Snarl

This figure was announced during a Hasbro presentation on February 21, 2023. It made it to stores at the end of February 2024. Maybe stop announcing toys a year in advance, Hasbro, and work harder on getting the ones you already have out? Snarl and the Autobots must find a way to destroy Unicron before Cybertron is devoured. Snarl is the unhappiest Dinobot. He misses Cybertron, he hates his altmode, and because he doesn't talk much, nobody ever talks to him, either, so he's constantly lonely and isolated. Basically, he's exactly the kind of person who would have thrived during lockdown. His helmet is similar to Sludge's, with the three spires on the front and sides, though his brain-bucket isn't as short as that one was. All the Transformers went through some sort of simplification when moving from three-dimensional toys to two-dimensional animation, but Snarl's cartoon model is very similar to his original action figure: a bulbous, angular chest, shoulders that almost reach his ears, and a very narrow waist and thighs. Studio Series goes the Masterpiece route, though, giving us a much more complex conversion in order to hide away all the unsightly kibble from the original. Plus, the sculpt has lots of small lines and panels, to give it a visual "heft." Say what you will about the Dinobots, what they turn into is apparent even in robot mode. Snarl has big pointy plates sticking out of him on his legs and back, and two stegosaurus tails on his shoulders. Technically two half-tails, but they're designed well enough that they pretty much look complete anyway. There are still dinosaur feet on the back of his forearms, but the other dinosaur legs are hidden away inside the robot legs in a most beautiful way. Hasui Shogo absolutely killed it with this engineering. Snarl moves at the head, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and rocker ankles. That's the same we've seen with the other three Studio Series 86 Dinobots so far, which is enough for a Leader Class figure like this. He stands about 8¼" tall to the top of his head, but the dinosaur kibble on the shoulders goes up higher. While Slug and Sludge both came with guns, Snarl has a sword - great timing to release this after the announcement of the "comic colors" Grimlock that's going to come with swords for all the Dinobots. Perfect work, no notes. This figure has a much more complex conversion than any previous Snarl. 1) raise the arms to the front, 2) unfold the dino feet, 3) hinge the little legs down further, 4) turn the feet around, 5) turn the wrists around, 6) fold the hands into the arms, 7) pull the biceps down out of the shoulders, 8) peg the forearms into the shoulders, 9) raise the dino feet upward, 10) detatch the spines from his back and 11) extend it upward so you can 12) fold together the two halves of the tail. 13) drop the head backward into the torso, 14) rotate the arms to point backwards, 15) extend the waist, 16) lift the chest slightly, 17) spin the legs 180°, 18) open the robot's heels so you can 19) rotate the dino legs up and 20) out from inside, 21) extend the dino feet, 22) push the legs robot shins together, 23) open the panels on the front of them, 24) point the robot's toes down, 25) fold the shins over onto the thighs, 26) fold out the dinosaur head, 27) close the shin panels, 28) push the waist back together with 29) the robot toes going under the chest, 30) fold the spines over the dinosaur's back, and 31) close the robot's heels to form the dinosaur's stomach. Snarl is a stegosaurus, though a problematic one. We brought this up in the "Power of the Primes" review, but Snarl's tail is very weird, dragging on the ground behind him. Science had moved beyond that representation even before the original Diaclone Dinosaur Robo came out in 1983. If every Sludge can be corrected, getting his tail up out of the mud (even in this same line), why can't Snarl? His dino mode is very cute, though. Its little head is adorable and dopey, though it doesn't have a spot to plug in flame breath like the others (because the head splits in half right down the center, so there's nowhere to put a peg). The head and feet are just molded in color, not painted, so they don't actually match the tail and spikes; fortunately, it's close enough that the toy doesn't really look incomplete or anything, and thus we can overlook it as a problem. For the most part. It's interesting how over the timeframe of these slow-drip Studio Series Dinobot releases, we've gone from "small figure pack-in to top out the budget" to "no more pack-in figure, but excellent engineering" to "oops, we can't afford to paint everything, too expensive." Snarl's another very good entry in the line, and certainly has us looking forward to Swoop now. Could the toy be better? Yeah. Does that mean it's bad? Absolutely not. We're 80% of the way through an impressive collection now. -- 04/30/24