Transformers G1 Victory: Doryu D-325 (Dinoforce)

Doryu, the Stegosaurus of the group, may look familiar...at the robot. Doryu shares the same mold as their leader, Goryu. Swap out the green for blue and you have Doryu. This is another 100% complete piece that I proudly claim in my collection.

There isn't much to say about the character of Doryu. He's yet another Dinoforce soldier that is obedient, strong, but dumb. Doryu comes packaged with his Stego gun and one of Dinoking's feet. Forms either leg of Dinoking. His U.S. equivalent is Scowl.

The downside of plastic being used for the inner tray over styrofoam is that the tray can easily become warped over time. Here is yet another box of mine where the side box flap doesn't want to close properly due to the tray inside. Thankfully the rest of the box is in great shape. I never get tired of that classic G1 grid design and the simplistic transformation sequence found on the top of the box.

Flap crease is present, but not too bad.  Same busy design on the back that we've already seen.

Right and left sides

One thing I never noticed on the shell until I got a good look at the awesome art work found on the box bottom are the two guns on the front of the shell. See the two small silver guns? Nice!

I always figured the cards were put on the inside flaps of the box so you could remove them without having the butcher the box. The bigger question is why Takara stopped making the Tech Spec cards individual in the first place!

 

Doryu has a great looking Stegasaurus shell, but there are a few aspects I wish had been changed. First of all the dinosaur eyes aren't painted! Nor are the teeth. A small bit of red for the eyes and white for the teeth would go a long way. I also don't care for the positioning of the tabs on the side of his armor where Dinoking's foot pegs in. That design to hold the combiner piece just looks forced. Where the fists form additional guns when stored on the dinosaur shell, what are the feet supposed to be? Shields?

With most of the Transformer combiners I'd be tempted to buy two of each toy, one to use in the combined form while the other used to display individually. However I don't have a desire to do that with Dinoking or Monstructor as much. The robots themselves leave a lot to be desired. While the robot modes aren't bad, the alternate modes just make me think WTF were the designers thinking?! TFWiki calls this "beast" mode a howling monster. Whatever.

Doryu isn't without his flaws, but that can be said about all of the toys thus far. He features a decent Pretender shell and a inner robot that shares the same mold as the leader of the Dinoforce squad. Then again people aren't collecting these toys for their individual toys. Hang on guys, we're getting ever so closer to the Dinoking post!

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