Sonar TM2 - Beast Wars - Figure

Beast Wars: TM2 Sonar

It’s no secret that the Beast series is my favorite of all TF’s. It revitalized the line, had an excellent TV show, and I always thought that animal TF toys had a little more personality than vehicular TF’s. But something that sticks out in my mind is... females!

Beast Wars had a relative abundance of females in a male-dominated toy line. There’s the smart-alecky Airazor, with standard and Transmetal forms, the femme fatale Blackarachnia, also with two forms, and one small TM2 Basic that slipped under the radar. That toy is, of course, Sonar. The Wreckers comic establishes the Transmetal bat as a girl, but the tech spec never actually mentions a gender. Use your imagination with your own toys (that’s what it’s for!), but for this review, I’ll stick with the Wreckers viewpoint.

Beast Mode:

5 inches long from claw to foot, with a 5.5-inch wingspan, this is probably the best TF incarnation of a bat from the entire line. Granted, bats don’t have large claws, as their hands form the wings, but she’s still pretty anatomically correct. More so than Nightscream, and way better than Batimus Primal. She has a dark, almost creepy color scheme. She’s primarily medium grey, with dark gold for the fur and feet. Her face and hindquarters are vacmetal red. Green and silver are used for details. The red is a little overwhelming, but it’s a pretty good scheme overall.

Beast mode isn’t terribly posable (sp?). Her jaw opens and her bat legs move around. Her wings don’t flap, but she can swing out a large blade from the left one. For anyone who’s wondering, the little tan/gold ones are the beast mode feet. The robot feet should be straightened out behind her to form her tail.

Beast mode loses points on posability, but it looks creepy and has a good color scheme. Besides, you’d probably have her flying while playing with her. :)

Transformation:

The first thing you probably hear when this toy is mentioned is how frustrating the transformation is. It may be a little too complicated for a child, but once you figure out where everything goes, it really isn’t very hard. Open up her back and slide her hindquarters away from her body. Reverse the knees and pull the legs through the body. Un-reverse the knees and everything should fold together properly. Going back to beast mode can be tricky, though. Watch where the robot hips are positioned inside the bat body. That part is easy to screw up. Her robot feet may pop off going in either direction. They go right back on, but it’s annoying. Pretty satisfying transformation.

Robot Mode:

4 inches tall with a 5-inch wingspan. Wow, and people thought Strika wasn’t very feminine. She does have a slender body and large chest, but it's still a rather ambiguous body design and can be imagined as either gender, much like pre-Transmetal Airazor. But I digress. She’s still very bat-like in this mode, with large ears on her head and wings on her back. No new colors are revealed, but there’s less vacmetal red since the bat face folds in her back.

Posability is again a little iffy. Her legs have standard hip-knee-ankle movement. Her arms, however, only move at the shoulders. They have to sit flush with the wings in beast mode, so elbows were left out. Her bat legs should fold up and rest on her shoulders for the best appearance, but you can swing them out as extra arms if you’re feeling silly. Her head is on a ball joint, so she can look in any direction and you can get some nifty flying poses. Her left wing/arm blade still works, too.

Same verdict for robot mode as for beast mode. Iffy posability, but lots of cool stuff.

Overall:

Not bad for a basic. She looks cool in both modes and has a good color scheme. Her transformation can be difficult, and she’s little more than a statue in beast mode, but she’s fun to play with, and that’s what counts. Beast Wars toys are, obviously, no longer in stores, but Sonar is easy to come by online, and never very expensive.

Reviewer	Dana R. Clark
Date	September 17th 2003
Score	(8 out of 10)
Reads	7026