Generations Selects Tentakil

Prelude: He is the Seacon with the scariest grin, the Seacon with the most arms, and the Seacon with the slimmest hips: Tentakil. He is also the final Seacon to be reviewed on Transformers Universe, so once we get him (her?) done, we can take on King Poseidon. So here is Tentakil, the robo-squid, the lipstick monster. Let’s say go!

Robot Mode: Unlike the rest of the Seacons, Tentakil is not a remold of a Power of the Primes Terrorcon, but rather a new mold… mostly. He actually reuses some engineering from Power of the Primes Moonracer, such as the crotch, the back half of the torso and the combiner connector piece. Not sure that qualifies as a retool, they are at best 30% the same figure, no more. It does serve to make Tentakil the slimmest of the Seacons, giving him an almost feminine appearance (fitting, seeing as his upcoming BW2 repaint Scylla was a female character in the cartoon).

Tentakil is a lean, very nicely articulated robot in salmon-red, blue, and light pink (mostly the kibble). He’s got a golden face and it’s pretty hard to tell what he transforms into. There is quite a bit of kibble, but it doesn’t really hinder him any. He can move very nicely and pull off all sorts of poses without problems. He strongly resembles his predecessor G1 Tentakil, so no complaints here.

Weapon-wise he carries two blue blasters and a strangely-shaped sword (once again a part of King Poseidon’s larger trident-sword). The blasters look good, though the sword doesn’t really work that well by itself. So bottom line for the robot mode: pretty good, though not outstanding in any particular way.

Alternate Mode: Tentakil transforms into a ten-armed robotic squid. Of those ten arms, six are basically just ornamental, two are the robot mode arms, and the final two are short stubby legs. The proportions of the beast mode are actually more or less realistic, but the face of the squid basically blows all attempts at realism to smithereens. It’s a nightmare face, its toothy grin surrounded by the lipstick of doom, and it will do irreparable damage to your soul to gaze at it for too long a time. Apart from that, you can’t really do that much with the squid. The laser guns can be mounted on the sides of its huge head, the combiner fist can go on the back, and that’s pretty much it. Do your best to forget about this mode, lest it haunts your dreams.

Naturally Tentakil has a weapon mode as well, once again it’s basically the leg mode with the combined blasters plugged in instead of the combiner foot. Not a great weapon mode, but it works.

Combiner Mode: Like all the Deluxe-class Seacons, Tentakil can become an arm, a leg, or a weapon for King Poseidon (or any other Combiner Wars style combiner, of course). We will take a closer look at King Poseidon soon, now that I’ve finished all the individual Seacon reviews.

Remarks: Copy and paste once again: all Seacons except Turtler were mindless drones, appeared in large swarms, only to be destroyed over and over again by the good guys. Tentakil was actually the first of the Seacons to appear on screen, as a pair of Tentakils attacking a Japanese city was the plot of Masterforce’s pilot episode. The most interesting thing about Tentakil, though, is that his Beast Wars 2 counterpart Scylla ended up being a female.

The only reason that Tentakil isn’t my least-favorite Seacon is the existence of Turtler. That isn’t to say that Tentakil is a bad figure. The robot mode is good, if not spectacular. And the beast mode... well, it’s unusual, at the very least. Not a big fan of it, though. So bottom line for me: Tentakil completes the Seacon team, but if you are among those who are fully satisfied with just getting five of them to complete the combiner (never mind that you’ll be missing part of the big sword), Tentakil would be the one to leave aside.

Rating: C+