I feel like the best way to begin this article is by being
completely honest: I do not care about Skalor at all. I don’t care about him as
a character; I don’t care about him as a figure. I hate his beast mode. I hate
his little tech spec story about being a disgusting, filthy guy. I don’t like
anything about Skalor. But, I really like Big Bite, the TFC Toys Skalor-alike.
I had this revelation late at night in December of last
year, or maybe January of this, sitting on the couch watching some late night
hockey with my cat asleep on the cushion next to me, converting the figure back
and forth repeatedly. Not too radically different from Cyber Jaw, Big Bite is a
generally slender robot with large legs. It is essentially a reshelling of
Cyber Jaw, as Big Bite shares the same panel-intensive transformation scheme
and same general monster mode, albeit a much beefier one this time around.
Robot mode is, like his predecessor, kind of dull, but of
excellent quality. Big Bite’s problem is literally that it is the same as the
immediate forerunner in the set, so the dominant feeling with it is “I just did
this”. And it’s true. But it is still a satisfying transformation, so the
feelings of familiarity are acceptable. The panels once again fold up inside of
the hollow legs, but Big Bite’s feet are more akin to Mentarazors’ than CyberJaws'. So, the figure is stable and possessed of the two part foot that allows
for decent ankle movement. The monster head becomes the lower legs, toothy
kneepads that just look excellent.
Big Bite is armed with a pair of blasters that are very
large and have two configurations. Apparently the “standard” robot
configuration of the blasters, the one that the individual robot would wield,
is the folded up form, which essentially is an enormous blaster with a really
tiny nub that acts as the barrel. Unfolded, the blasters are incredibly large,
generally too large for the figure to hold and look good as the weapons are so
oversized, but are the configuration intended to attach to the weapon mode each
of the five smaller figures can take. Big Bite’s blasters in their unfolded
form look real nice, adorned with teeth but too long and bulky to look good in
hand. It’s too bad that the parts weren’t made smaller, or made in a way that
would consistently allow for integration into the monster modes. Only
Mentarazor and Thousand Kills can incorporate their weapons successfully, so
when a figure like Big Bite is in monster mode, the weapons have no place to
go.
Monster mode is where this figure is really cool. Big Bite
transforms into a nightmarish version of the lovechild of an anglerfish and the
coelacanth, a living fossil lungfish long thought extinct but not. It’s that
kind of creature you’d see on a deep sea animal program, the kind I always
loved as a child (and as an adult. . . –mr) and it honestly looks pretty
menacing. A jointed tail and slightly jointed arms make for some fun monster
posing, and the giant, frightening jaws and teeth elevate the creature from
charming animal oddity to straight-up nightmarish beast. Again, the monster
mode is constructed from a sequence of panels that fold around the body of the
robot.
The panel-intensive nature of the alt modes may be the “easy
way” of effecting the conversion between modes, but it makes a lot of logical
sense. The Seacons strike some pretty drastic alt modes, things that really do
not resemble their robot forms. The G1 toys even did a pretty good job of
offering a clear and visible shift between robot and monster, even relative to
the simpler and less advanced engineering of the era. A figure like Big Bite
here makes a pretty dramatic change from robot to sea monster, and both of
those modes need to look good. Can’t have a decent robot and a shlocky monster,
can we. So the panel idea allows for a good robot and a good monster without
having to compromise either one for the sake of the other. Would it be nice to
not have this done via panels? Maybe. But does it work the way it is?
Absolutely. It’s not as big a deal or as lazy a solution as some would have you
believe. In hand, it’s actually a lot more impressive than it seems like it
should be.
Dreamy. |
Tasty. |
Big Bite is a lot of fun. The official G1 version was always
the poor cousin to Overbite, a less exciting and less interesting mouthy fish
with legs; the TFC Toys version is a beefy, scary monster and a good robot. It
even makes the paint scheme look good, which is pretty incredible as well,
given the flesh tone and teal pairing that is really, really not a sharp or
tough looking combo. So much of the base concept of this figure, that being its
G1 originator, is lame, and it’s really an amazing feat that the big, expensive
3P version manages to be so much of a success. To me, at least, seeing as I was
never a fan of the original. Ultimately, Big Bite is just going to be one of
Poseidons’ legs – it’s not like I’m so smitten with him that he’d get promoted
or anything – but it is a good toy, and a nice version of a character and
figure that has never done anything for me personally.
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