I feel like the best way to begin this article is by being completely honest: I do not care about Skalor at all. I don’t care about him as a character; I don’t care about him as a figure. I hate his beast mode. I hate his little tech spec story about being a disgusting, filthy guy. I don’t like anything about Skalor. But, I really like Big Bite, the TFC Toys Skalor-alike.
I had this revelation late at night in December of last year, or maybe January of this, sitting on the couch watching some late night hockey with my cat asleep on the cushion next to me, converting the figure back and forth repeatedly. Not too radically different from Cyber Jaw, Big Bite is a generally slender robot with large legs. It is essentially a reshelling of Cyber Jaw, as Big Bite shares the same panel-intensive transformation scheme and same general monster mode, albeit a much beefier one this time around.
Robot mode is, like his predecessor, kind of dull, but of excellent quality. Big Bite’s problem is literally that it is the same as the immediate forerunner in the set, so the dominant feeling with it is “I just did this”. And it’s true. But it is still a satisfying transformation, so the feelings of familiarity are acceptable. The panels once again fold up inside of the hollow legs, but Big Bite’s feet are more akin to Mentarazors’ than CyberJaws'. So, the figure is stable and possessed of the two part foot that allows for decent ankle movement. The monster head becomes the lower legs, toothy kneepads that just look excellent.
Big Bite is armed with a pair of blasters that are very large and have two configurations. Apparently the “standard” robot configuration of the blasters, the one that the individual robot would wield, is the folded up form, which essentially is an enormous blaster with a really tiny nub that acts as the barrel. Unfolded, the blasters are incredibly large, generally too large for the figure to hold and look good as the weapons are so oversized, but are the configuration intended to attach to the weapon mode each of the five smaller figures can take. Big Bite’s blasters in their unfolded form look real nice, adorned with teeth but too long and bulky to look good in hand. It’s too bad that the parts weren’t made smaller, or made in a way that would consistently allow for integration into the monster modes. Only Mentarazor and Thousand Kills can incorporate their weapons successfully, so when a figure like Big Bite is in monster mode, the weapons have no place to go.
Monster mode is where this figure is really cool. Big Bite transforms into a nightmarish version of the lovechild of an anglerfish and the coelacanth, a living fossil lungfish long thought extinct but not. It’s that kind of creature you’d see on a deep sea animal program, the kind I always loved as a child (and as an adult. . . –mr) and it honestly looks pretty menacing. A jointed tail and slightly jointed arms make for some fun monster posing, and the giant, frightening jaws and teeth elevate the creature from charming animal oddity to straight-up nightmarish beast. Again, the monster mode is constructed from a sequence of panels that fold around the body of the robot.
The panel-intensive nature of the alt modes may be the “easy way” of effecting the conversion between modes, but it makes a lot of logical sense. The Seacons strike some pretty drastic alt modes, things that really do not resemble their robot forms. The G1 toys even did a pretty good job of offering a clear and visible shift between robot and monster, even relative to the simpler and less advanced engineering of the era. A figure like Big Bite here makes a pretty dramatic change from robot to sea monster, and both of those modes need to look good. Can’t have a decent robot and a shlocky monster, can we. So the panel idea allows for a good robot and a good monster without having to compromise either one for the sake of the other. Would it be nice to not have this done via panels? Maybe. But does it work the way it is? Absolutely. It’s not as big a deal or as lazy a solution as some would have you believe. In hand, it’s actually a lot more impressive than it seems like it should be.
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| Dreamy. |
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| Tasty. |
Big Bite is a lot of fun. The official G1 version was always the poor cousin to Overbite, a less exciting and less interesting mouthy fish with legs; the TFC Toys version is a beefy, scary monster and a good robot. It even makes the paint scheme look good, which is pretty incredible as well, given the flesh tone and teal pairing that is really, really not a sharp or tough looking combo. So much of the base concept of this figure, that being its G1 originator, is lame, and it’s really an amazing feat that the big, expensive 3P version manages to be so much of a success. To me, at least, seeing as I was never a fan of the original. Ultimately, Big Bite is just going to be one of Poseidons’ legs – it’s not like I’m so smitten with him that he’d get promoted or anything – but it is a good toy, and a nice version of a character and figure that has never done anything for me personally.
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