Saturday, October 6, 2007

Model: Leoblaze


Official:
Designation: BZ-001
Type: Lion
Alignment: Republican
Movement: None
Colour: Red and Grey
Special: Can fuse with 3 others to form the Matrix Dragon
Approximate Size: About 11cm long, or 16cm including the tail. About 6cm high.

Review:
I love this Zoid to bits (quite literally; he has been fused with Mosasledge many times when all I had were those two and a Molga), but there are a few things about Leoblaze that keep its rating down. Firstly, the colour scheme doesn't work well. I suppose I can live with the red and grey, but having an orange cockpit on red? Ick. A green cockpit would have worked much better in my opinion. A have actually repainted one of my two Leoblazes; he's now blue with silver and black paws. The blue does work well with the orange cockpit. Another more important problem with the Leoblaze is that it has a major design flaw: it's head does not fit properly because of its shoulders. A lovely blox/Z-Builder Zoid with many great pieces and a nice, feline design, as well as that oh so cool sword tail and those cute teeth, Leoblaze is a great Zoid except that he isn't very sturdy, mostly due to his main body being comprised of the Z-Builder blocks, but also because his shoulders don't allow enough room for his head so that joint is always a little loose. Also, his head is not the easiest to assemble as you have to have a few small pieces in place before snapping it together. Otherwise, this guy is easy to assemble. A word of warning though: once you snap on the shoulder and rump pieces, they don't come off. So if you put the shoulder piece on the rump, it's probably staying there. I did this with my repainted Leoblaze by accident, and didn't think I could take it off again without breaking it. Overall Leoblaze is fun to play with, he's a cute cat with posable arms and paws, a nice face, a cool sword tail, and is great fun to fuse. If it weren't for his awkward head-shoulder problem, and if he was a nicer colour scheme I'd rate him much higher.

Rating: 3.5 Stars
Assembly: Novice (the head may be closer to the intermediate level though)
Movement: n/a
Leosune, my custom repainted Leoblaze

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