Review: 44024 Tunneler Beast vs Surge

[VBBN]

Set name: Tunneler Beast vs Surge

Set number: 44024

Piece Count: 59

Year Released: 2014

Price: 9.99

Hello everyone and welcome to my review of Tunneler Beast. Firstly as always I want to thank Lego and the Eurobricks staff who made it possible for me to bring these reviews to you guys.

Tunneler Beast is the smallest beast in the summer wave. In the winter wave, Jaw beast ended up being my favorite of the beasts, and he was in a comparable size class. Does the Tunneler beast follow in his footsteps, and become one of the best beasts of the year? Read on to find out!

Bag Front

The front of the bag is similar to what we saw in the first wave. A nice panel of artwork is placed at the top, with the minifigure included at the bottom. The sets I recieved were also signed by the set designers. In this case it looks like there were 3 designers for Tunneler beast.

Bag Back

In addition to the usual novel of text to read, some of the set functions are shown. These include the moving claws, mouth, and the projectile function of the gun.

Contents

Contents

One bag of parts (with a smaller bag of parts within that) and the instructions.

Instructions

For redundancy sake, I have only taken photos of some of the interesting pages in the reviews of the boxed sets. It is worth mentioning that the comics are back in the instructions again, similar to wave 1.

Interesting Parts

Minifig components

Here we have the minifig arms and legs recolored in blue, as well as surges new helmet. Obviously the blue lego clip is not new, nor a new color. It is interesting, though, that we have gotten this in blue, whereas the first wave all of the clips were gray, as opposed to the color of their respective hero.

Head

The three beast heads this wave all use the reverse side of the jaw as the upper half. I do quite like the detailing on this, and it's nice to have a beast head in red.

Cocoon Petal

Unlike the other sets, Tunneler Beast only comes with one petal, and it's actually built into the final model. A cool and unique design touch, we will have a look at that soon.

Minifigure Build

Surge's build is no different than anything we've seen in the past. The blue is a nice color, after seeing the same minifigures from wave 1 so many times, Bulk and Surge were welcome changes.

Front

With that said, Surge has one of the weakest helmets of the wave. It's extremely smooth and I'm not at all a fan of that expression. He does feature a datapad, as well as the new gun that was seen earlier in the year in Star wars. It fires a 1x1 stud quite well.

Minifigure Back

Surge's back is the same as the rest of the miniheroes, though you can see the blue clip I was talking about previously.

Build

Torso

Tunneler beast begins with a smaller torso construction with a lot of balljoints for further connections.

Legs added

One thing I was surprised at that I didn't realize until I had the set in hand, was that he only has one armor shell. his legs are completely unarmored, but overall I don't think they look bad. The dark gray does irk me, but at this point I think we will have to get used to these questionable choices in bone color.

Arm

Like the legs, the arms have no armor on them. Something that I do like about all of the summer beasts, they all have claws on their hands! With that said, the thumb here is rather awkward.

Arms added

You can also see the small construct that will allow the petal and armor shell to be attached.

Head

Since the head uses the smaller halve as the top, the end result is a longer lower jaw. I really like the eyes on this beast, they seem almost lifeless, which leads me to believe the creature relies more on senses like smell and touch rather than it's eyesight. (It wouldn't really need eyesight if it was always buried deep in tunnels...oh let me have my moment here )

Finished Set

Front

The beast from a front view. The portion of his eyes that you can see have a menacing look from this angle.

Side

You can see that the back legs sit up much higher than the front due to the construction of his torso.

Back

The cocoon petal adds a burst of color and life to the creature.

Pose 1

I absolutely love the look of this guy. He can pull off some menacing poses, as well as some like this which can look either diabolical, or hilariously cute.

Pose 2

This may seem strange, but I'm really glad he got claws. Lego could have just as easily given him six legs instead, but the claws here add a lot of personality, something I feel works with all of the summer beasts. Much better than the typical 3.0 paw piece that we saw commonly in the first wave.

Pose 3

He can still crawl on 6 legs if you prefer.

Overall, the Tunneler Beast is one of my favorite sets of this wave, and a top runner for the whole year. His design is clever and looks good, that's well balanced and poseable. His color scheme is a nice change of pace from what we've seen (namely an influx of Azur) In terms of parts, he does feature some nice bits, such as a bunch of red sockets and some black kaiju fins, however he only has one cocoon petal and one armor shell, so people who find those parts extremely useful or necessary may not be as pleased with the selection in this set. It's also a relatively cheap way to get Surge if you want to skip the much larger Combat Machine.

