Generations Selects Antagony

Prelude: A quarter century ago Beast Wars was all the rage and the annual Botcon convention had several exclusive Beast Wars figures on offer. One of them was Antagony, a black repaint of Beast Wars Inferno, and a major player in the accompanying comic / text storyline “Reaching the Omega Point”. In 2023, with a new Inferno figure having recently been released in the Legacy line, Generations Selects repainted it black and brought us only the second-ever Antagony figure. Is Shokaract’s Herald Maximo ready to conquer the universe in her dark master’s name? Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Generations Selects Antagony is a repaint of Legacy Inferno, whom I have reviewed just a few months ago. So, this review here will focus mainly on the differences between the two figures. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first, Antagony is mostly black. Almost completely black, to be precise, as she has less color variation than Inferno. Pretty much the only spot of color on her (apart from her back markins) is the head, which is a purple repaint of Inferno’s noggin. She carries the same weapon as Inferno, too, just with translucent purple parts instead of red ones. And yeah, that’s pretty much it in terms of differences.

But hold on, there is one more thing: Antagony comes with a second head. The original figure just had a repaint of Beast Wars Inferno’s cranium, not looking at all like the head Antagony sported in the Botcon comics (see final pic in the gallery), so we are one up on the old exclusive. The new head… does not resemble Antagony as she was pictured in the Botcon comics, either. Uh, what? Yep, the new head instead resembles someone else, namely Beast Wars Scavenger, also known as Transmetal Inferno. Why? Uh, drawing a blank here, sorry.

Personally I prefer Antagony with the Scavenger head, if for no other reason than it makes the figure look quite different than Inferno. It also carries ample amounts of purple color so as to fit into Antagony’s paint scheme (such as it is) and if you open up Antagony’s chest plate, the interior even resembles the chest of the original Scavenger figure, too. Again, not sure why, but it’s a nicely done homage.

So bottom line for the robot mode: it looks great in black. In direct comparison and leaving aside my love for the Inferno character, I’d have to say that Antagony works the mold better than Inferno does, with either head.

Alternate Mode: For this mode I could simply copy & paste from my review of Legacy Inferno, because the only difference between that ant and this one here is the color. Antagony is mostly black in this mode as well, of course, with purple markings on her back and purple eyes, too. Personally I think she looks a bit better in this mode than Inferno (those baby blue pincers of his are dragging him down), but that is purely subjective, of course. So, same ant, same lack of a storage space for the gun, but looking great in black.

Remarks: The original Botcon convention, produced by 3H Productions, had its heyday during the Beast Wars era and a lot of Beast Wars figure were repainted as convention exclusives. Among them was Antagony, a repaint of Beast Wars Inferno, and to this day she is one of the most expensive Botcon figures to be found on the aftermarket. Antagony was Herald Maximo of Shokaract, a warlord, empowered by the life force of Unicron, who had conquered the universe at some point in the future. To protect his own past, he sent his heralds to ancient Earth. Antagony was the first to arrive, though she had a rather poor showing against Optimus Primal and Megatron. Failing in her mission, she was briefly resurrected when Shokaract himself arrived in the past, but was wiped from existence along with her master when the life force of Unicron was destroyed before the younger Shokaract could ever find it. Time travel stories, gotta love them.

Most of the times when reviewing a repaint of another figure I deduct some points for being “only” a repaint. In this case, though, I have decided to refrain from that. Antagony looks great, the second head is a weird but welcome bonus, and I almost added a nostalgia bonus simply for my joy at finally owning (a version of) Botcon Antagony after 25 years. So bottom line: if you like the Legacy Inferno figure, you will like this one here as well. And it does look very, very good in black.