Sorry for the wait, but I’m finally back with the second of my Exo-Force reviews. This time we’ll be looking at the Grand Titan and Thunder Fury.
As with before, let’s start with the figures.
This time we’re greeted by Takeshi and a Devastator respectively. Takeshi shares many attributes with Ryo, such as their hair mold, single-colour outfit and grey printed armouring. Takeshi’s face is, however, much more battle scarred, and his ‘angry’ face looks a lot more furious.
Similarly, the Devastator is a straight recolour of the Iron Drone. Storywise, the Devastators are the human pilots equals, possessing full independent thinking unlike the single-minded Iron Drones. As such, they pilot a much wider variety of Battle Machines, and are designated different ranks according to any specific skills they may have. These ranks are displayed by the Devastator’s torso colour. In this case, the included Devastator has a red torso, designating it as a Heavy Weapons Unit. These Devastators only pilot vehicles with a particularly vast weapons array for their size class, such as the Thunder Fury.
The Thunder Fury itself has a very imposing design, with fairly standard legs supporting a colossal torso mass covered in armour plating and weaponry.
Despite its top-heavy appearance, the Thunder Fury can pose very effectively, mainly due to the Galidor-style ratchet joints at the hips, knees, ankles and shoulders, allowing for a very wide range of motion. Through the use of a few Technic pieces, the figure is also granted an incredible ankle tilt, which greatly expands your posing options.
Now let’s take a better look at that immense weapons loadout.
Starting at the cockpit, we can immediately notice the huge central minigun surrounded by two pairs of lasers, however we can also spot two more pairs buried much deeper inside the chest. This area in particular is incredibly bulky, using large column pieces to create the striped sides. The pilot itself is protected by a curved shield made from a wheel arch, effectively protecting them from most attacks. This area almost seems like it’s own battle platform, but we’ll soon see that the rest of this machine’s armaments are no joke either.
On its left arm, the Thunder Fury carries a lethal saw-like blade made from a recoloured Keerakh staff, definitely an awesome recolour for us Bionicle fans. This is actually an aspect shared by all four of the 2006 mid-range mechs, each one containing a recoloured constraction weapon.
The other arm sports a colossal laser cannon, a weapon longer than the machine’s legs. Unfortunately, this cannon also features one of Exo-Force’s biggest flaws, the stickers that cover multiple pieces. In this case, the cannon features no more than three of these, being the barcodes on both sides of the weapon’s middle cylinder and the sticker for the cannon’s magazine. I feel this one can be excused however, as it looks infinitely cooler with this sticker applied.
Atop the mech’s torso we find four black spearguns facing back towards the sky. While these could be passed off as a simple visual flair, I prefer to think of them differently. These pieces do feature in quite a few other robot machines, but used as small lasers every time, so I’d like to imagine these are for picking off any air-based vehicles that may try to attack the Thunder Fury from above. There’s also a strange chimney-looking thing between these spearguns, but the purpose of it isn’t immediately apparent. However, turning the mech around may give us our answer.
Admittedly, as is the case with most Exo-Force mechs, the back isn’t pretty. It is, however, functional. You may have noticed the technic contraption seeming holding the torso together. Well, if you pull down on the dark grey piece, a light brick is activated from inside the torso, sending light all through a fibre optic cable linked to the main cannon’s scope.
As such, the brick illuminates in an almost blinding flash of red, lighting up the entire cable and activating the weapon’s laser scope. This is an absolutely brilliant effect, further added to by the Devastator’s translucent torso which the the light also emits through, creating an amazing glow. The ‘chimney’ on top is actually a light brick ejection device: pressing on the cone releases the brick from the torso, allowing you to change the batteries if necessary.
All in all, the Thunder Fury is an astoundingly excellent set, so let’s see if it’s human counterpart, the Grand Titan, can live up to the level of quality it’s established.
The Grand Titan features almost identical articulation to the Thunder Fury, differing only in the arms which are unfortunately a downgrade, lacking both the bicep swivel and ratcheted shoulder. The feet are constructed almost identically to the Thunder Fury, but the overall design language is almost the exact opposite. While the Thunder Fury was smothered in sharp angles and points, this mech is very smooth and rounded, especially in the huge shoulder pads. However, like the Thunder Fury, this machine also gets a boatload of weaponry.
Again starting at the torso, we can immediately spot the two neon lasers under the cockpit. Other than that, there’s not much more weaponry in this area, but we can take a closer look at the other details. There’s a lot of text, marking the ammunition store, light source and what appears to be an ejection seat. I also appreciate the tally marks under the windscreen, a particularly fun detail. Takeshi is similarly well-protected in his cockpit, completely covered by some angular glass. He’s also flanked by a pair of headlights on either side of the chest, likely for nighttime missions.
This time the right arm carries the melee weapon, mirroring the Thunder Fury like Uplink mirrored the Sentry. This is especially nice because it allows for Takeshi to use this clamp-like tool to block the Thunder Fury’s huge saw:
Other than that, the clamp is also notably made from a pair of red Air Slicers, completed with warning stickers on the ends of the blades. Additionally, the Japanese text on the clamp’s hub reads ‘Fang’.
This word choice matches the text on the left leg, meaning ‘Dragon Fang’. We also see the ever-present fuel caps, as well as some stickered grills and Takeshi’s symbol on the opposite leg.
The other arm has a six-barreled rotating blaster mounted to it, sporting two stickers which read ‘explosive’ in both English and Japanese. We again see the now familiar fibre-optic cable, so I’m sure you can guess what that means.
Just like the Thunder Fury, pulling a lever on the mech’s back will activate the light-up feature, brightly illuminated both the brick and cable. However, unlike the robot machine, the Grand Titan’s cable lights up the gun’s barrel rather than a scope.
Up on top we again see the ‘chimney’ release button, this time accompanied by a large wrench if Takeshi needs to make some quick repairs. Two missiles also join them, secured atop the the shoulders. These shoulder plates feature similar designs to the Uplink, this time reading L.01 as opposed to AT.01. The ‘L’ stands for Land, further supported by the Japanese text on the opposite shoulder reading ‘Ground Unit’, accompanied by the appropriate designation symbol, an image of Sentai Mountain itself.
That’s it for the builds themselves, now for a quick look at their prices. All the mid-range mechs retailed for a mere £9.99 each, just a pound more expensive than today’s Marvel mechs. Now here’s where things get weird: a comparison between 76141 Thanos Mech, released last year:
Yeah. That’s quite the size difference. And here’s the thing: Thanos Mech has only about 30 less pieces. Just conpare the parts. Thanos Mech’s parts are tiny and compact, lots of 1x1s and 1x2s, whereas these Exo-Force mechs rely on huge panels and joints that get the job done quickly. People always say that big parts drive the price up, but I really don’t think that’s true all. Take a look at some Mars Mission sets for proof of that. That’s the most interesting thing about 2000’s building, it wasn’t about making the sets as detailed as possible, it was about making them as big as possible within the part limit, a feat that we’ll certainly see achieved the further I go through this theme.
Overall, I’d personally recommend both of these, 8/10 each.
Next time…
