Loyal to his "queen," strong and fearless, and possessed of an overwhelming urge to fricassee anything that moves while laughing hysterically, Inferno is one of the most popular Predacons from the absolutely fabulous Beast Wars series. This ant eats picnics for breakfast and picnickers for lunch.
Beast Mode: An enormous flat and sparkly translucent red fire ant with black antennae and leg parts, purple-blue eyes, metallic gray mandibles, and green stripes on the thorax and abdomen, Inferno measures a whopping 23 cm(9") long, as big as a goliath bird-eating tarantula. He comes with two extensions for his rear legs that double as missiles. Although most large BW insects tend to be of the bellyflopping persuasion, my Inferno can actually stand off the ground thanks to fairly stiff joints and the spikes on his rear legs.
This is one of the nicer insects in the BW line. The legs have spikes and segments, the eyes have a grid texture to them, and the mandibles are serrated. The antennae can raise to make Inferno looked surprised or scared (not bloody likely). Pushing a tab on his head causes his mandibles to open wide and a smaller second set of mandibles to jut forwards. You can also
detach one of his leg extensions, load it into his mouth, and fire it a distance of over a meter.
The middle pair of legs do have an unfortunate tendency to pop off easily, so be careful you don't lose them.
Transformation: Involved, but not all that difficult. The antennae and mandibles slide out of the ant's head, the head swings down to become the chest, front limbs become arms, rear limbs become legs. Be sure to keep an eye on the middle legs and robot head, since one or more of these is likely to pop off. Kind of appropriate considering how many times Inferno got his head blown off in the series.
Robot Mode: Inferno stands 16 cm(6.3") tall in robot mode. Whereas some Mainframe character models tended to differ in appearance from their toys (Blackarachnia, Dinobot, Terrorsaur, etc), Inferno is quite unmistakable. He's got the familiar gray head with black spikes, red almond eyes, sharp fangs set in an evil grin, and a pointed chin. Instead of hands, he has curved claws. He's articulated at the head, shoulders, elbows, waist, hips, and knees. His chest doesn't snap into his torso very well, and thus tends to flip up when you try to position his arms. His missile launcher detaches from his mandibles to form two weapons that attach into holes on his wrists.
Inferno's abdomen gives him the largest posterior of any BW toy, but fortunately his heel spurs do a good job of keeping him stable. Opening it up like the petals on a flower reveals a silver mechanical interior with a long, four-nozzle jet engine in the centre. Pressing repeatedly on a red button causes the four abdomen segments to spin like a fan. As Cheetor would say, "That flight mode is ultra-gear!" The instructions tell you to separate Inferno's hips and swing down the abdomen for proper flight mode, but I think this looks rather silly.
Inferno's rub symbol is located on one of his abdomen segments.
Overall, Susp Sez: Don't let the fact that he was a shelfwarmer fool you: Inferno is a neat toy. The ant mode is big enough to be sufficiently intimidating and the robot mode is pretty much a dead ringer for the show, complete with nifty flying butt gimmick. However, the all-too-detachable ant limbs and the unstable chest drag Inferno down somewhat. 8/10
Susp
"Fool! Pain is my friend! Allow me to introduce YOU to it!" -Inferno
Reviewer | Suspsy |
Date | August 15th 2002 |
Score | (8 out of 10) |
Reads | 14392 |
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