Dave's Toy Rant:

     Digivolving Garurumon/Weregarurumon

     Didn't have much time to shop today, so I figured I'd just hit one
store, Toys R Us.  Jackpot.  A huge bin of transforming Digimon was right
inside the entrance (only Garurumon and Greymon, though), plus they had in
all ten animated Avengers figures.  Well, I think I might be done toy
shopping for the weekend.  }->

CAPSULE

     Garurumon: Decent "beast" mode, pretty good "humanoid" mode, good
transformation and very good transformation instructions.  Recommended.
$7.99 at TRU.

RANT

     Packaging: Like most Bandai toys, the bulk of the packaging is product-
neutral.  The card is the same for all of the Digivolvers, with the
differences being limited to paper inserts.  Garurumon is packaged in his
wolfen mode, bound in by two twist-ties and some plastic inserts.  He comes
with a prismafoil trading card of Weregarurumon, the final digivolutionary
level of the character, plus a poster showing all the Digimon.  The
instructions are folded up as part of the nametag piece, as with all carded
Bandai toys.  Oh, and in case anyone's wondering about the name, "garou" is
French for wolf.  So he's "wolfmon" and "werewolfmon."
     Here's the card stats:

ID #56: Weregarurumon
Damage Points: 360
Group: Animal Digimon
Technique: Wolf Claw
Size: 18.0 G (I'm guessing Gigabytes or something, since in the cartoon he's
     a giant, definitely more than 18 grams)

     Garurumon Mode: 6.5" (16cm) long light lavender and purple wolf with
magenta claws and a bit of Weregarurumon pantsleg visible.  3.5" (9cm) high
at the shoulder.  Like several Animorphs figures, his hinder is just a flap
covering excess leg, which is a bit disappointing, but not fatal.  His legs
have more joints than he knows what to do with (four per leg!) and his head
can move up and down a bit.  Plus his tail has two folding joints.  He has
one gimmick in this mode, if you push in on a bit of his feathery mane, his
jaws open and his tongue sticks out a bit.
     However, there's some flaws that should be mentioned here.  First and
biggest, his front shoulders are very loose pop-on ball joints which pop off
with very little provocation.  He tends to sag forward unless his front paws
are directly beneath him as a result.  Second, a great deal of his
Weregarurumon mode is visible if you look underneath, it's not really
hidden.  Finally, this one isn't really a problem in Garurumon mode, but I
think I'll mention it here; the swivel joints in his thighs are just pegs,
not actual joints, and his legs come off without too much force.  Oh, they
don't *fall* off, but after transforming it you may need to press the legs
back on a bit.

     Transformation: While the package claims transformation takes three easy
steps, the instructions are not so naive as to assume this is the case.
Transformation is broken down into eight well-detailed steps (14 if you
include all the sub-steps shown in diagrams) with three more steps to cover
exactly how to get a tricky part of the toy back into Garurumon mode.  In the
same space Hasbro devotes to its unclear and insufficient directions, Bandai
gives practically encyclopedic help.
     The main part of the transformation is the arm swap, and if you follow
the directions it's quite elegant, with all the non-Weregarurumon parts
completely hidden.  The back feathers swing around to form a nice frill
without any flaps hanging off in the wind.  Even the tail folds up and mostly
out of the way.

     Weregarurumon mode: Stands 6" (15cm) tall in a slight crouch, and is
quite accurate to the show character, if a bit too barrel-chested (a
necessary concession to hide all those arms).  Shoulders and hips are ball
jointed.  He has double-hinge elbows (so that they can fold over completely
for storage), swivels at hip and mid-shin (the hip ones are really only for
transformation, though, and don't work well as posing joints), hinge knees,
two hinges per ankle and highly-restricted ball joint wrists.  Head is
limited to looking up and down.  Gold-colored knuckledusters flip out over
his fists.
     Unfortunately, the toy is kinda top-heavy, and the rubbery
Animorphs-like plastic used on the legs leads to some weak joints (especially
since there's so many joints, and all it takes is one weako) and difficulty
in keeping him from falling over.

     Overall: Despite some flaws that are mostly the result of using soft
plastic, this is a pretty good toy, especially considering the price.  While
I'll grant that the transformation didn't require any drastic changes in
appearance, it's good that they were able to keep both modes pretty close to
the "canonical" appearance (and I'm pretty sure in this case that the toy
trailed the media design by quite a bit, unlike Beast Machines, where the toy
design came first and then was altered for the media version).

     Dave Van Domelen, just noticed that, ironically, the poster that came
with Weregarurumon only covers Digimon through #54, therefore not including
Weregarurumon itself....