I really loved the Transformers: Energon toys, but don’t ask me to tell you a lot about the Energon cartoon. I’ve tried to watch it many times, but I usually wind up wandering away to do something more meaningful and interesting like scrub out the bottom of my refridgerator or organize my sock drawer. One of the cool things, however, that was introduced in the series was the Terrorcons, a sub-line of drones that were dispatched to hunt down energon and swarm around like a plague of locusts. The Terrorcons were basically the Decepticons answer to the Autobot Omnibots. The toys consisted of four different molds, and a fair number of repaints, and today we’re going to start out by looking at Battle Ravage and Cruellock.

I remember being ridiculously excited about getting Battle Ravage back when he was first released. Besides looking like a really cool figure, he was the first time that the G1 Ravage design had been revisited with any success. Getting a Ravage figure that transformed into an actual robot was a pretty cool idea too and I still like to display him with some of my other lines of Transformers. His beast mode features a really good level of articulation and the design is a great balance between beast and robot. The head sculpt is particularly awesome and I love the spiked ball that forms his tail. Ravage has an energon star that mounts on his back and two energon weapons that mount on his shoulders, one fires a purple missile and the other is a pretty darn good replica of G1 Megatron’s fusion cannon, albeit cast in translucent yellow.

Transforming Battle Ravage is pretty simple, and probably entails exactly what you might expect from a small beastformer. His back legs become is robot legs and his front legs become his arms. It’s not terribly imaginative, but it works and the little flip that the torso does to reveal the head is kind of cool. Ravage can hold his tail as a weapon and his energon weapons can be mounted on his shoulder or held in his hands. Battle Ravage is a really fun little figure and really demonstrates a lot of what I loved about the Energon toys.

Next up is the ridiculously named Cruellock. While you can draw the obvious thread back to Grimlock, Cruellock isn’t quite the clear cut homage that Battle Ravage tries to be. Granted, he is a robot dinosaur that transforms into a robot, so the connection is definitely there. I like Cruellock well enough, but not nearly as much as Battle Ravage. In dinosaur mode, ok let’s call him a raptor, he’s nicely sculpted and I really like the way the energon parts look on him. But his pelvis is loose and wobbly and his head is pretty obviously visible right under the dinosaur’s mouth, even if it is turned around. He’s still a fun figure, but not terribly stable.

Transforming him involves a lot of the pretty basic stuff as Battle Ravage. His raptor feet become his robot feet and his raptor arms his robot arms. The clever part just involves pushing his pelvis together, which pushes his raptor head back and reveals his head. Meanwhile his tail splits apart and the energon piece becomes his sword. I’ll grant that there’s some impressive little mechanics at work here for what is essentially a Scout Class figure, and while his robot mode does look good, it’s pretty obvious that there isn’t much to the transformation, especially with his raptor head and tail hanging off the back.

It’s easy to quibble over little things about both of these figures, but the truth is that I still can’t help but love them both. They’re relatively simple, but loads of fun and look really good in both their cyber-beast and robot modes. They’re energon weapons also give you a little leeway to mess around with trying different combinations. These guys are also fun to army build, something you don’t get to do a whole heck of a lot in Transformers collecting. I found a lot to love in Energon, but if I could bring one element of it back to get more toys, it would definitely be more Terrorcons. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at the other two figures in this sub-line: Divebomb and Insecticon.