Dave's Transforming Toy Rant:

     Tiger "Morphatrons" Raptor

The Morphatrons line is a batch of little handheld LCD games by Tiger which
transform into robot, ship and game modes.  I found three of them at Target
for $10 each, and bought the Raptor one, for the heck of it.

CAPSULE

     Pretty lame transformation (think Pretender inner robots here), cheesy
game.  Not recommended except possibly for the novelty value.

RANT

     Okay, there's three versions that I saw, but no indication how many
total there are.  The ones I saw were Raptor (a sort of dinosaur), Arachnid
(spider) and Alien (humanoid).  Each also has a "space ship" mode on a par
with one of QuickSwitch's modes...it's a spaceship because they say it is,
basically.  Of the three, the Alien probably has the best "creature" mode and
"ship" mode, and the Arachnid the worst of both (I got Raptor because the
game part looked more interesting than the Alien's game).
     Raptor's dino mode reminds me of one of the $1 cheesy dino/robot toys I
got at Odd Lots a while back, including its oddly long and gimpy neck.  The
head, shoulders, hips and tail move, making it more poseable than any of the
larger Machine Wars toys.  }->
     The ship mode is just the dino all folded up, with the tail forming a
sort of main gun and the feet thrusters.  It's vaguely reminiscent of
Trypticon in this mode, but keep in mind that I've spent so much time playing
with Legos that everything is vaguely reminiscent of something to me.  I
think it's mainly the head and backpack (screen covering).
     The game itself is rather lame.  I thought it might at least be a wimpy
"Fighter" game, but it's just a "hit the high stuff, hit the low stuff, dodge
the lasers" thing, there's really only four things you can do, and three
things the attackers do.  Maybe I was expecting a bit much out of a 2 inch by
half inch screen game, but hey, I wrote a better fighter game on the
Commodore 64 when I was a kid than this.
     Y'know, I just realized that in "ship" mode, the dino's tail looks more
like another part of the anatomy.  I think I'll leave it in dino mode.

     Overall, it's a cute idea, but I don't see anyone over the age of five
getting more than a few minutes diversion out of it.
                                 
     Dave Van Domelen, oh yeah, it's grey with blue camo and red head and
tail, typical colorblind scheme....