It's been a while, but Hasbro finally has released a "modernized" Sharkticon toy, complete with the goofy little arms and legs-- it's pretty much straight-up the G1 design with modern detailing and paint. In this mode, Gnaw looks kinda goofy with his teeny t-rex-like arms, huge shark maw and face, relatively short body, little spike-ball tail, and relatively short legs. Because of the sheer "made-up-ness" of this mode, it's kinda difficult to judge it from a proportions perspective. You either like the design or you don't, but it is pretty accurate to the source material. The only extras in this mode are the robot fists on the back end of the feet-- they're pretty obvious, but on the other hand they do widen the feet and make the toy more stable since it's front-heavy in this mode. The mold detailing is a little on the smooth side, with some slight "armored" detailing on the main body, along with some rotation points, hinges, and some basic shape details here and there. The odd bits out are the arms, which have oddly organic detailing on them that doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the toy. The color scheme is mostly a light and a medium gray, but other than portions of the back it's broken up pretty well. There's a nice light pale blue on the fin, arms, tail, upper legs, and some other minor parts that contrasts decently with the darker gray (not so much with the lighter gray) and of course fits in with the whole "shark" theme. There's also a purple "mustache" on the face, which at first looks sorta weird, but it does create a nice "upper lip" on the toy and helps diversify the color scheme more. There's also some pink on the lower lip, confirming that yes, this color scheme was initially created in the mid-to-late '80s. My favorite part color-wise, though, has got to be the eyes. They could've just been painted on, but the transparent light green bulbous circles firmly ensconced in those gray eye sockets just looks GREAT and gives them that "glass" feeling they had in the animated movie. For articulation in this mode, Gnaw can move at the hips, knees, shoulders, and up-and-down at the jaw. (Unfortunately, the tail is fixed in place.) Since Gnaw is part of Titans Return, he does have two pegs for a Titan Master-- on the bottom of the inner lower lip of his mouth! Heh heh, time to get crunched, Titan Masters...
    To transform Gnaw to robot mode, you essentially fold down and back the entire upper half of the Sharkticon mode, fold the upper jaw sections back behind the legs, and then fold down the lower jaw and fold the legs up onto the sides to become legs. Given that most of this mode is visible either on the beast mode's back or underbelly or not at all, for a fairly simple transformation it gets a lot done-- Gnaw is a squat, circular little guy, and if it wasn't for the teeth on the top of his chest and some of his kibble it'd be hard to tell it was the same 'bot. As for said kibble, the most egregious are the mouth halves and shark arms on the backside of the legs. The arms in particular really stick out, and it partially ruins the look of the legs for me. The shark fin sticks out behind Gnaw's back, but it doesn't get in the way and isn't overly blatant, so I don't mind it much. The lower arms also have obvious feet on the back of them, in a reverse of the Sharkticon mode kibble. The arms themselves have very obvious ball joints that aren't quite "closed up" enough, which I'm not that big on, though it's not a huge downside. Overall Gnaw certainly has unique proportions, with a wide circular body, short legs, and big fists, but like with the shark mode, this is accurate to the source material (in fact, they slimmed him down a bit). So again, you either like it or you don't. Gnaw's head is a supremely well-done sculpt, complete with the little circular details on the sides of his helmet, a chubby light gray face with red eyes, and a "stunted" mohawk. There's even little faux teeth behind his head, which is a nice extra touch. The extra pink and purple details on the main body and legs help break up the gray even more, and the whole color scheme looks quite good in that slightly-loud late-'80s feel. Gnaw can hold his tail-mace in either of his fist holes, though given the way the weapon's molded he holds it at a bit of an odd angle. For articulation in this mode, Gnaw can move at the neck, shoulders (at two points), elbows, hips, and knees. His legs could stand to be slightly more articulated, but otherwise he's pretty good in this respect, especially given his proportions.
    Gnaw is definitely one of the most unique Transformers out there, with a wildly alien robotic walking shark mode and a chubby, short robot mode-- he's both sharp and curvy at the same time. I like his shark mode proportions a fair bit more than his robot mode, but your mileage may vary, of course. There's some pretty obvious kibble behind his legs in robot mode, but other than that how much you like this figure depends on how much you liked the Sharkticon design to begin with. If you think it looks goofy, this won't change your mind, but if you like it, here it is, and at a pricepoint that encourages troop building too, if you're into that.

Review by Beastbot

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