No, it's cool, you're right. Your opinion is perfectly valid, dare I say perfect, and his joke was on topic while my observation is well off mark. Masterpiece is premium and we should be willing to pay for premium even it means filling in another small gap at the sacrifice of another forty plus dollars. This is an evolutionary throwback and an affront to the standard MP 44 established. It's abysmal and should be packed into the Kingdom line.

That's where it belongs.

Masterpiece should be reserved for only the best features like unsightly back packs and parts kibble that just had no where to go on this entirely toon accurate [from the front] figure and just plain bad alt modes where a jet is twice as thick as it should be. Not to mention finicky transformations made that much more difficult by the quality of plastic chosen to make parts from. Nope, no cost cutting there.

And all those extra bits no one really needs or wants. Like a translucent out of scale figure to ride on the scooter.

You want to fill in the thighs, melt that sucker down and poor it in the holes.

But it's cool, you won. My hat is off to you. Enjoy your collection as you do. Next time, don't bother responding to my post if it offends you in some way that will save us some time.

 

Lol - you couldn't have injected any more sarcastic, passive aggressive doucheness into that if you tried! While I was just politely trying to explain what we were actually talking about, and my opinion on the matter. Well, OK then. I dont know what to say. Carry on. <Shrugs>

 

On the topic of those thighs, it's kinda clearer in Reboost's pictures how they transform:




And they're visible inside the door here:



I wonder if they're hollow in order to tab into something. Sadly, I think that's wishful thinking. It's probably just ugly hollow limbs for the sake of cost-saving. Hardly Masterpiece quality.

Hopefully a gap filler is in the market by the time Crosscut comes out  


Oh btw, have we seen any photo where the knees bend further than 90 degrees?

 

Hahaha agreed

 

You won't believe it but I knew I had walked into it. I did.

To be fair though, your post never offended me as I said, I was just trying to gauge what is "acceptable". [His don't really either though.]

Hey, you caught on to what I was going for.

Let me put it this way, when Masterpiece went full toon, I was told to accept it as that's what the fandom wanted. I didn't like it but I had to suck it up or move on.

Seems still appropriate.

 

So how do the arms rotate so the wheels sit as they do in the toon?

 

I honestly meant it as good-natured ribbing  

I would like to know this too!

 

Oh, I know. We're cool.

 

Just noting on the cheap and lazy part. There's a video here that talks about the animation models while recreating Starscream's. They mention how the characters might not move their full body as much to save on the work, but that's because of the work it takes in the first place to draw the model (and when I watched the toon the only point when I noticed them not moving around much was the transformation line before rolling out, they seemed pretty lively to me).

 

I happen to agree with you to a degree on Starscream. As I previously said I consider the transforming chest intakes on the previous mould to be a work of genious how they almost perfectly create the F-15's intakes. MP-6 was my first MP and that my first 'masterpiece moment', and still one of the best. I was a bit dissapointed to see that area unchanging between modes on the new mould in all its G1 simplicity, and how thick the jet has become.

That said, for me the bot mode is out of this world amazing and the transformation looks super fun. I can at least appreciate the underside is toon accurate, and I suppose also nods to the G1 toy. Overall a massive improvement on the original despite the flaws, and i can't wait to get all three. If you don't like the toon accurate bot modes i can see there is very little to be excited about there, though.

Still not sure what that has to do with Skids' CHUG thighs though, and there's probably another thread for Starscream!  

 

That’s the million dollar question. $$$
My suspicion is that if it could, they would’ve shown it to us by now.

 

Sadly I feel pretty certain they dont!  

 

Well we know that they are able to draw characters with more details on them and more of the alt-mode parts thanks to parts of the Japanese series and and the movie were the snuck it in every frame or so.


It's just that because they were given the budget of a Subway sandwich and the same time it takes to build a Lego car to animate the American series they had to skimp on stuff like alt-mode and more bot mode detail, so "lazy" is really only because it's what they had to go with.

Even then though I would assume the best toon accurate bots would be what the animators/designers intended rather than what they had to do due to cost cutting limitations. Like how MP-44 has white legs when I always though from when I was a kid that the white on Optimus/Ginrai was always meant to represent silver, since that's what the grill and smokestacks and gas tanks were as well.

 

Waist swivel?

 

There is yes.

 

Having a dedicated toon shelf and a dedicated Diaclone shelf will help me with displaying. I’ll put Skids with the toon bots so they can say hi and and hello for a few nights  oops:I like to imagine they’re all friends when I’m away ) then I’ll probably move him over with the Diaclone bots.

Damn they look fantastic!

 

Reboost wears this mold so much better

 

Those hollow pieces in Skids' thighs remind me of MP Wheeljack's biceps. There was a small outrage about that as well  

 

More fast people will learn that MP is not Hot Toys premium, the better (not refering to skids, but in general).

 

I don't even remember that, but I guess a sign that the complaints about Skids will also one day be lost to time.