Beast Wars Neo Elphorpha

Prelude: Elphorpha, or possibly Elphaorpha, maybe even Elephorca, is the Beast Wars Neo version of Beast Wars Torca, the elephant-whale Fuzor. Unlike his Western counterpart he actually appeared on TV, and he has the strong advantage that he does not suffer from Gold Plastic Syndrome (GPS). What else has he got going for him? We’ll see. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: The Fuzors were an interesting bunch, a lot of hit-or-miss figures, and only two of them actually appeared in the TV show. Torca was not one of them and he was roughly 90% gold plastic, making him very prone to breakage. That pretty much superseded everything else one might say about that figure, since the odds of getting one that was still in one piece were miniscule at best. Thankfully, Elphorpha (or whatever his name is) left out the gold plastic, so we do not have to consider breakage and can focus fully on the figure itself.

Let me get one other thing out of the way: for a robot who is composed of the largest land-based mammal and the largest sea-based mammal respectively, he appears pretty small as Deluxe-class figure. Sure, his tusks make him appear bigger than he really is, but still: Elphorpha should be a Mega-class toy in my book, possibly even an Ultra. Just saying.

Now let’s look at the actual figure. Elphorpha (thank God for copy & paste) is a Beast Wars Deluxe-class figure, so certain things can reasonably be expected: he is very nicely articulated with ball-jointed arms and legs. Sadly he cannot turn his his waist due to his transformation, but that’s a minor thing. The kibble on his wrists and on his shoulders and back hinders his movements a bit, but nothing that can’t be handled.

The sculpting also looks very cool and personally I like his colors better than those of Torca’s, even leaving the GPS aside. The blue just fits better with both parts of his beast mode than gold, in my opinion. Elphorpha has the same large squirt-gun weapon as Torca, naturally, which means he also has the same problem: the gun is so long that he cannot bend his arm when he’s holding it. Not a big thing, just worth a mention.

Overall I like this robot. It has the usual Beast Wars craziness to it and the lack of GPS and cooler colors do their part, too. Not the best Beast Wars robot, but still pretty good.

Alternate Mode: Elphorpha is a Fuzor, meaning his beast mode is a fusion of two different animals, resulting from a damaged DNA scanner. Now leaving aside where in the world a DNA scanner might find a blue whale and an elephant in close proximity to each other, the resulting beast looks pretty cool. It’s mostly an elephant with the whale providing the head and back, including a fin. The four limbs are the same as the robot mode limbs, so still fully poseable, and you can use the squirt gun (which becomes the back) in this mode as well. Moving the fin back and forth causes the big tusks to pinch… a little. Still, a nice gimmick.

Overall a pretty cool beast mode, if you are a fan of the craziness inherit in the Fuzor concept Me, I like it, so the beast mode gets a thumbs up from me.

Remarks: The Blendtrons (or possibly Blentrons or Burentorons) were minions of Unicron. In the Beast Wars Neo TV series, they were tasked with collecting the Angolmois energy capsules, secretly the life force of Unicron, to enable his resurrection. Enormously powerful, they easily defeated even the likes of Magmatron and Big Convoy. In the end, though, after having successfully resurrected their master, they were rewarded by Unicron draining their life force in order to aid in his final battle against Big Convoy.

As a Japanese-exclusive figure, Elphorpha isn’t that easy to find (nor is his name easy to translate), so I was very happy to see that my buddy Flo had the entire Blendtron trio for sale from a lot he had bought. The Blendtrons are probably not everyone’s cup of tea given their obscureness and the fact that they are “only” repaints of Beast Wars figures that were never part of the main BW cast, but me, I like them. And in Elphorpha’s case, he is definitely a better choice than Torca. Recommended to Beast Wars fans and fans of obscure Transformers characters.

Rating: B-