I'm come to grips that if there's a viable 3rd party option that's out there, I'm not going to sit here and hope that TT makes a character and miss out on getting a representation of him. If you think Downbeat looks good, there's no reason to not get him. It would be a shame if you missed out on getting what you feel is a good looking representation of a character because you were hoping TT made one.
I did that with the Fanstoys Dinobots. They look amazing and function very well. I'm not gonna sit here with empty holes on my shelf waiting for an MP Swoop.

 

Considering the masterpiece line is Takaras baby, that would be ginrai not prime, western audiences could use it as prime but it would technically be a different character

 

So is the mp Megatron an official P38?

 

I haven't seen anything starting he is, more that it's mentioned.

 

Yes actually, Hasbro IS making a brand new Masterpiece Optimus Prime, and it will be coming out this year, even!

We expect it to look close to this:

 

Megatron is not licensed, if that's what you're asking.

 

So I have been thinking about buying Megatron on Amazon Japan, but when I go to checkout it says that the item is not eligible for currency conversion? What does this mean? I can't pay with USD?

 

These MPs have become way too expensive IMO - I understand the bigger ones are going to cost more but what happened to the reasonable pricing of Ultra Magnus and Soundwave. Now we have super expensive Shockwave, Megatron, and even the Fuso bros.

 

They're only super expensive if you don't pre-order them. Sure, they typically cost more than your average TF's, but there are deals to be had if you do your diligence and/or pre-order. Late last year, some Company (I forgot their name) had Delta Magnus on sale for like $120 shipped and several other car bots for far less than the normal price. I kind of regret passing on those deals.

 

Agree to an extent - however, the prices - even with the cheapest vendors- are still higher than they have been in the past

 

A lot of that is increases in the number of parts that are being used, but also just a natural increase. The line is like 10 years old now, the price tags are going to increase in time.

 

Only super-expensive if not pre-ordered? Bullshit! Descriptive bullshit! I'mm just gonna point out that the pre-order price on Megatron is $230. Sure, it's Megatron, but to be $20 more than Ultra Magnus? That doesn't make sense, seeing as Megatron is physically smaller than Ultra Magnus, therefore requiring less material to produce. Which one is more intricate, however, remains to be seen. Anyways, I came in here to ask a question, one that seems to have slipped everyone else's minds...where is Sunstreaker? Takara has the Lamborghini license, unless it expired. But assuming they still have the license, what could be the hold up? Surely Sunstreaker would be an easy character to knock out unless the design is problematic.

 

Cheetor and Grapple are on their way from HLJ. Can't wait!

 

It is speculated that since Sunstreaker is a modified version of the Lamborghini Countach it's licensing could be problematic.

 

Takara should create a sort of Masterpiece Stylized line to put characters that can't get licenses in. Like a hyper stylized reimagined super tuned Countach so we can still get Sunstreaker in MP quality. Maybe even make it mostly a Cybertron form. Use War Within as a guide.

Who all are they having a difficult time with? Sunstreaker? Jazz? Trailbreaker? Skids?

 

Cybertronian alternate forms would be cool, but I suspect some kind of black magic would be required to make the transformation work in an actual toy. For a stylized line...I'm not too convinced. If the figure doesn't resemble as much as possible the original character it kinda defeat the point of being a masterpiece.

 

I think he was saying if you preorder them from a Jp site. I paid $151 for mine...before shipping at least. Shipping will probably still be $30 or so.

That said, I think I paid around $150 for Magnus shipped.

 

Well I'm thinking the robots would still look as much like the cartoon as possible. It's the other form that would look wild. But yeah I don't know if even they have enough magic to pull that off.

 

anyone know what Hasui is up to? Since he left, the G1 line has lost some of it's magic IMO. I've been finding myself more interesting in the BW and even MP Movie offerings as of late given the recent G1 characters they have chosen

 

Well, I had ideas what they could still improve, but I have no idea how they could do that with current technology without impairing the alt mode.