Image: Takara/Amazon Japan
Dinobot will always be my favourite Transformer. Maybe it was his cranky personality, or his fantastic turn from villain into anti-hero into hero. Or maybe it was that he, somehow, across time and space, knew lines from Hamlet. Either way, Beast Wars was the Transformers cartoon that defined my childhood, and Dinobot was the best character in it.
Which makes this action figure, leaked from an early Amazon Japan listing (which now appears to be up for realsies), is quite a sight for me to behold. This Dinobot, the third in a series of Beast Wars Masterpiece figures sold by Takara, is incredible. With a transformation style modelled after the original toys from the ’90s but with highly improved parts, visual design, and production quality, this is everything you might want in a Transformers toy.
He even comes with the golden disc that he was wrestling away from Megatron when he, uh, died. The figure comes in at a pretty hefty ￥30,240, or about $339, but that feels almost worth it for an action figure that looks this good. Check out some of the images:
Look at the attitude on that face. The jagged little teeth. It’s wonderful.
The rest… is silence.
[Transformers World 2005, h/t Rachel on Twitter]