Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base: Land Mobile Battleship: Playability Overload

Truth be told, often, a toy’s playability is 90% imagination and 10% tangible elements. Take for example a die-cast car. 10% is the toy car while the vroom, vroom, the racing between cars, and “driving around”, are pretty much imagination’s work. If anything, many toys, including those specifically designed for small children, are display pieces. Not in the case of the Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base: Land Mobile Battleship, though. The playability is through the roof.

The Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base: Land Mobile Battleship [JP] is the second robot-based project also dubbed Grand Dion. It features two flight decks that resemble those of an aircraft carrier, a rugged bridge flanked by radars, decks with handrails, and 10 massive tank threads for mobility – just to name a few features. Here’s a quick back story of this behemoth:

“Among the machines owned by the Diaclone Corps, the land mobile battleship has the highest class of combat capability as a single machine and was built as a central command flagship of the interception force responsible for the defense of multiple defense networks/surface areas. It is a super-dreadnought combat machine.”

It is armed to the teeth with triple guns, secondary guns, and missile pods. Levers operate the storage lifts to reveal the carrier-based aircraft while the bridge section is equipped with the main bridge that, wait for it, can be removed and serve as an independent shuttle vessel.

It is high in playability and highly explorable too, thanks to a powered lift that can transport the included figures to the upper levels of the Grand Dion, various points of weapons deployment, and multiple hangars that open to reveal hidden vehicles, including a land transport that can transform into an aircraft, a self-propelled multiple missile launcher, two aircraft, and a pair of tunneling vehicles.

That’s not it. This being the toy line that is the precursor of Transformers, the enormous 52 cm (20.47 inches) long Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base is transformable too. It can transform to form the lower torso and legs of a giant robot, towering at 45 cm (17.72 inches) tall.

The Takara Tomy Diaclone DA-95 Robot Base: Land Mobile Battleship is available now for 63,800 yen [JP] (about US$476). It is also available in major online toy retailers like the Big Bad Toy Store for about US$479.99. You may learn about all the features in the video below.