Bot Reviews: Transformers: Golden Disc Collection Deluxe Terrorsaur

I might be done with Kingdom’s Beast Wars updates, but one more slipped under the wire as an exclusive add-on: Terrorsaur. This is the guy everyone wants from the Golden Disc Collection, the Amazon exclusive Kingdom sub-line that’s mostly random repaints, since he’s a core cast member of the Beast Wars TV show, at least in its first season.

As a character, Terrorsaur was literally Starscream, again. He’s a red flying villain with a screechy voice who is always trying to take over the Predacons, and gain personal power. Bob Forward and Larry DiTililo claimed to know nothing about Transformers going into Beast Wars, so it’s odd that they’d create this exact archetype again. Regardless, the show did start to run into the problem that the Starscream Shtick was harder to justify when you’re not trying to take over an army, but instead trying to become the leader of about five to seven people stranded on a planet, taking on another five to seven people (meaning deposing that leader leaves you down a guy), so Terrorsaur’s schemes to seize command always felt a bit shortsighted. Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t really the brightest bulb when it came to any kind of long-term planning. Really, he was a goon with ambitions, and before the first season was out, had mostly given these plans up after a couple failed takeover attempts. That’s probably why he exited the show at the start of the second season, though he was kind of missed, unlike fellow departed baddie Scorponok (reviewed here).

Terrorsaur’s original figure was a Basic-sized release, with a spring-loaded transformation. The show model would wind up being quite different from this figure, ignoring his big back-mounted wings, his colors, and his general design cues. Terrorsaur hasn’t really gotten any updates since, outside of a BotCon figure of him as a Cybertronian jet (and a toyline-only Transmetal re-design). As for this current Golden Disc Collection release, it’s an extensive retooling of Kingdom Airazor (reviewed here), of all things, but is new enough that I’ve got a fair amount to say. For one thing, he’s packaged in Beast Mode.

Pterodactyl Mode

Beast Wars wasn’t known for its paleontological accuracy. Kingdom’s more about accurate animals, but with Megatron and Dinobot, still went for scaly Jurassic Park designs. Terrorsaur’s a step further away from accuracy, and a step towards animation accuracy, as some kind of strange featherless bird.

As far as retolling goes, this is a heavy one, and Terrorsaur shares very few parts with Airazor. Crucially, all the Dino Bits are new.

Terrorsaur’s a little bit awkward looking thanks to all of his underkibble, which is clearly a folded up, crouching humanoid body, with arms pressed against his sides. Airazor was like this, too, but something about her sculpt and deco choices made it blend better. You can still pose him in ways that de-emphasizes his undercarriage, at least. The biggest eyesore is definitely a massive fake bird back-end on his chest, to match the real one on his back.

On the other side of things, Terrorsaur’s got some nicely-detailed bird bits. The wings are a bit janky, though, with a lot of obvious articulation breaks, something Airazor hid better.

The star of the show is his headsculpt, though. He’s one ugly creature. He’s show-accurate, and crazily expressive, with a beak, teeth, tongue, and molded-in eyes. He’s got a cruel expression, which suits him.

His head got the lion’s share of the deco, too, with a yellow beak, white teeth, and fully painted green eyes, with pupils. Outside of that, he’s mostly a bright, primary red. He’s got some dark spots on his back, and a bunch of silver on his robot bits he really hopes we don’t look at. It’s a bit of a plain deco, but it’s a good shade of red, at least

Terrorsaur can be tough to balance on his legs and feet at times, being a bit front-heavy, but you can make it work in a few different ways. His wings don’t feel great to pose, though, unlike Airazor. The outermost chunks of them can come off of his mushroom pegs if you’re not careful (though they don’t fall off unprompted or anything, like I’ve heard reports of from some owners.)

Meanwhile, the sticky-out bits on the middle pieces of his wings collide with the innermost pieces, making them not as bendable as I’d like.

One of the high points of Airazor was how flexible her wings were, so it’s a bit disappointing to see these ones not pose or handle quite as well. There’s still a lot of joints in them, and you can get some good poses, they just don’t hit the highs of the original tooling.

For the rest of his articulation, his head’s nice and bendy, raises lowers and turns, and his jaw opens. His feet are on ball joints, and you can do a few things with the joints in his legs (including mid-shin joints for bird mode specifically). He even has a conveniently-located peghole for figure stands, to help him fly, the same as Airazor.

He’s got no other features, in this form, but you can stash his gun on the side of his folded up robot thigh, though it’s really noticeable, and hardly hidden.

He’s also got War for Cybertron pegs on his lower legs and feet, though they’re not of much use in this form.

Transformation

This is mostly Airazor’s transformation again, except the bird-mode head goes into his backpack instead of in his chest. Basically, you’re standing him up, swapping heads, and compressing his wings. This means that there’s some funny mid-transformation Bird Person modes you can make.

Getting his torso compressed is a bit tricky, but outside of that, it’s a nice, easy transformation, really.

