- Color Scheme:
- Well balanced combination of a light grayish blue, blue translucent parts, and rusty brown, with some brown , silver, and yellow accents. I have no complaints about his color scheme. If it wasn't well thought out, it sure passes as such. ;-)
- Robot Mode:
- Suffers from the "animal standing up" syndrome, but not so much as Longhorn and some others. His hind legs become arms, and front legs become robot legs, so it's not too bad. He has a cool gimmick (which I'll get to later), but his head has a sword-like tail sticking straight out the back, and his forearms are ball jointed the wrong way like Longhorn's, except that they're also hinged a little so it's (again) not as bad. Unfortunately, he has no hands at all. His paws only sort-of fold back, one arm to reveal the weapon gimmick, the other to reveal... what? a middle finger? I can't even tell, that's how useless it looks.
- Beast Mode:
- I'm about as thrilled with his beast mode as I am with Razor Claw's (of the Mutant Beast Wars) wolverine mode. As you can see, Razor Claw is NOT in my collection. The biggest problem with Quickstrike's beast mode is his front legs. They're way too far forward, and they can't be posed realistically at all. They're just like hind legs, but in front. It looks really stupid. I do like his beast head, though, even if it does look more like a dog than a wolf.
- Transformation:
- More than I expected from the pictures I saw and the fact that he's a basic/regular sized toy. His beast head folds into his chest like TMet2 Cheetor, then you play some tricks with his pairs of legs, slide his body down so that the head and chest is in the right place, fold his chest down, fix his legs, and he's done. His rating of intermediate is probably a little high, but he's definitely more complex than the "basic" rating.
- Gimmicks:
- His main saving grace is a pretty cool gimmick. One of his hind legs, which becomes one of his robot arms, has a "switch-blade" (now THAT would have been a better name for him. :) in it. Press the release button/switch, and the sword flips out, giving him a neat looking sword weapon. It's well integrated into his arm, flips quickly and is very solid (no wiggling at all, really). I can dig this kind of gimmick. I hope more BM toys have good gimmicks like this. Very playable.
- Pros/Cons:
- He's so-so. I'm not too fond of his beast mode, but he has a nice beast head. I'm not keen on his robot mode, but he does have the cool switchblade gimmick. My main gripe about him is Hasbro's flippant use of the name "Quickstrike". It just doesn't fit. If they want to re-use names, why not one that makes sense? They could have re-used Beast Wars Wolfang's name, AND character, and I would have been MUCH happier with it. Check the Funnies page for a funny about this toy and his name.
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