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Top 5 Best Grimlock Transformers toysGrimlock is one of the mot iconic and popular characters in the Transformers brand. He has been part of it since the very beginning and keeps being a mainstay with his inclusion in the soon to be released Transformers: The Last Knight. Surprisingly, for a character this popular, he hasn't had many great toys in the 30 years but there are some winners and you can find them all below!
5. Transformers Age of Extinction: Generations GrimlockI really love how this toy is a totally new take on Grimlock and yet stays true to several cues for the transformation. The robot legs become the tail and the robot arms become the dino's legs. This reuse of parts among the different modes help make this a sleek robot with minimal extraneous kibble in either mode, unlike the lager Leader ifgure which has visible hands and feet in dino mode and quite a bit of partsforming. There is none of that here. Instead, only the dino jaw is left in the back of the robot while the rest of the dino T Rex heads splits to become imposing shoulder pads. It gives him this ancient warrior look, like he comes from a Cybertron expansion of Warcraft. That's the look Hasbro and Michael Bay were going for and it works and comes fully realized in this toy. As a bonus, he has a chomp jaw action, which is always welcomed in a T-Rex toy.
4. Transformers G1 1985 GrimlockThe Dinobots are some of the crown jewels of any G1 collection and while their poseability is nothing to brag about, they will always looks great. Grimlock especially with his massive shoulders and decorative wings, adding to his upper mass. His T-Rex tail become the legs brings equal mass to his lower area, offsetting any top heaviness. The colours are also just great, with that gold just popping. It was a smart transformation and one that keeps getting carried over through different iterations over the years, even the movie toy covered above. And that biologically incorrect T-Rex mode adds to this toy being a time capsule of the 80s era while also giving him a more stylized mechanical dinosaur look, turning something dated into a timeless design.
3. Robots in Disguise Grimlock Battle Pack
The Robots in Disguise Warrior Grimlock came out with little fanfare. It was the same size as a deluxe, so out of scale with Bumblebee and the gang, his elbows had a breakage issue and he didn't even come with any weapon. But then Hasbro fixed all that, at a smaller scale. The Battle Pack Grimlock is similar in size to a scout figure of old. He has all the complexity of the warrior but in a smaller bot which makes him have a nice high parts count for his height. Plus they fix some of the transformation from the warrior and he no longer has the breakage problem. Also, unlike the warrior, he ends up in a nice scale with the smaller Legion bots and looks good next to the battle pack prime (who is a beast on the show). And lastly, the clear plastic weapons are perfectly fine. They give him an awesome homage to the AOE Grimlock when worn as armour and they connect to become a dino head which can plug into his arm for him to have some BW Megs action going. So all the pluses of the warrior, no downside and great accessories. I call that a winner.
2. Takara Battle Grimlock and AOE Silver Knight Grimlock
Lipstick on a pig is an expression fans throw around when there is a deeply flawed Transformers toy that Hasbro or Takara tries to amerliorate with a paint job. It doesn't always work and usually the toy ends up remaining just the same, but with lipstick. However, these two are some good examples of times when it worked, especially he Takara Batle Grimlock which uses the same base mold as Fall of Cybertron Grimlock but totally refurbashes it and amelioates it by repurposing it into Robots in Disguise Grimlock. The shoulders which were once a mess are reworked and made simpler and less frustrating, and if you didn't know the mold existed before you would think this was made just for this character. They reworked a lot of pieces from the original and give it a faithful colour scheme. Here is a quick example to show how it keeps the base mold yet reworks it.
1. Transformers Masterpiece Grimlock (Grimlock (MP-08))What can I say at this point that hasn't been said? This toy is nearly flawless. It has an imposing robot mode and a smooth Dinosaur mode that looks exactly like the show but with the extra shine of the G1 toy. The Transformation is well executed as it replicates the G1 transformation while taking modern engineering into account. Plus he is fully poseable. This is without a doubt the best Grimlock toy of all time and I don't see it being beaten anytime soon.