General Information: Images:
Tech Specs (Translated by Doug Dlin): Profile: A Cybertron warrior with a youthful atmosphere about him. Specializes in rapid-fire attacks and has the skill to wield two guns at Weapon(s): Type 93, Coolant Gun
Back in the days when Beast Wars was primarily focused on creating "realistic" animals that became robots, one oddball toy crept into the line, a Tasmanian Devil named Snarl. Later, Takara would use the same toy (with no changes) for its Beast Wars the Second line as Tazmania Kid. Now the mold has been resurrected again as one of Convoy's warriors in Robotmasters!
Beast Mode: This sculpt has a lot of the classic design elements of early Beast Wars toys. His entire beast mode looks like it was meant to be organic, not techno-organic. Fur patterns are sculpted onto the skin, including raised fur along the middle of the back. Other small details include each digit on the fingers being segmented and lines on the underside of the tail. The color scheme chosen for this toy is a really unusual one. In general, Tasmanian Devils are black with some brown hair. Bound Rogue wound up being mostly blue with light beige and white parts. While this combination looks good, black would have worked too. His teeth are white and the snout is painted white with a black nose. The eyes are orange. One bit of coloring the designers did keep accurate to the real life animal are the ears, which have a nice spray painted red on them. See, when Tasmanian Devils get aggravated, and they bare their teeth like Bound Rogue is doing, blood rushes to their ears, giving them a more fierce appearance. This mirrors that real life action nicely. Bound Rogue has eight points of articulation in this form. This mainly consists of the forearms having three points each. He also has a unique action feature. Grab the tail, press the trigger underneath and the figure launches at his enemies! The pleasant surprise here is that the spring works really well. In the previous versions of this toy, the spring was so weak there were times that the figure didn't even clear the launcher. Transformation to Robot Mode:
Robot Mode: What I find interesting about this sculpt is that even in robot mode, Bound Rogue has a heavy, heavy organic influence in his design. Just take a look at the beige parts on the upper body for instance. While these parts are only seen in robot mode (unless you flip the toy over in beast mode), they look like organic muscle patterns. The same can be said for the legs, which have patterns on them that look like something you'd find on an organic, not a mechanical creature. This includes fur and muscle type patterns criss crossing on the lower legs. Indeed, even his primary weapon looks organic since it was his tail. The robot head design is also very organic looking in texture while the shape is rather Transformer-like. Overall, this toy offers an interesting look favoring the organic.
One small, yet significant change is the lack of an "Energon Chip" (or rather, the Beast Wars term for heat sensitive rub
In this form, Bound Rogue is still mostly dark blue and beige. We get to see the tongue of the beast mode on his chest now, but right above that is an Autobot symbol tampographed onto the chest piece. Personally, I would have loved to see some more paint apps, specifically on the internal bone/vein details. Like all Robotmasters redeco toys so far, Bound Rogue has an extra weapon: a thin, futuristic looking rifle. While the rifle is molded in translucent green plastic, it is mostly covered in vacuum metallized silver. I personally would have preferred the weapon be left as green, but it is still cool to have an extra weapon. In this case, since Bound Rogue's hands are open palmed, he can attach the weapon to the hole on either lower arm. Bound Rogue has thirteen points of articulation, which is pretty good for a basic sized toy. Most of these are ball joints, a type of joint used in abundance during the Beast Wars era.
Final Thoughts:
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