WFC: Kingdom Maximal Grimlock
Welcome back, this week is the beginning of my first ever 2-part review. This means that I will be taking a look at a single set of figures with each one getting its own blog post. This review is also kicking off Kingdom Month (and a half), where each week I will be looking at a different Kingdom figure, in some capacity, and provided they all come on time. Last week I promised we would be “continuing on the dinobot train” and that is exactly what I am going to do. So without further adieu let’s kick this off and look at Kingdom Maximal Grimlock.
This figure comes from the first of 2 Amazon exclusive box sets for Kingdom. They got the name the Battle Across Time Collection, as each one came with a repaint/remold of a Beast Wars Kingdom figure and an earth mode version of a G1 character we got in Siege. This specific set came with Maximal Grimlock and Autobot Mirage and the other set features Maximal Skywarp and Autobot Sideswipe. Grimlock here is a repaint of the Kingdom Dinobot mold with a new head, which makes sense as that is what his original toy was. This figure got a lot of backlash when it was revealed as it has some questionable paint choices. I will detail all of them as I get to each section, but I liked that they tried combining the 2 BW Grimlock decos that got released(The original Beast Wars version and the Dinobots subline version). It is an interesting idea that could have been executed better, but enough talking about this figure's history, let’s get into it and you’ll see what I mean.
As always we look at the head and I would be lying if I said this isn’t one of my favorite head sculpts I have ever seen. Just absolutely stunning. The helmet is cast in this beautiful black plastic, on either side you have these spade shaped panels that have diamond shaped panels on top of them that wave molded vents on them. In the middle is this giant mohawk that goes all the way across the head and even continues down the back a bit. On the front it has this vertical drop off that actually tiers inward slightly as to not fully connect with his angled brow. His face plate is painted in this fantastic shade of grey plus it has his titular chin spike. Interestingly on the original toy his face plate was white and the Dinobots one was red. I find the fact that it is grey here kind of odd but I am not going to let that distract me from how good it looks. To top it all off are the bright green eyes that pierce through both of the dark colors. They are set in more than I might like but they can end up looking pretty dramatic thanks to the head articulation. Speaking of which, the head is on a ball joint and there is nothing around to hinder its movement so you end up with a pretty full range of movement
The torso is a pretty basic block despite his animalistic alt mode. The chest is odd to say the least. So it is supposed to be the Dinosaur head but slightly flattened thanks to Dinobot(the character)’s show model. You can see the top of the actual Dino mode head in the middle but the area around it makes no effort to match it. It is our first instance of “missing” paint as at the very least I think that the fake dino eyes should have been painted green. I am unsure about the rest of the fake head as the original never had this much black it was just spotted, but I think the added black would have looked nice and broken up the primarily white chest. The back isn’t too bad as it is just dino parts that condense down nicely, nothing too special here.
Moving onto the arms, which are the design’s traditional raptor leg arms. There isn’t a lot going on here other than lots of articulation and some very nice texturing, which is present throughout the entire figure. Like I said these arms have tons of articulation; double upward shoulder joints, full shoulder rotation, full bicep swivel, 90 degree elbow, full wrist rotation, back and forth wrist movement and the hands can open up thanks to the hinges on both finger sections. You may have noticed that the shoulders are white but the forearms and hands are grey and this is what I was talking about when I said this toy takes inspiration from both BW Grimlock decos. The original toy had fully white arms but the Dinobots one had the hands all the way up to the biceps grey similarly to this one, albeit this one stops at the elbow.
Now we get to the legs and you can probably already tell they are a kind of a mess, visually at least. All the articulation you would expect for a modern figure is here; ankle tilt both inward and backwards, 90 degree knees, full, but rather tight, thigh swivels, full range of motion in the hips, but the back movement is a bit restricted by the shape of the back of the crotch piece, and a waist rotation but it is off center so going too far in either direction makes it look wonky. Now onto the visuals of the legs and this vertical white and bronze split really isn’t working. I get the idea cause anything in white is visible in dino mode so they wanted it to match with the rest. The least they could have done is painted or molded the other halves in white so they match.
As for accessories, the raptor tail opens up and becomes two. You get this sword which can plug into either hand but because of how it is designed it can’t be used by other figures. The rest of the tail can also be plugged into either hand as a sort of rotating shield. I don’t really get it but it looks kinda cool and it can rotate thanks to the full wrist rotation. You can combine both accessories together to get this large wrist sword/lance/bow and arrow thing. Again looks cool but that is about it. The tail weapon can be stored on his back and obviously the sword can be stored inside the tail.
Transformation is kinda interesting but at the same time, nothing special. It is cool how the entire back of the dino unfolds from the torso, but it is so simplistically designed that after the first time it becomes boring. As for the Velociraptor mode itself it looks cool but that is about it. The colors are a neat combo especially for a raptor, and you can really tell they took this design from the Dinobots version. The original Beast Wars Grimlock was just white with black spots so it makes sense to liven up the design a bit more, I do wish there were more spots throughout the whole dino mode though. There are a few spots on the neck and they stop right before the thighs but I do think they could have gone further with them. He doesn’t have anything in the way of features and his articulation in this mode is limited. His head can look down, his jaw can open, the shoulders are on universal joints, the elbows go about 90 degrees and the hands are on ball joints but are molded in this downward position. The knees can bend forward a bit and the feet have all the same articulation as the robot hands, since that is what they are.
I think that is pretty much it for Kingdom Grimlock, he is oddly boring as a figure and tries to make up for it with looks but doesn’t quite go hard enough to pull it off, 6/10. I am still not quite sure what to do with this guy, but I am thinking I might keep him and make him my first big custom project to see if I can make him reach his full potential. As always gallery for this guy is up and next week I am obviously going to be looking at the second part of this set, Kingdom Mirage, but I still have a couple surprises in store, so see you all then.
