Have you lost your mind Phil ? Reviewing a toy that's 11 years old ? Or has it been re-released and we've not noticed ? No, this is a review of the original US BW Buzzsaw (The US bit is important as we'll see) As far as I know there's no plans for a re-release. I did own one of these but it was sold in the pay for the wedding purge. The arrival of Boldfang last week prompted me to see what I could find, and low I did get a complete one rather cheap. BW had a major repainting phase at the beginning of 1997 to bolster the toys ranks. Waspinator, Cheetor and Tarantulus each got new forms with the Predacon repaints helping to even the sides up (was the Dinobot toy originally meant to be an actual Predacon toy ? Cheetor, Rhinox and Wolfang vs Waspinator, Tarantulus and Dinobot ?). There's a couple more repaints later - Dinobot becomes Grimlock, and Terrorsaur Laserbeak, with a remoulded Wolfang as K9. Then there's Airazor and Razorclaw with the Videos in the US (that Razorclaw repaint is beautiful), Clawjaw and Spittor in Europe and a couple of repaints under the same name for TMII Dinobot and Prowl before we get to the nightmare that is Fox Kids. Buzzsaw is one of the BW repaints that never saw a European release. However, unlike Tigertron and Blackarachnia (the other 2 early repaints) he's not in the cartoon so maybe it can be forgiven. Slightly. The remoulded K9 and repainted Laserbeak did show up, but Grimlock didn't either. Unless you happened to be in Toys R Us during Christmas 1998 and found one of the ones that they imported. Some pictures: http://www.tfu.info/1996/Predacon/BuzzSaw/buzzsaw.htm Looking at the original Waspinator ( http://www.tfu.info/1996/Predacon/Waspinator/waspinator.htm ) from which this toy's repainted it's a straight colour swap: Dark Green becomes a Bright Yellow, Olive Green a brighter Green, Grey becomes Purple and the clear parts turn Clear Green. You'd expect this to be a car crash toy in terms of colours but it really does work looking very attractive. The robot head looks especially good. Buzzsaw is a bee - his wings are ball jointed at the point they connect to the body. The front 2 pairs of legs have no individual articulation however the 2 on each side can bend up and down together. His rear legs are much larger than the front and have ball joints at the hips and what I assume are both knees - I dropped biology before GCSE, Mrs Toys is the animal expert in the family and I'm not sure how much she knows about insects. To Transform: Fold the lower part of the rear legs over the middle part. Find the hips and fold the section they're attached to up towards the wasp head rotating the legs at the hips as necessary. pull the front pairs out to the sides and extend the robot arms, positioning at the shoulders. Pull the wasp head down towards the robot's chest, then separate it down the middle, slide to the sides and lock it into the sides of the robot chest. Pull his stinger out of his abdomen to form his gun - if you look in his wings there's a missile in each for the gun to use - sadly the stinger can't be reversed in the abdomen so he can fire missiles out of his backside. Unlike Waspinator the mutant head gimmick works doesn't work so well here - it's a big purple lump which makes it suffer in comparison with the robot head - Purple outer casing, yellow face plate and green lightpiped eye visor., The head swap is more involved than on the other BW toys - they are different heads, hence why the gimmick works so well on Waspinator. To swap them: unlock the wasp head halves from the robot chest, fold the chest piece forward & down and the back piece backwards and down. Then push on the head - either forward or back - so the entirety of the contents of the chest cavity pivots about half way down - the original head will swing into the bottom of the chest cavity from where the new head will appear. The articulation is excellent - ball joints at the knees, hips and shoulders, a bicep just below the shoulders and a fore and aft fold at the elbow + the neck and an additional fold forward at the shoulders as part of the TF - ha Marvel Legends: TFs had that joint before you did ! The Japanese version emphasises quite how easy it is to muck these things up: The yellow is slightly different - creamier, the purple is darker, and the green is now grey. And it just doesn't work there. These changes are I believe driven by the need to change Black Arachnia ( http://www.tfu.info/1996/Predacon/Blackarachnia/blackarachnia.htm ) from the US to the Japanese version - both green/grey and purple appear on both toys and change on both toys. Proof the Japanese don't always get repaints right (but quite frequently do) This is one of my favourite repaint toys. And yet I think a trick was missed here - the toy is soooo close to being a Beast Wars Bumblebee - change the grey and purple to black, and then make the wings the beautiful deep blue otherwise seen on the otherwise awful Fox Kids Waspinator ( http://www.tfu.info/1999/Predacon/FKWaspinator/fkwaspinator.htm ) and you're there. But at the time this toy came out there was - with the exception of Dinobot a clear Mammal/Bird and Insect/Reptile/Dinosaur division between both sides. This would be broken by the Japanese Shadow Panther black repaint of Cheetor. Overall - Waspinator's a good toy to start with, and this repaint superbly updates the toy turning it into a completely different character.
^ He stated that at the beginning of the article. Nice read, thanks. I like to keep the show accurate head on Waspy and the "normal" head displayed on Buzzsaw--helps differentiate them to me a bit more; gives them a little bit different personality.
This is the version I never got, but really wish I did. Liking those colors. I love this toy, the extra head is way cool
I don't believe there's anything that says I *can't* review an older toy that I buy. And BW is rather relevant at the moment with all the reissues on the way out. Chaos: Worth tracking down. If you've got the Japanese version this is some distance ahead of it.
ZOMG 11 YEAR OLD TOY!!!11! Kidding, of course, Phil. Nice review! I'm always glad when an older toy pops up here. I have the Jp version, and am pretty happy with it. I've always liked its colors a bit better than the US version in photos I've seen. *shrugs* I was driven to track him down shortly after I picked up Cybertron Buzzsaw. Now I just need to find an Energon Rapid Run to complete the trifecta....
I always preffered these colors for to Waspinator's. I sold mine when I pared my BW collection down to (some of) the show cast.
One of the few I never got. Thanks for the thoughts on him, one of these days perhaps he will actually be mine.
11 years is better than never It would be nice to one day get them ALL in here. Glad someone finally added this guy to the feedback
