[Misterfanwank]

If these don't quite fit the forum's Tokusatsu theme, I apologize, but I thought these were similar enough to Sentai mecha that they'd appeal to you guys.

I recently received Taurus, Leo, Aries, and Scorpio in the mail. They're the initial four figures of the line, and they're really cool:

Taurus and Scorpio are the standout figures of the four, they're just more solid and make better combiner parts than Leo or Aries.

Here's the picture of the teased 5 part combiners:



I'm hoping that combiner is awesome, but I have my worries because of some problems I've noted with Taurus and Aries. Basically they can't properly form feet without putting a lot of stress on the same clips used to keep them together in animal mode.

For Taurus the tab used to lock the head into robot mode isn't long enough to reach without forcing the clip to hold the entire figure in a state of light stress. This can be mostly mitigated by telescoping out the bull's shoulders so there's more room to move, but that pushes the combiner peg into an odd angle, which might affect stability.

For Aries the ram's horns prevent the head from tilting back far enough to align the tab with the clip. To connect them you need to bend the horns out of the way, which means the horns will be putting a lot of pressure on the clip. I actually solved this by cutting small corners out of the horns so the hinge can fit, so I think it'll be fine.

They're not terrible problems, and otherwise the figures are really cool, but this kind of oversight brings back bad memories of the Star Dino Team. I remain optimistic, though, because Young Toys has a great track record with combiners:

Quadrant is especially cool. It soundly beats Bandai at the Sentai mecha game, and I highly recommend it to everyone.