Snarl
(Power of the Primes)
In stegosaurus mode, like the other combining PotP Dinobots, Snarl very much takes after his G1 self. He's a little on the stumpy side, though his face is a bit more realistically proportioned this time and less of a curved wedge. His tail-- which usually sticks fairly straight out-- is also kinda slumped down to the ground, which works to get those tail segments out of the way easier in other modes, and to get his combiner port out of there easier. From a side profile, the tail still looks fairly natural, if missing a bit of mass near the top of it. As you'd expect, Snarl largely has the same color scheme as the rest of the PotP Dinobots, with a lot of milky medium gray and a red segment near the rear. Snarl has more gold than the other Dinobots, with all of his plates in that dull milky gold plastic shade, along with much of the plastic on his underside. There's also plenty of gold paint used on the inside of his clear plastic, giving a pretty cool look to his head, front legs, and the upper part of his rear legs. There's also some gold paint on the bottom of his rear legs and on his robot feet, which stick up slightly from the middle of his body. (Given that they're wedged in between two of his back plates, though, they're minor pieces of kibble at best.) Additionally, there's some silver paint on the inside of his upper rear leg pieces and on his lower legs, and some black on the middle of his rear legs and along part of the sides of his body to break up some of the gray/silver. Finally, there's some blue and red simple geometric details down the front section of his back, and some red paint on his eyes. All in all it's a pretty good color scheme, looking pretty "metal" overall but with enough red (and a bit of blue) to help break up his various metallic colors. His mold detailing is fairly impressive as well, with tech details such as circuitry, vents, pistons, and the like detailed pretty much all over him, including on his plates, along with the inside of his transparent parts, with the gold and silver paint there really helping to bring out all those cool details. Snarl has a clear plastic sword which can plug into the center portion of either of his hips-- I wish there was better storage, but it's a decent main weapon. His Prime Armor can ALSO only be stored on the side of one of his hips, which looks REALLY awkward. I mean, these Prime Armor pieces usually don't fit in with the alt mode all that well, but wow-- seriously? Nothing better than a giant hand hanging off his hip? Meh. He also has four ports for Prime/Titan Masters in this mode-- two on the top of the red portion of his body near the sides, and two more on the inside of his biggest back plates, which can be flipped down for precisely this purpose. For articulation in this mode, Snarl can move at the top of the front legs, as well as the rear hips (at two points) and at the rear knees. That's about it, but given his transformation, I don't see how they could get much more out of him at the deluxe pricepoint.
Snarl's transformation is fairly straightforward-- the rear legs slide up and become his arms, the tail rotates out for you to pull the head up before it collapses back together and splits in two, and the front sections rotate around to be his feet. The end result is pretty good, with minimal obvious kibble. The front dino legs hang off the sides of his lower legs pretty blatantly, but they do at least help give some bulk to what are, from a frontal view, rather skinny legs given that they're halves of the dino body split down vertically. The dino head halves hang off the back of said lower legs, but don't add any such useful bulk to anything. Of course, there are the tail half sections above Snarl's shoulders, but they frame his silhouette and, in my opinion, enhance it quite a bit and look cool, so I quite like them there. His main body is nice and bulky/burly, with some blue and black details on the sides to break up the red a bit more. (In fact, though his color scheme is the same in this mode, more of the black is visible, breaking up more of that gray/silver, and so I like his color layout more in this mode.) His headsculpt is pretty accurate to his original design, but "updated" a bit with sculpting and proportions you'd expect from a modern toy. He still has the angular antennae on the side of his head, a silver-painted forehead vent, and a silver "normal" mouth with red eyes. His arms and legs look okay from a diagonal view, but they're a bit skinny from a strictly frontal view. Given all the angles, he also just looks a bit "stiff" in this mode. Granted, he IS articulated, but he just doesn't look as dynamic posed as most other "modern" TF toys. Speaking of articulation, he can move at the neck, shoulders, elbows (at two points), inwards a bit at the wrists, rotation at the waist, and movement at the hips (at two points) and knees, so he's fairly well-articulated. As with all PotP deluxes, Snarl can fit his "Prime Armor" on his chest in this mode, but it still doesn't really look like anything, and just adds some extra mass to his chest that isn't really needed. There's a reason I have to keep reminding myself that Prime Armor can be used as something other than parts in combined mode, and that's because I basically never use them when they're not in combined mode because they look so weird.
