H is for Heinrad

The Winning Toy

"Heinrad usually acts dazed and vague. He has a clock in his stomach, which gives him the ability to manipulate time. His super-secret skill is being able to stop or stretch time for a limited duration, there's a flaw in this ability: he still can't control it at will.Heinrad's past and combat abilities are shrouded in mystery." *Please note that this was translated from Japanese, so apologies if it makes no sense.

Toyline: Beast Wars Neo

Generation: Beast Era

Size Class: Special (Ultra Equivalent)

Faction: Cybertrons/Maximal

Function: Dimensional Explorer

Strength: ?

Intelligence: ?

Speed: ?

Endurance: ?

Rank: 7

Courage: ?

Fireblast: ?

Skill: ?


Robot Mode



Heinrad's robot mode is (in my opinion) one of the best from the Beast Era. He has great articulation and the toy has a fair few features as well. His body is mostly a textured brown with blue and white used on his lower body. Heinrad also has a giant clock in his chest, but I'll be explaining about that in the last section of this review.

Heinrad's head is very detailed, he has a black helmet which has a fur-like Mohawk, and mutton chop bottoms, and the lower most part of the back of the helmet also has fur detailing as well. Heinrad also has detailing that looks like two small ears on the top of his head (which is both good detailing and adorable). Heinrad's face itself is a very pale blue with a sculpted nose and mouth. His eyes are an orange-red colour and surrounded by back markings (which emulate his beast mode eyes, but in a more mechanical fashion). Heinrad has a visor/set of goggles connected to the sides of his head which can be lowered over his eyes or rested upon his head. The visor can also be removed, but that doesn't really do anything, the visor's lenses are a partially translucent green. Heinrad's head is also able to rotate 360 degrees on a pivot.



Heinrad's arms are articulated in a few places, which gives him good movement. His upper arm is connected to his shoulder pad via a hinge and pivot joint, enabling it to be rotated 360 degrees and to bend forwards at 90 degrees. His lower arm is connected to the upper arm via a ball joint, which obviously gives it full articulation, and finally the hand is also connected to the lower arm via another ball joint. His hands also have a hinge that enables his thumb to fold inwards, giving a clasped hand look to it. His right hand also has a clip that allows it to hold his gun. An added point I should mention is that his shoulder pads can be lifted up (as per his transformation), to enable him to raise his arms further

Heinrad's waist is able to rotate on a pivot joint, but not by a lot (this might be just the case in my model, I'm not sure)

Heinrad's upper legs are connected to the groin by a pivoting hinge which enables them to move around a little bit (this is however hindered by his hip kibble) His lower leg is connected via a hinge, which enables him to move them backwards by about 90 degrees (if the leg kibble is opened outwards enough) this joint is also on a pivot as well, which is required for his tranformation, but can also be used for posing reasons.



Alternate Mode



Heinrad's alternate mode is very fun, he turns into a Tanuki (a Raccoon-Dog hybrid) with pretty good articulation (especially compared to other Beast Era toys from the time, whose beast mode's had very poor beast mode articulation.

Because his front limbs are also his robot mode arms, he has pretty much full articulation in them (the same extent as the robot mode arm's of course). His back legs however are only articulated by a ball joint connecting them to the torso.

Heinrad's head is on a hinge which enables him to move it at a 90 degree angle, and also has ball joints which enables him some angled head movements as well. Heinrad's tail is connected to his torso via 2 hinges which gives it some limited articulation as well

An interesting thing about Heinrad is that he can be positioned in a bipedal and quadrupedal mode, and both look good as well (very unusual for a 90's toy). In his bipedal mode he has his clock visible, but because of the design (explained more later) the alarm won't work in this mode. In his quadrupedal mode he just looks like a realistic animal

Heinrad is mostly brown with sculpted fur except for a few visible lumps of blue and white from his robot mode (it blemishes his appearance a bit, but it's okay considering how good the figure is). Heinrad also has several black/dark brown highlights in his fur, such as on the tip of his tail, the paws and his chest. His paws have silver claws, and his front paw is fully black.

Heinrad's face is designed very well. He has 2 silver and black eyes (that seem to sparkle in the right light) and has a cute button nose and bandit mask eye markings, making him look like a little robber. He also has pink inner ears making him look quite authentic

....Now....for the part you were all probably waiting for...Heinrad has testicles in this mode, there's not really much to say about them, except that the right ball holds Heinrad's spark crystal (visible in robot mode) which could be a reference to how a man's whole life is in his balls...or it could just be for laughs


Legacy

Heinrad's an interesting little guy, he was introduced in the Beast Wars Neo toyline as one of the main characters in the TV series and Manga, in both being shown to have his time manipulation powers as described in his bio. Of course, because he was only made available in a Japanese line and appeared in an undubbed TV series as well he was relatively unknown to the western audience until his entry in the Beast Wars Sourcebook (along with the other BW2 and BWN characters as well). Heinrad does have the privilege however of being one of the few characters from the Japanese exclusive lines (who didn't have their mold used in the West for some reason) to have appeared in The Gathering (IDW's first Beast Era comic), albeit as a cameo with Big Convoy and Magmatron.

Heinrad's most obvious legacy, is that it's the first (and only I believe) transformer to have testicles in their toy form (Devastator had a wrecking ball scrotum in the Revenge of the Fallen movie, but not in his toys) I've also noticed that people seem to be voting for characters with some innuendo or sexual context in them, in Heinrad's case it's his testes, Erector has a funny name (which can also be a reference to an erection) and even Astrotrain (think about the first syllable of his name)...Just thought I'd share that bit....


Is he cool?

In sort...yes, he is extremely cool, not only is he a transforming toy, but he's also a fully working and functional alarm clock (I can attest to that personally). He looks great in all his modes (robot, bipedal beast and quadrupedal beast) and is also quite well articulated in all these modes (by today's standards, and the standards of the 90's) The only real downfalls to this great character are that some of his robot mode parts show up in beast mode (a common issue though) and that he towers over most of the other characters from his own toyline, which in the TV series were about the same height as him, which again, isn't that much of an issue for me honestly



Heinrad comes with 4 accessories, a sake bottle, an IOU Note Pad and 2 white missiles, the bottle and note pad can combine into a gun, which the missiles can be loaded into one by one (I have to note however, the inner spring is on a hair-trigger, meaning that it'll fire with minimal force, so don't point it at anyone).

Heinrad can hold both of the larger items via their string handles in either of his bipedal forms (but it looks most effective in beast mode). The missiles can be mounted onto Heinrad's calves via a small hole just under the knee pads, using the small knob on the missiles themselves.



The clock on his robot mode chest/beast mode stomach is fully functional and is powered by one AAA battery. The small black dial on the back of his robot mode is used to change the time/set the alarm.

By keeping the dial pushed in (as natural) you can alter the alarm time, which is shown by the yellow hand (ie if the yellow hand is right on the 11 hour, it will be set off at 11 o'clock, and if you have the yellow hand half way between 1 and 2 then it will go off at 1.30, and so on. The alarm is monotonous and sounds from the small speaker on the left side of the clock. The alarm will b set by pulling Heinrad's head up and will be turned off by pushing it down (this of course means that he can only be altered/used as an alarm clock in robot mode.

By pulling the dial out slightly, you can turn it to alter the time itself, the long black hand shows the minutes and the small black hand shows the hour. The red hand shows the seconds, and cannot be altered (as with most clocks)

The clock has some aesthetic details such as non functional date dials (they would show the day and month if they were actually able to work and also has some detailing near the top, which I can't identify. The numbers on the clock face are in English, rather than using Kanji (luckily)