one could only dream

 

I hope that Takara is working on this, because they sure are fast with teasing revealing later figures like Super Megatron and God Neptune.

 

Honestly glad both of those exist but maaan I wish we'd see more of that Armada Optimus as well. Aesthetically I like it better than the FH one to be honest but I'd quite possibly get both anyway.

 

As much as I love Armada Optimus Prime, the +$200 is hard to swallow given I still have my (admittedly incomplete) Armada Optimus of my youth and I have all five MMC D-Squad on order.

 

It's a difficult situation, I'm glad that this is getting made, and I want FH to succeed, but they aren't doing themselves any favours by deviating from the original designs like they have. This image from the previous page sums up the problem:



Colours aside, the proportions are so off on him. I already thought that the torso was too long, but the shoulders are just as off. Their Megatron is just as guilty of being off-model, especially the tank.

Still, I appreciate someone finally tackling Armada.

 

I honestly see the Takara one being made into an MP since Micron Convoy was a choice in the masterpiece fan vote which gave us Starsaber, coming second place at that.

Wishful thinking he will be the leader class Optimus in WFC part 3 or as a full GS release.

I will probably buy both, but for now MB-15 will be just fine.

The main thing to remember is that Fanshobby do their own take, they don’t intend to do fully accurate to the source material figures right from the start. As for Megatron, they will most likely heavily change it by the time it gets to preorder like this Optimus has, I have to admit I really didn’t like it very much when it was first shown but now I’m all over it.

 

I really do hope they go in on the repaint's, I'd get one done up like the Costco(?) Deco since that was the only version of Prime I got as a kid. Either way I'm definitely buying this since Armada was my intro to Transformers.

 

To be honest Fans Hobby has given me that vibe in general. I happen to be a Masterforce fan as well and both their Ginrai and Overlord are a tad too stylized for me though in comparison those two still looked closer to their sources than this does.

The prototype we saw definitely isn't an MP because it's stylized as well. If we got a Leader class toy and an MP though I'd be absolutely thrilled. I'd gladly scoop em all up plus redecoes in true Unicron Trilogy fashion.

 

The thing about G1 designs from what I can tell is that it’s almost difficult to do your own thing to separate yourself from the rest and put your mark on it, yet still make it look like who it’s supposed to be. They’re more guilty of this with Powerbaser, but Double Evil is still fairly accurate as you say. I use their third party names because I’ve caught flak before using official names on 3rd party threads.

You’re right, it was obvious they didn’t design it to be an MP but honestly I don’t think it was meant to be a mainline figure anyway, it looks more premium than say a generations figure (which are actually not bad at the moment imo). I think it was intended to be a Generations Select release due to being revealed with Star Convoy but did say they wanted to see if there was interest in a different area more than anything. Probably didn’t expect people to want other series due to how well G1 stuff still sellsz

I still don’t think it would be out of the question for them to just blow it up to MP and simplify the details. The problem is while it makes a lot of people who want that happy, and it fits right in as a sub line to the MP range, it creates a problem because people will want a Megatron and so forth. That’s a lot of commitment to something that there is no guarantee to sell as well as it would say it were another G1 MP as sad as that is.

 

I'd love to get both, FH MP and Takara's generation select for different displays but come on. This has been nothing but a tease for like 2 years   I almost forgot about it

 

They said they don't even know what line they're gonna put it in at this year's wonderfest so...

 

This is a very good point about the Takara version being an MP or not. However once again bringing in confusion, let's look at MP-51 and it's departure from the G1 aesthetic. It's in the same line as the incredibly accurate MP-44. Although it's not so heavily stylized. After Arcee Masterpiece may shift its objective to be a definitive interpretation of a character, rather than recreating on-screen characters with perfect accuracy, excluding Beast Wars.

Or the could put it in Selects while putting on a custom pricetag so that they don't feel like they have to limit the figure. This is a step up from the original figure because the base mode has the articulation of the basic deluxe version and I'm sure that the Super Mode will have knees and feet articulation.

As for this figure, regardless of accuracy it's hard to find fault in it ultimately, as 3P figures historically have varying looks for characters. Just look at the movie Bumblebees where only the TransCraft is incredibly accurate. The rest have off proportions in some area.

 

I think at this point the MP and mainlines draw from each other's engineering is becoming more common. MPM Optimus was clearly a reworked ROTF Leader and I'd go so far as to say CW Magnus took some small cues from MP22. While they certainly could blow it up to MP scale I still think it's intended more as a mainline or as you say at least a selects release but some of what they engineer onto it will probably influence an MP. As for commitments, that's definitely there but considering it's been a few years since Star Saber came out and we've yet to see Deszaras, Victory Leo, or any other Victory toy to go with it (not that there's a lot of non combiner options) I don't think they'd be overly averse to just doing a one off and leaving it like that however long. If we get an MP Beast Galvatron I'll probably see that differently but I guess that's one to look out for.
Personally I WOULD of course want more MP ML/Armada figures if they did do Optimus but even if they did JUST Optimus it'd still be great and either way engineering an accurate looking one would be a monumental achievement in itself.

Is MP 51 really that much of a departure? I probably need to take another look but doesn't seem like it's tossing show accuracy any to me.
As for proportions I feel like that might just be more because of the engineering than intentional inaccuracies. I haven't seen the takes on movie Bumblebee truth be told but say UT was pretty dead on and MT's seekers and Galaxy Meteor were overall nearly perfect in terms of accuracy minus some minor details.
Even compared to a few years back though this one takes quite a few liberties.

 

FansHobby

 

Looks better, but still not quite right.

 

It's the same picture they posted in FB last week but repost into their Weibo. I really hope that this is not the final design

 

The thing about the original Sparkplug is that for his size he’s pretty much perfect, I guess they got carried away with doing their own thing. It’s nice to have extra joints for sure but the smaller something is with more moving parts the more fiddly it can be.

 

Still not big on that Sparkplug but I'd be lying if I said it was ever gonna see robot mode in my display anyway.

 

I think it's designed with that in mind, the robot mode is an afterthought and the car mode is awesome and it powerlinks in car mode so that's where he will likely stay.

 

I always thought that Sparkplug was more of a stylised Murcielago than a Gallardo but it’s still pretty nice to see they cared enough about him to give him a realistic alt mode.

I’d love to see them include Overrun too as like a surprise gift for the first production run and a nod to “bendy” Prime. I still have the Micron Desentsu version I found at a second hand store MISB like 4 years ago. I love that figure.