Battle Drill

The Battle Drill is a Laser Beast vehicle from the Generation 1 continuity family.

Dang, Pom Pom, you see that golmol? That's a nice golmol.

The most physically durable of the Battlecruisers, the Battle Drill (バトルドリル Battle Doriru) is a lethal mix of super-speed, nigh-impossible maneuverability, and sheer raw power. Optimized for underground operations, its antigravity drive enables it to chew through solid earth in any direction at speeds of 100 kilometers an hour, disintegrating even the hardest rock in its path. The drill is naturally a powerful offensive weapon, using gravity waves to send whatever it hits smashing to the ground. Plus its platinum-gold finish gives it incredible durabilty.

While the Drill is often under the command of Strike Force Commander Skullgrotes, it has also been used as the personal transport of the Laser Beasts' Great Emperor Tigerburn when he chooses to ride into combat.

Fiction

Legends comic

{{#if: Kup piece.gif |

| }}

{{ #if: You left a piece out! |You left a piece out!

|}}

This article is a stub and is missing information. You can help MediaWiki by expanding it. {{ #if: |{{ #if: | |
}} talk page.|}}

{{#if: {{#if: |What's needed: |}}|{{#if: |What's needed: |}}|}}

Toys

Beastformers

Beast Planet's Greatest Confrontation Set (Box set, 1988)

Released in the "Laser Beasts" portion of the post-Transformers-branded Beastformers toyline, the Battle Drill is a drill-nosed mole-themed battle sled with a pull-back motor, allowing it to rocket forward on smooth surfaces. The "handlebars" actually act as a securing clip around the waists of Beastformer and Laser Beast figures, though many figures end up kind of dangling there, feet off the platform.

A gold-chrome version of the Battle Drill was packed in the "Beast Planet's Greatest Confrontation Set" (ビースト星最大の対決セット Bīsuto-sei Saidai no Taiketsu Setto), a sizable box set that also included the Laser Beasts Skullgrotes, Kingbuster and Salmomancer, Beastformers Platinum Tiger, Yellow Giraffe and Golder, and the Tiger Hunter vehicle.

While the Beastformer-side items in this box were all re-releases of toys previously available individually (although Golder and Giraffe only in the previous Transformers-branded part of the line), the Laser-Beast-side toys were mostly exclusive to this set (see below). And with it being such a late release in a flagging toyline, it is easily one of the most (if not the most) expensive Beastformers items to obtain on the secondary market.

Battle Drill (Contest prize Battlecruiser, 1988)

Three different color variants of the Battle Drill were available throughout the short run of Laser Beasts.

The first was available only as a mail-away lottery prize: entry required sending in five questionnaires (presumably with at least one filled out) found packaged with every Laser Beast toy. This version of the Drill is mainly light yellow with a red drill, and (seemingly) came with Skullgrotes. It appears that later on, the Battle Drill that Skullgrotes came with was changed to the next version of the toy listed below.

The later two were available as top prizes in a pair of Beastformers "punch-box" giveaways in various stores. Basically, kids would punch through a paper front on a multi-compartment box, each containing a random Beastformers toy prize:

The first promo had 24 spaces, with a grand-prize exclusive-colors red-with-yellow-drill Battle Drill with Kingbuster in one of them, two spaces with the normal colorless-clear Crystal Killer Fish figure, and then 21 random standard Beastformers boxed toys, with a small baggie of assorted Beastformers weapons taped to the top of their boxes.
The second punch-box promo had a blue-with-light-blue-drill Battle Drill and Kingbuster as the grand prize, two exclusive Crystal Killer Fish with mottled-brownish stripes, and 21 baggies of random Beastformers weapons, kind of a downgrade from the first one's normal prizes.

Naturally, these Drill variants don't come cheap.

Notes

The machine's weaponry is detailed in the Hero Special 12: Laser Beasts mook. However, the Battlecruiser page has a persistent error where only about half the bullet points on the technical diagrams have lines leading to the specific parts of the vehicles.
This toy was planned to be released in the Hasbro Battle Beasts line in 1988, in an assortment of twelve motorized vehicle + Beast sets, but this assortment apparently never made it to even the test-packaging phase. It was also going to be released in three different color schemes... namely, the three color schemes used in the three different Beastformers contest-prize versions of the Drill.

It is uncertain which Beasts would have come with these three, as the Pre-Toy Fair Catalog shows Skullgrotes riding the yellow "Savanna" in inset, but the blue "Buzzsaw" in the group shot, so it's very possible stuff got mixed up. The group shot does show Jeerermonkey on the yellow Drill, Flying Dragon on the red, and Hornhead on the blue.

Search