From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

So this showed up at work, we assumed it was opened and were pleasantly surprised it was not. I ended up taking it home, it came in at the heels
of about 200 Transformers boxed and loose, as well as about 30 Iron
Factory, so nobody would really notice. Holiday Prime, SG Magnus, Titans Scorponok and Selects Guardian Robot seemed to be the big hitters from
this trade anyway.

I did watch Naruto in it's entirety, but then I watched Boruto which
soured any enjoyment I took from Naruto. So I'm not a Naruto fan. I got
this because I wanted a nine-tails fox and a frog Transformers, without
waiting for a redeco of Gamakichi as Spittor or Diver, a redeco that may
never happen after Beast Walmart Legacy offerings bombed.

Kurama and Gamakichi come in a box with rounded sides to look like some
kind of sideways ninja scroll, it has a front window with both in robot
mode in a plastic tray, with 2 knives, a scroll, and a small weapon all
above Gamakichi. Kurama's tails are folded up behind him for space I'm
sure.

Opening the side, the 4 energy accessories are wrapped in white paper
with red Autobot logos. Each bot is held into the tray with 3 plastic
bands.

Kurama

Kurama in the series is basically a god beast sealed inside Naruto when
he was a baby. 1st episode spoiler. Most of his appearances are when
Naruto talks to Kurmama inside his own soul. Later the Boruto series has
to eliminate Kurama as a god to try and salvage the series which angered
many fans.

I didn't know in advance, but Kurama is a heavy retool of Kingdom
Cheetor. It works out really well, he has a new almost everything, feet,
shins, thighs, hips, both heads, all arms, even the hands. I think only
the shoulders and upper arms might be the same. He's mostly orange
plastic with dark gray shoulders and feet. His robot head has green eyes
with a white face and leaf village headband.

Kurama's hands are totally new engineering, 1 is a circle with
forefingers pointing out in a Jutsu position, with added wrist tilt, the
other hand has a knuckle joint allowing it to hold things or open up to
attach energy blasts to the peg that folds out of the palm. The feet are sandals, the beast feet have nine-tales symbols on the soles making them
knee decoration in robot mode. His shins, thighs and forearms have some
ninja armor deco, his right thigh has a off-white wrapping molded on.
The back has 3 mounts for 3 pieces which are each 3 tails so 3x3=9
tails. The literature has them down kind of like a rear skirting, but
there's a lot of joints on the back to give many options. Each tail
gives a double hinge, and the lower back has 2 more joints to fold the
back upwards to make the mounting a little higher and not interfere with
robot legs.

To transform him it's the same as Cheetor, except also unfolding the
lower back (those 2 joints really have too little clearance.) In beast
mode his legs are much longer than Cheetor, with big ears and a longer
neck, large ears, and of course 9 tails in 3 groupings. His neck is so
long, I wish it had articulation of some kind because his muzzle is down
low, his beast eyes look a little crazy with slit pupils, and his teeth
are always visible, there's no way to make him not look either angry or
insane. The new hands unfortunately stick out between the back legs, try
not to see 2 small round pieces with fingers sticking out between as fox genitalia.

His front paws have 5mm ports in the soles, he can use the energy
explosion accessories or hold weapons if we want him looking like BW2
beasts.

The energy blast accessories are all designed for Kurama. He has some
ground Chi-blasts to go under his robot feet, his energy ball accessory
and energy disc accessory are designed for his robot hands, to connect
to his fingers or the palm peg and look like he's gathering or shooting
out an energy ball. The instructions also give a demonstration of using
the beast front legs unfolded from the robot back to hold the energy
ball or disc, while robot hands hold Kunai knives.

Gamikichi

We've had 30 years to update a frog Transformer, and they have... by
getting rid of the tongue gimmick. Don't get me wrong, it's a good toy,
but in 30 years we've just taken away functionality. He's even pretty
close in size to the original Spittor.

Of course now the frog is wearing a black vest (or onesie?)

Gamakichi is an annoying little character in the show that delivers
stuff to Naruto after his training with the big frog Gamabunta, which
the whole talking ninja animals event was a weird unnecessary element
from the series.

His frog head, robot head, frog legs, and shins are molded orange
plastic with black detail, his torso, thighs, feet, forearms, and the
plate to cover his frog back are all unpainted dark gray plastic. His
eyes are yellow, with a white robot face with a Leaf Village headband
again.

Gamakichi has limited head motion, he can turn around but no tilt. He
has ball joint shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, ankles, and no waist
rotation. His hands can hold 5mm port weapons, but he has a frog foot
coming off of his knuckles. It can fold under the arm or fold out like
he's Spittor

His Transformation is very similar to to BW Spittor, but since many
haven't handles that toy in 30 years...
Rotate his robot head, unfold the panel covering the top of the frog
head (about the only new improvement piece not on Spittor) and then
rotate the frog head up over the robot head, and the instructions have
you fold it all the way, but that will interfere with the next step so
only go 70% of the way. Next you fold the robot shoulders down to the
robot hips. Now the frog fore-legs on the torso part of the shoulders
are mounted to some rotating discs, that you use the arms to rotate
them. The arm discs have little nubs that get stuck on the frog head,
and these aren't even a necessary part, as I really only got the
instructions out to figure out why the discs were there at all. Then the
knee joint do a 180 rotation, the feet fold up under the frog neck, and
the frog neck can finish folding with the neck flap locking in to be the
back panel.

In frog mode he has 3mm ports on his forearm palms, in his mouth, and 2
on his back. He has shoulder motion, hip, knee, and ankle joints, and
the frog mouth of course opens.

His accessories are a scroll and a smaller knife, both with 5mm ends but
3mm ports on the sides. Both accessories are designed to go in the frog
mouth, be used in frog or robot hands, or be stored on the back in
either mode.

I wonder if they do remold to Spittor will the have to completely remold
the frog mold to remove his clothing or will they just give us a blue
vest and pretend it's not there?

Overall I'm pretty happy with this set as animal Transformers that
aren't Animorphs (Someone traded in some broken Animorphs we ended up
just throwing out) and I was pretty happy with the Kingdom molds. It's
pretty good as a set and while I don't care for the series it's crossing
over with anymore, I can understand and appreciate they're reaching out
to other fandoms to deliver new and unique Transformers. I also got to
play with Maverick, and Agent Knight, Frankentron, Gigawatt, as well as Ectotron, and while I don't need them I can see what they were trying
with them as well. I don't like Ectotron's hoses. He doesn't hold
together too well with his backpack stuff.

Anyway Kurama and Gamakichi are $55 on Pulse, but $35 on Ebay now, so
yeah...
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