Glacialord Part I - Fangro

I know that I did this whole treatise about how I would never own a 3rd party figure, but that was written with the full knowledge that I'd be a hypocrite.  I'm gonna blame this one on paxcybertron.  To me, he's the 3rd party king and every time I check out his site, I'm bombarded by pictures and reviews of some great looking 3rd party figures.  Low and behold, I finally broke down and decided to get Glacialord after reading his review of the first three figures that were released.  He just weakened me, man.

As many have pointed out, the whole concept of the Glacialbots is to have a figure with today's modern tooling and technology feel as if it was plucked straight out of the G1 era.  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail with Fangro, or Tailclub for that matter, since these were released last summer at TFCon as a little early bird special and everyone has covered them already.  I'm going to give some quick thoughts on the Fangro and show you some pics.

I love the style of the box, as it is appropriately retro.  It certainly feels as though it could have been released around 1986 or so.  The worn edges are a nice touch.  Once you open up the box, you're greeted with Styrofoam.  I really can't remember owning too many figures that came with Styrofoam save for Metroplex, Skylynx, Omega Supreme, and Fort Max.  I can't remember if Scorponok was packed in Styrofoam or not.  At any rate, it's a very nice touch.

 

I'm not sure on the reasoning behind the the partial decal placement.  Maybe so it seems as though it once belonged to someone else?  No clue.  I'm actually not terribly fond of this.  Coupled with the lack of a sticker map in the instructions, I wound up with a decal that I couldn't place.  One unplaced decal does not diminish my love of this guy.

Fangro's sabre-toothed cat mode is awesome.  For some reason, it feels as though he should have been released in exactly 1987, when the Technobots were released.  It seems like a product of that year.

Here is Fangro's trainer?  Head?  Brain?  I don't know what to call it.  He doesn't have a name that I'm aware of.  Maybe he's Fangro and the sabre-toothed tiger is just a transector?  I don't know, but whatever the case, he's pretty detailed.  His articulation is on par with an actual Headmaster, so that's pretty nifty.

Here is Fangro...riding Fangro?  I'm still not sure on how to parse all of this.  At any rate, this looks awesome.  Who wouldn't want to ride a sabre-toothed tiger?  Communists, that's who.

The simplistic transformation actually works in Fangro's favor.  Fansproject has completely captured the G1 feel with this figure.  The cat's head and tail form his gun, and it looks pretty sweet. 

Side shot

I'm glad that I got turned on to the Glacialord project, and I can't wait for the rest of them to be released.  Hopefully, this isn't the start of a trend.  Next up, Tailclub.