I left off the last post with “here’s hoping we have better luck with Grimstone and the Dinobots”. The answer is an emphatic yes… mostly.
Grimstone himself, is wonderful. His colour scheme — and that of his Dinobot drones — is patterned in the grey, red, gold, and silver of the original Dinobots.
His Styracosaurus alt mode, though incorrectly identified as a Triceratops on his box, is sharp and — despite being patterned after a herbivore — looks quite dangerous.
Front mounted guns with a tail-mounted minicon port just for the heck of it.
Likewise, the Dinobot drones all look pretty dangerous, despite three of them being herbivores and one not even being a dinosaur at all.
First, the non-dinosaur of the bunch, which was also mislabeled on the packaging. The Dimetrodon drone, mistakenly called a Spinosaurus, is the one predator of the group, and is actually a synapsid. I’m assuming, seeing as all the other drones have visible weaponry, that the protrusions below his chest are guns of some sort.
I wonder if this particular drone is actually solar-powered?
The Dimetrodon forms one of the two arms of the combined mode, with his head making the hand. Due to this, he is the only drone that can open and close his mouth. The other arm is the Parasaurolophus drone, my favourite of the drone designs. There’s just something really cool looking about him.
After getting tired of being picked off by the tyrannosaurids, this parasaurolophus started packing heat.
Much like the dimetrodon, another staple of “dinosaur” Transformers is the ankylosaurus. The Ankylosaurus drone follows in the Parasaurolophos drone’s lead by bringing some heavy weaponry. His design reminds me of a mix of Gairyū and Doryū of Dinoforce from the Japan-only series Transformers Victory.
Guns in the front, spiky club in the back.
Lastly is a fun dinosaur, the thick-skulled Pachycephalosaurus drone.
First he shoots you, then he rams you with his hard head. Or maybe he rams you, then shoots you. It's all about having options.
These have jumped straight to my favourite set of drones and my favourite commander of the entire PCC line.
Where the “mostly” comes in is his combined mode. Don’t get me wrong, I like it a lot, and it has taken it’s place as my favourite PCC Autobot — a spot previously owned by Double Clutch and his Rallybots. It wasn’t enough to bump Bombshock and the Combaticons off my number one overall favourite PCC combined mode.
Grimstone’s crest forms a skull-like chestplate and the unified colour scheme really makes this an awesome combined mode. Beast Wars long ago made me perfectly fine with heads/mouths as hands, so the hand formed by his Dimetrodon drone is cool with me. However, rather than a hand formed from his Parasaurolophos drone, he ends up with a giant pincer of sorts. Just looking at it, the designers really missed an opportunity. By having the tail fold down rather than up, he could have had a three clawed hand, rather than two awkward-looking pincers. It’s still not enough to throw the whole design off, so I am quite happy with this guy. There’s a good chance he might be the only PCC Commander and drone set to be displayed in alt mode because, let’s face it, robot dinosaurs still rule.
