PROS
+ Nice use of metallic paints. The colours look nicer IRL than in photos.
+ Interesting use of the tail spikes as a club for the robot mode. This is the first stegosaurus Transformer where the beast mode's natural weapon becomes the robot weapon.
+ The faux dino head inside the right leg was an interesting surprise that helps to make the legs look more symmetrical.

CONS
- The arm/hand design is just monumentally and inexcusably bad. They could've easily designed the hands to have a 180 degree range of pivot, allowing it to fully extend in robot mode and conceal itself in beast mode.
- The panel underneath the head doesn't lock into place in robot mode.
- This toy has too much green and needs more colours to break it up. The urine-coloured spines don't help much either. Snarl isn't as bland as his casemate, Hot Shot, but he still really needs more variety in his colour palette. Colourwise, Snarl looks like the love-child of Waspinator and G2 Sizzle!
- Having one of the spine panels transform into the axe is a nice idea, but the peg on mine is too large to connect onto the hole on the back.
- The back spine panels can interfere with the tail kibble. This can be remedied by simply not opening the spine panels up all the way, but it's still a notable design flaw.

Overall
Massive disappointment. Sabreback is a far superior stegosaurus TF despite being 15 years older than AoE Snarl! Snarl is really just a sub-par toy by current day standards, and considering that this toy isn't even based on one of the "impossible to translate" AoE screen models, I cannot see how this toy ended up being as bad as it has. Then again, Slog and Slash had flaws too despite not being based on screen models. IMO Snarl exemplifies the AoE Dinobots in general. They're really all just ordinary toys whose engineering/design level are easily just as bad (arguably worse) than the Beast Machines Maximals.

Not recommended unless you just want to complete all the AoE Dinobots; in which case, reviews aren't going to matter to you because you're going to buy this toy regardless (just as I did ). If so, do yourself a favour and don't pay full price.


Photos

Robot mode

Dinobot mode with axe attached.

Dinobot mode without axe attached.