With its wonderful curved tusks and shaggy fur, the extinct woolly mammoth is about as recognizable as any dinosaur. Small wonder then, that Takara chose it as the beast form for the Cybertron leader in BW Neo.
Beast Mode
From trunk to rump, this woolly mammoth measures 23 cm (9") long and stands 13 cm(5.4") tall at the head. Main colours are chocolate brown and caramel, with ivory white for the tusks, teeth, and toenails and green for the eyes. The detailing on this toy is nothing short of superb, with grooves in the tusks, wrinkles on the trunk, and finely sculpted fur.
His trunk and tusks are made of a rubbery type of plastic, making them less prone to breakage.
Big Convoy's legs are firmly locked in place, however he's not a total brick. His little tail moves and his ears flap back and forth. Pushing a lever on the top of his head causes his trunk to slowly rise up as though lifting something or trumpeting. Also, pushing back on either ear causes the
tusk on that side to rise up in a kind of "goring attack." Gonna disembowel ya, bub.
Attack Mode
Like most BW Neo Cybertron figures, Big Convoy has an attack mode that involves mangling his beast mode until it looks like it was hit by a freight train. In Big Convoy's case, missile launchers similar to the ones on T-Wrecks out from his flanks and his entire back and middle part of his head rotate 180 degrees so that his trunk becomes his butt and he's got a great big gun sticking out of his forehead. Looks more hideous than impressive.
Transformation
Yikes. This one's a real challenge, involving lots of
parts shifting and flipping out and folding up and rotating around. The first time I transformed this guy was in near-darkness during the MST3K showing at Botcon 2001, so I had a devil of a time trying to get him back into beast mode later on.
Robot Mode
In robot mode, Big Convoy stands 19 cm(7.5") tall and a
whopping 33 cm(9") wide due to his tusky shoulder pads. Like most other BW Neo figures, he suffers from a major case of beast kibble, with the mammoth limbs and flanks hanging off his legs and the halves of the mammoth head acting as the aforementioned shoulder pads. His actual robot body is mostly
red, white, and black with some blue on the chest and feet. His head is blue and silver with chrome yellow eyes, and while it has the familiar face plate and vertical crest of a Convoy-type robot, it's also thicker, with horns that point out more towards the sides. His arms are slightly asymmetrical;
the right one is white and red, the left one is metallic silver and translucent red. Big Convoy is articulated at the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, thighs, knees, and ankles. The head on mine is very wobbly, unfortunately.
Big Convoy's arsenal is second to none. He's got missile racks in both shoulder pads, gatling guns mounted in his hips, and missile launchers on his shins. Each launcher fires a red, crescent-shaped missile about a metre or so. Spiked clubs called tonfa flip out from the armour on his forearms and peg into the bottoms of his fists. Finally there's his Big Cannon, a
gigantic piece of hardware that rivals Rampage's tri-barrel cannon. Formed from the mammoth trunk and back, it's black and white with two red missiles that fire by rotating the beige knob on top. The missiles don't fire a great distance though, and the darn thing is so heavy and cumbersome that Big
Convoy has difficulty carrying it properly.
Last, but certainly not least, there's the Matrix. Flipping open the translucent red panel on Big Convoy's chest reveals a red plastic gem surrounded by a gold chrome housing complete with handles. While it doesn't completely resemble the Matrix of American TV, film, and comic lore, it's still very cool in its own right. Oh, and, Big Convoy's red Spark crystal is located on the inside of his chest panel. Clever.
Overall
Suspsy Sez: The woolly mammoth mode is blocky and the robot mode is laden with beast kibble, yet on the whole, Big Convoy is one great toy. Fine detailing, nice colours, tons of weaponry, good articulation, and the first ever Matrix. Bear in mind, however, that he's considerably expensive, even by Japanese toy standards. I had to shell out $65 for him at Botcon 2001, and that was after BBTS finally lowered the price on Sunday.
Suspsy
Reviewer | Suspsy |
Date | January 7th 2002 |
Score | (9 out of 10) |
Reads | 11361 |
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