I ordered a set through AE... But it was a tough sell.

 

Fleecing seems like a pretty strong word here. When it comes to TTMall exclusives, there isn't much they can do to make it easier or cheaper for the few people outside of Japan who want the set to obtain one. They can't help the import price when a chunk of the money you pay is going to your chosen middle man.

 

HAHA That's cool. I'm patient, so Ill wait for my friendly neighborhood Chinese factory worker to fleece Takara-Tomy and put it on Ebay at a price for the thrifty minded buyer  

 

Thrifty minded buyer = line destroyer. If these 'people' actually invested in the series the figures would see more releases/accessories/extras/diorama's. All kinds of good stuff.

KO buyers are just parasites with no standards or gumption.

 

Hey now, there's an entire thread where you can call KO buyers parasites. The Knock off transformers thread
Let's keep this thread only about these particular four MP cassettes and nothing else.

 

Just like the "3rd Party hurts official sales" argument, you really have no evidence to support that theory.

 

The evidence is in the releases and what's been noted in the Official Masterpiece guidebook from a couple of years back. As the line has got more notoriety the content has increased. It'd be even better if people who claim to love the line supported the official product and don't buy a KO.

Very simple.

 

I own three KO MP figures. Sideswipe (who will be replaced with an authentic MP-12+), Red Alert (who was replaced with an authentic one), and Silverstreak, who I got because I had zero intention of getting the original and ended up boxing him up because he just didn't fit, not being a new character and being a KO surrounded by authentics.

I'll be getting this set because I love the MP series, I love cassette minions, and I love obscure characters.

Triple play!

 

I wouldn't normally go with a ko over the official but in this case I don't think I can pay what's being charged for these no matter how much I want them but would snap up a cheaper ko set

 

I just realised Nightstalker is indeed smaller than the other cassettes and it's not distortion. The pink case for Nightstalker is shorter too. It looks like Blaster's chest will take smaller cassettes than Soundwave.

 

I think the pictures are distorted. Otherwise, Wingthing is narrower than Enemy (see second pic), which makes no sense at all.

 

Well, people do say that black is slimming color.  

I think it's distortion too. Seems quite unlikely that TakaraTomy would design Blaster to hold smaller tapes than Soundwave. These are the same guys that made MP Magnus larger so that his cab could match MP-10's.

 

I mean.For all they are concerned as of now,they just need to be cartoon accurate.The autobot cassettes never went into soundwave or vice versa with the decepticon cassettes in blaster.Doesn't bother me at all that they're different sizes in cassette mode.

Now if the the "bot modes" are of a different scale from the decepticon cassettes then there will be a problem

Remember,mp magnus is from a diff mp era where the vehicle mode was meant to be realistic.It was from a diff time where diff things were of priority from the "now" era of mps

 

Thanks, I did miss that but is it a Hasbro Asia release or the Takara mall release that they got hold of?

 

These pictures aren't being taken through either a telephoto or fish eye lens, Nightstalker is almost certainly smaller. It's sitting on the same visual plain as Ratbat and looks physically smaller in both modes.

 

Just an FYI, it doesn't need to be telephoto or a fisheye lens to cause an image to display the pincushion distortion effect. All lenses (except maybe macro lenses) will do this if you take an image with the camera too close to the subject. The ANSI/NIST standards document for criminal mugshot photos state that all facial images be captured at a distance of 2 meters so the facial landmarks (i.e. Features) aren't distorted, which would impact automated facial recognition systems (and can even trip up human examiners).

Is not that the Nightstalker cassette is smaller. The cassettes on the periphery look like they are stretched, which is very apparent in the bottom pic where Enemy looks to be a cm wider than Wingthing (shout out to @Whovian Zorker ). We know it's not because Frumble is the same size as Ratbat in cassette mode. Nightstalker's cat mode may be on the small side (meaning, not as long as Stripes/Ravage), but the cassette is the same size as all of the others.

Also, look how much bigger Enemy's left arm appears compared to his right in the top image. Maybe he arm wrestles a lot left handed?

@Danny Boy , the case looks shorter because it's sitting just in front of Stripes' case, which again is distorted because it's close to the edge.

All of this could have been avoided had the person doing the promo shots grabbed a nice macro lens for this image instead of what I guess is a stock 18-35mm lens with zoom.

 

Count me in on the distortion side. Blaster can't have smaller cassettes because Stripes comes from the Ravage mold. So Ravage and Stripes have the same sized cassette modes.

 

Like I said pages ago, it's clearly lens distortion.

 

For MP-14+ (i.e. Anime Red Alert), it was the same. TTM exclusive sold at the same price through HA. The Ginrai exclusive pack as well. The TTM release is distributed through HA without the usual discount

That being said, the Ginrai set was actually slightly cheaper in Singapore than in HK, which is a pretty rare situation. So there's a 10% chance that someone in Asia will be able to wrangle a better pre-order within the next month.

 

I'm probably way out of the loop on this, but what shop is AE?