One of the more sensible fusions in Beast Wars Fuzors came in the form of Terragator, a terrapin and an alligator. Why not throw a turtle shell on a gator? That's a heck of a useful defensive weapon right there, although once you start applying some form of logic to alien robot warfare you start to get into trouble.
The beast mode is not exactly a solid creation, but it looks cool. The thin limbs and the shell are a little hard to keep together, as the shell pegs don't quite fit into the hand holes. The tail stays in place, and the articulated legs (while unnecessary) are a real nice touch. There's a cool little mechanism in the head where if you move the arm under the shell, the head will bite. It's not a perfect fit but it's pretty nice that they worked something like this in such a small figure. The critter is essentially a barely-poseable creation, but you'll probably going to want to keep it as a robot anyway.
Like most of these toys, transformation is nice and simple-- pop off the shell, fold out the limbs, remove the tail, and presto-- robot. The roughly 4-inche tall figure has roughly a dozen points of articulation and is quite spindly, although the joints seem to hold up rather well. While not as stiff as Noctorro, it has no problems standing up and posing for a fight. I doubt it would hold up to heavy play due to all the ball joints, the limbs are designed to pop off if given too much stress.
The most amazing thing about the toy-- especially for a 1998 Transformers toy-- is the paint job. The shell is one of the prettiest things I think Hasbro has ever done, and the most amazing thing is that this came out of an era where most toys had, at best, three or four colors of paint on their heads. This shiny finish with the fading browns is really nice, and I can't help but wonder if it was entirely intentional for it to be this rich or if it was just a happy accident in the production process. The previous Beast Wars, turtle, Snapper, had a shell molded in green with some yellow splotches. Terragator has other great details like painted teeth in both modes, big bright eyes, and a creamy color for the bottom of his reptilian head. Sure, that tail gun thing is sort of dorky, but you can't deny that with all the accessories removed that this is a really nice Predacon figure. (There's no escaping beast kibble, folks.)
His Predacon rubsign is located under his shell so you really can't see it well in either mode. While I can't honestly say that Terragator is a shining beacon unto the late 1990s toy line, it's certainly very good as a thing to look at and futz with. I doubt you'll be sorry if you pick one up, but just remember that it doesn't exactly hold together in beast mode as well as you might hope.
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