Review – Armor Bot
The Highs:
1. It’s friggin’ huge!
2. Neat play features
3. Heavily armed
The Lows:
1. Not enough missiles to fill the spots for them
2. Not a lot of articulation
3. Electronic voice sounds are extremely corny
The Verdict: Not a must have, but a nice piece for the price.
Well, since I’ve been in a Joe mech-reviewing mood this week, I figured I’d finish it up with a review of the granddaddy mech of them all…the 1993 GI Joe Armor Bot. In the last years of the original line, Hasbro tried plenty of sub-teams to try and breathe some life back in the line and recapture that mid-80’s success. Ninja Force, Eco-Warriors, Drug Elimination Force, Star Brigade…a lot of these teams are heavily derided by hardcore Joe fans, but every now and then, we’d still get some nice toys out of them. The Armor Bot is one of them. Hasbro also had a tradition of releasing one or two really big toys each year. The General, Terror-Drome, Defiant, Rolling Thunder, and of course the mighty Flagg were all examples of this. The Armor Bot was the last of the big Joe toys in the original line.
The first thing you notice about the Armor Bot is that the thing is frigging huge. It stands over a foot-and-a-half tall (almost 2 feet if you count the antennae) and the arms make it about a foot wide. The body is primarily white, with the left arm, waist, cockpit canopy, and laser cannon all black, the rest of the weaponry blue, and the toy’s accents gold. These colors aren’t too military, but considering this is supposed to be a sci-fi, space-faring toy, I’m not going to knock it for the color choices. The feet are fused together, but have wheels in them so the Armor Bot can roll around easily. The legs are setup in a reversed knee configuration, similar to the PoC Deviant or the Star Wars AT-ST “Chicken Walker.” The right arm is a six barreled missile launcher, and the left arm is a giant, spring-loaded claw. The head contains a two-seater cockpit, accessed by flipping up the forward “face” plate. The Armor Bot has articulation in the hips, shoulders, waist, neck, and at the wrist of the arm with the claw. It’s decently articulated, but not tremendously. I wish the legs were more articulated and could be moved independent of each other. There’s also a large handle on the back of the Armor Bot for easy transport and handling during play. The handle’s kind of awkward-looking, but it doesn’t look too bad.
The big Armor Bot also has BIG firepower. As previously mentioned, the right arm is a giant, six-barreled missile launcher. Pushing down a black, spring-loaded tab near the arm’s elbow fires a missile and cycles the gun to the next missile. It works well, but I worry about the long-term durability of that tab, as I can see it breaking. Besides the fact that the right arm is just a giant missile launcher, there’s plenty of other armament as well. The feet contain four spots for missile storage, and the chest has spots for a whopping eight. The only problem is that the Armor Bot doesn’t come with enough missiles to fill all the spots. If you unload the launcher on the arm, you can, but otherwise you’re limited to having six in the launcher and six on the chest, which looks kind of goofy. Also, if you put the missiles in the spots on the feet, they stick out way too far. I ended up buying two more missiles off eBay so that I could have a fully loaded arm and all 8 spots in the chest filled.
There are still more weapons here, though. The AB’s “chin” has a large, black laser cannon attached to it, which can be rotated from side to side and raised up and down. The right side of the head/cockpit has both a single and double-barreled cannon, and a large quad-barreled cannon dominates the left side of the head. All three guns on the head can be moved up or down so they can engage targets individually.
There are other play features here, too. The left arm has a spring-loaded claw that can easily grab a figure, or be used to tear off a piece of the vehicle. In a somewhat strange feature, the three gold “fingers” can be pushed back and locked, and pushing a small button on top of them makes them spring forward. I don’t know why this is here, because they don’t snap forward very far. The “waist” section of the Armor Bot is really a battery box with a built-in speaker. There are two buttons on the back of the box, accessed from the Armor Bot’s rear. Pushing the right-hand button makes a laser firing sound, and a red light in the laser cannon on the Bot’s chin flashes in time to the sound. The left button activates five voice commands, in a cheesy, robotic-sounding voice. The Armor Bot says, in order, “Check Laser,” “Fire Laser,” “Check Armor,” “You’re dogmeat, Cobra!” and, in one of the cheesiest sounds to ever come out of a toy, “Let’s kick Bot!” MAN, that is so cheesy it should be on a pizza!
The Armor Bot’s huge and it’s got some neat features, but it’s far from perfect. Besides the lack of enough missiles, lack of articulation, and the corny-assed sounds, there are a few other problems. I don’t like the orange hose that runs from the back of the Armor BotThe stickers are kind of fragile, and they’re those crappy old paper ones. When I was applying them, several of them had some colors smear. Fortunately, CobraStickers has replacements available, but they’re a whopping $15 a set. Finally, there are two platforms on each foot with space for figures…but why would any Joes want to ride on the robot’s feet?
The Armor Bot is a massive toy, but it won’t cost you massive bucks. You can still find these, MIB, from around $50-80 depending on where you look. I believe that a large amount of these were clearanced out when the original Joe line went down the tubes, and collectors took advantage back then by snapping them up for next to nothing. I personally remember a ton of these on the clearance aisles at Wal-Mart and Kay Bee Toys. That’s why MIB examples aren’t exactly rare. If you want a loose Armor Bot, plan on paying around $25-30, though you might be surprised how reasonably you can get one off eBay…not counting shipping, of course. All in all, the Armor Bot isn’t one of those must-have giant Joe toys…but it’s not bad for the price!
