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Wow, and you thought "Drift" was an uncreative name!
The ferocious and adorable Rex is stomping from the game right into your collection!
Hey, I've actually played Fortnite now! It's still not free on Steam, but it is on the Epic Games Store. (Which kind of makes sense, since Epic Games makes it, but it's not like Valve offers all its biggest hits for free by default, y'know?) Technically I only downloaded the Epic Games Launcher because The Witness was free, but Fortnite was right there, so I figured I'd better try it if I'm going to keep reviewing these toys. Anyway, I've won fully half the games I've played, so maybe I'll retire while my record is still outstanding.
Rex was introduced during Season 3, which makes sense since that was the one with the impending meteor strike. The costume could easily have looked like a real dinosaur, with scales (or feathers) and everything, but instead it looks like someone wearing a dinosaur costume they made out of a pair of pajamas.
The suit is mostly green, with a lighter patch on the chest and belly, a few darker patches stitched on as if to repair small rips, and some orange triangles up the arms. He's got a large orange bandana around his neck and a smaller one
around his right bicep, plus some black straps around the right leg and some silver armor on the shins and the tops of the feet.
When you buy the Rex skin, you get more than a costume: you also got a thematically linked backpack. Called "Scaly," it looks like a little lizard body clinging to the wearer's shoulders, with arms and legs and a little tail dangling off the bottom. There's a line of orange spikes running down the center of the back, matching the ones on top of the T. rex mask he's wearing. The toy's included ranged weapon is a rocket launcher, which is fine but could have benefitted from A) making the rocket removable, and 2) giving the hands extended trigger fingers.
His Harvesting Tool, Bitemark, is available in the same "Dino Guard" set that gave you Rex, and is designed like an up-sized version of one of those little "biting" toys you can get at museum gift shops; it's shaped like a dinosaur head, with three big spikes on top, and even features a faux trigger for the biting mechanism on the handle, but why would you sculpt something that looks like a moving hinge but not just make it a moving hinge?
Rex has great articulation, just like the other
Fortnite figures. Well, the McFarlane ones. Jazwares is making a 4" line (in contrast with Todd's 7" scale) and those are pretty good for their size, but they obviously can't compare to this. This figure has a balljointed head, balljointed and swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, double-hinged elbows, Revoltech-style swivel/hinge/swivel wrists, a balljointed chest, a balljointed waist, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, Revoltech ankles, and hinged toes. The thigh swivels don't move too well, thanks to the shape of the legs, so be aware.
It's come out that Epic Games is abusing its employees, which certainly doesn't encourage me to keep playing Fortnite. McToys may be too timid to properly credit their sculptors, but at least there are no complaints about forced overtime or anything. Raptor and Drift were okay, but Rex is the first release since Cuddle Team Leader that's really been a lot of fun. The lesson is clear: the silly costumes are more appealing than the sensible ones.
-- 04/25/19
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