Apparently the only figure in this month, Astrotrain is out March 2020. 9350¥. Mod Edit: Listing and images from Takara Tomy Mall Website トランスフォーマー シージ SG-47 アストロトレイン AmiAmi [Character & Hobby Shop]
That shuttle mode just looks so unfinished. With all the other Siege offerings being pretty darn good/great, I am not sure why they could or did not do something better with this figure.
Should give us a variant without it in Earthrise, but seeing how incompetent Ha$bro was about blue fists for prime, I would be shocked if they actually did just that. Between this and Astro being shorter than the TR version even with the feet add on, they are really doing Awful AWFUL job justifying the new price point. How the hell do you defend them cutting the figure size in half while slapping $5 increase. These things are shorter than SS Blackout and Megatron even with all that armor crap on them!
I feel they did legitmately try to make it work. Lacking panels to cover the rear half of the shuttle, they used what they had (exposed bits and the reverse side of parts) to suggest angular space machine, so I can give it a pass. I will admit I'm tired of the battle damage or dirty look. It was cute on Optimus because it was almost everywhere, like it should be. Here it looks like Astrotrain waded up to his shins through grime.
the better question is how are fans so ignorant for the past year to not understand yet that they didn’t cut leader class in half, they’re adding articulation and using the plastic that leaders had in height for other stuff like weapons, filling in hallowness that leaders were well known for and making things like armor or extra parts like the train car/launch pad for bases or added playability to the figure.
Because if price was directly equivalent to height, then the 12 inch Marvel figure with four points of articulation that my baby cousins are obsessed with would be around 80 bucks? Is this conversation seriously gonna pop up with every damn leader figure from now on?
I have to agree with you on this one. Quality is often a matter of perceived value - I see the value in the way the figures are being designed and built now, just as I can perhaps see the value in heavy plastics, less articulation, bigger size, etc. (e.g. Armada). Whatever a general notion of 'quality' could mean, what we can say is that the figures are changing in the specific ways Hasbro hopes will appeal to collectors (the Generations market), and I agree that the price point is justifiable.
Looks great, apart from the fact it looks like a kid with dirty fingers has just man-handled part of it...
Despite the shuttle having a metal blanket over its back that looks so out-of-place, it has a pretty decent Cybertronian shuttle mode. The train mode looks too Earthlike though. =/ meh.
It looks "Earthlike" because it was designed for Earth-Rise. Hasbro added it to the end of siege to extend that line a bit because it's selling like a mofo.
I think Astrotrain looks pretty great, the shuttle mode is definitely the weakest of the 3 modes but it isnt horrible either. I have been collecting for 1 full year now as of this month. I was always a big fan of TF as a kid and the only toys I still enjoyed as I grew up were Beast Wars. I stopped wanting the newer toys as I got a bit older because I did not like the aesthetics. Ultimately, gaming took over my life in the late 90's in large part due to Pokemon. I got back in last year due to Ollie's and the Titans Return line deluxes looked great to me, I got all that I could and love the headmaster gimmick. The voyagers were pretty good with being triple changers and all. The leaders though were my least favorite and honestly I can't wait to replace them because they're barely poseable and the plastic quality looks worse than on the deluxes/voyagers. I wasnt that into PoTP aside from the leader gimmick there to which I got them all and after playing with and displaying them that gimmick only really works well with Prime. They basically have the same limited amount of poseability and cheap look to them that TR leaders did. Now, with Siege I immediately was drawn to it for the aesthetic alone, then added plastic quality, poseability and the COMBAT system gimmickare all things I am looking for in a line. Being a newbie collector I look at this line and Earth Rise going forward and am glad I got back in when I did because looking at past lines it just doesnt do it for me. These toys look more like the G1 incarnations I remember as a kid when my oldest brother would watch the show/movie with me than any other mainline toy before it. Just my newbie opinion here. TL;DR: IMO the new toy line(s) of Siege look superior to the past lines in aesthetic and poseability/playability.
