>>10762783Nightcrawler and Chromeribs - the theme here is 'third modes'. Like the owl mold, the beetles tend to be held in fairly high regard, and for good reason. Nightcrawler has poseable, jointed limbs, opening elytra, and a fairly interesting transformation which revolves around a big 'keel' that everything else rotates around; its box mode hides its rounded parts fairly well. What makes the beetle mold really fun, however, is that it has a third 'flight' mode built into it - Nightcrawler, Demon Dart, Zephyr and the elusive Black Waltz all have a pair of jet wings that fold out from under their elytra and a nosecone that covers their head; folding their feet into their box mode configuration completes the look and makes them look like they flew out of a Gradius game or some other shoot-'em-up.
Chromeribs is from the Firmhand mold - normally he's a wolf (with a bionic arm) who turns into a box, but he has a hidden third mode (originally advertised in Firmhand's pre-release pictures, but strangely removed from his actual listing images and absent from his instruction manual) where he can stand up and become a wolfman. Chromeribs comes with a replacement arm (a bonus item for Firmhand but standard for Chromeribs) which can transform into a Megaman-esque arm cannon for use in this third mode as well. He's pretty neat, and can stand freely when in upright mode; sadly, he has no ability to move his hips outward, so he won't be pulling off any splits anytime soon. Transformation into cube mode is unusual and asymmetrical, with the whole transformation making him wrap around his (default) bionic arm. His actual normal wolf mode is pretty neat, too, but the proportions are a bit gangly.
I think chromeribs has the better color scheme of the two uses of this mold, especially since the normal Firmhand doesn't have any chrome plating on him to highlight his 'bionic' parts. Oh, and Chromeribs comes with a cool dark blue Box Charger with a red slash mark painted on the front.
