If you mount it onto his shoulder-peg it can function as a shield, albeit with the inside facing out. I also have him hold his pistol by the barrel, it kind of looks like a microphone to match his MTMTE appearance.

 

Titans Return Skullsmasher

What? This guy is wave 1 and has no review topic?

Well I don't have a camera handy for pics so I'll make do without.

He comes packaged in his robot mode which looks great. Love the colors, that alien combination of (Pink? Magenta? What do you call that?) and dark green makes it eye catching and somehow menacing. The light gray hightlights add a mechanical twist just to remind you he's a robot. The head is nice and big, very old school blocky design.

He's very well articulated. Ball jointed head (biggest advantage of the new line, Headmasters needed this), waste swivel, double jointed shoulders, standard elbow hinges, forearm and bicep swivels (crazy!), ball jointed hips, quad swivels, and two knee joints.

His feet are tiny (just toes, really) that he can't really balance on because of the crocodile head backpack. Also his hands don't snap into place so they tend to flop back into the forearm. Also his hips and knees are pretty loose which doesn't help with the balance issues either. One trick is to make sure to use the lower, green knee joint as it's much tighter than the upper gray ones. Still he's going to have to be hunched over to compensate for being back heavy but given that he eats Autobots, I think that matches his posing well enough. Dude is savage.

The transformation is simplistic but interesting. The shoulders rotate up where the head was before taking off the titan master. There are two very small slots on the inside of the shoulders to tab into the upper torso that I didn't realize were there at first and had a hell of a time. From there the croc head had a double hinged joint that flips in onto the other side of the shoulders to tab very nicely into place. The legs just fold up and are supposed to tab into place but I don't seem to be able to get them to. If I fenagle it I can pop something into place to hold it mostly securely but they still come loose very easily and flop around. Pegging the tail on helps hold it in place as well. The gun pegs into the rear underside of the hallow tail, something the instructions (and a few video reviewers) don't bother to show, becoming the tip of the tail.

The beast mode is awesome. It looks great with tons of sculpted detail but most of all it has articulation! The tail is solid but it can wag side to side, the head is on a crazy ball joint and the mount opens easily and stays open for all kinds of fun. The bicep and forearm swivels add to the front leg articulation and the back legs are solid but have ball joints at the end for basic movement. There isn't much you can do but there's just enough for him to look dynamic as he snarls at the next figure on the shelf. He looks fantastic!

The titan master is basic stuff. He's my first in the new line so he functions as my personal introduction. Grax is tiny, but he's got some nice sculpted details. Articulation is pretty minimal but there's some there. Ball joints in the shoulder let him shrug (at least he can break up his silhouette a bit). Lower legs are one solid piece so there's not much he can do but sit and kneel (Before ZOD!). He had a compartment in the beast mode's torso that, strangely enough, is concealed with a soft plastic panel. Honestly that's the only part I don't care for. I hate soft plastic, it tends to take it's shape in the packaging, often bent wrong, and never seems to want to sit well.Why not a regular plastic panel that can snap into place?

The weapon mode for the titan master is actually pretty neat. You take the hollow tail accessory, tab the titan mater in at the slot in a sitting position, and then peg the gun in. You have to take the gun out of the tail to sit the smaller figure in. You can't reach the tab if the gun is in place. It looks pretty cool even if it is clearly a hollowed out tail. Some stickers on the inside to give it that cockpit vibe could snazz him up a lot, though.

Overall I love this guy, and he holds no nostalgia for me at all. I watched headmasters before but this character never really imprinted on me. But his design is cool, the engineering is light but there's enough to make him interesting, and he looks great on the shelf. I never knew I wanted a headmaster that transformed into a crocodile until now.

 

I'm sure it was mentioned somewhere in this thread, if not, then consider it "news"...

but....

I hope you're all turning the rear alligator legs downwards in bot mode so they serve as heel spurs, right?

