CLASSIFICATION: REPAINT
MATERIALS USED: ENAMEL PAINTS
FIRST APPEARANCE: TRANSFORMERS #4 (AS GRIMLOCK); TRANSFORMERS #59 (AS PRETENDER)

"Think you tough, Decepticon leader?  Me Grimlock--me eat Decepticon leaders for breakfast!"

Preamble:  I think Grimlock is probably my favorite of the four Classic Pretender toys, mainly because he's so cute.  He's actually a surprisingly well-designed little toy, considering the complexity of the original toy, which this version was based on.  He's kind of puny, admittedly (which was necessary in order to get him to fit into a Pretender shell), which is why I've taken to calling him Grimlock Jr.  Aside from the size issue, the only real problem with the toy was that it needed more paint operations.  He was almost completely colorless, and what paint they did apply to him (like the orange eyes and mask) just made him look dorky, and nothing like his animation model from the cartoon.

Construction:  I didn't fully disassemble this toy, mainly because his legs are held in place with a permanent bolt that I didn't want to mess with.  I did take his robot arms and head off, though, and that proved sufficient to get to all the parts that I wanted to paint.  The first thing Grimlock needed was a darker shade of grey, since the original color of plastic was closer to off-white.  I used that for the robot arms and legs as well as the dinosaur head and tail, as well as the heck section his dino head is attached to.  His upper chest and the claws on his arms became light yellow (I had gone with gold originally, until I realized I wanted something closer to the cartoon/comics and painted over that).  His pelvis got some nice red paint; his fists and face became black; and the tip of his tail became light grey.

Comments:  Even though the Pretender version of Grimlock transforms to robot mode differently than the original  toy (for the Pretender, the upper body of the dinosaur becomes his legs in robot mode), the new color scheme works very nicely.  Even I was surprised at what a difference a fresh coat of paint can make.  Now, he actually looks like Grimlock!