Grimlock's general look for Power of the Primes is, as you'd expect, taken very heavily from his G1 design. In dino mode, it's pretty faithfully done... well, from the waist up, that is. The prooportions for that part are pretty spot-on, and his headsculpt is incredibly accurate. The t-rex arms are maybe a bit too skinny even for a t-rex, but that's a minor complaint at best. No, the real issues from this mode come from the waist down. The most obvious is that awful... AWFUL... tail. It's way too wide, not "deep" enough, and very very clearly the robot legs pegged together with little tiny bits dedicated to the end of the tail sections folded over the feet. I mean, from a remotely rear-facing view, you can even see the space in betwen the legs and the knee ratchets. The only part that partially covers up those upper legs is the torso mode crotchplate, with forms the lower back in this mode. It looks nice, but doesn't really fit in with the surrounding pieces all that well. The lower body-- which becomes the chest in robot mode-- is a bit too wide and low in this mode as well, making it look like Grimlock is wearing a gold diaper. It's pretty unfortunate. Additionally, although the legs look decent from the front (albeit a bit oddly jointed), there's big honkin' combiner ports on the back end of them, ruining the lower legs essentially and really looking off. As you'd expect for a PotP voyager, Grimlock also has Power Armor pieces, which are basically the combined mode feet with little holes near the front for a Prime Master to fit in if you so desire. (He does come with a small silver-and-red "power core"-like piece that can slot into one of these holes in lieu of a Prime Master.) They're pretty obviously feet, though, and can't really be wielded or stored inconspiciously anywhere in this mode-- you have to just peg them onto the sides of the lower legs, giving even more uneeded bulk to those pieces. On the plus side, however, Grimlock is very well-detailed mold-wise, with circuitry lines, panels, and pipes all over the place-- but not enough to "overcrowd" the toy. Grimlock's main plastic is a milky gray, but it's a little shiny as well, not being light enough to be particularly boring in my opinion. He's also got a lot of dull metallic gold-- with much of it painted on the INSIDE of clear plastic parts on the neck and lower body, giving a really cool look and fitting him in thematically with the rest of the PotP Dinobots. There's also some red details here and there. Plastic-wise it's mostly used for minor connector parts like the knee ratchets, part of the stomach, and some minor hinges, but paint-wise it's also used for his eyes and on his hips. There's also some foil stickers used for Grimlock, but unlike most uses of foil stickers on modern toys, I actually don't mind them-- they fit in fairly well with the milky gray, and aren't on any parts where they'll easily start to peel off from repeated transformations. You can see these multi-colored robotic detail stickers across his t-rex chest and sides, as well as on the bottom of his tail (which becomes his robot mode lower legs). For articulation in this mode, Grimlock can move at the jaw, up-and-down at the base of the skull, at the shoulders (it looks like his elbows are on a hinge, but that's just a molded-in detail), at the hips (at two points), knees (at three points), and up-and-down at the base of the tail. So for a beast alt mode, he's pretty well-articulated, overall. Finally, it should be noted that there are two little pegs on the top near the base of the tail for a Prime/Titan Master to stand on.
    If you've transformed any G1-esque Grimlock toy, the transformation of this one should be pretty familiar; the t-rex head and body fold back behind the main body, the lower t-rex body and legs fold up to become his robot mode chest and arms, and his tail becomes his legs. The only real difference here is that, as hinted at in beast mode, you basically just separate the tail down the mid-point and then fold back the two tiny tail-end pieces to become his heels-- it's not as complicated here as on other G1 Grimlock toy tails, due to the limitations of him also having to form a torso mode for a combiner. This is definitely PotP Grimlock's strongest mode, being generally pretty G1-accurate with only a few minor issues that most of his other toys don't have. The most obvious of these is that even for Grimlock, he's very barrel-chested, and his head is a bit small proportionally, so his main body looks off a bit. There's also the torso crotchplate hanging out behind his butt, though this is a pretty minor issue. He does have the dino head and sides folded behind his upper back, as you'd expect, but this is pretty much Grimlock's thing by now, so given that they don't get in the way of articulation and the torso "wings" actually accentuate his silhouette, I don't mind them much. (That said, they could stand to be a TITCH higher on the back to better frame his shoulders.) The combiner ports are pretty obvious on the inside of the lower arms and the outside of his lower legs, but those are also minor issues. I don't like the big hollow squares next to his fists, though, as his lower arms already have other big hollow squares on them because of those aforementioned combiner ports. Mold-wise, he continues to have the quite intricate detailing carried over from the t-rex mode, and his headsculpt is spot-on, complete with a red-painted visor. There's also some more red on the waist and abs, and combined with the slightly more apparent shade of black on his head, fists, and lower legs, helps vary up the color scheme a bit more in this mode compared to beast mode. Grimlock's Prime Armor pieces don't really fit anywhere inconspicuous in this mode either, being relegated to fit onto the sides of his lower arms, like ridiculously oversized feet-gauntlets. For articulation in this mode, Grimlock can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows (at three points), inwards at the wrists, rotation at the waist, and movement at the hips (at two points), and knees (at two points). I wish his feet had some ankle tilts, but other than that he's quite nicely articulated and poseable in this mode.
