Beast Wars Rattrap (Walmart Transmetal)

Prelude: This blue-tinted Rattrap here is a repaint of Transmetal Rattrap, whom I’ve reviewed previously. It’s been nearly seven years, though, so I think we can give this mold another go.

Robot Mode: The original Rattrap figure was a shell former, basically a robot emerging from inside a beast shell that splits into a pair of half shells on his back. The Transmetal version retains the basic shape of the actual robot, only this time the beast mode is less of a shell and more of a big backpack. So we have a rather thin-looking robot carrying around a big load on his back. Looking at him from the front, the only things from his beast mode visible are the halves of his beast mode head on his shoulders.

Rattrap is nicely articulated and can easily balance his big rucksack in most poses. The head halves on his shoulders hinder the movement of his arms a bit, but not much. As for weapons he has that big whip (really his beast mode tail), which contains no less than ten joints, allowing all sorts of poses with it. Sadly he’s missing the gun he always carried in the series.

The differences to the first Transmetal Rattrap figure aren’t that pronounced in robot mode. He’s got a slightly different shade of grey and green and yellow highlights instead of blue and orange, but that’s it. So bottom line, still a very good robot mode and only slightly different from the standard release.

Alternate Modes: Rattrap transforms into a mechanical-looking rat and here is where the repaint comes into play. Whereas the first TM Rattrap was mostly a reddish brown, this Rattrap here is black and blue with some dark grey. The blue parts are chromed and shiny. The rat’s articulation is very limited, as the feet are very tiny and the head is immobile. Still, that’s more than the original Rattrap toy had. The only thing that can move with the best of them is the tail.

Some words on the tail, because I’ve been asked this several times: the instruction sheet says that Rattrap’s tail is to be plugged into his hand, which is right underneath his romp. This looks terrible. The tail can also be plugged directly into his rear end. Not directly, but rather sideways, as you basically slide the handle of the whip upwards into the indentation there (see the pictures above). It doesn’t hold as firm there as it does in the hand, but it looks about a hundred times better.

Like all Transmetals Rattrap has a third mode (or maybe a two-and-a-half mode) where the beast mode is slightly modified into a vehicle. In his case the rat folds in the legs and flips out wheels and a triple exhaust pipe in order to become a dragster. I have a certain fondness for this mode because of the hilarious scenes in Beast Wars where Dinobot rode around on dragster-mode Rattrap, complaining all the time about being reduced to a rat patrol. Not much more I can write here, it’s nothing more and nothing less than a rat on wheels. Whether you like that or not is, of course, up to you. Me, I love it.

Remarks: Store exclusive releases of various Transformers figures were just coming into vogue around the time of Beast Wars (and didn’t really take off until Robots in Disguise) and Rattrap here was the first store exclusive repaint of the series. He never did appear on the show on these colors, of course, but this figure was later repurposed to be the Transmetal version of Packrat, a Botcon 1997 exclusive repaint of the first Rattrap figure. Transmetal Packrat appeared in the “Transformers Universe: the Wreckers” comic books from 3H Productions, where he sacrificed several of his Wrecker comrades to save his own skin, only to be killed by Cyclonus later on.

Truth to tell I mostly got this figure here because I saw it cheap in an online store. It’s nothing more and nothing less than a repaint, so unless you have a certain fondness for the old 3H Production comics or are a Beast Wars completist (both of those apply to me, I’m afraid) you don’t really need Walmart Rattrap. Still, it’s a good figure, depicting one of the greatest Beast Wars characters of them all (Rattrap, not Packrat), and everyone not completely anti-BW should own at least one version of this Stainless Steel Rat.

Rating: B