I live in California, and the cost of MP-44 from Nippon Yasan is $341.47

 

Get it from Amazon Japan instead. Fast shipping and lower price.
I’m in California as well. 320 shipped

 

Not anymore.

 

Dang, too bad.

 

I was literally thinking of doing the same thing with one of my two copies. I have half a mind to see if I can recreate the G1 packaging somehow by seeing if I can comission laser etching or something like that.

First, I'm sorry to hear about your situation with your father and wish you the absolute best.

I 100% agree on the voice acting front. So iconic and so perfectly fitting for their respective characters. I recently finished the original Ninja Turtles cartoon and there were several runs of episodes that had substitute voice actors in various parts that, while not terrible (Jim Cummings voiced Shredder multiple times and that guy's a legend though Shredder is Uncle Phil all day every day), were just not the characters they were playing for those short stints and I am so glad that never happened with any of the major characters in the first two series outside of what seems like production errors where Bluestreak is speaking but the line was recorded by Michael Bell for Prowl. Some actors were swapped out between the movie and season 3, but they never bothered me for whatever reason. I know with Galvatron I came to think of his madness being Megatron's spark fighting through Unicron's reformatting to reclaim his body so Frank Welker taking over the role for Nimoy felt fitting (if I were writing a cartoon or comic that continued off of Headmasters (SPOILERS for Headmasters ahead!) I would have a "mental" battle between Megatron vs Galvatron in their spark that resulted in what would end up becoming Super Megatron busting out of the ice and discarding the Galvatron crown piece).

On a side note: I've always been curious as to how other regions have taken to their respective voice casts? Does the voice cast of the Japanese version get readily name checked as Cullen and Welker are in the forums I personally access? What about Spanish or French dubs? Do non-English speaking fans know the names of the actors of Cliffjumper and Prowl? It's not a competition thing for me at all, I'm just generally curious in the experience of others.

 

@WildBill, here in The Netherlands we used to have most cartoons in their original language, so I grew up with Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime. Nowadays a lot of cartoons are dubbed in Dutch, which is a shame. I grew up with Gummi Bears too for example. Then later they started dubbing that in Dutch (Gummiberen), which took me some time getting used to. Thankfully the original Transformers series was never dubbed, so my G1 experience has been great.  

 

@Sam: I agree wholeheartedly. IMO even though Peter Cullen is getting along in age, he will always be everybody's inspirational hero.
The man is a wonderful cross-generational, cross-cultural inspiration.

 

I do wonder how weird it is for these guys, who 30 something year go were probably just taking a job to make rent or keep the lights, on who today are met by those now grown kids who watched them and told how important they were to their childhood.

 

No weirdness or awkwardness whatsoever. Have you seen videos of how enthusiastic both legends like Cullen and Welker are when speaking to their adoring fans at all those TF conventions throughout the years?! If anything they have filled and more than accepted the role of real life heroes and inspirational motivators, and have voiced out many times how grateful and happy they are to have the kind of LIFE CHANGING impact they have had to countless generations of fans.

 

Interesting. With Gummi Bears was it just that the voices were different or do you feel something was lost in translation somehow? For that matter, you ever see the first translations we get of interviews where the direct translation might be "we wanted to make MP-44 to look like it jumped out of the screen" but what google translate gives us "screen jumper of desired Convoy to salute for release" and wonder what that looks like in reverse when English phrases are first translated for Kanji readers?

 

Growing up I was a total G1 sunbow addict (still am, really). Peter Cullen WAS G1 Optimus Prime to me. I had seen and heard some of the live action films and was thoroughly disappointed by the way his character was written as Prime didn’t feel the same as he did in the original show. But I got to attend Botcon 2010 when I was 10 years old and I was soooo excited to attend the panel featuring living legend Peter Cullen despite that, because to me he was still the G1 hero. About 10 minutes into the panel he ad-libbed some trash dialogue about conquering the galaxy “in the name of peace”. I’m not too ashamed to admit I cried and my dad and I left the panel (gimme a break, I was 10). Suffice it to say, after that day I realized nobody is actually who they play on television. So as much as I love Cullen’s Prime voice, I don’t see him as Optimus as much as you guys do.

Tl;dr: never meet your heroes.

 

The one with Eeyore ?

 

Afraid I don’t understand, besides knowing that Cullen voiced Eeyore.

 

Sigh...like I said, I had left the panel by then but that does look right. And that dialogue is exactly what my point was. “Whose butt do I kick?” Oh yeah, sounds like G1 Prime to me  

And yeah, I get he was doing a bayverse Prime voice. Just emphasizes my problems with that portrayal too.

 

The "Whose butt do I kick" line is supposed to be a joking way in which Optimus would defend one of his friends. Optimus protects those close to him (Eeyore); Peter Cullen was just having a bit of fun.

 

G1 Prime was not averse to some occasional thrash talking and backing it up. Plus he was watching Eeyore's back when someone was mean to him. That's my Prime all right!

Cullen is a voice ACTOR best known for portraying Prime. That does not mean he is not a human being without his own faults and quirks. But based on videos and interviews of him speaking out of character as himself, he seems like a nice person, aware of but genuinely honoured, humbled and appreciative of his role that inspired a generation and beyond. There can be no other Prime but him.

 

The man has a wicked sense of humor to boot! My hero. ;3

 

I don't believe much got lost in translation, perhaps a joke here and there which simply wouldn't work in another language, but for the rest it was the same I guess, but the voices sounded different, so that required some getting used to. Plus the title song was translated too, so every time the show aired I used to sing the English lyrics while the Dutch lyrics played.   I really learned English by watching TV. Same goes for German. My father worked in Germany for a few years, so we did this "game" sometimes in the car "what's that in English dad?" or "how do you say that in German dad?". Little did we know that we were learning.   German TV was dubbed, so I watched Knight Rider and the A-Team a lot in German. The German dubs were bad. You would sometimes hear people with the same voice, also between different dubbed series. I guess they didn't have enough voice actors.   I'm glad that I grew up with Transformers in the original voices. I hope that one day my sons (2,5 and 5 years old) can start watching the G1 series too. Wonder how it'll go language wise, because all the cartoons that they watch now are in Dutch. At least they really like my Masterpieces.  

 

Hindsight is crystal clear, isn't it? Not that some of us haven't been suggesting that very option since Amazon pre-orders went up (repeatedly, I might say  ).

Just teasing you man, but for what it's worth if this is like MP-36, then Amazon Japan will have another pre-order up pretty quickly. Usually sell-outs get a reissue 9 months later. You could still do that process for the MP-44 reissue, if you wanted. If you don't mind waiting, then it's a good way to make your mind up fully based on in-hand pictures and personal reviews, to make sure this is the right Prime for you.

I had every intention of paying monthly, but ended up just doing it in a couple of big chunks (with one chunk left to go), and it still eases the price a little bit. Still a crazy amount of money, but at this point who among us isn't crazy already