MP-14 is Red Alert, also Rising Prices, MP-13 incl. Laserbeak

For the G1 toys, yeah. And if Masterpiece was Alternator-level detail like opening doors, steering wheels, sponsor decals etc, yeah. But the Materpiece line, especially recently, isn't a hyper-realistic line, it's more of a toon-accuarate line. And as has been noted, the toon avoided most of the racing sponsorships. Even Gitanes became Citanes on toon Mirage.

So I think they could probably make a decent job just from toon deco. And if they chose to add more detail, well RTS Jazz for example is a perfectly good 'G1 inspired' deco. Ditto Wheeljack. If anything, the real life Lancia that Wheeljack is based on has too much added stuff; I don't think I'd want a MP Wheeljack covered in 'Lancia' 'Alitalia' 'Pirelli' 'Britax' 'Fiat' 'Champion' etc writing and logos.

I'd be happy with this happy medium you described in the first statement. However using the G1 toon as reference is a bad idea from the start, as many have said before the consistency of that cartoon is horrible.

Maybe I should be more concerned with a VW Bumble Bee than these three guys.

My Feedback l Masterpiece Cards & Coins l Classics G1 84 - 86 Checklist

The toon does get a lot of flak for inconsistency, and a lot of it is totally warranted (it was undeniably rife with scale, continuity, colouring and animation errors), but one thing it always had was a fixed animation model for each character. The G1 Marvel comic also largely used those same models (see The Ark Compendium book or the old TF Universe for collections of these character designs). What I'm getting at is that things like surface detail and deco markings did have a 'proper' reference for how they should look (even if, as noted, errors often corrupted those references).

As for Bumblebee, I wonder if the VW issue could be got round by using a more stylised alt mode (if you look at the toon BB car, it was sort of half way between an actual Beetle and the super-deformed G1 toy). Would a 3D interpretation of the toon car still cause legal problems with VW?

Really like this idea as it may get around the 'war-toy' issue with VW. As the design of the VW Beetle is over 50 years old the original design protection would have run out but they would probably have renewed it. This neatly sidesteps the problem.

The only thing that might cause problems there is the Beetle was still in production in some countries up until about 10 years ago. So while the design is 74 years old (started production in 1938), it is still fairly current as far as manufacturing (stopped production in 2003) and I assume the licsencing of it would be fairly current as well.

That being said, I think there could be some leeway by going with the hybrid design of cartoon and VW Bug as mentioned.

Yeah lemme know what that comes to after shipping from Japan.

But also let me say I think the price I see at most places is fine for a Voyager-ish sized figure from Japan with most likely pretty well done packaging.

Yeah I think it could work! Also let's not forget, not too long ago Takara released a deformed Beetle Transformer under the Disney label (it turned into Donald Duck, but surely it still counts? )

All true, good point (although the design goes back 80 years) I just hoped by super deforming the design it may be a way to have an MP Bumblebee (fingers crossed).

Yeah, another good point, completely forgotten about that!

If you use SAL or Air Packet it really cuts down on shipping costs and would more than likely be cheaper than buying it domestically.

^Click to go to my FB^

Exactly, and using Smokescreen as an example as I did in more detail in another MP thread, his G1 toy didn't have all the sponsor logos of the track car that inspired it. So in that case, I hope that's one less hurdle for Takara's pursuit of cartoon accuracy and Hasbro's tending to recalling toy details.