Scorn

I'm not sure if you'd call me a Transformers fan, really - I watched the G1 cartoon as a kid and remember none of it, but I'm a big fan of the goofy film. I've seen every one of the dreadful Bayformers films, and although I don't like them and haven't actually paid a cent to see one, I think they're incredibly funny in a "someone actually made this?!" kind of way. Does that make me a fan? Well, not so much, but I love the toys, and that's all one needs. With that in mind, this is my first-ever Transformers review, so go easy on it! Scorn has the jaws of a dino and the personality of a tank. He's a rumbling, thundering war hammer on legs. Scorn was one of the Dinobots featured in Bayformers: Age of Excretion who appeared momentarily towards the end during the big smash-up in various parts of China (that are nowhere near each other) and then buggered off with the other Dinobots to, presumably, destroy cities and whatnot. Whatever. In the movie, Scorn was mostly dark-metallic with red highlights that were most visible in his dinosaur mode, in which he turns into a Spinosaurus, aka the gigantic T-Rex-destroying dinosaur with the mobile phone ringtone you remember from Jurassic Park III. Unfortunately, Hasbro took that single color and ran with it here - Scorn is nearly entirely bright red, which fits with the other single-basic-color motifs that the toys have, but doesn't look as cool as the images from the film. Despite being absolutely enormous in the film, Scorn here is a Deluxe Class toy, so in robot mode he stands about 5" - not tiny, but not as huge and imposing as we saw onscreen, and not really in scale with any of your other Transformers. He makes up for this by being well-sculpted with a lot of neat details - I really like how the combination of knight-helmet head, large-shoulder pads and the long spiked-arm weapon give him a very knight-like look - outstretched, the spiked arm has a very lance-like look, which is neat. In this mode, he's plenty articulated, with 19 points. There's four points on each arm, including the Transformers equivalent of balljointed shoulders, which gives him lots of range. He has five points on each leg, making him plenty flexible but very stable in his lower regions. He features one accessory, a small sword which is free of paint detail, but still looks great going with the spear arm. To make things even cooler, his Beast Mode head is part of his forearm, which gives him something of an additional snappy weapon. Which leads into his Dinosaur Mode, or Beast Mode, or whatever the modern vernacular is. The transformation is surprisingly easy considering the near engineer-level complexity of many modern Transformer transformations, leading to a very cool Spinosaurus which stands nearly 6" to the top of his spiny spines. There's a lot of cool details here that are reasonably accurate to the real Spinosaurus, and I like how details in Dinosaur Mode become pieces of armor in the robot mode. It's very effective. Like in robot mode, he has 19 points of articulation, though these aren't nearly as successful as in the robot mode. His little Spinosaurus arms are barely articulated, and his legs are a little awkward in their design, without a full range of motion at the thighs and lacking fairly crucial articulation in the feet. The size of his tail contrasted to the size of his upper body makes him unbalanced, and without capable leg articulation it's sad to say that Scorn sometimes takes a topple in his dinosaur form, which is a bit of a let down. On the upside, though, his snappy jaws work a treat and he looks very striking, boasting his terrifically detailed sculpt. Where do I fall on Scorn ultimately? He's a very cool Transformer, with a striking sculpt in both bot and dino mode, though I much prefer his robot mode due to the stability and the awesome look of the robot. If you're after modern Dinobots, you can't go wrong with Scorn. If you're not, what are you even doing here? Why are you reading this? Go outside. -- 03/03/15

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