[SmoothJazz]

Have these been released, or did you get them early? Anyway, thanks for the review. A while ago I wasn't too interested in this set, but lately it has grown on me. Certainly one of the best looking summer sets of the wave.

[Brickus]

Thanks for the review, I actually overlooked this set but your review changed my mind.

[Sir Brickalot]

This looks great! Like you said, a welcome change from Azure. Great review!

[TheOneVeyronian]

I agree. Well, it might not be "set of the year" for me (but I reserve judgement until I have all the sets in my hand of course), but the model is well thought out and looks very filled out, which is ironic since it only has one shell piece and a bit of cocoon. I might see how it looks with longer and/or all black limbs. It might not be matched to the other beasts colour schemes by use of azure, but it does share general trans-green and lime colours with Crystal and Queen Beast, which helps connect the Tunneler Beast to the other underground beasts. Overall, I really do like all these new beast sets, and once again, thanks for the review

[Shakar]

He's even better than I thought- and my opinion on him was already high to begin with. Glad the coccoon is lime like on Nuremberg, unlike the aqua green of the NY set.

Like Crystal Beast, another winner. Good review as usual! Onto the Queen..

[SmoothJazz]

Could the three signatures imply that one person designed the cocoon, one designed the figure, and one designed the beast?

[toatyger]

Those cocoon petals make excellent insect carapices,don't they?

[Cirkit]

That beastie is simple in build, but I like 'im a great deal. Red's a nice change, and I really enjoy the detailing on the beast's upper head piece.

That cocoon is bright and gives the beast's body a very organic feel. I do feel as if the thumbs look a little.. off. But it's cool.

I agree with the fact that Surge's helmet looks too.. smooth. It has the shape to give off the impression that 'yes, this is Surge, come buy his toy', but it doesn't look totally right to me. Perhaps if the top somehow had a point at the rear, like Surge's helmet has in all his incarnations.. I'd like it better.

And he gets a pew-pew gun. Why does everyone get the cool pew pew guns? I want a pew-pew gun D;

Not sure why they opted for a red head for Surge. It's an inconsistency and to me it stands out.

If I get a set with Bulk, I'll swap his and Surge's minifig-heads. Lime will look so much better.

Simple set, again. I still want to pick up Jaw Beast before I do any others.. but I probably would pick this guy up after. :)

[Csacsa234]

I agree with you VBBN, it's the best beast of the year. The shape of the body is refreshing and the red color gives it a new flavour. I really like the cocoon pieece on it's body. Thanks for the reviews, I'm totally gonna buy this if it will be available here in august.

[Aanchir]

Tunneler Beast is maybe my absolute favorites of the beast sets. With 59 pieces and 20 points of articulation for only $10, the set stands head-and-shoulders above even some BIONICLE canister sets like the Piraka and Vahki (not literally, though, since it has a brilliantly unique insect-like build rather than a humanoid build).

I actually love Surge's new helmet, and your wonderful photographs really help me to appreciate it even more. Even without the spiky back, its design really echoes Surge's helmet design with those wide, angular eyeholes and powerful jaw. Plus, that grin! It really seems well-suited to Surge's character, Surge being basically Hero Factory's answer to Lewa — youthful, reckless, and spontaneous.

Great review overall! I was not sure quite whether I'd be getting this or Surge & Rocka Combat Machine, but I'm now rather confident that I'll be getting both. Having an extra Surge won't kill me!

[beartrapper]

That cocoon piece is going to make for a great Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors moc.

[TheLazyChicken]

Nice review! This set looks good and I might decide to get it!

[Chimaninja454]

I agree with you VBBN, it's the best beast of the year. The shape of the body is refreshing and the red color gives it a new flavour. I really like the cocoon pieece on it's body. Thanks for the reviews, I'm totally gonna buy this if it will be available here in august.

I agree with you VBBN, it's the best beast of the year. The shape of the body is refreshing and the red color gives it a new flavour. I really like the cocoon pieece on it's body. Thanks for the reviews, I'm totally gonna buy this if it will be available here in august.

I agree with you VBBN, it's the best beast of the year. The shape of the body is refreshing and the red color gives it a new flavour. I really like the cocoon pieece on it's body. Thanks for the reviews, I'm totally gonna buy this if it will be available here in august.

@VBBN and Csacsa234, I agree with two of you, that it is definitely the best Beast LEGO has ever made! :D