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Blackjack's Review: Walmart Transmetal Rattrap

Name: Rattrap
Allegiance: Maximal
Accessories: Tail/Sword

It has been one of my longtime dreams to collect the entire Beast Wars toyline. There’s just something about robots that transforms into animals both sane and insane that has always appealed to me, and Beast Wars strikes that balance between having good ball-joints yet having that crispy retro feel to them. And most important among the massive toyline would be the show characters… which isn’t really easy to find in a good price. Maybe elsewhere, but in my country, it’s hard to find Beast Wars toy at all, let alone people who want to part with them. So for a long time the only show characters I owned from Beast Wars are those who received modern incarnations like Telemocha Megatron and Universe versions of Cheetor and Dinobot. Tracking down people willing to sell the original toys from Beast Wars itself is a daunting task, let alone finding someone willing to sell them without charging an exorbitant price.

Oh, and there’s this guy. See, back in the day, stuff like ‘Walmart exclusives’ are unheard of. Beast Wars was the first toyline in the franchise to introduce the concept of exclusives, and one of the first toys to be released as a store exclusive would be this redeco of Rattrap’s transmetal toy, coloured in blue. By design or by coincidence, it’s a dead ringer for the Botcon convention exclusive character Packrat (who was redecoed from Rattrap’s original toy), and Packrat eventually adopted this toy as his body in 3H’s Botcon comics.

Back then I didn’t really care about any of that Packrat stuff. All I know is that I have finally tracked down a show character, even if he’s blue, and I’ve heard people wax lyrical about the Transmetal versions of Cheetor and Rattrap. So here we have the Walmart exclusive redeco of Transmetal Rattrap.

Beast Mode:
As his name indicates, Rattrap transforms into a rat. What a riot. And being a Transmetal, Rattrap was cast in vacuum metalized plastic, giving the impression of mechanical animals, with the addition of a third quasi-vehicular mode. A departure from the brown and maroon deco that his original deco sports, Walmart’s Rattrap sports a deco that’s mostly metallic blue and a shade of glossy brown, with black and neon green scattered here and there. His eyes are yellow, and some parts are vacuum-metalized in purple. Overall it’s a far brighter paintscheme than the original Rattrap’s deco. Obviously I would’ve preferred the original Transmetal Rattrap for show-accuracy purposes, but if I had both I would say that the blue one is more distinctive.

Even if there probably aren’t any blue rats in real life… unless it’s some wacky mutated strain. Nature’s weird that way.

Rattrap is a pretty compact little bugger, with tiny little feet angled towards himself. He’s an angry rat, grimacing like an old TMNT toy. Rattrap manages to embody the skittishness of a rodent pretty well, and there is a significant – if minimalistic – amount of work that went into detailing. It’s marred somewhat by the name ‘Rattrap’ tampographed in silver randomly in his spine, but it’s rather unobtrusive so I’m willing to overlook that. He’s got obvious vehicular parts in this mode, with the massive rear wheels doubling at the rat thighs and two smaller front wheels hanging off his rat shoulders.

Rattrap’s tail is, as you would gather from the pictures, made up of various intersecting hinges and is fully articulated. This was a toy designed in 1998, nearly fifteen years from the point of writing this review… and it is just so rare to see such an involved piece of accessory! And Rattrap’s tail works so well too – it can support its own weight yet the joints aren’t too tight that you can’t fiddle with it. Rattrap’s tail can curve over his body, or just trail behind him... it’s deliciously posable and I love it.

It’s a pretty accurate rendition of Rattrap’s show model in the show, certainly. There is a bit of a kibble undercarriage, and under Rattrap’s neck you can very easily spot a hint of his robot-mode torso peeking out, but it’s not really a major problem.

Overall he’s a pretty awesome, if static, robot rat and while rats definitely aren’t my favourite animals, I do like the look of Rattrap. He’s a cute rat.

Vehicle Mode:
Rattrap has an additional ‘vehicle mode’, which is totally bizarre and insane and awesome at the same time. By fiddling a bit, you fold the legs away and have the wheels touch the ground, and flip up a pair of exhaust vents whose position raises some questions on what exactly they are, um, venting. It’s certainly not meant to be a proper vehicle, it’s supposed to be a half-animal, half-vehicle madcap affair and it works well! The show gave Rattrap’s Transmetal mode a fair amount of screentime, and it’s a pretty insane looking one, resembling some kind of go-kart with the face of an angry rat on it.

