Bear Fighter

Bear Fighter gets to be the first Zoid I write a new review for. Why? Not because of sentimental reasons, not because it's a favorite of mine or because it's simply that awesome, but because B is the second letter of the alphabet. This is not to say that Bear Fighter isn't a good Zoid-rather the opposite, in fact.

While its new release was limited in Japan, Hasbro brought Bear Fighter to the US as a regular release much like the Rhimoses. Considering its lack of anime stardom, Bear Fighter was pretty slow to sell if you could find it and often showed in Wal-Mart's packs of four windups back in the glory days of clearance Zoids. Differences between it and the original release are a matter of details: shade, smokey cockpit, shiny pilot, and different box. Properly different variations include Cruncher (Zoids2 green chrome, dark green, and gold) and the Mk.II (OJR white, blue, gold). Both are wonderful, but the latter is pretty impossible to find. I don't own one, but I can vouch for its coolness as I took care of Mystick's for a bit.

What does this mean? That you should rescue a Bear Fighter and set it free, of course! It's a fun build, partially because of its contribution to the overall cleverness of the large windups: it can walk on all fours or on two legs equally well. This means it has numerous slidey things one must piece together to enable it to shift between the two "modes". Besides the legs moving, the head does too, meaning your Bear Fighter isn't stuck looking into the sky or at its feet when it shouldn't be. It's all controlled by the back gun, so there's no need to argue with Bear Fighter's legs mumbling to switch into the other [expletive deleted] mode already as bits fall off.

The overall look is a good one-while not a large bear Bear Fighter looks capable of doing some smiting with its pokey claws. The front ones are on pegs that let them move down far enough that it doesn't look like it's telling you to stop! - in the name of love when in the two-legged mode, either. For extra pokey, I suggest giving Bear Fighter a Pile Bunker on one wrist (or two), since the large spear looks more proportioned to its hefty arms than an Iguan or a Rev Raptor.

All in all, Bear Fighter is of the most neglected Zoids of the new line and of the Hasbro-exclusives, and worth the small amount of cash it will take to add one to your collection, especially if you're a fan of windups and mechanical things.

Rewritten September 11th, 2006
Old review