So after resisting for years I ordered G1 Mirage and Sunstreaker KOs from eBay. Mirage has been my holy grail because I never had him as a kid, and Sunstreaker is pretty up there too. What I got from the articles describing the differences between the KOs and the originals was that they were "good enough" even with minor differences. The pandemic weakened my resolve and I figured I'd take a shot. Worst case, I'd write down my experience since I can't find any recent reviews online about these guys.

I bought from a 1200+ point seller in China. This is actually the second time I tried to order these two. The first time was back in April and the seller scammed me. Got my money back, though. The second time I didn't go for the cheapest option, just the best seller. Ordered on July 5th, got it July 28th. The package was actually a styrofoam box wrapped in orange tape. Super mushy but actually good protection.

The TL;DR version is both figures have both issues that I've read about and have "new" unexpected issues that were disappointing. One was fixable, the other not.

Sunstreaker first: Generally what I expected. He has a brighter yellow and the car top is a clear plastic instead of dark. There's minor paint chipping on the left fender. Black paint applications not even everywhere. Converting him to robot revealed that his arms don't swing out at all. They get stuck against the body frame and forcing them just made everything bend, which was worrying. I think mold degradation or just a bad mold copy made the parts slightly bigger and there's no more clearance. I had to shave off (marked in the photos) various areas for the arms to swing in and out more freely. Other than that one of the elbows is a lot tighter than the other, but that's no big deal. The body plastic feels cheaper. In short, he's not perfect but I fixed him and he's alright.

As for Mirage, I'm pretty sad. His chest and back are basically busted.I think the chest screw was put in with too much force and permanently bent those two parts. They are warped pretty bad. I thought the original shiny grey chest piece was die cast? Here it's chromed plastic. For transformation, the wheel parts don't fold back easily without going at an angle because of the warping and the folding the front onto the chest is stiff and doesn't feel good at all. Lots of parts with bad clearance due to the warping.

Since I figured he's already broken, I took him apart to look inside. It revealed a lot of defects like stress marks on the internal chest piece, screw holes, and misaligned parts. One of the black shoulder sockets has a crack.

I took a picture of the waist swivel pin. Is it larger than the original?

What else? Wheels are pretty loose but I don't know if that's from the original design. The forearm pieces don't seem to fit very well. One fist doesn't align with the forearm correctly, like an imperfection to the mushroom peg inside. Probably fix that with a bit of sanding. I was thinking of getting a junker G1 and replacing the appropriate parts, but that feels like throwing good money after bad. And I think the color isn't quite the same. But it might not matter for the chrome/diecast parts.

I put him back together and asked the seller if I can get a replacement, hoping it doesn't have the imploded chest. Worst case, he says no. But it's not the end of the world and I'm still keeping him in my collection.

As for packaging, the boxes look pretty nice. The cardboard is good. Each figure was on a card-backed bubble which I was sad to open as there's no clean way to do it without ripping everything. Accessories were inside the bubble with the figure, some on sprues or parts of sprues still attached. Instructions were stored on the side in a small clear bag, which also contained the tech spec reader, the stickers and a loose (and scratched up) rub sign.

That's it!

 

Well at least they look great in the box!

A G1 Mirage with broken waist can be fixed with a little ingenuity and they usually don't cost that much.

Mine was bought for around 20 bucks and arrived in 2 pieces. 70 cents worth of hardware later and I have a pretty decent Mirage. Hes got a little play in vehicle mode but its passable. This reminds me that I gotta get his accessories at some point.

 

Hopefully you take something + from this experience, which imo would be to not trust cheap reissues from China.
There are plenty of sellers and traders on here that help fellow collectors out with legit, quality figures.

 

There was no real trust, just cautious optimism  

Buying legit G1 Mirage and Sunstreaker wasn't really an option because 1) they're expensive when complete and 2) at their age they're loose as all hell. In the end the seller offered to give me a partial refund, so I'm good with that.

 

As an update to Sunstreaker, the missles and fists wouldn't hold in his arms. I opened them up and saw that the yellow pin mechanism wasn't cleanly cut from the sprue and the little nubbin' prevented the pin from moving up and down to hold anything. The photo shows the second one. The first was way worse. Snipped off the bit and both work great now.

 

I've always been curious about the manufacturing stamps on these G1 KO figures. Would you mind posting pictures? Mirage should have his stamp on the back of his leg, and Sunstreaker should be on the little yellow part that connects the base of his feet. For a while I considered buying whatever season 1 figures are available just to have a set to display as MISB, but I eventually passed on that idea. I realize buying vintage G1 figures can be expensive, but for me, the hunt is always part of the fun. I've sold off entire collections several times only to get the itch and track everyone down again. This time I've looking for pre-rub "circle stamp" figures when they're available, or stamped with only Takara. They're a bit more difficult to find in good condition, but I like the challenge. If you don't mind posting those spots, I'd appreciate it! Thanks!

 

Sure! No problem at all!

 

My KO Sunny was fine, but Mirage was missing pins and was very loose.

Oh well....

 

I forget who did them, but the guy who did the high quality KOs of the dino cassettes, Browning, Japanese Headmasters, and Galaxy Shuttle, went to great lengths to make subtle but obvious changes to the figures to make it clear they were not originals (e.g. removing the original manufacturing stamps, using different styled rivets, etc).

