Motor Arm is a repaint of the original
BW Tripredicus Combiner Ram Horn.
Ram Horn
http://www.tfu.info/1997/Predacon/RamHorn/ramhorn.htm
Original Motor Arm:
http://www.tfu.info/1998/Cybertron/M...m/motorarm.htm
No pictures of new repaint - sorry.
I've been dreading this review. This is partly because I truly despised the original
BW Ram Horn. The colours clashed for me and I could never remember how to
TF it right, especially when converting it to limb mode - Ram Horn formed both arms of Tripredicus linked bar a bar that passed through Cicadon. In fact the other part of the reason I was dreading this was because Motor Arm has spent the last 2+ weeks sitting as the arms of a Tripledacus using a spare Cicadon to substitute for DJ. I suspect the Japanese name is sourced from this use of the toy
Motor Arm is a Stag Beetle. It's quite a nice looking stag beetle with 4 stationary rear legs and 2 front legs which have a bending joint inside the body and a ball joint at the knee. The head bends at his base and it's antennae bends where it's connected to the head. Motor Arm's shell is painted a nice chocolate brown reddish colour, while his legs are darker. There's some red and grey visible from robot mode pieces underneath and to the sides.
In this mode the shell can flip up and you can unfold 2 blades that will sit between the abdomen and the thorax of the beetle.
TF: Turn the toy over so you're looking at the beetle's under side - this exposes lots of the robot all folded up. Pull the robot feet away from sides of the lower robot chest, bend down at the robot's knees and twist so the rear beetle legs form adornment on the front of the lower robot legs. Fold the robot shoulders forward, and then pull the robot arms out from under the sides of the shell - they're not pegged in and just hidden where you can get them folded away to. Split the halves of the thorax and fold forward, locking them together to cover the robot chest - whoever
TF'd Ram Horn for the
TFU photos has left these back which is an alternate way of displaying the toy. Peg the grey robot neck piece is back into the remaining central piece of the beetle thorax, and fold the insect head forward onto the neck piece. Open up the helmet halves to reveal the face. Flip up the robot body shell, slide out the claw weapon and place into the robot hand.
Resulting robot looks odd. That face is just a joke, especially with the ball joint sitting between upper and lower jar providing some odd articulation. There's lots more grey revealed in this mode - robot chest and upper limbs are grey as is the head - though face plate is painted red. "Hands" and lower legs are molded in a similar red which is a close match for Gimlet's and make for a cohesive whole when used with him in the combined form - but I'll talk about that when DJ comes out (bit more positive about that now)
Covering the rest of the articulation: Ball joints also feature at shoulders, elbows, hips and knees, with fore and aft joints at wrist and ankle. His "hands" are essentially 2 big flippers with a standard sized peg hole in the middle. But although this is the right size for the Requiem Blaster etc it isn't of any use as the joint at the wrist is in the same plane as the peg hole and putting any weight in it causes the hand to flop back.
Overall: Decent repaint. OK beast mode, odd robot mode. Not my favourite
BW toy.
