Zoids Battle Rex!

Battle Rex

Type: Dinosaur (Tarbosaurus)
Class: 4
Function: Assault/Command/Enigma
Alignment: Guylos Empire (on box), but not specified in the Zoids: Fuzors anime
Designation: #110

Technical Specifications

Height: 12.8m
Length: 19.6m
Width: 7.5m
Weight: 92.0T
Max. Speed (open range): 140km/h
Crew: 1
Armaments: Dual 150mm Gravity Cannons, 70mm Grenade Launcher, Dual 50mm Cannons, Various 20mm and 30mm Forward-facing Cannons, garish paintjob that will blind any enemy
Distinguishing features: Oh come ON...how could you miss that outlandish color scheme? Whoo! =8^D Better suited for an episode of "Pimp My Zoid" than the battlefield/arena.
Powercell requirement: 1AA (motor)

NOTES:
Before I get started, I'd like to thank Jesse Yu, Tom Schneider, Seth Thurston, Tilly, and the Wikipedia folks for their informational contributions to this article.

Alright, lots of questions, I'm sure everyone's got them. Let's dive right in and get started.

Aaaagh! My eyes! I'm blinded! What's that freakishly garish thing that cost me my eyesight?!? What you see here is Battle Rex, one of the last planned kit releases in Hasbro's licensed handling of Tomy's Zoids line. Battle Rex is a recolor of the OJR Deadborder, one of the first "Dark Zoids" introduced after the Guylos Empire staged its coup and overthrew the Zenebas Empire waaaaaaay back in ZAC 2089 (or was it ZAC 2088? Agh, gettin' old...can't remember... =X^D ). This particular color scheme for this Zoid design appeared (just long enough to get its ass handed to it) in the Zoids: Fuzors anime, and I would assume that Hasbro was planning to time its release to capitalize on that appearance. Fuzors didn't do so well, though, and it ended its run on Cartoon Network (in America) before the entire series was shown.

Battle Rex, as it appeared in episode 21 of Zoids: Fuzors, "The Water's Surface And The Under Current"

So just what the hell makes ol' BR so supposedly special? As with any mystery, the "not knowing" drives the mystique of the thing. Unanswered questions swirl around Battle Rex like hornets around the head of some dumb kid who beat their nest with a stick. For shits & giggles, let's tackle some of those unanswered questions as if that aforementioned kid with the stick had also had a beekeeper's suit and a big ol' can of Raid... =X^D

How rare is Battle Rex? Ol' BR here is considered by some to be one of the rarest Zoids out there that's been made available to collectors. The true rarity of BR can't be confirmed, though, because no definite quantities of the thing can be independently verified. When it comes to unreleased items, pre-production samples, and the like, hard numbers are often difficult to obtain even when consulting directly with employees or former employees of either the parent toy company or the manufacturing plant.

What we DO know is that this unit is one of only two that are curently known to be in collectors' hands. Tom Schneider (of Die ZOIDS sind zurück! fame) has the other one, and has his own page for his Battle Rex sample HERE. This unit came from the same individual who provided Tom's unit, as there are markings on both this box and Tom's box that identify them as coming from the same source. That source obtained the Battle Rexs, along with several other Zoids, at a trade show where vendors display future products to potential buyers. The specific trade show where the Battle Rexs were obtained was never divulged by the original source. No instructions or decals were included with either unit.

Also currently, Seth over at ZOID.US has a tentative lead on three more potential units. So, we're looking at two confirmed units and three unconfirmed units. And then, there's the blue-hosed built unit from the Hasbro box photos...which has never surfaced in the public eye but definitely did exist at some point...so that makes it 2 confirmed, 3 unconfirmed, and 1 semi-confirmed. Right now, anyway.

Is Battle Rex a prototype? The term "protoype" is often applied to the Battle Rexs that reside with Tom and I. That, however, is incorrect...from my POV, anyway. Here's why...

A true protoype is constructed from resin or other similar such materials, and is not produced off of production tooling...truly a one-of-a-kind item. Prototypes are used to help build production tooling and/or make other critical design decisions (color apps, part interface, action-feature function, etc.) prior to the first production part being run. Again the Battle Rex that resides here at Channel Zi IS NOT A PROTOTYPE. It is, instead, a vendor (or pre-production) sample: an item run off the production tooling and provided by the manufacturer prior to the start of regular production to show potential buyers from retail chains a rough idea of what the final product will look like. That is to say, regular Tomy production tools were used to produce all of the sprues for the unit and finished Hasbro packaging tools were used to print/cut the package.

