like they’re there less for stability, and more to reassure you that everything’s being positioned in the right place. One thing that did confuse me at first is the big joint his backpack’s attached to, and moves downward on. You think the backpack goes all the way back and down and sits flush against his back in its lower position, but it doesn’t, you position it up and out slightly, and build the rat from there. Here’s a photo to show what I mean:
Beast Mode
Once again, Rattrap’s incredibly tiny in this form, to the point where my rat-loving partner called him “Mousetrap” instead, since he’s more the size of one of those, than a rat. He’s pretty cute, though, and in terms of his sculpt, is following Kingdom’s trend of going for a semi-realistic animal mode, instead of imitating the old Mainframe design.
From what I’ve heard, this is a typical day of New York traffic.
So, a lot of those early 1996 Beast Wars toys commonly had two issues with their alternate modes: The animals they changed into were marred by tons of seams and screw holes running across their skin, and their robot parts were clearly visible from the bottom. And, well, in 2021, they still haven’t solved those issues, because Rattrap still has both of those things in spaces, including visible robot fists in a place that….makes sense for a male rat.
It’s not a pretty sight.
To be honest, there was no way around it, especially since even those ludicrously-expensive Masterpiece figures can’t even pull clean altmodes off, so it’s to be expected.
He’s also much less terrifying than the Thrilling 30 one.
Where there aren’t seams or robot parts, though, Rattrap’s got nicely-molded fur, and is mostly grey, with some pink bits on his feet, ears and nose, and nicely-painted eyes, with pupils. I sounded really down on it above, but honestly, this mode’s still endearing!
Endearing, but panel-y.
Articulation is basically nil, something also common in Beast Wars figures of this scale. You can rotate his rear feet, and technically move his rear legs, but it’s pretty obvious via the tabs they expose that they’re not meant to come undone. You can sort of arrange him into his “standing up” pose like he’d assume on his show from time to time, though it involves undoing a lot of panels, exposes tons more robot stuff, and his unarticulated front arms only work if you assume he’s going “Whoa, whoa, hold on!”
“I didn’t know you were Chopperface’s cousin. I take it back, I take it back!”
Outside of that, for features, his robot mode gun can peg into either of his back legs, for storage, or for an attack mode, and I find myself wishing it still split and stashed inside his beast shell, like on the original.
One rat infestation you REALLY don’t want.
Overall
A menagerie of beasts, from a menagerie of toylines.
It’s funny, reading this back, because I keep listing flaws this version of Rattrap has. He’s got a lot of tiny ones, and on paper, I’m not sure he’s actually better than the original Beast Wars figure, with its snappy autotransform, integrated weapon storage, and so forth. What this guy’s got going on is that he’s marginally more accurate to his TV show appearance (though the original actually wasn’t too bad with that), marginally more poseable, but most importantly, way more available to the average consumer.
The rest of this group are all due for Kingdom updates, but they still look nice as a groupshot.
That sounds like I’m damning him with faint praise, but honestly, he’s well-made, and he’s got a personality and charm to him that overcomes all of these tiny flaws, to make something great. Or maybe I’m a sucker for the character, I don’t know. Either way, this is a good one, and I wholeheartedly recommend him, if you can find him.
Bonus Pictures, Because I Overshot This Guy
There’s no way this is going to end well.
See?
Rattrap’s most notable non-Beast-era role.
Aruto Hiden tells his new robot friend a joke.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks