I haven't had a chance to do a photoshoot with him yet, but I busted Trypticon out yesterday afternoon and I can safely say he's BY FAR the better of the city-bot molds. (I haven't yet decided if I prefer him or Devastator for the best
Titan-class toy, but they're pretty neck-and-neck to be honest.) I'm still working on the stickers - I only got the ship-mode ones on so far, probably about a third of the total number - but even without all the extra detail that they provide he's still a beauty to look at.
He is definitely shorter than the Maxtroplex mold (if you have them facing each other and put Trypticon at full standing height, he ends up gazing longingly at Max's robo-pecs), but as others have said he definitely feels like an equal match mass- and volume-wise. Especially if you're at angle where you can see that ridiculously beefy tail. City mode is also really cool-looking and expansive, though I haven't had the chance to compare to Max's (in official and/or fan configurations), but once again it
feels like a much more impressive city/stronghold than the other molds' attempts.
Both altmodes are way more convincing than anything on the previous two cityformers, as long as you can disregard (or obstruct from view) the blatant dinosaur head sticking out the back. Yeah, there are little panels to cover the eyes so I guess that's nice, but his mouth is unable to close fully so it still always ends up looking less like a generic lump and more like a mildly surprised T-Rex sticking out the back of a spaceship (or city, as the case may be).
One thing to mention in particular, though, that I could've benefited from knowing for certain as I messed with Tryp for the first time: he absolutely
does have forward-backward ratchets in his hips. Mine were very resistant to movement, to the point where it felt like there wasn't actually a joint there, and I spent a good ten minutes feeling like I was about to shear my new toy's legs off, and poring over the instructions trying to determine if I was reading them wrong.
Eventually I disassembled his hips, and confirmed that there was a ratchet there when it launched a positively
huge spring at my face. Seriously, no surprise that the hips are hard to move when you've got a spring the length and thickness of a moderately-sized earthworm putting pressure on the ratchet. Luckily it was easy enough to reassemble, albeit with a modicum of constant force to keep the spring from exploding out again, and Trypticon has suffered no lasting impact. But the discovery stands: the figure's hips definitely
can move forward and backward, even if it doesn't feel like it - and I've found the best way to get them to move, amusingly, is to
not be delicate when you're trying to do so. (Within reason, of course. I am not responsible for any damage sustained by whacking your Transformer with a mallet to try and move its joints.)
As I mentioned at the start, I haven't had time to do a proper photoshoot yet (and he's not even fully stickered up either, so even if I did he wouldn't be at his movie-star best), but I managed to snap a pic of a fun little thing as I headed out this morning.
"Oh wow, you've got Grimlock, yeah that's real scary Prime. My dinosaur is a city and my personal attack spaceship. I think we both know whose is the better one."I also brought Full Tilt to work again today, and I'm getting better at keeping him upright; I don't retract my statement about the trouble with his flat feet, but it's not as bad as I had thought it was yesterday. I can get him standing without issue on just the edge of one foot and the toe of the other, so that's pretty good!
Shots like this often look more dynamic if you take them at a 'Dutch Full-Tilt' angle. Sorrynotsorry(Side note: I just checked my post history out of curiosity and that crazy-long Full Tilt review, probably the pinnacle of my writing on these boards so far, fittingly comprises my landmark of post number three hundred... and one.
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