What's surprising to me about both BRs is that vendor samples are typically not completely produced in their final regular production colors, yet both BR samples appear to be colored correctly (though the matter of the hose color is open to debate).

The closest thing to a "protoype" Battle Rex would (in my opinion) be the built sample with blue hoses that was used by Hasbro for package/catalog photography. While one might expect that unit to be an old Deadborder repainted to look like Battle Rex, a close examination of the box art for Battle Rex leads me to form the opinion that the unit was indeed molded in Battle Rex colors, and was not a hand-painted unit. Perhaps it's the lighting from the photography, but it also appears to be colored a lighter green than the actual pre-production samples. I would also think that the person building up a unit that was run off the available tooling surely would have noticed the part assembly issues (which we will discuss shortly) and thus would have attempted to get them corrected before further pre-production runs were made.

Unless...the blue-hose unit didn't HAVE those problems. A closer look at the unit on the box reveals that it was also apparently made before the tooling changes to the chest gun barrels and the small hoses on the main guns, making it more like the OJR Deadborder. For ease of comparison, the Battle Rex parts (in black, still on the sprue) are shown below aside parts from one of my OJR Deadborders (in charcoal).

Deadborder and Battle Rex Chest Gun comparison

Deadborder and Battle Rex Main Gun comparison

I think it's a safe bet to assume that the two known units were run sometime after the blue-hose unit, and were not part of the same pre-production run. The fate of that built unit with the blue hoses is, again, unknown. As for why that unit had blue hoses and the two other known units have gray hoses...we'll get to theories on that shortly also.

Overall, Battle Rex made it far enough through the production process to have package tooling made and boxes produced. Having worked in manufacturing for a while now, I can assure you that that's actually very far along in bringing a product from the drawing board to the store shelf. Significant resources have to be committed by a company to bring a product to the point of packaged samples. Most unproduced toys don't make it to the packaging stage before they're nixed (and the reasons for a product cancellation can be quite varied). As a side-note to all of that, it was probably easy for Hasbro to get Battle Rex so far along in less time and at less expense than a totally new-design product because the tooling for the kit itself already existed and the basic package format wasn't veering away from their standard (*coughcoughboringcoughcough*) Zoids box art style.

Box front

Box back

Why did Hasbro change the hose color from blue on the unit pictured on the box to light gray for the regular production version? Don't know. IMO, it wasn't a good move, as the blue really added some extra visual "pop" to the BR as it appears on the package art (good for catching the eye of kids when they're on the toy aisle). With gray hoses, the thing actually looks dull (despite its already loud colors). Given the fact that both BRs were vendor samples (which are most often not run in their final correct colors), it's possible that the gray color material may just have been what the maufacturer happened to have on hand when Hasbro whipped up the vendor sample units. However, I think the gray hoses actually make it more show-accurate with its appearance in Zoids: Fuzors...so gray may have indeed been the intended final prodction color. I think it WAS a conscious decision on Hasbro's part to make them blue to begin with, though.

Why were there such blatant quality issues with the motor switch lever and head-mount pin? Misassembly and tool damage, respectively.

The incorrect switch lever placement simply appears to be a case of the on/off lever being installed backwards. With the lever installed 180 degrees out-of-position, the on/off switch will not operate properly. According to Tom, this can be corrected by disassembling the motor halves, removing the switch lever, and reinstalling the lever in the correct position. For whatever reason, though, this reverses the on/off function (i.e., it's on in the off position, and off in the on position).

Deadborder motor, with on/off lever in correct orientation

Battle Rex motor, with on/off lever in incorrect orientation

Overall, again, this appears to be a simple assembly issue. The line operators asssembling the motors probably had incorrect work instructions, or possibly just didn't properly follow the instructions proveded. If the same line operator built both Battle Rex motors, at least they were consistent. =X^D

The switch lever issue is nowhere near the showstopper that the oversized head pin is, though...

