General Information:
Release Date: June 1998
Price Point: $50 USD
Retailer: Botcon Exclusive
Antagony is the Botcon 1998 large exclusive toy. It is a repaint of the original Inferno toy. The new color scheme is primarily black and lavender with silver and dark brown coloring as well.
Beast Mode:
Antagony's beast mode is that of a large ant. The black and lavender color scheme shows up very nicely and the dark brown pattern on her ant mode's rear has metallic flaking making the coloring sparkle. The ant mode legs still suffer from the inability to hold up the beast mode body. If one tries to stand up the ant mode, it tends to flop onto its belly or a couple of the legs here and there will collapse down. The ant mouth pincers can open and close by using the sliding mechnism on the top of the ant head. In ant mode, Antagony has forteen points of articulation, mostly in the ant legs.
Transformation to Robot Mode:
The conversion from beast mode to robot mode is fairly simple. The robot legs are formed from the rear ant legs (which also house one missile each for her hand held launcher). The middle ant legs fold back and the front ant legs form the robot arms. Her weapons are removed from her mouth/pincers. That section splits in two to form a pincer weapon and a gun which both attach to her hand using pegs in holes. The ant head folds down to form her robot mode chest and from there, her robot head folds up. The rear "rump" of the ant mode has four panels which fold out to reveal mechanical inner workings and Antagony's thruster unit.
Robot Mode:
Antagony's robot mode is the same as Inferno's. No major mold changes were done. Antagony looks menacing and mysterious all at once. A black color scheme is always very nice to use on any toy.
All of the mechanisms that the original Inferno had are in this toy as well. Although results may vary from individual toy to toy, the joints on this toy feel much tighter than the original Inferno toy I own. Antagony stands in robot mode easily with the four sections of her rear thrusters spread open.
Overall, Antagony is a great find, if not for collectable value but just as a fun toy. A
Updated Thoughts (October 10, 2023):
In October 2023 Hasbro released a new version of Antagony in their Generations Selects line. That prompted me to dig this figure out of storage and take new photos and restore this review ahead of my review of that figure. I have a special fond memory of Antagony. Not only was she an amazing exclusive thanks to a killer deco and a fun base sculpt, but she was also a character in the Botcon 1998 script reading where she would claim she had consulted my web site to find Beast Wars Megatron (shortly before he blasted me out of existence!). I recently digitized the video of that reading and you can see it below.
