Review – FansProject Warcry

FansProject is loved by many, and it’s possible that without their work over the years my Transforming Collections Kickstarter project wouldn’t even be happening. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, yes, but I say this only to help demonstrate just how important the company is to the third party scene. And despite my not being as much of a fan of their work as others, I can say that Warcry here is a decent enough transforming robot toy that look good and has an easy enough transformation process.

Packaging

Very similar to the Flameblast box (review here), Warcry comes in an attractive box that includes a mix of photos and illustrations. The window box design shows off the toy very well and everything was securely packaged and perfectly safe. An excellent box that would work well in a retail environment.

Jeep Mode

As a recolor of a mold originally designed to represent the Combaticon Swindle it should be no surprise that Warcry’s a military jeep-like vehicle. Mostly it’s a great vehicle mode, but for some reason the front section of mine won’t lock together at the tabs so the hood has a massive gap down the center; see the photo, below.

All of the wheels spin freely and the toy rolls nicely across the floor, but no matter how hard I try the front section just won’t lock together. That, plus the ugly gunshield design on the roof — that weapon will not swivel and the shield likes to fall off — makes me a little unhappy with the toy’s vehicle mode. Well, maybe robot mode can save it.

Robot Mode

Transforming from vehicle mode to robot mode is pretty simple, with the only real trick the roof of the vehicle sliding down to press closer to the underside/torso when the toy is in robot mode. The arm transformation is very nice while the back and legs are fairly standard flip and snap approaches to design that aren’t anything new. Unfortunately, that huge rear section of the vehicle hanging off of Warcry’s back makes the toy back heavy and without the weapon and shield in his hands Warcry will topple backwards more often than I like.

Articulation

Warcry has a reasonably useful range of motion, with ball joints at the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, swivels at the waist and thighs, and hinged ankles. It’s unfortunate that the hands don’t have any articulation at all, but I guess that since the hands need to be holding the accessories to help the toy balance the lack of articulation at the wrists doesn’t harm anything.

Paint

Most of Warcry’s coloring comes from the plastic parts, with the only significant paintwork on the head, vehicle windshields, and the shoulders. The paint’s clean and tight and overall what we expect from our toys. It would have been great if FansProject had applied more detailed paint apps to the cannon, legs, and torso, but what we have to acceptable and doesn’t reduce the toy’s play or display value.

Closing Thoughts

Overall Warcry is a pretty good third party Transformers toy. At the $45 to $50 he seems to go for he’s an okay buy, but the FansProject Insecticon toys that were released last year are a much better buy and have far superior robot modes and articulation. Warcry’s not bad, but as a re-release/retool of an earlier design the toy suffers only because the FansProject team has gotten better since they first designed the toy.

I’m not sure who I would recommend this toy to. It’s not exciting and not terrible. It’s simply okay, and with the number of toys out there these days there’s no reason to buy “okay” when you can dig a little deeper and find “great.”

Philip Reed knows he should have reviewed this toy last year when he got it, but life (and cooler toys) kept getting in the way.