Bot Reviews: Transformers: Golden Disc Collection Voyager Mutant Tigatron

I have a bad habit sometimes, and that bad habit is that when I find a Transformer tooling that I particularly like, I’ll get random redecos of it without much thought. Case and point: Kingdom Tigatron, who I can definitely say is one of the best releases in the Kingdom line, and who’d  receive this very odd repaint and retooling in Amazon’s exclusive Golden Disc Collection, almost simultaneously with his retail release.

The Golden Disc Collection is yet another repository for random repaints that couldn’t fit in the mainline, like Generations Selects and Galactic Odyssey, with the difference this time being that there’s actual story to it, a short prose story told in the product copy, which the Transformers Wiki has helpfully copied down right here. In short, this version of Tigatron comes from an alternate timeline, where the Quantum Surge (the thing that created the Transmetals in Beast Wars) mutated him into a savage, aggressive warrior, with no memories of his previous identity, and who then gets manipulated by Terrorsaur into fighting a team of time-lost Autobots, also dragged there by the Surge.

As a figure itself, though, it’s a homage to a couple different things. Firstly, its colors are based on the initial prototypes of the original Beast Wars Tigatron figure, pictured above, which was going to deco him as a standard orange tiger, as seen in several catalog images and convention samples, before HasTak opted to go with a white tiger instead. Secondly, his new head is based on a gimmick all but the smallest first-year Beast Wars toys had, where they actually had two robot-mode heads, “robot” and “mutant,” and could swap between them, something the television show ignored. When it came time to paint the original figure’s packaging art, Tigatron was depicted with his Mutant Head instead of his Robot Head, though the show decided to go with his robot head instead. So, this release is a weird alternate-universe bad guy version of Tigatron, who’s also a homage to his prototype colors, and a head-swapping gimmick the show ignored. Got all that? Either way, since I already reviewed the excellent Kingdom original (right here), this’ll be a story about what’s different.

Robot Mode

Well, the big thing is that he’s very, very orange now, instead of white. And it’s an extremely deep orange, like those not-actually-orange-juice drinks you’d see at kid’s sports games. It’s almost Generation 2-ish in its gaudy vibrance, which, naturally, immediately appeals to me, and it’s very striking in person.

At first glance, this seems like just a simple palette-swap of the original, to the point where the stripes across his body are in the exact same pattern, but when you look closer, there’s a bunch of small changes. Firstly, they’ve also swapped the green out, changing the original’s lighter, minty green for a slightly darker, more forest-ish green that contrasts with the orange better. He’s also had some of the deco on his lower legs changed to an off-white, with some deco actually added to his thighs, plus more color on his tiger-mode head, which I’ll get to, further down. It all looks very nice, though honestly, I wish the deco was a bit more specifically toy-accurate, since the original color layout was a bit different.

Of course, his other big, obvious change is his new head sculpt, based on that strange-looking mutant mask the original figure had. To be honest, I was never quite sure what the original was supposed to be. It’s sort of shaped like a tiger, but it looks more like a beaked bird creature, or some kind of snapping reptile, especially with its smooth skin. I also assumed on the original figure (I had Cheetor) that it was supposed to face forward, but this new sculpt interprets it as facing downwards, presumably to make it fit in altmode.

It’s a weird head, and it’s replicated in high definition here, complete with rows of teeth along the bottom, and reptile-looking slits around his blank, gold eyes. It almost looks more like a mask, than a new head. Most amusingly, there’s a pair of orange “mandibles” at the bottom, and a small orange crest uptop, which are sculpted references to the horns and chin of the other head, flipped upside-down in the face-swap of the original.

I’d almost say the new head clashes with the rest of him, given how he’s otherwise a normally-proportioned robot man, but it might just be jarring for me to see a show-accurate body with such a non-accurate head.

That’s a lot to say about a head, but there’s not much to say about the rest of the figure, which is still just as solidly-built as the vanilla-flavored release. It’s poseable, stable, and fun to pick up and mess around with. It’s also got the same gun and tail-whip, with the only change being swapping the white for orange.

Part of me wishes they’d found a way to get his gun to be more yellow, though, so Kingdom Cheetor can use it, but as it stands, it clashes just a little too much to work.

Tiger Mode

There’s nothing much to say about the transformation, since it’s the same, aside from noting again that it’s fluid, intuitive, and just feels good to do, and still changes him into a tiger. Vanilla Tigatron changed into an extremely tiger-y tiger, and turning him orange makes him even more tiger-y. This version really has museum gift shop quality to burn, and the straight-up-tiger-ness of it just amuses me.

Again, most of the stripes on his body are the same, this is largely a palette-swap into orange, with a few adjustments.

On one hand, he still has a bit of conspicuous green at the back of his neck, wrecking the unbroken tiger skin. On the other hand, the white deco on his robot legs blends into the back of his tiger legs a lot better than the original deco.

Speaking of that deco, he’s missing stripes on his chest, and doesn’t have the faint yellowing on parts of his fur the original had, but that’s the apparent price of a bonus: Instead, he has extra white deco around his face, and on his stomach. And his mouth isn’t uncolored now, but comes with white teeth.

Aside from that, he’s still nice and poseable, and still expressive, though has the odd, perma-bent-down  tail and lack of gun storage.

Overall

Here’s the deal: This is still an excellent figure, just like the regular version. I like the orange deco, it’s striking, and the new head is interestingly weird. And him being a Strangely Realistic Standard Tiger is neat. But, all that being said, I don’t know if I can honestly recommend him, at least not the same way as the Kingdom deco, which I can definitely say is a must-own. A part of it is just the facts of his distribution, since he’s only available on Amazon.com, so there’s shipping and exchange, especially if you’re Canadian, and it’s a limited release, on top of that. Keeping all that in mind, I can’t say the whole significantly nicer than the original, considering the extra price tag and hoops to jump through.

I think I can sum it up this way: If you don’t have any version of this figure, you should probably just track down the original. And if you have the original, I don’t really think it’s worth the effort to get a second copy of the mold. I sound so lukewarm, but it’s still a really great figure, just kind of superfluous, outside of the “unreleased deco” angle, to me. If you really don’t like white tigers, and/or really like this orange deco, though, you’ll have a blast.

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