TFARCHIVE FORUMS

Name: Snarl
Allegiance: Autobot/Dinobot
Size Class: Deluxe Class
Accessories: Cheetos Lava Club

”Snarl smash!”

Snarl is one of the three Dinobots featured in Transformers Animated, but unlike Grimlock and Swoop, who are straight-up Animated versions of their G1 counterparts, Snarl does not turn into a stegosaurus like his G1 counterpart. He instead turns into a triceratops like Slag. So why doesn’t Hasbro use the name Slag? Well, apparently Hasbro has since discovered that ‘slag’ has another offensive meaning in some parts of the United Kingdom. Hence, Snarl.

I’ve loved dinosaurs ever since I was a little kid, and my first-ever contact with Transformers has been with the dinosaur Transformers Airraptor, Dinotron and T-Wrecks of the Beast Machines Dinobots line. When I started descending into Transformers geekdom I discovered the Dinobots fairly quickly, with their Marvel comics debut being one of the very first Transformers comics I’ve ever read. So I do quite like the Dinobots.

Snarl and the other Animated Dinobots started off as animatronic robots which, by a mixture of Megatron’s machinations and Sari’s Allspark Key, brought to life. Snarl and Swoop played two seasons basically as the non-speaking muscle to Grimlock, generally following Grimlock whether they are working against or with the Autobots. They only transformed far later into the series because I guess screw any Dinobot that isn’t Grimlock. They were happy to be confined to the Dinobot Island most of the time, although Snarl was disowned in season three for making friends with the Constructicon Scrapper (and was first named in that episode), and starred in a fun little two-parter with Scrapper, Sari and Wreck-Gar as part of the Substitute Autobots. And despite that Snarl has never spoken a single word other than the odd grunt or two.

Snarl’s name originated from the stegosaurus Dinobot from G1, whose most famous exploit is not appearing in the 1986 movie. The name Snarl had since been slapped on several other Transformers by Hasbro, first on a Tasmanian Devil in Beast Wars, a lion in Beast Machines, a wolf in Cybertron, a Mini-Con tiger in Classics, before the name returned to a Dinobot in Animated.

Beast Mode:
Snarl transforms into a fully-mechanical triceratops, decked in a slightly brighter version of classic G1 Dinobot colours. Comparing Snarl to a Jurassic Park triceratops in my room, he’s a fairly faithful rendition of the dinosaur, albeit obviously drawn in Animated’s characteristic stylized fashion. His legs are a fair bit more pudgier, though. Snarl is pretty cute in this mode, though, and I do like it.

Snarl is mainly a shade of slightly-bluish gray, with a nice shade of red colouring his stomach and horns, while his tail, head and toes are cast in gold. Black and red pick out the detailing on him. I particularly like the black streak running under Snarl’s baby-blue eyes. Overall, it certainly screams Dinobot.

There are a fair bit of kibble that are visible in beast mode, though, most egregiously the robot head smack dab on the middle of his back. It’s made even worse by the three horns jutting up from his head which are visible, plain as day. His robot mode fists can kinda be seen if you look at him from the back, but they’re not too prominent.

Posability is not that good, unfortunately. The rear legs are pretty good, with full rotation joints on the thighs and two hinges – one that allows it to bend backwards and another that allows it to bend laterally – on the knees. The front legs, however, can only bend backwards on an odd angle – those black bits are completely immobile in beast mode. His head can angle up and down somewhat, as can his horns and upper beak. He’s pretty brickish though it’s pretty decent for a toy his size.

Snarl’s gimmick includes pressing buttons to have little flames pop out from his hind legs’ thighs. In the show Snarl inherits G1 Slag’s ability to breathe fire, but since that’s kind of impractical to do here, we get this instead. Eh.

Snarl is a pretty great beast mode. It’s certainly the better of the two modes, because unfortunately the robot mode isn’t as spectacular.

Robot Mode:
Snarl’s transformation is a bit awkward. The red halves in the middle of his body, and the whole spine-waist black assembly are engineered such that they will only move in certain steps and transforming Snarl after a long time of not doing so made me nearly break some of the more fragile parts. His legs are a bit too long, his waist too thin and his shoulder pads are too large, and the ends of the tail halves should point upwards instead of downwards. The end result is kind of a disappointment since he looks like he’s cut off a fair bit of the fat from the waist down and generally looks a bit awkward.

