Ok, as you can see above, I've made my second (counting CB Dino-rider Lockdown...) AoE purchase. Most likely my last one, too. This here is, officially, AoE Legion class Grimlock, who ships in a Walmart exclusive case with Stinger, Optimus and BB. However, in a weird move, hasbro decided to not make ANY new CV molds for AoE, despite showing some new ones for the upcoming RiD show. So we're stuck with repaints! Optimus and BB are barely worth talking about, since they are repaints of former movie legion/legends toys that inevitibly are indistinct from prior releases. Optimus is a real shame in that regard, having his evasion mode artwork on the box with the worn-down look that most of his toys have avoided in the AoE lines. Stinger is interesting only because this is the first toy of his to be released; too bad it's only TFP Knock Out with Different Black Stripes. Suck-town. Anyway, Grimlock is nice because the Rippersnapper mold already had some Grimlock-like traits (beast rear legs become arms, legs form from even split beast parts, tiny forelimbs dangle uselessly off robot mode, backpack, etc). The paint job is AoE Grimlock's, but it's a much more toyetic approach, like most of his other releases. His dull orange is meant to emulate copper, and he has some black and silver.
A few other things:
I don't fault them for not giving the ROTF Optimus mold a weapon, because AFAIK it was never remolded for CV to be able to carry any. However, at least Stinger and Grimlock are both 3mm capable molds that originally came with weapons (two in knock out's case), and I'm assuming BB is the DOTM remold of the ROTF mold, so it's disappointing that they aren't equipped with armaments. Grimlock would have looked cool with a sword or maybe the BH hammer weapon.
This toy doesn't represent AoE Grimlock for me. I wouldn't mind having a representation of that character, but none of his new-mold toys interest me, and my mold-origin OCD means that this Grimlock hails from the TFP universe. I ignored the comics that depicted the FOC Dinobots as part of TFP, so while this guy doesn't have to look like FOC Grimlock, his dragon alt mode, I feel, needs explaining. Similarly to how I was going to use the (pretty much unreleased) TFP BH CV Dimebom as a Predacon-ized Swoop, Grimlock here as pretty much the same deal. Basically, shockwave attempted to transfer the Dinobots' sparks into Abominus-type combiner-capable Predacon bodies.
(As an aside, it turns out that there are two more AoE legion Dinobot repaints coming - one is the cutthroat mold in AoE Strafe's blue, but looks a bit more like Cryotek, and the other is a rather inexplicable second repaint of Rippersnapper into Grimlock, this item with a slight different color layout, including some red paint apps)
Any way, this is a neat little repaint and will go well with a CV collection, especially the BH releases.
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