Head-mount section of the Deadborder upper body halves,
with correct size pin

Head-mount section of the Battle Rex upper body halves,
with oversized pin

Yeah, the pin on the Battle Rex is MASSIVELY oversized, and there's no way you're going to get ol' BR's noggin installed over that thing without some serious plastic surgery.

If you look at the oversized pin, you see that it's nice and cylindrical. To me, this looks less like tool damage and more like a tool repair gone awry...like the misguided intent was to make it a rubber-cap pin instead (the pin diameter matches that of pins for rubber cap attachment). The other possibility is that the original pin was formed by an insert in the tool, and that insert was lost before the Battle Rex run was made; the missing insert would have left a large cavity to be filled by plastic when the sprue was shot, thus creating the honkin' big pin. However, I don't think that's as likely as the poor repair scenario.

Overall if you look collectively at the OJR Deadborder, Battle Rex, and the TDP Deadborder, you get a very interesting story about the life of a toy tool and the various pitfalls it faces that can result in dramatic changes to the original tool design.

Based on Seth's review of his TDP Deadborder build, the TDP Deadborder (which was released after the development and cancellation of Battle Rex) did not have any of the adverse assembly issues that Battle Rex displayed. It did, though, have some of the notable changes first seen on Battle Rex (changing the "Made In" tags, removing the molded-in hoses from the main guns, modification of the chest guns, addition of "OFF" & "ON" to part D25, and removing two of the rubber hoses from the original hose sprue). It does not, however, have the foot-stabilizer-strut changes documented on the TDP as well as the "Pre-Release" Deadborder. The Wikipedia articles that mention Battle Rex (Unreleased Zoids and Deadborder releases) hint that Hasbro may have reconstructed the entire Deadborder tool from scratch while they were developing Battle Rex, and were the ones who screwed up the head pin and made other notable changes to the tool. I really don't think they completely reconstructed the tool, as a complete tool fabrication on a sprue of that size would be very expensive.

My opinion is that, in transferring the tool from Japan to Thailand, the tool was damaged and required repair. Interim repairs were probably performed after the tool was inspected to make the tool usable enough for Hasbro to run some sample Battle Rexs. This may have been done when the various "Made In" tags on the sprues were altered in the tool to reflect the new point of manufacture, and/or when the slight modifications to the tool (specifically, to the main and chest guns, probably for US safety reasons) were made by Hasbro. If interim repairs were performed, though, I have to wonder why all of the the correct final tool repairs weren't performed before the Battle Rex samples were made. Seems to me you would want to only go into the tool once, make all necessary repairs, and then put the tool back into uninterrupted use...unless certain minimum repairs were required just to get the tool running, and there was a necessity to run the tool ASAP.

With the TDP Deadborder in mind again, I then have to wonder if the correct repairs were greenlit and performed before Battle Rex was officially cancelled or after Hasbro had canned BR. Tomy owned the tools, of course...Hasbro was just borrowing them. I see a couple of possibilities here...

Closeup of oversized pin

First, let's say Hasbro decided not to chip in to have the tools corrected, because they were not going to take Battle Rex into full production. At that point, Tomy either had to live with a damaged tool or front all the funds for the repair themselves if they wanted to ever use the tool again. From a business standpoint, what purpose is served in using resources to make a tool repair if you're not planning to use the tool again for the foreseeable future? I think Tomy might have opted to make the TDP Deadborder run to recoup some of the costs of having the Deadborder tool repaired without help from Hasbro.

What, then, if Hasbro had made the tool repairs before Battle Rex was cancelled? Again, from a business standpoint, I don't think Hasbro would drop coin on something as expensive as tool repair if they weren't certain the product was going into full production. This is probably the lesser-likely scenario.

The overall bottom line is that the tool was correctly repaired sometime between the Battle Rex run that created the two known samples and the TDP Deadborder run. If Seth (or someone else) manages to verify and subsequently land any of the three unconfirmed samples, we may get some more clarification on just when those repairs took place. How? It's my opinion that the three unconfirmed samples were run AFTER mine and Tom's. Assuming so, it would be interesting to see if those Battle Rex kits have the same assembly issues as the two known samples, or if those problems were corrected. Of course, someone has to get their hands on one of these unconfirmed samples and build one first...if they do indeed exist.

The only thing that muddies the water on all this, though, is the longer foot-stabilizer on the "Pre-release" unit and the TDP unit...but I'm guessing Tomy was responsible for those changes.

