Transformers Beast Wars Terrorsaur review

Those who were followed by site for much longer may remember a brief time when I reviewed the old Beast Wars figures reissued and exclusive to Walmart. I got Optimus Primal and Megatron for $11 each and Cheetor for $7. I did get Rattrap, Scorponok, and Tigatron as well as non-show character Cybershark for their intended retail price, but that would be it for vintage Beast Wars to reviews...until now, where a trip to Ollie's got me Terrorsaur as well as Wolfang and Iguanus for $9.99 each. We'll start with the character who DID appear in the show and see how the pseudo-Beast Era Starscream holds up.

Here we have Terrorsaur in his Pteranodon mode which has the honorary jetformers traits of having all of the robot mode kibble under the beast mode. From the top, the illusion works apart from the black hinge breaking up the sculpt and the green spotty pattern, though you'll still see the feet peering through. The aforementioned spots as well as the lack of yellow on the beak stem from this being inaccurate to the cartoon, but this toy was made either before said cartoon was in production, a trend Hasbro used to do until we got things like the movies or shows like Animated and Prime, whose concept art predate any merchandise 

For a comparison with his Kingdom counterpart, I was originally going to show the Legacy version of Terrorsaur, but he was in storage while the Golden Disk version was on a shelf I could access. Admittedly, I feel like neither figure could do a convincing beast mode, with the original toy being so plain and the more recent version having a bulky body and overly segmented wings. With how thin the average Pteranodon is compared to the Kingdom version, perhaps a possible Masterpiece version could do better? MetaGate certainly did their stab at one since Takara is slow AF with completing the Season 1 cast (we got Rhinox and Rattrap 4 YEARS after Tigatron was released in 2020!).

For a beast mode size comparison, Terrorsaur is much smaller than both Ultra Class Megatron and Mega Class Scorponok. Being a Basic Class makes him almost the size of a baby Pteranodon!

Transformation is really simple: pull the head back and the legs shift down while the beast rump becomes the robot chest. The resulting robot mode is decently close to the cartoon apart from the wide wingspan, but that is a compromise from the toy having been made around a gimmick. This normally isn't a bad thing but many early Beast Wars Basics didn't always get as much engineering as they would later receive in subsequent waves, like Airazor and Quickstrike. For his articulation, the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees are on ball joints while the ankles are on hinges. His gun can be taken out of the gap behind his head, but the hinge the barrel is connected to seems to be much looser than it should be.

As far as reuses are concerned, this is the Takara version utilizing more accurate colors thanks to the cartoon airing a year later in Japan, allowing the toys to better match the character models than the Hasbro/Kenner versions. The head is now red, all black plastic is now dark gray, and the purple on the hands and shins are now gunmetal gray. Instead of green spots on the back, Terrorsaur now has a yellow beak.

This is Lazorbeak, a character who may or may not be associated with the Generation 1 cassette partner of Soundwave. The prominence of purple instead with red accents is a striking contrast to the original Terrorsaur. He has a retooled section on a wing where an Energon chip is located, (basically the Beast Era version of the G1 rubsign), and the Takara version is basically the same but with solver applied on the wings.

Up next, we have Fractyl. This is a BotCon repaint from early on in the fan convention's life, opting to make a more believable color scheme for the beast mode rather than look toyetic. He was included in a 2-pack with Packrat, a redeco of Rattrap. 

And this is Terranotron. He was part of the Dinobots subline that basically consisted of Beast Era dinosaur repaints, with him and Grimlock both being repaints of US-original characters while the other figures were reused from the Neo line. He kind of looks like road pavement in beast mode.

After the Dinobots subline but before the 2021 Beast Wars reissues, we got an unexpected version of Strafe from the Age of Extinction line. Remember when Hasbro would find any random dino mold lying around? Amazed they didn't use the Beast Wars Dinobot mold since it could vaguely be T-Rexesque. He came in a 2-pack with a Cyberverse Legion Class Bumblebee repaint that loosely resembled his appearance in the movie. This is amusingly the only Strafe toy to have a single head, which I'm mentioning since the usual suspects bitched and moaned about the flying Dinobot member not named Swoop having an extra head.

For a comparison with his newer counterpart, here he is next to his Kingdom counterpart, whose backpack is making me realize that Hasbro could have folded the wings up to make the backpack a bit more compact than it currently is. As it stands, the vintage figure is alright for what it has to offer, but you should definitely buy it at the Ollie's price if there is one in your area. They'll take over any empty store should they start expanding, and I reckon it'll be easier to find plenty of copies there compared to Walmart stores. And hey, love them or hate them, those World Class Bullshitters dudes at least had a purpose in convincing me to go to the one Ollie's near me and buy some missing Beast Wars figures. 

That being said, whose idea was it to only release three of the main 5-7 Predacons from the show?! I'm fine for getting non-cartoon characters, but where the hell are Tarantulas, Blackarachnia, Inferno, and even fucking Waspinator?!

Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