No interest in the Maketoys G1 Seekers, but I'm just glad to see Maketoys isn't totally 100% dead yet. It gives me hope they might still put out the two repaints I really want, the Galaxy versions of Lightning and Skycrow...

 

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They could literally get out of their financial troubles by doing small runs (less than 1000 pieces) of recolors and reissues.....Just like xtransbots did this year.

Also, i´d like em to put some excitement into the game to keep their fandom

 

The face only looks improved because its not all black now, but it looks like the same mold which was always on the small side. No excuse not to have wing fillers standard, so hopefully that is improved too. Price needs to be right now that MP-52 is a thing and looks amazing.

I'm no Takara fanboy, but MP-52 is objectively more toon accurate than Meteor. Meteor is great, but lets not pretend MP-52 design isn't the most authentic take on G1 Starscream for MP scale.

 

Surely it includes the wing fillers. Surely they will reissue Skycrow and Lightning. It will be very much a shame if they don't. And an affront to the "EX".

I paid resale for these guys and SunStorm but I hope that everyone who wants a set can get them. Apart from the heads I have no issues at all, and Starscream looks gorgeous with an MP44 issued head. Of all my figures Meteor is the guy who stands out the most on the shelf, just a really pretty figure. I would never have thought I'd pass up a Takara figure for a 3P (particularly a non-FansToys) but I see nothing in MP52 that justifies $275 (no crown or cape!), especially with an MP11 sitting on the shelf in alt-mode. And nothing in this "EX" to tempt an upgrade.

 

You pay less than that if you preorder. I bought mine for $192. Pretty sure Maketoys Meteor goes for around this price on the used market.

 

100% true, but for me it's incremental. For $150 I would have pre-ordered, and by that I guess committed to replacing the whole Seeker team. $275 is crazy. MP44 was insanely expensive but it seemed to have so much value, especially with the audio chip. If this did starscream's (English) voice then I would see the money as justified. But as it stands, with a ~$800 for three seekers price tag it's just asking too much.

 

If the Meteor EX is significantly cheaper I'll probably go for it. I'll still get MP-52 eventually since it does look really good enough for me to pay that much

 

That's not necessarily a good thing.

 

am i the only one who really loves these bots but really hates the painted cockpit glass so much it ruins the whole bot?

 

I thought I would too, but in person it's a nice paint so it actually adds flare to him. It's like... cartoon..but real?

And I'm not someone who likes full toon btw. I bought jrem's addons to give it more detail.

 

If I may ask..where did you find him for 192?

 

The cockpit is one of my favorite elements of this figure.

 

I thought I'd hate the canopy too, but it's silver painted under clear amber, and has nice depth in-hand.

 

Anime Export. Preorders are sold out now.

 

Before shipping right?

 

I don't give a flying fuck about "cartoon accuracy". I think MP-52 looks like absolute shit, and I stand by that. They have a fake nose cone that's covered up by a giant piece of kibble in vehicle mode, making the jet thicker than it needs to be, and then using the giant kibble piece to hide the real nose cone in robot mode. If they didn't use a fake nose cone, they could have nuked a bunch of that kibble as well.
The wings slip in two for no other reason, as far as I can tell, than to hide more of the pointless kibble introduced due to the over-abundance of fake parts. And I'm not against fake parts because, whilst I prefer not to have them used, they can be done just fine. Meteor does the fake nose cone fairly well. MP-52 does not.

And yes, Meteor isn't perfect. The head is a bit on the small side. The wing fillers were an absolute joke (I've posted plenty of times in this thread tearing MakeToys apart for that bullshit). But between the overpriced backpack-fest that is MP-52 (and the Masterpiece line in general, lately, which is why I stopped buying that garbage) and the mediocrity that is MP-11 (a shame, because I generally like how that mould looks, but it's poorly-built and severely outdated), I maintain that MakeToys Meteor is the best of the bunch. Now, if Zeta ever puts out their original Seeker trio, that's another story, because I think those are the best of the bunch, though unless they change the height, they're still going to look far too tall (and I'm no stickler for scale, but Starscream being taller than Megatron makes no sense).

Besides ALL of that, I prefer the Hasui-era Masterpiece designs, so the fact that I'm saying I think Meteor is the best of the (currently existing) bunch of Masterpiece-alike Seeker moulds available is, I think, a rather telling statement.

It doesn't ruin it for me, but I WOULD prefer it to be translucent.
It'd look weird with the fake nose cone hidden underneath in alt mode though.

 

Do you mean the cockpit every time you say nose cone? The cockpit on MP52 is right beneath the faux one in bot mode, not hidden on the back somewhere. Just one thing to note

 

Even if we remove advantage of cartoon accuracy, MP-52 is also just an overall cleaner design. The legs and the back is much improved. Really the only qualities Meteor has over MP-52 is a thinner backpack/wing section in bot mode and a waste swivel, everything else the MP-52 basically improves upon. This is why I hope this EX version of Meteor is a good deal cheaper than MP-52 as it will make a great option for those that can’t stomach the premium price for MP-52. Needs to be at least $100 cheaper.

 

That's because they got screwed by the Yes Model copies of them that were like $60 each when they came out.

 

The cockpit is part of the nose cone. Same thing. Moot point, anyway. MP-52 belongs in the trash, as far as I'm concerned.

That's debatable, as it's ultimately subjective. Meteor has infinitely less kibble. MP-52 doesn't have as many obvious gaps, but is fat, especially with the current trend of "just stick everything on the back, it'll be okay (it fucking won't but these suckers will buy it anyway)".
At the end of the day, I think Meteor looks overall better than MP-52, and you couldn't pay me to put MP-52 on my shelf. Opinions, man. People have them. Yours isn't automatically correct for arguing against someone else's.

Were they, though? Because there are plentiful rumours that suggest that was MakeToys attempting to liquidate excess stock, or perhaps even factory rejects.
To be fair, we don't have any concrete evidence of this, to my knowledge, but it's entirely possible. Which begs the question: IF MakeToys are in bed with YesModel (or perhaps even owned by the same people), has that affected MakeToys with the recent KO crackdowns? And then MakeToys is connected to FansProject. Ex-FansProject people are supposedly the ones behind FansHobby. So on and so forth.
Sure, this is conspiracy territory, but it's something interesting to consider, especially considering that those MakeToys/YesModel rumours have been swimming around for a long time, and consider that they only seem to have knocked off the unpopular MakeToys figures - where are the YesModel KOs of Downbeat, Gundog or, dare I say, Meteor and co.?