Yep the name of this toy is Geckobot. Geckobot. They reuse Jetstorm, Snarl, Quickstrike, Silverbolt, Buzzsaw, Scavenger, but not Skyshadow!?
Beast Mode:
This guy's got a very nice looking beast mode. Dark green contrasted
with translucent pink wings with gold detailing. The head has white
teeth, a gap between jaws but they don't open which is annoying, the
head just turns side-to-side. However the skull opens to reveal the
green spark and this cleverly allows the spark to also form the eyes.
Very poseable, hip/knee/ankle ball-joints in all beast limbs and a
hinge at the base of the tail. The tail is molded going up then
flattening out, 1 or more joints in the length of the tail would have
been nice. Additional gold/pink detailing on the center of the body,
head and the diamond end of the tail look very nice.
Only negative of beast mode is what is it? The skeletal structure resembles a mammal more so than a reptile. I guess we can just let it go as a winged-lizard, but as far as I can figure this guys is the Jersey Devil.
Gimmicks:
The wings are made up of 4 sections on each side, the rear 2 are fused
together. When these are pulled back the 2 in front of them also move back
but slide slightly and the front 2 scissors forward. It calls it a
slicing action and the front of the wings are molded almost like
blades, but if they cut anything it'll just be his throat. I prefer
just thinking of this as a wing flapping action.
WOW! I really like this guy! This is a **** beast mode!
Too bad there's also a robot mode.
Transformation to Robot Mode:
Straighten legs, turn at knees and ankles. Lift up center body
section, separate and swing to sides. Fold beast head back, turn robot
head to face forward. Swing shoulders up (ala Manterror) and do
something with the arms.....?
Robot Mode:
This mode is dominated by the completely unwieldy disproportional
arms making it very bad, more comments on this in the Transformation
tip section.
As nice as the colors accented each other in beast mode, the robot mode is almost completely deprived all color. Nearly all dark green, the only details seen are on his arms(if positioned to see the colors) pink eyes and a bit of paint on his large forehead. Unfortunately it combines with the thin lines in a radial pattern to make him look like one of the Mexican Wolf boys.
The one redeeming value of his robot mode is the high degree of poseability, the legs have the 3 main ball joints, his head turns on a ball joint, and well his arms have too many segments with ball joints. Again the tail just sticks out back and an additional joint or 2 would be appreciated.
I don't like doing ratings for each mode separately, but since this guy's night and day, it bears pointing out that his beast mode is **** but this robot mode is the big 0. However........
Transformation tip: Alternate Robot Modes (3 of 'em!)
Since it's nearly hopeless adjusting the arms in any convincing manner
given the transformation, I decided to just not do that part of the
transformation. Leave the center/wing section where it is and his
lizard forelimbs are in the correct position for shoulders and are
decent length(1). This does leave the beast head a bit too visible
though so...unplug, separate, and move the wing sections slightly to
the side. This allows the beast head to pivot completely behind the
robot mode and moves the shoulders out for slightly better
proportions, although a bit less stable(2). These 2 slight variations
are SOOOOOOOOO much better. This gives the robot mode the 3 standard
ball joints for arms, with the wrists of special note since they don't
just bend one way(90 degrees) but both(180 degrees) and of course
rotate 360. Now this is actually a good robot mode with all expected
joints except a waist pivot. Add in the options of extra arm joints
and this guy is more poseable than Optimus Minor and actually fun too!
But he maintains the bland coloration problem.
Here's #2 Alternate
Robot Mode(with decent length arms)
Here's #1 in
Zen-Meditation-pose
Another alternate robot mode is to transform it just as the instructions say but then hind the lizard forelimbs underneath the wings and use the wing-blades as his hands/weapons(3). Evidently Hasbro wanted these to be used in robot mode but couldn't figure out a good way, this is decent enough but results in having no real hands.
Overall:
Well he has a very nice beast mode, a poor robot mode, but enough
jointing to make some cool robot modes. All the joints make for some
fun and could also make for good kitbash fodder. While not as well
designed as Quickstrike, Geckobot far exceeds the quality of the other
regular BM Maximals
Overall Rating: *** -- The beast mode is cool, the official robot mode is a blight, but the prolific jointing can helps and makes for some fun.
