Age of the Primes Quickstrike
Here to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of Beast Wars, Quickstrike compliments fellow Fuzor Silverbolt after a bit of a break, and fills another gap in the shows cast.
Much like fellow Beast Era weirdo Sky-Byte’s update, Quickstrike proves to be a refinement of the original. Since there’s not a lot you fundamentally can change, you take what’s present and make it as good as you can. Now, that’s refinement of a basic bitch Basic class figure instead of something much larger and considerably more fiddly, but still, they made what the Kenner original offered as good as they could, adding plenty of finer points to touch up the experience.
I imagine further Transmetal updates will follow similar suit in that there won’t be many stark differences compared to what came before. Most of the designs introduced in seasons two and three of Beast Wars are super close to the toys, so if you want to make a new figure of the character from the show, you kind of just… make a better version of their old toy. Quickstrike shows this off in full force in a myriad of ways. First off: he’s not comprised nigh entirely of clear plastic. You can actually make out what he looks like, as opposed to being so transparent he gets lost in… himself. Opacity aside, the colors in general are delightful. The gold used for his chest and legs really pops with the bright teal.
Another notable shift from the original is a heavy reduction in ball joints. He keeps them for the cobra arm (and the scorpion head, more on that in a second) but his shoulders and hips are universal joints, his left arm gets two sets of mushroom pegs, and his thighs get one each. Most bends are now hinges, all of which are nice and tight, at least on my copy. It all lets him pull a pose or two! He’s got a very healthy range of movement, and doesn’t have too much trouble balancing. The cobra arm is obviously quite flexible, which is something that carries over to beast mode.
Transformation is a satisfyingly simple affair. Everything moves cleanly and slots nicely into place, with maybe the slightest exception of the shoulder pads. They very much need to be moved out of the way before the chest can come up (or down, going back to robot mode), but that’s not much of a problem and there’s still ample clearance. You don’t need to flex anything. It is pretty simple, though. Not that’s a bad thing, but what you see is what you get with Quickstrike. Kinda lays his Everything pretty bare. It’s an upgrade over the original for sure, but if you were hoping for a substantial shift you might end up a bit disappointed. Though, with how good the scorpion mode is, I can’t imagine why that feeling would persist.
The scorpion mode is fantastic, plain and simple. His legs can actually hold him up, and the head gets a good chunk of articulation thanks to the way it’s assembled. He’s overall very expressive for a beast former, the added points of movement on his face(s) giving you a lot of options on top of everything else. The scorpion head is on a ball jointed strut, letting you lift it up and swivel it around. The cobra head obviously keeps all the ball joints it had as an arm, but it can also open and close its mouth, which reveals/obscures a blast effect port. My only complaint is that he could have used an extra swivel below the. Like elbows but on a bug- It’s not a hugely limiting factor, very much not essential, but that additional range of movement would have been nice.
For his first new toy in… 28 years, Quickstrike makes a darn tootin good return. This sort of quality helps set the standard for modern Generations and proves why people love it so much. Now if only he weren’t shortpacked to one per case. Other “first new toy in decades” character and Quickstrike’s wave mate Sureshot got the same treatment… meanwhile the new Junkion repaint character Jalopy got two. What in tarnation is goin on over there?!?!