Man with these guys I certainly feel like I’ve been swindled.
When I was a young fella and getting out of Transformers, I stumbled across the Decepticon Race Patrol. From that moment on, I fell in love with Blackjack, Detour, Roadhugger and Hyperdrive. To a lesser extent Micromasters as well. I ended up getting Overload and thought he was pretty neat. Their size and the fact that they had good base style interaction was pretty awesome. I didn’t really get anymore than them, but I definitely appreciated their efforts.
When War for Cybertron: Siege line announced Micromasters, I was all for them. I saw them at the Tokyo Comic Con and they were tiny, but looked all right. Also they had no price listed.
Now I have Roadhandler and Swindler in hand. I remember these guys mostly from the Marvel comic that led up to the Underbase saga. Or after. I can't remember exactly. Anyway Micromasters are cool!
(Picture stolen from someone's site.)
So with that warm fuzzy feeling of having some new Micromasters I bought them and boy do I feel swindled!
For one main reason, the just don't feel like you get what you payed for.
The vehicle modes are nice enough. Roadhandler is a beefy muscle car type thing and Swindler is a Delorean, or so I've heard. To be honest, the only Delorean I know is from Back to the Future, so if it doesn't have time travelly junk on the back, I dunno.
They look nice and are small.lack paint, but their design doesn't require a whole lot. They feel cheap and light with kind of knockoff attached wheels. Roadhandler doesn’t seem to clip together too well.
Transformation is easy. Flip the back windows over. Flip the bonnet. Wiggle the arms out. Well it should be easy enough, And Roadhandler certainly is. Swindler however .... Damn.
His hood is seriously hooked into the arms making a real pain in the arse to unlatch it all.
Robot mode looks nice enough and they have some decent joints. The hinges of the G1 toys have been replaced with ball joints and they've been given a waist. So... They have one extra joint from a toy of 30 years ago.
Sculpting is pretty good and they are recognisable as the bots you think they are. However the paint work is a tad a sloppy. There is some surprising sculpting on the inside of their legs though, a nice touch!
Swindler's arms are always hindered by the bonnet, but Roadhandler is pretty free.
Roadhandler's heels are a bit ineffective bit Swindler is fairly sturdy.
They also have an ugly screw hole in their chests, but this is G1 accurate and used for the horrid third mode.....
….
….
….
Gun mode.
I dislike this mode immensely. It doesn't look like a gun at all from any angle. I'd rather it had been left off completely to be honest.
You can split them apart and have two 'guns' but it just looks like a half transformed Transformer. No matter how I’ve arranged them, they just don’t manage to pull of a convincing gun mode. At least the figures haven’t been compromised for it, so that’s a plus.
So while not inherently bad toys, the biggest killer by far is the price. TakaraTomy has their RRP listed as 2000 yen. I don't usually pay RRP as most places have their own discounts and stuff. I got these guys for 1200 yen and I don't think they're worth it.
While the toys themselves aren’t exactly bad as such…. they just don’t feel worth what you pay. For me that is a real negative, as normally I don’t judge a toy on what I payed for it, but the flimsy cheap feeling plastic. Sloppy paint. Drab colours (Swindler looks particularly boring) and stuck bonnets just kind of show they are a bit on the crap side, which is only exacerbated by their high price.
Really these guys should be about 1000yen/10bucks at the most.
I'll be thinking twice before getting any more
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