Review – RoboWarriors Herculoid
I grabbed this terrible transforming robot toy while I was in Cozumel last week for one reason: Herculoid is clearly based on the Go-Bots Scrap-Bot toy (review here) so there was no way that I could leave this toy behind. It’s pure junk, yes, but it makes an adorable addition to the various Transformers Rescue Bots series toys (Amazon.com search*) and similar pieces in my collection.
Packaging
The back is blank so I didn’t bother to take a picture, but the front is full of the promise of other bad transforming robot toys. And if you compare the images on the packaging to the various robots at gobotsarepurelove.com then you’ll notice that anyone collecting the official toys will likely want to find one or two of these bad knockoffs. If you can even find them for sale anywhere for reasonable prices.
Vehicle Mode
As you can see by the photos, this orange-colored toy is not an exact match for the Go-Bots Scrap-Bot toy (review here) that inspired it. The design is similar, the transformation is identical, but each any every piece of the toy is an original sculpt and not simply a copy of the official toy.
The photo below shows the two toys and gives you a good idea of just how similar the cheap bootleg is to the official toy. Well, I say cheap, but the toy ended up costing me $7. Not at all a terrible price for a transforming robot toy, but actually pretty high for something of this poor of a quality.
Robot Mode
As bad as the vehicle mode looks — click any of the shots and you’ll see that the paint is patchy, scratchy, and looks like it was applied with a q-tip by a blind artist — the robot mode really starts to suck once you study it for more than the blink of an eye. The articulation is the same as Go-Bots Scrap-Bot (review here), but that’s pretty much the end of what the two have in common.
And it’s not just the paint that’s bad. Herculoid is constructed of some of the cheapest plastic known to man, feeling at times like a stadium drink cup that’s gonna shatter if you apply too much force. The plastic is so cheap that I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some insanely high percentage of these toys were pre-broken before they were packaged at the factory. Yeah, this is all around a bad toy.
Closing Thoughts
But regardless of how bad a toy it is, RoboWarriors Herculoid will live proudly with the similar toys in my collection. $7 was definitely too much to pay for the toy, but considering that I may never see one again I think I’ll just sit back and smile. At least I didn’t leave Mexico without him . . . unlike another transforming robot toy I saw while I was in Cozumel.
Philip Reed also saw a bootleg Generation One Shockwave while he was in Mexico . . . but he was too dumb to pay the $20 to bring it home.
