Details
Gigastorm (1998)
Part of the ninth wave of Beast Wars II products in the Japanese Beast Wars toyline, Gigastorm is a redeco and partial retooling of the original Transformers line’s Trypticon, giving him a new dino-mode nose-horn as well as removing the metal ball-bearings from the outsides of the legs. He transforms from a Ceratosaurus-like robot mode (dubbed his “Destruction Dinosaur Mode” ), to his “Huge Base Mode” (the name of his battle station mode), to his “Attack Fortress Mode” (the name of his city mode). In Attack Fortress Mode, he has a lifting mechanism that can send smaller vehicles rolling down his ramp.
Gigastorm can still walk but lacks virtually all of Trypticon’s accessories, only coming with “Gigascouter” (“Gigascooter” in Korea), a redeco of Full-Tilt. Gigastorm also features one minor piece of intentional misassembly: the panels which flip out from the sides of his Attack Fortress Mode are assembled backwards, so that the round, molded details are showing when the panels are flipped out, as apposed to the blank indents where the “HELIPAD” stickers would’ve been. As Gigastorm does not feature any stickers, it would appear this was done to compensate. This detail also made its way into his cartoon character model.
Sonokong also released this figure in their Beast-War toyline as “Giga Storm”. This Korean release of the figure has a sticker over the battery cover. In place of the bio cards of the Takara release, Giga Storm comes with two “Jan-ken-pon” cards. One has an image reflecting the one on the box, with paper and the number two die roll, and the other with scissors and the number five die roll, with a rocky desert background.
This toy was repurposed as the Gigastorm Armor.
Photo Gallery