So what do you think kept Battle Rex from reaching full production? I suppose that it's a toss-up as to whether it was the tooling costs involved with correcting the part assembly issues, or the fact that Hasbro's incarnation of the Zoids line was on its last legs at that point, or perhaps a combination of those issues that led Hasbro's product management for the Zoids brand to make the decision not to produce the Battle Rex.

What about the rumor that the tool actually never was damaged, and that Hasbro just accidentally mixed Viagra into the plastic when molding the Battle Rex samples? *ahem* Next question please...

Do the ladies find Battle Rex sexier than Deadborder because his pin is so much larger? *ahem* NEXT QUESTION PLEASE!!!

Is it likely that more Battle Rex units were produced and are sweltering in storage somewhere or residing with employees and/or former employees? I would say it's possible. As I said earlier, Seth over at ZOID.US has a tentative lead on three more potential units. However...no one seems to have provided him any photo-evidence of their existence. Yet. That said, I do seem to recall someone over in Europe cracking open a shipping container in the late 1990s and finding an assload of dead-stock MOC Thundercats figures. So...anything's possible. =8^)

Is it just as possible that any additional parts or units produced during the run that created the two known units may have been scrapped because of the part issues that prevented correct assembly? Yes. Although frankly, I'm not familiar with Hasbro's process for checking product off of final tooling, nor their protocols for dealing with defective products that have not shipped out of the factory.

What's a Battle Rex worth? Beats the hell out of me. It's difficult to gauge demand for something that really never reaches the market in the first place, and as such, difficult to set any firm, consistent price. Again, no definite quantities of the thing can be independently verified. I'm sure everyone who is after one has their price they're willing to pay or item(s) they're willing to trade...but that's going to be a very wide range of prices and items. It's all relative anyway, you know. =8^)

Will you ever build this thing? Right now, no. Tom's built his, and documented the assembly issues. Knowing that these are the only two currently confirmed samples, I'd like to at least keep this one unbuilt to represent the unit in its most raw state. If more show up someday, then I might reconsider.

As you see below, Battle Rex was molded in metalflake green and neutral black. Transparent parts were molded in orange-tinted clear. Caps were molded in bright red. Hoses were molded in light gray. Pilot was molded in blue. Motor housing was molded in gloss black; leg mount rotors on the motor were molded in white.

Battle Rex sprue A	Battle Rex sprue B
Battle Rex sprue C	Battle Rex sprue D
Battle Rex sprue E	Battle Rex sprue F
Battle Rex caps, hoses, footpads, and pilot	Battle Rex motor

What is your overall opinion of the Battle Rex? Personally, I think the thing is ugly as sin, color-wise...right up there with Hasbro's Battle Cougar. Having one around requires some mighty powerful sunglasses. Had BR made it to regular release, I likely would not have purchased one.

I didn't, however, procure BR simply because of what it was. I've never been one for collecting items like prototypes, VSPs, first-shots, and the like...I'm more for the (typically) much less expensive finished product, with all the paint apps in place and whatnot. Rarity doesn't appeal to me as much as the overall appearance and function of a finished product. Case in point: I like the OJR Iron Kong Mk II Limited because it just looks badass, not because it happens to be rare as hell. BR came into my possession as part of a collection buy...I was more interested in the overall collection than just the one piece. I was going to buy the collection whether Battle Rex was there or not. That the Battle Rex just happened to be part of the greater whole I was obtaining was, well, random.

As time has gone on since ol' BR fell into my lap, I have come to appreciate the fact that it's not only a highly uncommon Zoid curiosity, but also an artifact of Hasbro's chapter of Zoid history, too. In those respects, the responsibility I feel to the Zoiding community as the custodian for one of the two known samples far outweighs my revulsion at its hideous color scheme. =X^D Aaaaaand I do like the Deadborder design, as it's one of the better OJR Guylos units...so that helps BR a bit as well. =8^)

So, it's very exciting and at the same time very humbling to play host to one of the Battle Rexs here at Channel Zi. We're glad to finally join Tom in sharing our example of this critter (and all its quirks) with the Zoiding community, and hope everyone has enjoyed the writeup!

And no, Seth & Lionel...it's still not for sale. =X^D

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