Weekly Robot- Beast Wars Quickstrike (Basic Fuzor, 1998)

Quickstrike's robot mode is a gangly mess, but to me it's always been an endearing gangly mess. Beast Wars was something I had to go back to as it aired when I was out of collecting Transformers. While the early CG animation style can be pretty painful to watch at times, the plots, scripts, and voice acting hooked me and I always enjoyed Quickdraw for being the evil cowboy dumbass of the Predacons.

I'm always a sucker for well done translucent plastic in robot designs and it really comes off nicely with this figure. The balance of the color scheme makes him really pop, and that odd scorpion/snake combo is just really engaging. Oh yeah, and the cobra head has a soft 'bladder' underside that allows it to absorb water for squirting. Not like well, but it's a thing.

The transformation is simple and clever, and the segmented styling of his snake tail/arm is just a really fun design choice. Twisting his robot head and shoulders underneath and flipping it all around while turning his codpiece over into his scorpion head all feels very satisfactory. It's the kind of slick engineering that makes you hope it earned its designer a bonus or some sort of appreciation at Hasbro.

Gonna give him an 8/10. While it's nearly impossible to find a good pose for his robot mode that doesn't look like a cluttered mess, his beast mode is just too interesting and that transformation is a great example of 'simple is better'.

Quickstrike's original bio:

There are few robots as downright mean as Quickstrike; even his fellow Predacons steer clear of his terrible disposition whenever possible. His deadly cobra-headed tail squirts a venom that instantly paralyzes its victims, leaving them defenseless against his razor-sharp scorpion pincers and attack-claw.