Get it?  RINO?  Rhinox In Name Only?

Okay, fine, that's not actually something I believe, I just thought it'd work.  But it's not strictly true, so I guess it's not funny.  Well, I'm not rewriting the title of this thing.  We're doing this live!!!  LIVE!!!!

Anyway, after Kingdom toy after Kingdom toy just knocking Beast Wars out of the park, Rhinox feels like a... departure.  In more ways than one!  All the other Kingdom toys follow a very specific design motif pattern: realistic animal mode transforms best it can into a recreation of the cartoon's CGI model for the robot.  Optimus, Rattrap, Blackarachnia, Cheetor, Megatron, Airazor, Dinobot (well, a realistic... Jurassic Park animal...), all these follow that pattern.  And then along comes silly ol' Rhinox, whose robot mode is... seemingly based directly on the Forged to Fight phone game Rhinox?  With the big ear muffs and the weird nose and the robot mode loosely translated from the Thrilling 30 Rhinox toy from seven years back?  It barely looks like Rhinox in the same way everyone else looks like themselves.  Who asked for this?  Nobody asked for this.

And on top of all that, like, it's probably the first legimately bad transformation experience in all of the War for Cybertron trilogy of toylines.  It's not fun!  It's anti-fun!  His legs are a nightmare of panels that need to push through each other every step of the way.  And it's not like it ends up looking nice after all that effort.  The giant ugly open seams are on the FRONT.  What on Earth.  Who let this happen?  So many questions.

I mean, it does get some things better than previous toys in new ways.  The rhino chest jaw being a faux part that folds away instead of becoming the actual rhino's lower jaw results in some better show accuracy AND a rhinoceros head that doesn't have a jaw that hinges at the very back of the skull, muppet style.  And the robot feet are fake rhino feet as well, so you're able to have the robot foot poke out between the rhino toes, rather than out the back.  Everything else seems like a weird step backwards.  

It's not a fun toy and I hate it.  It doesn't pose unawkwardly, it doesn't look nice even stood statically, it's a murderous chore to transform, and its rhino mode honestly looks like a potato.

The only thing engaging about the toy is how off it feels from all the others in this toyline just by merit of not being great.

I drew a Shortpacked! strip nine years ago about the arms race of more accurate Beast Wars Dinobot toys, wherein we're presented a toy, it's not painted so accurately for whatever reason, and then Hasbro and Takara go back and forth on the toy, with each subsequent release being a little more accurate but not ALL the way more accurate, and over the course of a decade or two get you to buy slightly better and better Dinobots.  It's a pretty good racket they have going!

COMPLETELY UNRELATED here is LG-EX Rhinox.  He's like the Hasbro Generations Rhinox I already had, but now he's brown instead of tan!  The tan was more accurate to the original Beast Wars toy, but less accurate to the television animation.  TakaraTomy's first attempt at this mold, released under their Legends toyline, had similar colors to this new LG-EX Rhinox, but the line-wide visual gimmick at the time was "make everything metallic."  That's probably more okay if your toy's, like, a car, but Rhinox is 80% rhinoceros hide.  And so he was this awful-looking metallic brown rhinoceros, despite otherwise being more accurate colors to the animation.  I skipped that specific release of that toy, preferring having the rhino hide parts be matte plastic rather than him looking to be made out of aluminum foil.

Well, good, because a toy convention over on that side of the world decided that they were going to give Rhinox (and Waspinator and Rattrap) another go, this time without the mindboggling metallic plastic.  So, like, problem solved.  Matte brown plastic!  Perfecto.  This time Rhinox even has his gums painted inside his rhino mouth, which is a nice (and show-accurate) touch.  Great work!  Thanks toy convention!

Other than the brown, the most obvious change is to the dual Chainguns O' Doom, which feature actual paint, rather than being solid unpainted plastic.  Rhinox is no longer trying to stop you with a pair of oatmeal cookies.  Also his hip joints are a little tighter, which solves another problem.  LG-EX Rhinox is less likely to faceplant.

Anyway, time to get rid of this older, tanner Rhinox before I end up with a Rhinox collection like I do my mountainpile of Dinobots.  

If I had a time machine, I would probably use it to go back to like 1999 or so and tell myself that this toy would exist.  Look, little dude, you don't have to pull all the parts off your Rhinox and sculpey yourself a more show-accurate one.  Just... wait a while.  You'll lose that thing anyway.  

Also in a few years you're going to stop believing the Earth is 6000 years old, so why not cut that shit out earlier.  You'll be free.  Let it go.  Let it go.  Turn away and slam the door!

The original Rhinox toy was designed to be kinda like a samurai guy.  He's got his samurai skirt and he gets a sword and a mace weapon and his mutant face splits out and kinda looks like the sides of a samurai helmet.  The cartoon model was all "hell naw" and removed a bunch of that and ignored his sword and just made him this huge unstoppable bruiser who's also super-smart and really good at being a leader and settling disputes and... okay, Rhinox was kind of on the edge of being annoyingly perfect.  But he was humble and kind of a homebody, so that kept that from happening.  Rhinox was never "i have to go now my home planet needs me," and other folks mostly ignored that he was clearly the most awesomely competent dude in that show.  

The original Rhinox toy was also a mess.  God dang.  Everything hangs everywhere.  He transformed from rhinoceros to a Christmas tree, I'm pretty sure.  Just cascading panels everywhere.  Thank goodness the newer, bigger Rhinox toy emulates the cleaner look of the television show.  The back end of the rhinoceros does split into quite a few parts, but they all compact neatly around him and usually lock down.  A hanging crotch skirt piece remains as the single remaining callback to his original samurai look.  (You can fold it up under his jaw-chest if you want to erase that motif completely.)  

In rhino mode, he's a very satisfying rhino, if immobile.  His butt and tail and horns and ears are all made of soft plastic.  There are no gimmicks in this mode.  He will look pretty and that is basically it.  Don't even open his jaw.  It's not supposed to be opened.  The jaw is for transformation and there's rows of very very not-rhinoceros-like sharp teeth in there for robot mode and the whole thing is hinged too far back in the jaw anyway to look good.  Don't do it!  Enjoy your static rhinoceros, dammit.

In robot mode, Rhinox has the articulation you expect, though I'm appreciative that his balljointed neck allows him to look up, which facilitates some nice chaingun of doom poses.  Speaking of which, he comes with two of those, as is Proper.  As with the original (single) weapon, pump the lever and the chain spins.  As not with the original, it's an actual chaingun thing, and not a weird rotating mace sawblade thing.  If you don't want your Rhinox to be encumbered with his weapons, you can shove the 5mm handles into the deep screwholes in the backs of his shoulders.  We always wondered where Rhinox was reaching when he'd grab behind himself and pull these outta seemingly nowhere, and now we know.

Rhinox is packaged mistransformed so that his torso is elongated.  Properly transformed, his crotch compacts deeper into his torso.  He's depicted this incorrect way on the packaging as well.  But done correctly, he's rightly stout.  

Two things I don't like about him:  1) His legs are a little loose!  Sometimes he's hard to stand.  2) I wish they'd kept his lips.  This new toy's mouth is more of a simple sculpted line.  Not only can't he be a samurai anymore, but he can't be a black dude, either (who is voiced by a white dude).  Stop this cultural erasure, Hasbro!

you totally need to buy him, for reals

he's so great