No problems with balance:




EDIT: I think I saw somewhere that someone figured out a way to turn those alligator legs inwards, into the empty space on the legs. I forgot what thread I saw that in.

 

Mine for sure doesn't have the 'burn' marks yours has.

Anyway I know there's a bunch of ways to fix the loose hips, but if you're a cheapskate like I am, I just ripped a bit of napkin and put that in the socket. Pretty much my go-to fix for everything.

 

The head on mine was fine, but like most others I have some pretty lost hips both at the ball and the swivel.

My guess? Since these upper legs will be used elsewhere on different figures connecting to different parts, they were tested better against some other parts. The combination they have here is probably the worst we will see.

Overall he's a slightly below average robot. I still say the worst mainline figures we got was back during the fall of cybertron line, and he's better than most of that. I do really like the gator mode though, so an above average alt mode.

 

Question: Can he store the tail somewhere on his back?

 

Robot Mode
The eyes on Grax are a bit too dark, and while this simulates the G1 toy I think the Takara head looks better. The tail, like the G1 toy, becomes a hand weapon but it’s a bit too big and can’t really be positioned on any great angle. Out of the four new Titans Return deluxes he is certainly the weakest of the four. Also his alligator claws come off really easy in this mode.

Gator mode
A really good looking gator! Very long and well proportioned. They have done their best with the colour scheme so it doesn’t look as sickening as the G1 versions does and I really like the details in the mouth with all those individual teeth and the segmenting detail on the tounge. The head can swivel somewhat which is good, but it can be hard to make the tail sit flush with the gators arse. Grax’s compartment actually has a rubber hatch which is an odd choice and the placement has changed, instead of being afraid he would get swallowed like the G1 toy, in this case he already has been and is half way to the gut.


My review of the four Deluxe class figures can be found HERE


+

 

Yeah, it has a peg that allows it to snap onto the gator head. It makes him more back heavy and looks pretty crazy, but it can be done.

 

Any pic of it?  

 

Yes, somebody else asked this question and I answered it back in post #39. Took a picture too.

 

Okay so mine seems to have a problem I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else (besides the obligatory hip problem)

For some reason his croc head/neck won't peg into his arms for croc mode??? I don't know why, I even detatched the arms to see if the pegs on his neck would fit the slots, and they don't at all! Is there a fix for this besides giving up on life?

 

Which slots are you trying to use? The round holes or the flat slots underneath them?

 

I get the feeling you might be transforming him incorrectly. Photos would help here....

 

I tried both before consulting multiple videos to see which was right, and then, instead of trying to force it, I took the arm/shoulders out of the sockets and tried putting the neck pegs directly on the slots and found that they didn't fit at all. Either the pegs were improperly cut too big or the holes were improperly cut too small.

It's no longer an issue since I ended up giving up and returned it in exchange for a blurr. I think I'll hold off on this mold until at least some of the problems have been worked out...

I do appreciate the attempted help though!

 

Mine has the burn marks in the hips. Doesn't stand up worth a damn, but no problems pulling the head off, even after the correct way of attaching it. Are people just pulling straight up? Cause you're supposed to tilt and pull forward to allow the tabs in the neck to slide out of Grax's head.

 

Yikes! That's kind of bad   I guess I need to learn to live with holding it in his hand.

 

I would suggest getting an x-acto knife going forward.

 

Man, I wish I had seen enough of these to exchange them for everything.

I've bought literally every single Titans Return figure I've seen. All two of them.

 

What a let down.

This is the one deluxe out of everything we've seen in Titans Return that I wanted most. And he's a horrible mess.  

Can't even easily get him into alternate mode because the damn hips just pop off so easily and the legs don't want to tab together very well either. For robot mode, hips strike again but also the hands on mine are very floppy.

When I get him just right both modes look great. But not being able to do anything with him blows.

 

I coated all his joints once with nail polish and that wasn't enough.
Got fed up and smeared a huge coat over the joints again.
Now he's perfect haha. My favorite toy of the wave.