/:>
/:<

Thankya kindly for the reply, KayODave

 

Sorry it's sideways. But I hope it's a good enough pic. It was a simple mod that I'm very happy with. I may point off the end a bit but for now it's good.

 

Like the other fellow said, they need to curl to reveal the ports, but if you did trim the pegs on the swords, you could straighten the hands a bit more.

 

He means the wave 1 Bee.

 

Finally got Hound.

 

Oh I know, I agree with him there. I think that one looks real awful.

It was more just a side note to his post.

 

Nice

 

I finally open my Nitro and boy he's difficult to transform.

 

Got my Nitro and Scorn in from BBTS. Had to go to work on Nitro right away. Not finished but I had to stop because my eyes were getting tired



I've got a junker shockwave on the way, he'll be donating his head to make him a little more movie accurate

 

Fantastic Sqweeks custom

艾雷

 

Wow, that's amazing. Looks almost like a 3A product

 

I know Hascon is only more than a month away. But to me, finding out Blackout's size has become an obsession.

 

That is effing incredible.

 

"Are you Samuel James Witwicky..."

I tried to make a stop motion of Optimus Prime's first live action transformation with MPM-04.

 

That's giving me second thoughts.

 

In a good way? Are you on the fence about the MPM-04? Because I can attempt to push you off the metaphorical fence...
 

 

Some thoughts on Takara Calibur Optimus Prime and the AOE Leader OP base mold in general; I finally unpacked Calibur Prime today and I've been fiddling it a lot now.  

Yes, the mold itself is still not the best effort Hasbro/Takara has made and even with the current movie design they could have done better, at least if given just a bit bigger budget in the first place. Then again, perhaps they would have done some bits of it differently if they had the final design to work with, the original figure is after all based on earlier concepts. But yeah, this Calibur version is pretty much the "ultimate" version of this mold. What I found extremely funny is that even if you ignore the shield and therefore partsforming element of it entirely and let the shield part just hang on his back, it's still less kibly than the original. This is a good proof that with a bit more time and budget they could have made the backpack of the original much more compact if they'd wanted. It still has not a whole lot going on, at least when compared to more complex movie figures, so having too much moving and transforming parts is not an excuse either; given how clever the Evasion Prime's transformation still is, it's kinda shame that the leader OP of the same line didn't have as much effort put into. The proportions are a bit off anyway with oversized shoulder guards, big, chunky legs etc. but the leg transformation is kinda neat and the remolds Takara did on the arms and the chest improve the figure quite a lot. The head sculpt is beautiful and Takara paintwork makes it and the whole body shine (literally too).

It's still far from being perfect, but I hope that the new voyager and the improvements they made with this recent leader version carry on to the next Knight Optimus leader class figure. The design has a lot of great, poseable and powerful looking robot mode potential and if they're not aiming for 1:1 accuracy, it's not that impossible to it a good transformer as well...   It's, in my opinion, OK to have a bit more bulk and inaccuracy here and there, if you make a clever use of it. Takara showed that even with the current mold it's possible to vastly improve the back of the figure and the new voyager does a lot of things right (though I still can't understand why they didn't give him wrist articulation and a bit longer sword, would have been awesome) so there it's very promising indeed that they've learned a lot between these two movie toylines and still have a lot of room for improvements. I just hope they'll have ambition and passion to actually execute all that potential; I might be on a minority here, but I like the current movie design of Prime, it's great they try something new, even though they have wasted the great plot potential of the whole knight theme, but that's another story anyway.

As a transformers figure it's pretty average at the best and definitely has some faults, but it's damn FUN in both modes. On some aspects, it kinda reminds me of Energon Prime: the figure has not received too much love over time, but you can't deny that despite it's clear faults it has A LOT of play value. And in this case, the figure also looks absolutely beautiful both as a robot and a truck. When it comes to truck modes of movie Prime figures, I dare say that this one takes the cake; the paint apps are top notch (yeah, they could have done a bit more with the rear section, but anyway) and rubber tyres are nice touch. The whole thing is beautiful to look at and a nice display piece in this mode too. Then again, the robot mode looks gorgeous when standing with his sword (or axe, if that's your preference) and ratcheted joints and everything are good here. As said, the limb proportions are a bit unbalanced and this chunky legs distract some more dynamic poses, but he manages to look pretty impressive for most of the time. It's up to personal preferences if his both mode is 2/5 or 4/5 to you really, for it has qualifications for both grades, so to speak.

Personally, I find the figure extremely fun to fiddle with and it's definitely an eye-catching display piece whether in truck or robot mode. The problems really come down to the challenges they had with the execution of the recent robot mode design and even though the Calibur OP manages to overshadow his faults much better than the original (or the recent) Hasbro version, it's still, in all of his glory, a bit lacking as a Leader Class Optimus Prime figure. Very fun, but lacking. On the process to something extremely awesome, but not quite there yet.

I really like it and appreciate the effort Takara made. Now, I just hope they carry all the good ideas of this and the current voyager to create another, vastly improved Leader.

 

MPM 04 is dumb.

It is too well balanced...

It looks too good with 3rd party weapons...

It is just so dumb how cool it is!