Do I have to explain BeastBox again? Righty, mechanical beasts that compress into boxes? Very collectable? 15+ age bracket? No? Oh, click here then. OK, let’s have a quick chat about a BeastBox I got recently. What is, technically, the first.
Dio, or D10, is the mascot of the BeastBox brand and 52Toys in general. His eye forms part of the company logo, and the cutesy robo-animal style a lot of the earlier box moulds had begins with him. Dio is sufficiently popular to see frequent and numerous re-releases/retools, the creation of Mega-Dio, a model kit, and today's subject. While numbered as BB-01, this is actually a revised version with 3mm port functionality for a wider play pattern. As such, Dio mrk2 (1.5?) features a twin gun turret, but to get the full use of these ports, you'd need assorted accessories sold separately. This brings me to the most significant difference Dio has from what followed: he's a 4cm cube not a 5cm one. This makes him a wee bit smaller, so he wouldn't fit in a boxcharger by himself, not that he comes with one. So, he is perhaps a less complete experience than other box toys I've written about.
That having been said, actually handling Dio made its the reasons for its popularity very obvious. Part of that is visual design, backed up with effective joint design. Dio has an immense amount of character; the big head on expressive neck joints, the tiny T-Rex arms, big legs with great movement, and simple but not overdone tech details. He moves in a way largely ideal for something with this body plan; his joints are working with the box mode, not against it or sacrificing for it. Maybe there could have been more in the tail, and the arms are vestigial, but I’m very happy with the neck and opening mouth. Said box mode is not flawless, although the use of flat panels and the blaster to fill a gap counts for a lot. I do like how the lower legs extend for beast mode, that’s a welcome flare which could have easily been skipped. Dio is immensely charming as a fiddle toy, pleasing both the "serious collector" and the "awwwwwwww" bits of my brain. Elegantly designed and adorable. And given that the turret both rotates and tilts, it can blow shit up too.
Bringing Mega-Dio into the conversation makes for some interesting contrasts. If regular Dio is a baby, Mega-Dio is the mature animal, reflecting the growth in complexity beast box has seen. The pair seem to be in different scales, and ultimately having different design philosophies. Its a bit like comparing a Gundam with its smaller "super deformed" version, except the cute one came first. Mega-Dio is much more about the transformation, which has grown on me, but perhaps paradoxically, omits knee joints for it's otherwise adequate articulation. This means that MD is bit less nimble than what it's updating, but it is a worthy tribute. It kinda depends on where you stand on the matter of complexity versus brevity, with the pair on opposite sides of the spectrum. Of course, this is very much a "why not both?" situation; you can peg baby-Dio in box mode atop Mega-Dio. I mean, its daft, but its a thing you can do.
Maybe its because this version of Dio is a revised version, thus benefiting from experience and such, but I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I like this. I’d ordered Dio very much as complement for a Mega-Dio, and because its something you kinda well, do, if you’re collecting BeastBox. While I was initially disappointed by the lack of the storage case and such, Dio rapidly won me over. He’s great. Not a complex toy by any means, but very good at what its choosing to do. Possibly iconic, in the unironic sense of the word. And definitely something that exists.
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