Time for the first in what will hopefully become a regular
series of reviews. God knows I’ve got enough stuff lying around. First up: the
Zoids Command Wolf!
Most of what I know about Zoids has been picked up through
fandom osmosis (thanks, Zita) or through Zoids.us, a
wonderful guide to all things Zoids, including all sorts of historical tidbits
and photos of the ‘bots. It did, however, cause some disappointment that that
awesome metal Pegasus I saw on TV as a kid is exceedingly expensive. Woe.
On the plus side, many of the other Zoids are not. I wanted
to get the experience of building one for myself, so I hit BigBadToystore and
picked up a blue Command Wolf, which apparently is one of the common and easy
to find variants of a very well-used mold, so if you like 1. wolves and 2.
robots, you’re in luck. The one I got is the 98/99 Japanese release, and the
box proclaims it’s a Command Wolf, it’s on the side of the Republic, and a
whole lot of other stuff I can’t read. Zoids canon kinda goes in one ear and
out the other for me. ‘Blah blah government blah blah plant blah blah GIANT
ROBOT ANIMALS.’
But it’s a nice box and I like it. It’s sturdy, it holds all
the extra bits and bobs in there, and it has some nice shots of a legion of
Command Wolves on the hunt. I think Zoids may be a toyline where armybuilding
is encouraged. Inside the box, you’ll find the sprues that make up the parts of
the Wolf, sticker sheets for the details, an instruction sheet, and a ‘Zoids
fanbook vol. 5’, which is basically a sheet that shows off the other toys
available. Unfortunately, I don’t read Japanese. Fortunately, I can follow
basic picture instructions and the guide in the instructions was easy to
follow, even if I didn’t understand anything it said. Hasbro could take
instructions in how to make clear instructions from these guys.
All my sprue construction prior to this had been with
Tyranids for 40k, so I was familiar with the basic concept but was pleased to find
how much easier it is to keep track of things when all your pieces are so much
larger. The Wolf’s main colors are blue and black, with the accessories in
shades of grey, and it’s pretty easy to keep track of what you’re working on by
checking out the letter and number marks on the sprue. My one concern with the
sprue is that when you trim a piece off, the resulting trim mark, due to the
stress on the plastic, is a different shade of blue. I tried to trim and gently
buff it down the best I could, but I didn’t want to file too hard for fear of
hitting the rest of the plastic, which is a metallic blue. When the toy’s in
good light, you can see the sparkles in the plastic.
The end toy turned out to be a nice size; comparing him to
my Prime Predaking (my closest toy for reference), it looks like he’s just a
few inches bigger, which would put him into about the Voyager size class. (Some
people use imperial measurement, some people use metric. I use Transformers.)
He’s got all sorts of nice little molded details, with the
gear/joints/hoses/etc sticking out nicely despite the dark overall colors. He
also a ludicrously huge gun option, which is fun just for the entertainment
value of seeing a giant metal wolf with a gun almost as big as the robot
strapped to it. The real action feature, though, is the little wind-up motor
you assemble. Crank it up and watch him go, with the speed determined by the
position of the head. It works nicely once it’s cranked, but the Wolf seems to
run out of juice quickly, or at least until you start poking him in the rear
leg with a finger. But considering it’s powered by a twisted knob instead of
batteries, it’s still a cool feature.
My one complaint with this toy is the stickers. I
<i>hate</i> dealing with stickers on toys, because I can never seem
to get them on straight, and they end up half on, half off, always in the
process of trying to peel. At best, they tend to end up uneven. I tried putting
the detail stickers on the Wolf…and promptly took all of them off, save the
flower symbols and gun decals. Why is the Wolf decked out with pretty red
flowers? I assume there’s some kind of canon to this, but without context, it’s
a little odd.
But to summarize: the Wolf is a neat toy for robot fans,
especially robot animal buffs. He’s a nice size, he has an action feature
that’s satisfying to play with (crank him up and watch him go!) and there’s a
sense of satisfaction to be had from knowing you built this neat little moving
model with your own two hands. Plus, for collectors there’s scads of variations
of this thing, and the fact that it’s common makes it easy to track down mint
for if you want to actually have the experience of building it, rather than
buying somebody else’s work.
Speaking of building, I still need to see about part hunting
for a later review…
No comments:
Post a Comment