However, as the ever-awesome Clay has informed me, there really is a trick to transforming Snarl properly so that he can assume the stocky thickset silhouette he has in the show. By folding the waist piece so that it points at a 30-degree angle from the blue piece that forms his chest and not having the waist piece point straight down, the end result enables the triceratops beak to slot into the slot in the waist in addition to moving the black bits closer to the waist and generally makes the robot mode look far more compact and clean. Making the black waist assume the proper position is a bit fiddly to do, though.

It’s not a perfect resemblance like the show model unlike many of the Animated toys, but Snarl, when transformed properly, does look have the Animated line’s high standards of show-accuracy. I like how Snarl is extremely (and almost exaggeratedly) thick and stocky, whereas Swoop is all thin, athletic and agile-looking, whereas Grimlock has a compromise between the two, looking large and muscular. On any other lines I’d write it off as coincidence, but Animated puts a lot of focus in exaggerating physical features in theme with the characters’ personality, and I personally think it’s a rather excellent gradation.

Unlike Grimlock and Swoop, who are mostly faithful to their G1 counterpart’s transformations, Snarl eschews it all in favour of a brand-new transformation which has the triceratops head end up smack dab on the chest instead of behind his robot head. The head is completely different as well instead of a straight-up Animatized version of the G1 like the other two, being a flat-ish affair with a blank expression and three horns. The light piping is neutered with painted eyes, but I don’t particularly care. The gold tail splits in half and end up sticking up behind the shoulders, which is actually a fairly nice visual tribute to G1 Snarl which I always found amusing.

From the side, Snarl is fairly messy, with the beast head jutting a bit more forward than it should (though not as much if transformed properly), whereas parts of the lower body are skinnier than they should be, mostly on the black parts. Of course, after Clay had taught me how to transform him properly his general silhouette has looked a lot better.

Snarl is pretty nicely articulated. The head rotates, the shoulder still retains that rotary joint and he’s got a double-jointed elbow. The thumb and the other four fingers are on separate hinges which is a nice little touch I love. His thighs are double-jointed with rotary and hinge joints, and his knees are on hinge joints.

However, the halves of his waist like to split apart anytime you even think of messing with his feet, making posing his lower half a veritable nightmare. The waist halves have pegs that are supposed to click together but on my specimen they never did, making the waist a floppy mess. Less of a problem are the torso halves, which are very hard to move around, and constantly like to get in the way of properly transforming him either in the beast or robot modes.

Snarl’s fingers are conducive to holding the club included with him. All stock photography show an awesomely painted mainly-black lava club with red glowing streaks. The thing included with Snarl is far from that, though. It’s the same shape but is cast in entirely bright clear orange plastic, making it look extremely stupid-looking. Like he picked up a petrified Cheetos piece from my trashbin and starts waving it threateningly at Decepticons. It’s ugly. I have no idea where it is now. Maybe it’s returned to the trashbin. Even among the Animated line’s penchant of freaky weapons, Snarl’s Cheetos is the weirdest. I do still kinda wish I had it just to laugh at how funny it is, though.

There’s a ‘battle mode’ where you transform the triceratops head into the beast mode configuration which looks stupid. We do not mention that here. The spring-loaded fires end up on his shoulders, which looks less stupid.

Overall, it’s a pretty mediocre robot mode. Too many things wrong with it to be satisfactory.

Marks out of ten for the following:

Transformation Design: 3/10 Between the bad waist and the difficulty in properly transforming the waist and getting the general look of Snarl right, plus how easier it is to transform him in the improper, ugly way… Snarl’s transformation does result in a great dinosaur mode and a relatively serviceable robot mode, but it is a poorly designed one.

Durability: 7/10 The pudgy Dinobot is pretty sturdy, though the whole spine-waist assembly looks dangerously fragile since transformation usually makes me put too much strain on it because of how hard to transform the aforementioned red flanks. Otherwise, though, he’s pretty sturdy stuff.

