From Newsgroup: alt.toys.transformers

Dave's Transformers Swapticons Rant: Wave 3

Lazorbeak and Terrorsaur (chunky pterodactyl)
Blackarachnia and Predacon Tarantulas (spider)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Artifacts/Swapticon3

This is a smaller wave, with no 5-pack apparently on the horizon to go with it, although Walmart.com has listings for three more 2-packs. The packaging of these suggests those packs won't be in this wave, as the card backs show wave 1 Optimus/Magnus and Bumblebee/Hot Rod in the cosell portrait line.

Still at $8.88 at Walmart, which seems to be the only place selling
these. Same packaging, although oddly Lazorbeak and Terrorsaur have
Decepticon symbols on their nameplates while Blackarachnia and Tarantulas
have Predacon symbols.

The theme of this partial wave seems to be "Beast Wars characters and their redecos." Of course, Blackarachnia is almost better-known than Tarantulas at this point, but Lazorbeak is a name that didn't get used again for toys until now. Fractyl has gotten as many toys, albeit both as club exclusives (and he almost got a third).

Lazorbeak and Terrorsaur: Both need to be assembled, with the beak and tail of the combined mode hiding behind the inner card. These combine into sort of Terrorsaur's beast mode, if with a big butt and an inexplicably
spiked tail, almost a thagomizer. The collar areas of both are Decepticon Purple, everything else is brick red plastic.
Lazorbeak has purple paint on his chest and boots, and bone colored
paint on the tail spikes. No paint picking out the rest of the robot body against the background, though. The beast legs are his arms with minimal
fist molding inside them. The chest is molded with large scales rather than the smaller scales on Terrorsaur, while the rough shapes of the molded robot bodies are similar they differ in all the details. His face sticker is sporting a somewhat goofy lopsided grin.
Terrorsaur's chest and boots are painted bright red, while the abdomen, pelvis, and thighs are silver. The wings fold open to reveal molded arms (which are pretty long compared to the body), with silver upper arms and
black fists, and black on the molded pistol in the right hand. The beast
head hanging off the back end is really big and clunky, it has a yellow beak and bright green eyes. The sticker face has a calculating sneer.
Combined, it's one of the bigger altmodes in this line thanks to the big head and tail. The wings are too small and too far forwards for the combined body, though, and it looks more like an attempt at Rodan than Terrorsaur. As with most of the beast altmodes, it just sort of rests on the robot chests.

Blackarachnia and Tarantulas: Man, she'd absolutely HATE having to be a combiner with him. Especially since the combined mode is Tarantulas, and she becomes the butt. Both figures use shiny purple plastic for the body and
head, chartreuse green for the collars, and black for the arms/spider legs.
The arms of each have two spider legs and a clawed hand, but Tarantulas's
claws are bigger and can loosely hold 1/8" rods while Blackarachnia's are smaller and have no grip. The arms have the usual swivel shoulders.
Blackarachnia has gold paint on her chest and boots, gloss black on her sternum and the rest of her body. Her sticker face is smirking. Tarantulas has matte darker purple on his torso and thighs, gloss black pelvis, and chartreuse boots. While Tarnatulas has a molded spider abdomen on his robot side, Blackarachnia doesn't.
Combined, I'm reminded of Harry Scoots from the short-lived "shout and they move" line of spider toys. It tries to compensate for the boxy shape
and, well, it tries. Still, not too bad of a look overall. There's
chartreuse paint on six of the eyes (the other two are very small and hard to see, but I might try adding 'em), and brownish yellow paint on the abdomen details (spots and squiggles). The legs are long enough that the combined
mode rests on the feet rather than on the robot chests. While it's a low bar to clear, this is IMO the best combined beast mode so far.


Dave Van Domelen, forgot these were even coming.
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