Friday, February 2, 2018

Fansproject Pinchar - Snarl

FansProject Pinchar was a long time coming. Like most others, I had wished they had completed their core set of Dinobots before releasing those previous two figures. Unfortunately, Pinchar really wasn't worth the wait.

His stegosaurus mode is a large and chunky size, but now makes Columpio look even smaller. He has a surprisingly G1 look when compared to the more stylized dinosaur modes of his teammates. As expected, the metallic gold paint and chrome plates look fantastic. His front and back sections has a tendency to separate on my copy. A tighter set of pegs would have prevented that.

His head has the slightest of nodding action. He can open his mouth a fair amount. All four limbs are on ratchets with a single joint at the knees. The rear legs also swivel at the knees and have a hinge at the toes. They can splay outwards. His tail can waggle side to side. Some of the plates along his back are hinged.

Transformation back and forth is very straight forward. It follows most of the expected motions of a Snarl figure. Be sure to pull on his torso until it clicks into place or he will be a floppy mess. I appreciate how his shoulder plates lock into place as well. 

I wish I could say I couldn't complete his transformation. Unfortunately, FansProject seems to have simply given up on the backplate kibble. According to the instructions, it simply sits there, sticking out quite annoyingly. They should have provided a swivel joint on that back plate so it would at least have pointed downward. I've seen a mod involving a dremel and some careful cutting that I might look into.

That backplate canopy is downright annoying. Otherwise, his aesthetics is similar to his teammates. The paint applications are plentiful and clean and the line work is abundant. If not for the messy backplate, I would really like how he looks. He really fits in well with the rest of the Dinobots.

His head is on a ball joint. He can't look up very far, but he can look down quite a bit. Being his rear hips, his shoulders are on the same double hinges and ratcheted swivels. Even extending the double hinges, he can only raise his arms out and to the side well shy of 90 degrees. He swivels at the biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs. He can only perform half curls with his single-jointed elbows. His thumbs are fixed while the rest of his fingers are single pinned and articulate as a single unit. He has ratchets in his waist swivel. He also has both a normal ab crunch and a reverse ab crunch. His hips are on ratcheted universals. He can perform full forward and side splits. Technically, he has ankle rockers and tilts. Unfortunately, they are both hindered by the dinosaur legs tucked inside his robot legs.

His accessories include a rifle, a sword, and his Target Master. His rifle is black plastic with some line work. His sword blade is translucent red plastic. The handle does not have any paint, but has plenty of line work. Both weapons sit securely in his hands.

His Target Master, Lepida, is a large pole arm of some sort. Unfortunately, he seems to be a step backward when compared to the Target Masters of Volar and Severo. I’ll probably leave him in weapon mode. His head is on a swivel. His shoulders are on hinged ball joints. His elbows, hips, and knees are also on ball joints.

Pinchar will stand on my FansProject shelf. For now, I'm combining them with the Maketoys Cross Dimension figures since they don't really fit anywhere else in my collection. The scale isn’t quite what I would have liked, but it will do for now. I might even turn them all back into dinosaurs so as to not deal with the kibble on three of them. This set of Dinobots took forever to complete. I appreciate that FansProject was going for an aesthetic all their own. I even really like the art direction. Unfortunately, the engineering aspects aren’t holding up. Volar and Severo are my favorite in the line. They have wonderful aesthetics and delivered on the engineering. Too bad Pinchar arrived a little too late and finished off the line with a whimper. I hope FansProject now concentrates on finishing their Function X line of Headmasters, but I’ll likely not collect anything more from them beyond that.









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