Can you PM me the name of the seller as I'd like to know if he's selling the KO G1 giftsets like Abominus and Computron with the box.

 

I couldn't leave it alone, so I spent more time attempting to fix Mirage. I remembered a guide about fixing warped plastics (Repairing Bent/Warped Soft Plastic) and read up on it. Then I took the Mirage's front and back parts and boiled them. They straightened out pretty nice but I overdid it since the back/car piece shrunk on a side a little bit, fixing one warp but giving me another. I marked the new warping in the photos.

It faded out a bit of paint. You can see where by the squiggly lines.

I did manage to fix my T30 Springer's warped sword with that method, so that was nice.

Back to Mirage. Even with the "fixed" pieces there was still a lot of stress when putting his body together. The wheels wouldn't flip easily, the arms wouldn't come out without a lot of force, the chest still felt like it was bending, etc. I started scraping/filing down his internal bits as much as possible, reducing nubby bits that went into rails, etc. I've marked in red in the photos where I scraped down the plastic. I wish I had an original to compare the internals.

On the arms there's a bit where I completely cut off. You can see in the photo where Citanes is visible, marked with a rectangle. It was a large-ish piece meant to go into a groove. I only noticed after I removed it that I had been putting the arms backwards on the body when testing the smoothness of taking the arms in and out. So I don't think I had to remove that bit.

There were other bits on the black part of the arms that were square on one arm but looked malformed on the other. Evened those out.

Because of the new warping on the back piece, I had a heck of a time trimming down the chrome intake pieces for them to fit again. One fits okay, the other doesn't and bends the internals a little.

I suspect the boiling also shrunk/warped the chrome front piece in other parts. I found that the die cast hinge didn't fit as well and was really stiff. Shaved some more plastic, marked in the photos.

I put him back together and things seem to work a lot better. It's not the cleanest looking thing you've ever seen, and the arms droop some, but I've got a much better articulated/transforming figure out of it. Gonna sticker these guys up and I think that's pretty much it for me with KOs  

 

Really interesting. My only experience with g1 'reissues' as the Chinese are fond of calling them, is with a G1 Optimus I bought in an attempt to salvage his fists and drone crane arm for my original.

Long story short, I found the original fists in the end and the crane arm balljoint is too large to transplant without filling it down.

The rest of the figure was surprisingly good.

I was/am tempted to get a Wheeljack KO in order to replace one of my Ogs tail wings, but those seem to go on a high price (for a KO) and in the end I couldnt know if the wings would fit.

 

Hound and Wheeljack were my next planned gets if the first two had worked out. I think I'll be waiting a fair bit.

 

Got them stickered up.

Am I happy to have these guys? Yeah. Did I pay too much? Yeah.

 

I got both of those ko's. My Mirage felt like the real thing. The Sunstreaker felt off. The clear plastic for the wind shield/roof doesn't feel right, but it looks the part on the shelf

 

Factually incorrect. Mirage generally is loose after transformation. Sunstreaker not so much. I've purchased many vintage figures that have little to no wear and display nicely with tight joints for fair $$.
Again, there are many board members that are happy to help out fellow collectors.
Is acquiring a vintage, somewhat loose figure, worse than buying a missing pins/broken KO with a terribly obvious KO box?

 

I stand corrected!

 

The basis of the discussion is wrong though.

You are advocating collectors in the sense of wanting to complete a collection. In other words, original items.
The OP is content in having (in his own words) 'good enough' display items that remind him of his childhood despite 'irregularities' in the mold.

 

I have a KO Mirage and I must have been lucky because the quality is great - certainly better than the old original 80s G1 toy I also have which has seen better days.

I do keep getting tempted by a G1 Wheeljack KO. Again, I have an old G1 one but it's missing both spoiler pieces and one shoulder cannon and for the price of finding them I could probably get the KO with everything looking minty fresh. No idea on the quality though.

Worst KO purchase I made was a G1 Swoop - soft as hell plastic meant the beak/head snapped off stupidly easily and, to be honest, it was loose as hell anyway. As someone else mentioned you take your chances... (at least until Takara decides to reissue some of these moulds but as it's been talked about for 20 years now and we've still seen nothing I wouldn't get your hopes up).

 

I'm in the same boat with recently getting into KOs. What can I say? I LOVE them. I got Mirage, Wheeljack, Swoop, Sludge and Snarl. So far I am loving all of them. Sure, when you put them up close to your face you can tell the plastic is not the best quality etc, but overall, I was surprised with the quality and value (Got all of them for about 32$ shipped from a chinese seller). VERY tight joints, to the point where I had to move them back and forth to loosen them up. I was especially surprised at the quality of the decals, booklet etc. The only thing I would have a complaint about would be on the dinos the bubble was separating from the cardboard backing, but a little bit of elmers glue fixed that. I am now planning on getting some of the more expensive G1 KOs like Jazz and Hound.

 

I am not advocating any collecting habits, just offering advice as B/S/T here and on ebay as a fair and honest G1 collector, like so many other members.
If broken, out of a KO box, is good enough suits his needs, while admitting he paid too much, so be it.