    Grimlock's torso mode is definitely the "new" part of this toy, given his similar his other modes are to previous Grimlock toys. The lower half, sadly, isn't particularly impressive and pretty straightforward; it's his robot mode waist with the legs splayed sideways to form the waist and upper legs of the torso mode. The waist piece from the butt of his robot mode switches to the front of this mode to become a crotch plate to make that section look larger-- and the crotchpiece is pretty well-detailed, with several angular details, and it's covered in silver and dull metallic gold paint. The upper portion of this mode is much more impressive, at least concept-wise. The robot chest folds down and the t-rex head folds onto it to form a fairly wide, barrel chest with the beast head sort of forming the center of the chest in a manner similar to a lot of beast transformers' robot modes. I do wish that the head "meshed" with the chest a bit better, though; given how angular and flat the chest is, having the t-rex head just suddenly jut out-- and farther from the front than anything else in this mode-- does look a bit odd. Due to the transformation, there's also two obvious black square holes near the sides of the chest, which are a minor eyesore. The combined mode head (the combined form of all the Dinobots is called Volcanicus) is basically a bigger version of Grimlock's head, but with a more detailed sculpt on the sides and back with several robotic details molded into that black plastic, while he has a sort of large dual antennae on his forehead that sort of looks like a crown. (Which of course fits, because of the whole "Me Grimlock King" thing.) His visor is painted red as expected, while his chin strap is silver and his "crown" is dull metallic gold. As for the shoulders, they consist of the dino legs/robot arms folded up and then the dino body shell halves folded over and tabbed into the top of them. In theory, this is a pretty cool idea, but it makes Grimlock VERY wide-shouldered when you add on deluxes to those combiner ports, to the point where it looks rather awkward, especially when compared with his relatively thin waist. From some official pictures, you can add additional Prime armor pieces to "beef up" the waist a bit on the sides, but then you're taking those away from the feet, which makes him less stable-- or if you take them from other PotP toys, they likely won't match, and they look a bit out-of-place anyways. They only slightly mitigate the problem, they far from solve it. Additionally, there's only one tab that connects the folded-up robot arms to the dino shells-- and this isn't nearly enough given the weight that's placed on those pieces when you slot the 'bots in that form his arms, so his shoulders halves can come disconnected a bit easily, which is my biggest problem with this mode and rather annoying.
    Power of the Primes Grimlock has great articulation, an original (if somewhat flawed structurally) torso mode, and some nice paint apps and details. However, he's TOO G1-accurate in his beast mode and robot mode, and this really hurts him. They needed to be a bit more original with his transformation and look in both modes to accomodate his additional ability to combine-- you can still make the toy definitely "Grimlock" without so slavishly replicating his G1 toy structure in both modes. As is, because they stuck to his G1 structure so closely, they had to make some major compromises in other areas, leading to odd proportions in beast mode in particular, but also in his robot mode as well, and some unnecssarily obvious combiner ports. There's several G1-ish-accurate Grimlock toys out there already; they should have been a bit more original with his design for this version so his proportions and structure didn't suffer as much on this toy. If you want a Grimlock that combines, this is your only choice, but if you only want a G1-y Grimlock toy there's far better attempts out there.

Review by Beastbot

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