#attack pack

...however, you have to admit...

...the premise of those old toys is basically what started happening to a lot of the car-hybrids under the Visitor's gaze...

Making new friends

It's Cozmo Clam! Anyone who even glanced at the Hot Wheels aisle in '92 couldn't miss the oversized monster trucks with giant mouths, and a year later, they'd seen enough success to branch out a bit with aircraft. And also a bunch of UFOs.

So, there's an outside chance you remember this from my Slime-inator review, but basically, a bunch of good guys (in monster trucks) were fighting a bunch of bad guys (also in monster trucks) over "the final energy source" in an unspecified jungle. And then a bunch of spectral animals came out of nowhere, fused with the combatants, and now they're all living vehicles with giant animal mouths. Simple enough.

And then a bunch of UFOs showed up and got turned into bite-mobiles as well.. Okay, now I have questions.

This fellow in particular is listed as being "molecule-morphed" with a river clam. With eyes. I guess the alien DNA wasn't sublimated as much as the humans' were.

It's a solid enough design, a bit like the Enterprise had a baby with a shuttlecraft, and then that thing sired this with a Diener spaceship. Very short and wide, and the color scheme, while not as bright in natural light, is simple but effective. I'm not the spaceship nut I once was, but it's all right.

Now we're talking! Squeeze the thrusters closed and the saucer section splits open into a large mouth of some sort as the eyes rise out to the top. It's a pleasingly odd design, thick rounded "teeth" that read more like outgrowths of a clamlike shell, blotchy green interior, and a branching tongue. Said tongue happily catches on one of the spikes if you do it just right, allowing for display in an open state without the aid of rubber bands.

Clammy here wasn't my first choice, even among the spaceships, but looking at the file card again, this thing is kind of terrifying. "impervious to attack", it spends its time in orbit, locking weapons on "anything that catches its sleepless, roving eyes". Well, that's creepy.

Given the timeframe, I'm hesitant to say spaceships happened because X-Files; not that Fox wasn't on fire at the time, but the turnaround period on toys means they'd have to have made a lucky guess. Either way, it wasn't the shot in the arm the line needed, and for proof, I point to the price tag.