Review: #710
Name: Tyrannocon Rex
Brand: Transformers
Allegiance: Decepticon
Year of Release: 2021
Size Class: Leader
Mold Status: retool of Kingdom BW Megatron
BEAST MODE:
Tyrannocon Rex transforms into a brown tyrannosaurus rex, supposed to be the one that appeared in the first Jurassic Park movie.
It's a repaint of Kingdom BW Megatron, and it does feel that the beast mode was modelled like this just because they hand plans for a Jurassic Park crossover.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing beast mode that just oozes character.
In particular, the head sculpt is sublime, from the rows of teeth to the angry looks in the eyes.
Best of all is the articulation, she can pull off better poses than you'd expect with flexibility in her legs, arms and head.
In terms of size, while Tyrannocon Rex isn't as big as a Leader in the heyday of Transformers, she is one of the heftiest ones right now and feels substantial in your hands. Above is a comparison against Throne of the Primes Optimus Primal and TLK Optimus.
There are no other gimmicks in this mode but you don't really need anything else.
This is a near perfect beast mode that captures the spirit of the dinosaur really well.
TRANSFORMATION:
Transformation is quite complex as you'd expect of something that transforms from a realistic dinosaur to a robot with barely any dinosaur parts. As a result, there is a heavy reliance on panel shifting and stacking them on top of each other to store as a backpack in robot mode. The head and tail forms the arms, while the legs form the robot legs. The torso of the dinosaur then rotates and flips to form the robot torso, and all the while, the dinosaur shell folds up into the backpack.
ROBOT MODE:
BW Megatron has a distinctive design so it's natural to be sceptical on whether Tyrannocon Rex could pull it off without looking like Megatron in different colors. Thankfully, it appears that she was able to pull it off with the addition of black and red (and the conscious decision not to use paint to highlight the more unique sculpted details).
The robot mode has a huge amount of panels as the backpack, however, they are compact enough, and close enough to the torso, to not post much of an issue.
The only retool here is the head, which is a good choice as Megatron's head would just be too distinctly Megatron. The new head looks awesome too.
In terms of size, while Tyrannocon Rex is shorter than bigger Leaders in previous years, she makes it up for her heft and minimal hollow parts, she's feels solid all around.
A quick comparison with the original mold to see how much different the figure can look with just a different lick of paint.
Articulation is fantastic here, she has joints for her head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, knees and ankles.
She doesn't come with any handheld weapons, rather, the dinosaur head and the tail form her weapons. While she doesn't come with any blast effects, if you have any spare, they can attach to the dinosaur's mouth.
The tail is also jointed, and she also has a fist.
One thing to note is that most of the dinosaur's shell was made from softer more rubbery plastic, while this all disappears in robot mode.
A strong robot mode, although just like JP93, it breaks a bit too much away from its movie inspiration in robot mode.
OVERALL:
Tyrannocon Rex uses a strong mold so naturally as a toy itself, this is a fun on. As a homage to Jurassic Park, and it works perfectly in dinosaur mode, and less so in robot mode, but that would have been always the case. Nevertheless, it works well enough and is a clever idea.
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