Toyworld TW-D01 Roar - Pictorial Review

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Year of Dinobots indeed! Fansproject Columpio, despite being a great figure and surely a hit considering how big their fanbase are, is not really my cup of tea. Luckily, Toyworld also ventured into the world of the Dinobots this year with their first release, Roar (Not-Snarl)

Pic Credit : Web

Unlike Grimlock, Sludge and Slag, Snarl was created as the second batch of Dinobots, together with Swoop, by Wheeljack. The Dinobots in general are not really people-friendly bunch of bots but Snarl took it to another level. An unhappy and unsociable loner by nature, Snarl's actions are the ideas of the others, having not much opinions and even less expressing them.

Pic Credit : TFWiki

In Package



For this review, I only received a loose sample of Roar so will update this portion once I get the packaging. However, below are pictures from weibo

Pic Credit : alucardlee@weibo

Pic Credit : alucardlee@weibo

Alt Mode

Roar transform into a fairly big Stegosaurus, homaging G1 Snarl almost to the letter.

Roar primarily consist of gray and red plastics with gold chrome tail spikes (thagomizer), plates, head and feet. The alt mode is really solid and sturdy without any parts detaching and he's considerably heavy even without any diecast part.

Roar comes with a sword and gun (not sure what are the names) where the gun can be mounted on top of him and the sword nicely stored inside the tail.

The dino head comes with light blue light piping which is kind of nice considering the chrome made the head sculpt less visible.

The chrome plates are on ball joints which are quite tight and no issue of the plates rotating or falling off when you play around with Roar.

The quite a lot of detailing on the body with green, red and blue colored parts which I don't think based on the G1 toy deco.

The head is on a hinge where it can look upward and downward with the jaw on a hinge. However, the head can't be rotated or look to the side due to the design. The head splits open into 2 halves in robot mode.

The front legs are on double-hinge but the range is still quite limited. The knees and the hoof-like claws are on hinges.

The hind legs have the same articulation as the front legs.

There's a small range of movement for the tail as it can tilt upwards just a bit. Again, due to the way of its transformation, the tail can't be rotated or move to the side.

Size comparison

Roar is roughly the same size as Columpio which I think in real dinosaur scale, Columpio is considered small. To be fair, Toyworld version of Sludge also will rougly be the same size.

Overall, Roar is bulkier then Columpio, which I pretty much prefer.

With Clasics Optimus Prime variant

One of the best feature for Roar alt mode is that the tail can be split open and the sword can be stored inside the tail.

The tail can be detached from the main body which I guess for 2 reasons. One, to ease the transformation to robot mode but after few time transforming Roar, I think it's not necessary. Second would be [if I'm not mistaken] to cater for combine mode and slight possibility that the tail would be part of the combiner's weapon. Hopefully we'll receive more information on this.

Robot Mode

Toyworld did a good job designing Roar's robot mode, I must say. Personally, I think it's the right balance between G1 and modernize G1 design.

Transformation is quite straight forward and can be accomplished even without using instruction. There's no 'surprised' gimmick however and everything is as you can see.

Side View

Roar is kibble free with the exception of the tail that splits into 2 halves but this is more on homage. The alt mode's front legs are hidden nicely inside the robot mode's legs rather than hanging by the side like the G1 version.

I've heard complaints about the robot mode's head and honestly, I don't get it. The head sculpt is nicely done and resembles G1 Snarl.

The cover on the chest can be opened to install the insignia. Other than that, the body is quite plain with almost all of it in red.

Size wise, Roar is roughly the size of a big Voyager, almost Ultra Class.

Articulation wise, Roar doesn't disappoint. Roar's head is on a ball joint with quite wide range of movement, the shoulders are on hinges and swivel joints, ratchet joints on the elbows (which are very tight!) and articulated fingers (four fingers molded together). Sadly, he doesn't come with wrist swivels.

Roar's waist is on a swivel joint, the hips are on ratcheting universal joints, ratchet joints on the knees and also ankle tilts. In addition to that, the dino legs that becomes the heels act as stabilizer when posing him. Not only that, the feet can be titled quite far which is kind of a surprise.

Despite being top heavy, Roar has solid joints on the legs and also wide feet that makes him a very stable figure.

Another reason why I like Roar's design is because of his bulkiness. To me, it suites the aesthetic of a Dinobot which is synonym with brute force.

Nice clearance!

Head-to-head, Roar is a tad bit smaller than Columpio which means, Toyworld version of Sludge will roughly be the same.

Pic Credit : Toyworld

I've been reducing my 3rd party releases and Dinobots were initially on my exclude list. I didn't budge when I had FP Columpio in hand but I will definately get Roar. Maybe a lot of people have already owned previous Toyworld releases and are sceptical but trust me, this is nothing like their Throttlebot nor their Headmasters.