DSC_2100
So, after about a year of delays, Hasbro has finally shipped out the Pulse Victory Saber sets.
If you collect Transformers, or are aware of the fandom, you'll probably have heard that this set is not just highly anticipated, but also, that the finished product bears the tried and true Hasbro traditions of questionable design choices and QC concerns.
Having opened mine, I can definitely confirm both.
Victory Saber isn't one of those characters that is well known if you have no interest outside the American based universe, seeing how we skipped several Japanese G1 seasons here in North America.
Victory Saber is incredibly popular overseas as his look is not only a deviation from the typical Convoy/Prime aesthetic, but he literally has Gundam DNA in him - I'm not super familiar if it was the entire character, but you can at least see it very clearly in Star Saber himself.
The character/toy introduced some interesting concepts to the Transformers universe, though it's probably best known for the Brainmaster concept, which itself is a spin off of the Headmaster concept - tiny figure becomes part of a larger figure (in this case not so much the head but rather the consciousness of the larger robot head) which then plugs into body to form a larger robot, which was sort of used as recently as the Titnas Returns line.
The last time Victory Saber, as a Takara/Hasbro release, was back in the 2000s with the Robotmaster version, which were small, Deluxe sized figures and were of course not retailed here. There were hopes that there would be a Masterpiece version, as a Star Saber was released quite a few years back now, but they never followed it up with a Victory Leo to complete the set.
The Pulse set, including all of the bonuses for meeting sales targets, consists of four figures and various accessories. There is the Leader sized Star Saber, Voyager sized Victory Leo, and the two... I have no idea what they're called these days, but back in the day they were called Micromasters, Holi and Fire.
To keep things relatively short and concise, you're not going to see any mind shattering feats of articulation. These figures are, at the end of the day, mainline level releases, which basically means they'll do what typical figures of their size class can, though I will admit it was nice to see that waists were present on most of the larger figures, minus Victory Leo.
QC wise, there's the typical Hasbro material, joint, and paint issues. But that's not where things end - that would have made me a happy camper.
No, we have questionable packaging for a $180 USD set - better materials would have been nice, but at the very least you figure they could given us a clamshell rather than those plastic ties, which not only make repacking the figure impossible, but can, and have, caused paint damage.
Secondly, there's that sticker you have to apply. I get that you can't really paint that particular type of plastic, but why am I having to do it at all? Could it be because it's very labour intensive, and that the sticker is so flimsy you're likely to destroy it by just taking it off the backing?
Thirdly, there's a hair or a bristle under the chrome paint applications, which as you can imagine is very visually distracting. Some users have actually taken to covering it up with mirrored tape... which begs the question of either why they didn't use the tape in the first place, or how did they screw it up.
Finally, and here's my favourite - Hasbro actually forgot to cut a hole into the body of Saber. This hole prohibits the combination of the nose cone with the jet mode, which would have made transformation impossible if I hadn't spent an hour of my life fixing it.
The worst part is... I got off lucky. Some customers have reported even more aggravating things, like missing parts.
So overall, somehow Hasbro managed to make me work more and be more annoyed with a product that is priced at a higher than normal price point.
DSC_2100
So, after about a year of delays, Hasbro has finally shipped out the Pulse Victory Saber sets.
If you collect Transformers, or are aware of the fandom, you'll probably have heard that this set is not just highly anticipated, but also, that the finished product bears the tried and true Hasbro traditions of questionable design choices and QC concerns.
Having opened mine, I can definitely confirm both.
Victory Saber isn't one of those characters that is well known if you have no interest outside the American based universe, seeing how we skipped several Japanese G1 seasons here in North America.
Victory Saber is incredibly popular overseas as his look is not only a deviation from the typical Convoy/Prime aesthetic, but he literally has Gundam DNA in him - I'm not super familiar if it was the entire character, but you can at least see it very clearly in Star Saber himself.
The character/toy introduced some interesting concepts to the Transformers universe, though it's probably best known for the Brainmaster concept, which itself is a spin off of the Headmaster concept - tiny figure becomes part of a larger figure (in this case not so much the head but rather the consciousness of the larger robot head) which then plugs into body to form a larger robot, which was sort of used as recently as the Titnas Returns line.
The last time Victory Saber, as a Takara/Hasbro release, was back in the 2000s with the Robotmaster version, which were small, Deluxe sized figures and were of course not retailed here. There were hopes that there would be a Masterpiece version, as a Star Saber was released quite a few years back now, but they never followed it up with a Victory Leo to complete the set.
The Pulse set, including all of the bonuses for meeting sales targets, consists of four figures and various accessories. There is the Leader sized Star Saber, Voyager sized Victory Leo, and the two... I have no idea what they're called these days, but back in the day they were called Micromasters, Holi and Fire.
To keep things relatively short and concise, you're not going to see any mind shattering feats of articulation. These figures are, at the end of the day, mainline level releases, which basically means they'll do what typical figures of their size class can, though I will admit it was nice to see that waists were present on most of the larger figures, minus Victory Leo.
QC wise, there's the typical Hasbro material, joint, and paint issues. But that's not where things end - that would have made me a happy camper.
No, we have questionable packaging for a $180 USD set - better materials would have been nice, but at the very least you figure they could given us a clamshell rather than those plastic ties, which not only make repacking the figure impossible, but can, and have, caused paint damage.
Secondly, there's that sticker you have to apply. I get that you can't really paint that particular type of plastic, but why am I having to do it at all? Could it be because it's very labour intensive, and that the sticker is so flimsy you're likely to destroy it by just taking it off the backing?
Thirdly, there's a hair or a bristle under the chrome paint applications, which as you can imagine is very visually distracting. Some users have actually taken to covering it up with mirrored tape... which begs the question of either why they didn't use the tape in the first place, or how did they screw it up.
Finally, and here's my favourite - Hasbro actually forgot to cut a hole into the body of Saber. This hole prohibits the combination of the nose cone with the jet mode, which would have made transformation impossible if I hadn't spent an hour of my life fixing it.
The worst part is... I got off lucky. Some customers have reported even more aggravating things, like missing parts.
So overall, somehow Hasbro managed to make me work more and be more annoyed with a product that is priced at a higher than normal price point.