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Series: Studio Series 86
Year: 2021
Allegiance: Autobot
Class: Leader
Prelude: Me, Grimlock, something, something, bad ass! Munch metal! No bozo, me King! Come on, you know the drill! For the longest time the leader of the Dinobot has mostly been restricted to relatively small size classes, despite usually being depicted as one of the biggest non-combining, non-Titan Transformers in fiction. In the Studio Series 86, however, he finally achieves Leadership. Or rather, Leader Class. Sorry, after writing so many different Grimlock reviews over the years, it’s hard to come up with new material. So, Studio Series 86 Grimlock, let’s say go!
Many thanks to Jörg “the Carpenter” Zimmermann for loaning me Grimlock here for this review. He has outfitted this figure with several 3rd party pieces and Toyhax stickers, so don’t be surprised if it looks a bit different than the stock images.
Robot Mode: Just to put this review into proper perspective: I had this figure here in hand roughly 18 months ago when I took the pictures and I wrote down some bullet points for the eventual review. Which I am writing now, with the figure no longer in my hands. So just in case I forget something important or get some detail wrong, I hope you’ll forgive me.
My first thought when I had Grimlock in hand was, man, this is basically Masterpiece Grimlock. Both in terms of size and design, this Leader Class figure bears a very, very strong resemblance to the Masterpiece figure from 2009. Of course some things have been changed to accommodate the lower price class. Grimlock has open feet and forearms (filled up with 3rd party filler pieces on this particular figure in the pictures), he sports no metal parts, and one of his weapons is missing, too. Grimlock only comes with his trademark rifle. The sword he carries in some of the pictures is, again, a 3rd party piece.
Apart from these changes, though, what you have here is basically a Masterpiece light. Grimlock is big, chunky, very nicely articulated, and almost perfectly captures the look of the G1 character. Very nice. Not really sure what else I can write here that the pictures cannot tell better. A great Grimlock robot. Now if they had just given him a sword instead of that ugly piece of orange (see below).
Alternate Mode: No surprises here, Grimlock still transforms into a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex and here, too, the resemblance to the Masterpiece figure is quite strong. Again, there are a few changes, such as SS86 Grimlock not having an articulated tail and the articulation of the tiny little T-Rex arms has only decreased, as there are no individual fingers. Also, and this is something that has upset quite a few people, Grimlock’s T-Rex jaw is missing its front teeth. The figure in the pictures has been outfitted with a 3rd party filler piece to rectify that (see 13th picture), which is a strange sentence to write, really. A 3rd party company has made dentures for a robotic T-Rex. We are living in interesting times.
Apart from that we have a very nice robot T-Rex here. Grimlock can adopt several poses with no problems, open his jaw, move his arms, everything you’d expect here. The rifle he comes with can be stored on the back, but that looks a bit weird. Better to leave it aside and imagine it has vanished into subspace. So bottom line here: a great T-Rex mode, unless you are really angry about those missing front teeth.
Partner: I was tempted to simply skip over the fact that Grimlock comes with an accessory figure, because I consider it to be one of the most useless pieces of plastic ever (and I owned Beast Machines Supreme Cheetor). For some reason someone at Hasbro decided that, instead of having his trademark sword, Grimlock should instead come with a small, non-transformable, almost immobile Wheelie figure. Wheelie has shoulder and hip joints, but both arms and legs are permanently stuck in the poses they are in. All so you can somewhat recreate the scene from the movie where Wheelie rides on top of Grimlock. Considering that we’d get an actual Studio Series 86 Wheelie figure a bit later on, this one here was so very, very superfluous.
Remarks: Cards on the table here: I am not a big fan of the Dinobots. Not that I dislike them or anything, I just never really understood the hype. They are robots that transform into dinosaurs, sure, that’s cool, but it was never really enough to catch my interest, hence why I skipped the Studio Series 86 Dinobots entirely. Thankfully my buddy Jörg loaned me Grimlock here (and some others) for a review, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered reviewing them. That said, I am fully aware that a lot of people have been clamoring for proper CHUG-scaled Dinobots for a long time and the Studio Series 86 has finally delivered, bringing out all five Dinobots in proper Leader-Class scale. So kudos for that.
As mentioned several times above, Studio Series 86 Grimlock is basically the Masterpiece figure in a simplified, more affordable form. Some of the choices are a bit weird (No front teeth? A Wheelie figure instead of a sword?) but all in all it works pretty well, I think. The figure has recently been reused for Comic Edition Grimlock and there is also a Shattered Glass Grimlock if you are interested. Bottom line: if you are a fan of the Dinobots, you will want to buy this figure (if you haven’t already).
Rating: B+
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