DSC_5195
I'd been eying the new Masterpiece seekers for a while now, but they were always so expensive. It was only a matter of time before they reused the mould for Thundercracker and Skywarp, but even then, the prices for these were a bit too rich for my blood.
Then Christmas came along, and as a Festivus miracle, I came across one, brand new and sealed, at a Pawn Shop of all places, where I walked away with it for about $160 CAD.
Having played with it, I can understand why collectors are generally not too thrilled with this figure.
The figure is effectively the same as Starscream, but with fewer extra parts. Of course, the MSRP is lower too.Th
Things start off well - Jet mode. To be fair though, even the 1.0 Seeker (which was the last time I handled a MP Seeker) had a pretty good Jet mode, though strangely, looking back at it, the 1.0 actually had a cleaner undercarriage.
Whatever the case, the thing looks like a Jet, and is an officially licensed Boeing F15. I guess in vehicle mode, the two blasters are fuel pods or something... officially. Whereas my 1.0 came with missiles, there does not appear to be any actual weaponry dedicated for this vehicle mode. There are a set of thruster effects, and the cockpit and nose cone open up.
I have no idea what that thing inside the nosecose is, but I do know it is present on the 1.0 as well.
There's as a flight stand, which is fairly basic but it does get the job done and appears to be quite stable - I didn't actually use it.
What's funny is that this relatively simple stand came with the Seekers and Dinobot, but the most expensive MP to date (Convoy 3.0) couldn't spare a few bucks to include it, instead including an adapter for use with it instead, presuming we're all rich enough to actually afford multiple MPs. So yeah, out of the box Convoy 3.0 cannot do any iconic jumping/leaping poses.
Transformation is... long. Very, very long and involved, and for the first time I was actually stuck, as there are there so many panels and folding parts on this thing it's not funny.
There's a Gerwalk mode now that I honestly cannot remember ever being used in an episode.
The resulting robot is visually quite nice, definitely very G1 cartoon. Like with Megatrom, its a very clean looking robot mode with a great silhouette. QC is a bit looser than I'd like on the finish side of things, but overall the thing looks just fine.
The issue is that despite all that effort, there's no waist joint, which is kind of an odd thing for a Masterpiece to be missing. I'm also unsure if this is a widespread thing, but on my figure the knee joints are very weak, which makes posing the figure that much more challenging.
DSC_5195
I'd been eying the new Masterpiece seekers for a while now, but they were always so expensive. It was only a matter of time before they reused the mould for Thundercracker and Skywarp, but even then, the prices for these were a bit too rich for my blood.
Then Christmas came along, and as a Festivus miracle, I came across one, brand new and sealed, at a Pawn Shop of all places, where I walked away with it for about $160 CAD.
Having played with it, I can understand why collectors are generally not too thrilled with this figure.
The figure is effectively the same as Starscream, but with fewer extra parts. Of course, the MSRP is lower too.Th
Things start off well - Jet mode. To be fair though, even the 1.0 Seeker (which was the last time I handled a MP Seeker) had a pretty good Jet mode, though strangely, looking back at it, the 1.0 actually had a cleaner undercarriage.
Whatever the case, the thing looks like a Jet, and is an officially licensed Boeing F15. I guess in vehicle mode, the two blasters are fuel pods or something... officially. Whereas my 1.0 came with missiles, there does not appear to be any actual weaponry dedicated for this vehicle mode. There are a set of thruster effects, and the cockpit and nose cone open up.
I have no idea what that thing inside the nosecose is, but I do know it is present on the 1.0 as well.
There's as a flight stand, which is fairly basic but it does get the job done and appears to be quite stable - I didn't actually use it.
What's funny is that this relatively simple stand came with the Seekers and Dinobot, but the most expensive MP to date (Convoy 3.0) couldn't spare a few bucks to include it, instead including an adapter for use with it instead, presuming we're all rich enough to actually afford multiple MPs. So yeah, out of the box Convoy 3.0 cannot do any iconic jumping/leaping poses.
Transformation is... long. Very, very long and involved, and for the first time I was actually stuck, as there are there so many panels and folding parts on this thing it's not funny.
There's a Gerwalk mode now that I honestly cannot remember ever being used in an episode.
The resulting robot is visually quite nice, definitely very G1 cartoon. Like with Megatrom, its a very clean looking robot mode with a great silhouette. QC is a bit looser than I'd like on the finish side of things, but overall the thing looks just fine.
The issue is that despite all that effort, there's no waist joint, which is kind of an odd thing for a Masterpiece to be missing. I'm also unsure if this is a widespread thing, but on my figure the knee joints are very weak, which makes posing the figure that much more challenging.