Beast Machines Tankor

Series: Beast Machines
Allegiance: Vehicon
Categories: Mega
Year: 2000

Among the winners, there is no room for the weak.
A giant power-tank Vehicon, Tankor exists only to crush everything under his treads that he doesn't blow up first. Simple-minded, Tankor is unquestionably loyal to Megatron - or so he wants everyone to think. In reality, Tankor hides his intelligence, playing the Vehicons and Megatron off of each other so that he might someday take sole control of Cybertron. He wields a flamethrower in tank mode, while head-mounted energy blasters top off an assortment of heavy weaponry in robot mode. One of Megatron's three generals, Tankor is in charge of the powerful tank drones.

Robot Mode: In robot mode Tankor looks completely bad-ass with his thick clawed forearms and the huge cannon resting on his shoulder. His black-and-red colour scheme adds to the effect. He is also quite posable, allowing for quite a lot of movement. You can also flip back the cannon and have it rest along his back, but he looks cooler with it deployed. Only drawback: He doesn't exactly resemble the Tankor from the Beast Machines cartoon in this mode. Wrong colour, wrong legs, and the head doesn't quite look the same, either.

Vehicle Mode: While the robot mode looks only very little like the cartoon version, the vehicle mode does a good job, only difference being the paint job, black-and-red instead of grey. The tank looks good, too, and has an added gimmick in that you can open up the 'hood' and deploy the chain saws within, which spin when you drive the tank over the ground.

Remarks: Tankor was the only toy from the Beast Machines cartoon that interested me at first. As interesting as all the different characters were, most of the toys didn't turn me on at all. Tankor looks pretty cool, though, and the cartoon character had the added complexity of being a turncoat from the Maximals. Too bad he didn't live to see the finale of the series, but I wanted him as part of my collection either way.

Rating: B-