(Dinobot did use Rattrap’s vehicle mode as a go-kart once in the series)

It’s not a realistic vehicle mode by any stretch, but is it fun to muck around with? Those massive wheels, the ability to roll on your table with impunity? Hell yes.

Robot Mode:
Rattrap’s transformation isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s a bit fiddly to get him to fold back into his rat mode. But cracking open the rat to get the robot out? It’s a very painless process and the end result is a robot mode that is a near-perfect representation of the show’s model, with articulation to boot! The main offender is that the massive wheels should end up behind his shoulders and not jutting out from the underside of his backpack, but it’s a minor quibble considering how solid Rattrap ends up being.

In robot mode he’s almost entirely tan-brown and gray, with nearly all of the metal blue having relocated to his backpack. There are a couple new patches of green and yellow that pop up on his robot head and chest. He’s got an angry scowl on his face which isn’t exactly what I’d associate the show’s Rattrap with, but as expressions go he could have worse.

The general look is a slightly slimmer profile than the heroic, bulky Maximals, and indeed it’s a look that fits Rattrap’s character, what with him being the type to skulk about and do sabotage. I do love how his rat head halves end up as shoulder guards.

He’s got a bit of a balance problem due to having a relatively heavy backpack and skinny legs with ankles that are fully articulated, but it’s a simple problem that’s easily mitigated by positioning him in an action pose. And he’s got a great range of articulation! Sure, he doesn’t have a waist joint and the kibble gets in the way somewhat, but his arms and legs feature a massive amount of hinges and ball joints that allow Rattrap to pull off a rather impressive range of poses for a toy made in his time.

And that’s not all! Sure, he doesn’t come with his gun, but the rat’s tail, that awesome accessory I talked about before? By virtue of transformation design it ends up in his hand straight off transforming. None of this taking out weapons, setting it aside and plugging it back in the wrist. No, Rattrap holds on to his tail-sword in both beast and robot modes. And it works as both a sword and some kind of a whip with a spear end. It’s a great incorporation of a feature that works in both modes and a pretty great-looking one to boot. You can just imagine him whipping the thing around, having it straighten and be a sword… well, you don’t have to imagine it. Just watch the show! Shame Rattrap uses his (nonexistent in toy form) gun so much and not this brilliant accessory.

To sum up, Rattrap’s robot mode, other than the positioning of the wheels, is practically perfect.

Marks out of ten for the following:
Transformation Design: 7/10 It’s a brilliant transformation that incorporates not only a fun little vehicle mode, but both a great robot and beast modes. It did baffle me a little, though, most egregiously the positioning of the robot hands in beast mode. Transforming him into beast mode also requires a fair bit of patience and the right order of steps, but with a couple of practices you’re good to go.

Durability: 8/10 The particular Rattrap I own has apparently survived a fair amount of time without even getting a chip on his vacuum-metalized parts. As with all Transmetals, it’s always a risk that you’ll get them chipped off and I’m not sure how prone Rattrap is to getting them torn off, but other than that he’s pretty solid.

Aesthetics: 9/10 Pretty damn show-accurate, other than the shoulders. I do like Beast wars models a lot. They just have a lot of personality.

Articulation: 9/10 It’s not the best compared to modern standards, but Rattrap can pull off a surprisingly wide range of motions. He’s got a bit of balance issues going on but as long as you keep all of his feet planted firmly on the ground he’ll stand.

Fun: 8/10 He’s a rat! He’s a robot! He’s a rat robot that turns into an insane bumper car thing that can roll around your desk!

Price/Value: 7/10 I got him for a cheap price, but then again this isn’t a properly show-accurate Rattrap toy and thus will be less valuable.

Overall: 9/10 As with the original Transmetal toy, Rattrap is one of the better offerings to come out of Beast Wars. It’s certainly not necessary for someone who already has the original Rattrap, but for someone who’s collecting Beast Wars toy and stumbles upon him, or someone who for whatever reason wants to complete the 3H Wreckers, you can give Blue Rattrap a try. I know that his paintjob has certainly grown on me, and he's one of the toys that embodies both the quality and the insanity of Beast Wars perfectly.
 
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