The second of the unofficial Seacons, Cyber Jaw has a lot to
live up to following Mentarazor, and it does so pretty easily. This figure will
also be the base of the next two Seacon figures, so hopefully, it is a good toy
all on its own.
The unofficial version of Overbite, Cyber Jaw is a slender
robot, compared to the wider chested Mentarazor. The colors are nice and
bright, revisiting the Seacon teal in a stronger and more plentiful usage than
on Mentarazor. Cyber Jaw carries on the practice of the robot foot being a
composite of panels from the monster mode, but this time there is a flip down
toe. The robot feet aren’t that great, really, and they are functional but
really clunky looking. They look like
a combo of panels; whereas on Mentarazor they didn’t. It may be due to the
color of the plastic: the black on Mentarazor obfuscates the presence of
separate panels, while the seafoam green of Cyber Jaw, with the grey plastic
hinges in the middle, makes the same quality much more noticeable. Maybe it’s
the grey parts that are the problem. Where they the same green, they wouldn’t
necessarily be visible, and a solid color could make the feet look better. On
Cyber Jaw, just as with his predecessor, the feet are ball jointed, so they
provide a de facto ankle, but the toe part is attached to the calf and not the
rest of the foot. So, the figure can take wider stances, but too wide and the
toe part won’t line up with the rest of the leg and foot and it will look bad.
Cyber Jaw is a stable figure though, so for the most part, the foot issue ends
up being mostly aesthetic, not a matter of terrible importance.
 |
| Pretty stable. |
Overall, robot mode looks great though, as the shark head
and tail fold behind the back and only the shark arms on the robot legs betray
the alt mode. (I think the arms are mistransformed in my pictures. The little
claws fold inwards, into the forearm, and I didn’t do that for whatever reason.
The shark arms sit flatter than they appear in the images. Sorry. –mr) Something
really amazing about these figures is how a monster unfurls from a robot and
how a robot stretches out into a monster. The largest and most identifiable
parts of the monster modes generally vanish in the robot mode, and Cyber Jaw is
the best example of this. The head sculpt is very nice, and the molding on the
chest is great. Not as face-like as some of the other figures in the set, Cyber
Jaw has a real interesting design on his chest that spices up the general look
of the figure. The arms are fully jointed, and are mounted on a hinge that
moves them further away from the torso. This is needed in the alt mode, but it
affords additional posing options and movement in robot mode. Strangely, the
figure has two different hands, an open hand and a clenched fist, which can
each hold the peg of a weapon, but this is the only figure of the six that has
this asymmetrical nature.
The figure also comes with some sword parts, used to
construct the eventual and enormous Poseidon weapon, and can also wield the
monster mode tail as a weapon. The twin sword pieces are probably the best
swords of the entire set, as they are recognizable and fairly menacing looking.
The tail terminates is a hinged fin that can be splayed out into a crescent or
collapsed into more of a point, and the “weapon” configuration resembles, with
some added imagination, a kind of jointed or segmented scythe, a lashing type
weapon, maybe like a flail. Hard to say, since it’s really just a sea monster
tail being repurposed, but it’s passable. A downside is that, despite being
jointed, the tail is comprised of only five parts, so it doesn’t really pose or
bend much: kind of just enough to strike a monster pose or look like a flaccid
weapon in the robot hand. On the plus side, the tail attaches to the back of
the robot, and does marvelous work filling in what would otherwise be a pretty
gappy and bad looking backside. It offers a bit of extra depth to the figure as
well, as the tail on the back alleviates the condition of Cyber Jaw being a
front-view-only type of figure.
Cyber Jaw feels like a small figure. He’s slender, and not
very bulky or thick. Those familiar with Seacon lore probably know that this is
generally because Overbite is supposed to serve as the blaster for Piranhacon,
and so the leaner, thinner body and look of Cyber Jaw is due to his role on
this “not Seacon” team. While any of the five limb figures can serve as a
weapon for Poseidon, and it has not yet been entirely decided which one will
serve as the weapon in my collection, Cyber Jaw does seem like he should be the
weapon, as the body and general proportions lend themselves to such a function.
The monster mode is a lot of fun, and is much more
recognizable than Mentarazor’s. Cyber Jaw is clearly a shark with arms and
legs, the kind one encounters at sea naturally, and while it is technorganic,
it is not a vague or abstract beast the way Mentarazor is. The mouth opens and
closes, largely thanks to hinges and parts that need to move for
transformation, but this is clearly intentional, as the inside of the mouth is
painted and everything. Clearer on this figure than on Mentarazor is the
engineering step that is going to be present in every one of the five smaller
team members, and that is the way the alt mode is basically composed of panels
that fold away inside of the robot legs. All of the legs for these figures are
large, and the calves are very blocky. This is so that the beast modes, which
are achieved largely via panels creating an outer shell around the robot, can
store said panels inside of them. This is such a cool piece of engineering, as
it allows the monster mode to literally disappear and reveal a robot. The
figures are not panel forming in the sense that an external shell wraps around
the robot to hide it (I’m trying to come up with an example of this, and all I
have at the moment is Warbotron Sly Strike, which just entered my possession
earlier this week, and which I’ve only handled for a few minutes but know from
looking at it that the jeep mode happens simply be flipping the back panels
around the robot body. But that’s the only example I have at the moment. –mr),
but they are panel forming in the sense that panels do envelope the robot and
tab together to create the alt mode. This works well for these figures however,
despite this style of transformation often feeling lazy or like a cheat. The
Seacons do well with this because the beast modes really do completely vanish,
minus pretty obvious clues on Deathclaw and Thousand Kills. But the panel thing
is done well, and even though it winds up being mostly unchanged on Big Bite,
Deathclaw, and Thousand Kills, it always feels somewhat fresh. A few TFCons
ago, a slide of blacked out CAD models indicated that TFC Toys was going to be
working on Terrorcons, adding Abominus to their stable of Decepticon combiners,
and almost immediately speculation began that the Terrorcons would be reshelled
Seacons. It does seem like this would work, as the panel-dependent nature of
the Seacons could allow the base figures to essentially change clothes and
become a whole other team. (Once you get the whole Seacon team together in
monster mode, you can look at them and sort of match them with Terrorcons,
furthering the plausibility of this idea. They do look the part. –mr) How well
this could or would work needs to be seen, however: whether or not reshelling
these guys would make for convincing Terrorcons
can’t really be known.
Anyway, monster mode looks great, and is a lot of fun. Because
the body is so long, it is a little tough to pose the creature in ways that
look good that don’t involve it laying parallel to the ground. If there was a
joint in the middle of the body, so the beast could kind of hunch over a
little, (kinda like Terrorcon Rippersnapper . . . –mr) there would be more
options, but Cyber Jaw is a torpedo-shaped beast and that’s about all. There
are not any noticeable balance or stability issues, once the beast legs are
adequately positioned. If there was an issue with the beast mode, it may be
that the monster feet are a bit tiny, really only being claws as decoration.
Not that huge, menacing claws are expected, but they are so small that there is
a little bit of concern over whether or not they will prevent the figure from
tipping forward. Turns out they do.
Cyber Jaw is an excellent toy. Some people are not fans of
the panel forming aspect, and that’s understandable. As much as I like it, and
am impressed by it every time I handle the figures, it does cause Cyber Jaw to
be a pretty simple toy to transform: everything folds into or out of the legs,
and then you tuck the head away. But not everything has to be complicated, and
we’re still talking about a toy that turns into a robot, a monster, two
different body parts, and a weapon.
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