Robot Mode

Here’s the thing: On the TV show, Terrorsaur had something of an impossible transformation. The entirety of his wings folded and compressed into a small, rectangular backpack with his beast head on top of it (I used to freeze frame my VHS tapes, I can confirm). Little winglets would sprout on his shoulders after that.

I’d like to see even a Masterpiece do that kind of transformation. It would literally need to make his wings out of rubber or fabric, or something.

So this guy was always going to be less show-accurate than most of the Kingdom line, in that he’s got wings on his back, like the original toy. If they really wanted, they could have done like Earthrise Arcee (reviewed here), maybe, and just popped his wings off. Heck, you could turn them into a Green-Goblin-Glider, like Arcee’s funky hoverboard thing.

But, okay, he is what he is, and as an Airazor retool, he’s less accurate than most, but still manages to look cool, at least. This is, again, almost an entirely new figure. He keeps Airazor’s lower legs, but not feet, the forearms, and a bunch of internal parts, and everything else is new.

And let me tell you, the vibes are impeccable. It’s probably because of how smug that headsculpt is. It’s a great expression on a great face.

It blends with his retooled-from-a-lady form to give him excellent vibes. It’s enough to make you not notice the inevitable retool jank, like how his pelvis is oddly far forward on his torso, something that wasn’t a problem on Airazir due to her bird-head-chest sticking out more.

If you actually compare him to a screenshot of the show, you’ll notice that Terrorsaur actually has a lot of little sculpted details from his Mainframe CGI model on him, but they kind of vanish when he’s missing big things like his shoulder winglets. Plus the paint isn’t really laid out like his CGI model very much, obscuring those details even more.

That being said, what he *does* look like is good. He’s almost entirely red and silver now, save for some spots on his chest (and a white face and yellow eyes), and it’s a good combination. I like the trick of giving him forearm-winglets via accessories that peg in, and are meant to stay there permanently. His backpack’s a bit messy, but I like the silhouette it gives him, and you can flare out the wings for a more toy-style look.

The good news is that he has no structural retool jank, he feels as good as Airazor did, and can even stand on one foot, despite his ankles being balljointed. And he’s got lots of joints, including bonuses like ankles, mid-shin bends, and wrists that don’t swivel, but do a neat little tilting move thanks to his transformation. It fits his expression and demeanor well, and it’s easy to make him look haughty.

Terrorsaur has his gun as an accessory, first of all. It’s sculpted nicely, though the red tip is a bit odd. It can stash on his thigh, a detail I particularly like. On the show, characters would sometimes stow their guns that way. I don’t recall if he did it, but it’s a nice feature.

Meanwhile, those winglets on his arms can come out, and you can actually fit them into his hands to make a slashing weapon, or boomerang.

On top of that, he has weapon ports in his forearms, feet, and backs of his legs.

Part of me wishes they’d found a way to put some ports on his shoulders, so that he could replicate his shoulder-cannons he’d sometimes deploy on the show, though.

Lastly, he comes with the item that gave the collection its name, the titular Golden Disc. It’s big, round, painted a nice shade of gold, but is also unlike either one of the two Discs that appeared on the show.

See, there were two Golden Discs on Beast Wars. One was the “Sounds of Earth” record from the Voyager space probes, with its name on one side, and abstract star charts on the other. The second disc was created by the mysterious aliens watching the planet, and had a set of cryptic symbols repeated on both side. This disc has the Sounds of Earth name and record grooves on one side, but the Alien Disc symbols on the other. I’m really not sure if this was deliberate, or some kind of error (the box does specifically show the Alien symbols), but, honestly, it’s kind of disappointing.

You can get figures to hold it one way or the other, and pretend it’s got the right graphics on the other side, but not having it actually be either one of the discs is still something of a letdown to me.

As of right now, the only way to get the “correct” versions is to buy the Ark, and a Titan-Class Transformer isn’t really in my budget.

Overall

This is an odd one. See, Terrorsaur’s objectively a downgrade from the figure he’s retooled from, and comes with a lot of newly-introduced problems, like his messy wings, and his general aesthetic issues. But it can’t downgrade what was, at its core, one of the best figures in the Kingdom line, and a lot of the good points of Airazor still shine through.

On top of that, both headsculpts do a lot of heavy lifting, and give him a charm that I just enjoy. So, while he’s not bad at all, he has problems, and falls very short of what he could have been. And on top of that, they messed up the Golden Disc!

This is complicated by the fact that he’s an online exclusive, and therefore hard to get and track down, especially if you miss the boat on him and have to hit the aftermarket, since he’s a core member of the cast, and completists like me will be after him. So, I’ll say this: If you have a shot at him for a fair, retail-adjacent price, I’d say he’s worth it, but if you’re not trying to complete the show cast, just get Airazor instead, and don’t lose sleep over missing this one. There’s a fairly reliable rumor floating about that he’s going to get a toy-colors redeco in Buzzworthy Bumblebee, and if that’s true, that would probably be a better package, between the standard retail pricing, the more-interesting colors, and the general easier availability. He probably won’t have a Disc on him anymore, but at least he won’t have a wrong Disc, either.