TRANSFORMERS TOYS AND MERCHANDISE SECTION

Robot Mode:

Alternate Mode:

Additional Image:

Box Art:

Clay's review of: Beast Wars Rampage

Name: Rampage
Group: Predacon
Function: Warlord / walking heavy weapon

The result of an experiment gone awry, Rampage is an evil titan devoid of mercy. Calculating and fearsome, he is a legend among Cybertrons, and it is rumored that his spark cannot be extinguished. In king crab mode Rampage uses his hulking claws to generate colossal tidal waves, induce earthquakes, and trigger landslides. Though his bulk hinders his overall dexterity, Rampage makes good use of his impenetrable armor and multi-weapons arsenal in crab, tank, and robot modes. Galva-conductors on his back channel deadly electric currents that he disperses at will. Rampage customarily activates his gatling cannon to finish off his enemies in a deluge of cluster missiles. All Cybertrons fear his unmatched aggression.

Another one of the first Beast Wars figures I picked up was Rampage. I don't remember the specific reasoning behind my decision, but I've ultimately been happy with the result. Rampage is certainly one of the larger toys to be attached to a character in the show, and it does a good job of not letting the entire spectrum of occupants on Beast Wars shelf look puny. Like Depth Charge, Tigerhawk, and the Megatron dragon, it's rather the space hog, but he makes up for that in several ways.

Crab Mode:
Rampage is a big, honking, robotic crab. Like all the other transmetals, it's out-and-out mechanical in detail, as opposed to natural like the earlier toys or an abomination like the transmetal twos. With Rampage, this works very well considering his skewed proportion to the other toys. "Since it's a robot crab, so it doesn't have to be normal sized."

Aesthetics aside, it's a fun crab to play with. The little legs are all ball jointed (and thus are too weak to actually support the weight of the toy), and the big claws are mounted on arms decked out with ratcheting joints, so they'll stay wherever you put them. And what big claws they are! This is where the fun of having an oversized crab comes into play - the claws are big enough to grasp even deluxe-sized figures and hold them in mortal peril. Fun stuff!

Tank Mode:
As a transmetal, Rampage gets a mandatory third 'vehicle' mode: a tank. To pull this off, rubber treads that are stored inside the claws can be wrapped around several pivots to form tank tracks, and a large tri-barrel gun extends out from under the mouth of the crab. As the toy is rolled forward (in theory), the wheel on the gun should turn as well, triggering the missles. This doesn't quite work out as well in practice, but achieved goals aside, it's still a pretty neat mode. The rubber tank treads do rotate, and that should be enough to regard the tank with fondness, considering 98% of all toys professing to be tanks just have little wheels instead of tracks, which is lame.

Robot Mode:
Rampage in robot mode is something of a behemoth. It's most closely comparable to Depth Charge in that it's very wide, and very thick, so it takes up quite a bit of space this way (or any way).
That's really the only negative aspect, though: the figure itself, space consumption aside, is pretty darn neat. All the normal points of articulation for a humanoid are there, so it's quite posable. And even with the tiny feet that it has, the figure is very stable and not prone to falling over. There is a fair bit of dangly crab-parts, though. The huge claws sling over the back, and the smaller crab legs are attached to the forearms. These don't interfere with the articulation in any way - they're actually kind of neat, since they can still be positioned as one likes - but you can't hide them.

The nicest detail about the robot mode that I've found is the head itself. This is hardly a robot head: this is the head of a creature synergized of humanoid and crustacean, complete with a sideways mouth. Creepy, but very effective for toy trying to portray a very bad guy.

As far as accessories go, it sports a tri-barrel gun (as mentioned before) and a smaller gun that does not fire. The nicest part is that the big gun stores away under the crab in the animal mode, and the three missles and the smaller weapon can be hidden in the claws (opposite the tank tracks). Nifty!

Moreover, the big gun works better in robot mode than in the tank mode. A little claw flips down into a position where it can trigger the missles, and then by rotating the wheel, the missles can be fired in quick succession. Thus, Rampage is probably the only transformer to have a working minigun. Again, nifty!

Transformation: 7. Very well thought-out toy. The transformation between crab and robot is very straigtfoward, but getting the claws in the proper position for the tank treads is a challenge the first few times.
Durability: 9. I don't foresee how anything could possibly break on this. Even the detachable parts don't detach easily! It does have its share of chrome though, so watch out for paint chipping.
Fun: 9. Great fun can be had re-enacting old and terrible sci-fi movies with the crab mode and some smaller figures. Because the firing gimmick doesn't work too well in the tank mode, it gets a point off here.
Price: 8. Unlike some of the other Beast Wars show figures, Rampage seems pretty predictable at around $20, give or take. That's a fair price considering its age and size.
Overall: 8. Another great Beast Wars figure, but because of the shelf space it takes up, and the amount of hanging animal parts in the robot mode, this one won't be for everybody. I like it, though.