Kingdom Waspinator

*When Waspinator explodes, and no one is around to hear it...*

Series: War for Cybertron: Kingdom
Allegiance: Maximal
Categories: Deluxe
Year: 2021

Prelude: Waspinator has plans! Waspinator wants to become franchise character like Opti-Bot and Barney-Bot! Waspinator also wants not to be blown apart all the time, but Waspinator knows universe hates Waspinator, so that’s not going to happen anytime soon. But Waspinator happy to have received new figure in War for Cybertron Kingdom line. So Waspinator will now say go!

Robot Mode: When we talk about Kingdom Waspinator, it’s almost impossible to not also talk about Thrilling 30 Waspinator, his predecessor. When the Kingdom line was announced, Waspinator was one of those figures (much like Rhinox) where I wondered how they were going to top the Thrilling 30 version. Answer: they did not. Instead they more or less copied the figure, while also slightly changing every bit of him.

In comparison to Thrilling 30 Waspinator, Kingdom Waspinator has pretty much the exact same basic design and transformation scheme, but is still a bit different in every aspect. He is a darker green, he’s got thicker insect legs and wings, the sculpting of the legs is a bit different, he is a bit smaller overall, you see where I’m going with this. The biggest difference is the wasp’s head on his chest, which now has much bigger insect eyes despite being smaller overall. Still, it’s really the same figure with not a single bit of it being identical.

Similarities to the previous Waspinator aside, Kingdom Waspinator is a pretty good figure. Articulation is good, detailing is good, and he looks like the TV show character, too. Like many insect-based Transformers, the numerous insect legs attached to his limbs get in the way sometimes, but that’s not a big thing. I did forget one major difference to Thrilling 30 Waspinator, though: Kingdom Waspinator has left out the wing-flapping gimmick of the previous figure and his hand weapon does not unfold into a larger gun. Then again, Hasbro has become very gimmick averse for some reason, so that was to be expected. He does get moving mandibles, though. Fair exchange?

So bottom line: it’s clearly Waspinator, a nice robot mode, but it’s really a bit weird how similar to and yet different from Thrilling 30 Waspinator he ended up being.

Alternate Mode: Unsurprisingly Waspinator still transforms into a (female) wasp. As mentioned above, the transformation is the exact same one as Thrilling 30 Waspinator, if you can transform one of them, the other is no problem. His weapon still becomes his tail stinger, his underbelly still doesn’t tab together all that solidly, and the resulting wasp looks pretty cool overall.

Not much more I can write here, to be honest. Again, very similar in basic design to Thrilling 30 Waspinator, yet different in every detail. The wings are on ball joints now, so you can easily position them every way you want to and while the insect legs are all one stiff piece, you can still achieve some posing variations by swiveling them, so the wasp is higher off the ground or lower. That’s pretty much it, though. Waspinator becomes a good-looking wasp, so mission accomplished.

Remarks: I would call Waspinator one of the break-out characters of the Beast Wars series, but most of the characters in Beast Wars could easily be called by that designation. Waspinator endeared himself to fans by his strange way of speaking and by being blown apart all the time. He was actually supposed to die at the end of season 1, but he was such a fan favorite that Terrorsaur and Scorponok got the axe instead.

At the end of the day I am really not sure what to write about this figure. It’s Waspinator, no doubt about that. And it’s different from the Thrilling 30 version, yet at the same time it’s not, not really. So I guess the bottom line simply is this: if you want a Waspinator figure, this one here is a good choice, but don’t expect it to be an improvement over the previous one. It’s not better, it’s not much worse, just a bit different, but not much.

Rating: B-