PREDAKING!

OK, this post is a landmark for two reasons. Beside the fact that this is my first actual review, this item also holds a lot of personal meaning for me. To explain, we have to go back to '92 or so when a young Zarak visited his great aunt's house. We didn't stop by very often, but the trips were your typical murder-by-boredom family visits as my mother would chat with her forever and leave me to amuse myself. Which consisted of mainly staring at my cousin's Generation One, complete, shining, golden, Predaking. Always on display, always pristine and amazing, towering over the living room proudly on a bookshelf far out of my reach. Not that I was allowed to touch him, ever, but I always remembered that massive Decepticon and coveted him for myself. Of course, by that point, Predaking was long gone off of toy store shelves and even if he hadn't been, I doubt I could have convinced my parents to buy me five different, roughly twenty dollar toys in a row. My dad spoiled me sometimes, but not that much.

Fast forward a few years to when I was fourteen or so and trying to get a Generation One collection going through eBay and harassing my friends to check their attics/basements/etc. I hunted constantly and got some good deals from time to time, but there was still always that handful of figures that never showed up or were way out of my price range. Megatron, Sixshot, Piranacon, and of course, the King. Back then, his combined mode head alone went for fifty bucks, I couldn't swing that on my allowance.

So the years went on again and over time, I grabbed a Megatron reissue and then a Piranacon reissue and now finally, thanks to reissues once more, I give you PREDAKING!

The box is a very nice, fully printed suitcase style that lets you open and close it without having to damage the packaging in any way. The front has art of each individual member with their names in English and Japanese next to art of Predaking, his English name cutting across the entire front and grabbing your attention, the Japanese version being below his feet. The Transformers logo is present in the upper left corner in Japanese yet again flanked by a Decepticon symbol and a Welcome to Transformers 2010 logo as well. I neglected to take a picture of the back, but it again shows and names each member, this time with actual photos of the robot modes and combined mode as well as having small bios for each.

Inside the box is a slide out, two layered plastic tray, a top layer protecting the robots and combiner parts beneath. The Predacons are packaged in beast mode and already have quite a few stickers applied, though each member also has an individual sticker sheet if you want to add them. In a nice touch, there is an extra sticker sheet with red eye stickers for each member's robots and beast mode eyes if you prefer them that way. I kind of like them better with their painted gold eyes, so I didn't apply those


Beneath the main tray is a smaller, two layered tray containing the Predacons' individual swords and guns. There is also a baggie containing the sticker sheets, instruction sheet and bio cards for each Predacon and Predaking.

Here they are out of package with what weapons can be used in beast form attached. Note that Tantrum (the bull) and Headstrong (the rhino) use Predaking's feet in this mode as giant mounted cannons, clever reuse of accessories. Razorclaw, the lion, has a large dual-barreled cannon that can mount on his back.

Robots!  These guys are pretty heavy as each has a large piece of die cast metal in their construction. Which is awesome, just like the old days! Each Predacon has two identical black rifles and a golden sword, except Razorclaw who has just a sword and his giant cannon. However, trying to initially match up who gets which type of gun and which sword can be a bit confusing as there are four types of guns that all look almost exactly alike. The swords at least have very different hilts.

The main Deceptiking himself! Big, chunky, heavy, giggle-inducing. This here is literally the claiming of a collecting holy grail to me. He has a surprising amount of articulation for a Generation One combiner. His shoulders and hips ratchet, his waist and wrists swivel, there's a little bit of elbow bend in each arm and Divebomb's wings can ratchet up and down at the base of the backpack and extend a bit the "shoulders." Predaking carries Razorclaw's sword which is laughably small in his giant, spike-knuckled fists, and the dual-barreled cannon on his left arm. However, in a surprisingly clever move, the cannon itself transforms! Pulling apart the black sections at the back of the cannon and swinging them forward to clip together covering the dual barrels, you reveal a telescoping single cannon barrel that pulls out to form a totally different gun, very cool.

That's the quick once over, I'll get more in depth on the individual members soon but I wanted to get off a post before I had to go to work. For now, just bask in his greatness while I'm gone.

P.S., I got my Predaking from Big Bad Toy Store if you were looking to score one for yourself...