Aesthetics: 6/10 Unlike most Animated toys Snarl isn’t a picture-perfect copy of the show model in robot mode. It’s all little things, and while the proper transformation makes him look better, there are some parts that still doesn’t quite make him look perfect. The robot head in beast mode, the slightly too-thin waist and upper legs, the general lack of mass around the waist area… still, it’s a pretty serviceable robot mode.

Articulation: 3/10 He’s got a lot of joints, but the waist being badly designed and a generally floppy mess makes it nearly to pose anything on the lower body. The exploding waist makes balance terrible as well despite the sturdy legs. The arms and head are pretty posable, though, making good for Cheeto-waving poses.

Fun: 6/10 I found him fun as a set with the other Dinobots, but alone he’s a brickish if cute triceratops that turns into a messy robot that wields a cheese stick. I have to admit that my opinion after owning him for a long time has actually made me appreciate him more than I did before.

Price/Value: 3/10 He’s not the cheapest toy out there but I don’t find it that worthwile to shell too much money out for this kind of messy toy.

Overall: 3/10 I like the Dinobots, but Snarl is an ungodly mess in robot mode. Of course, it’s a bit better when transformed properly – a couple little changes makes all the difference – but there’s still no denying that Snarl suffers from a lot of problems. Bad kibble, a waist that keeps exploding at the slightest provocation, bad balance… he’s coherent, yes, but while I’ve grown fond of him over the years he’s still a fairly bad mess and I won’t recommend him for anyone who’s not trying to collect a set of Dinobots or Animated toys. Snarl is kind of bad.

The triceratops head actually collapses down pretty flush with the rest of the body. I had the thing for about a year before I figured it out, and then my opinion of Snarl sweetened greatly. Want me to snap a picture?

And I like the Cheeto.

Clay wrote:The triceratops head actually collapses down pretty flush with the rest of the body. I had the thing for about a year before I figured it out, and then my opinion of Snarl sweetened greatly. Want me to snap a picture?

Oh yes, I would very much like to see. I've been fiddling with him for an hour and still cannot get the triceratops head to collapse down.

There's still the problem of the bad waist, though.

Clay wrote:And I like the Cheeto.

I lost the Cheeto

I would probably be happier if I mucked around with the Cheeto now, but I remembered being very annoyed with it back then because of how awesome the lava-cheeto looked in stock photos.

Okay, here's how I see him most commonly mistransformed. Dino head jutting out, tail not rotated, waist being all thin...



Here's how he's supposed to look:



Much more compact and clean, yeah? I think it's the waist that threw me off for such a long time. It actually sits at about a 30 degree angle instead of straight down.



I mean, he's still not great or anything. He's still got the torso halves that want to pop out and the split waist that doesn't stay in place. But he's a little more coherent than I initially thought, and kept thinking for about a year after that. He's a nice complement to Swoop.

Snarl smash!

Clay wrote:Much more compact and clean, yeah? I think it's the waist that threw me off for such a long time. It actually sits at about a 30 degree angle instead of straight down.

That's so much better looking, I do agree. Kinda fiddly transforming his blue parts to get into that form, though... EDIT: Okay, figured out how the dino head is supposed to be attached to the waist piece, but still hard to get the black bits to peg into the waist so I just left it as it is.

But yeah, even without pegging the black bits in, that robot mode looks so much more stable now. Will edit review tonight.

Yep. And playing with it yesterday, the lack of articulation compared to the other Animated toys makes more sense if he's understood to be a contrast for Swoop. Swoop is lean, agile, and dexterous in appearance, while Snarl is supposed to be a tree trunk. I'm sure they could have added a lot more articulation than they did, but I think it's limited on purpose to help Snarl be a foil for Swoop and make Grimlock the happy medium, which is kind of a highbrow concept for toy design, really. It also neatly explains why the line has only the three Dinobots instead of five. Thematically, they didn't need five.

And he also has a Cheeto. Gosh, I love these things sometimes...

What the hell is a cheeto?

A Cheeto is tasty

I've altered a fair bit of the review. Still think he's a mess of a toy but I've changed it so that it makes Snarl far more flattering, and I've improved the scores somewhat.

@Dalek: Cheetos are kind of like cheese puff snacks with a cheetah mascot.