Looks like it can be fiddled with to sit more flush.

 

At worse this is what Im expecting his neck to look like, not magnified by 100,which was apparently not an issue for the last 7 months.

 

Yeah.
PARTSFORMING, I TELL YA!!!
 

... and TRANSFORMERS RUINED FOREVER! of course ...

    

 

Well, if it's fixed or looks better then I will consider it

 

this is not a problem at all...buy it people  

 

Never change, @teemu8

 

I know, Takara can do no wrong  

 

Tilt that head to hide the floating..got it!

 

I mentioned last week how the leg transform looks similar to the vans, now I'm also thinking that instead of the hands sliding into the forearms it's actually the forearms that slide forward over the hands in Jeep mode. I could be wrong, but I don't see a slider tab or a panel that would get the hands in and out of the forearms.

Man, I'm loving these vehicle modes that have functions and gimmicks other than just rolling!

 

I imagine that would that eliminate the problem of wearing out the wrist joint and hands breaking off after repeated pull/push in/out.

 

That actually makes sense, looking at the engine too you can see more dark components on the ends of the arms than you can in robot mode. If the forearms slide forward, it could grant clearance to the rest of the arm to fold in half.

I think the car part of the chest disengages and rotates upward. The arms rotate inwards, I suspect from the bottom, and the forearms slide forward while the arms basically snap in half. A small panel rotates on a hinge into place over the wheel well to fill the gap from the shoulder. The stomach components kinda shuffle around to cradle the arms while the wheel flip out and around to cover the stomach sides. The back unfolds into those two door panels with the seat bottoms attached, if not the whole seats, to align themselves properly with the legs (whose conversion I’m still working out).

The shoulder launcher should be interesting...the missile itself and the front of the launcher flip up and over, and a panel that rests on the bottom of the previous part flips up. Seems to have some alt mode detailing too, maybe even deck plating. While Hound’s head’s armature flips under the hood, the launcher swings straight back like @Sam noticed and the launcher itself might even fit between the seats or the legs.

I wish I was good at diagrams.


@Samue1 , good to have you.

 

Welcome aboard chief!  

 

People nitpick all the toon accurate details, what makes design choices like this apparent floating head any different?

 

You guys are spot on with the forearm sliding forward.


The pin in the hand does suggests that the outer forearm slides forward over the hand. I’m seeing a pin in the right elbow and experience tells me there’s another pin that makes it a double-elbow.

Looking at the left elbow bend, looks to be double-jointed. Sliding the forearm forward will expose 100% of the double-jointed elbow joint.

Which achieves a 180* bend.

 

The pins in the front corners are no doubt for the butterfly joint. And the arms definitely flip out from underneath. My only question is, how are those side mirrors detachable? How do they stay mounted? The mirrors in this picture don’t look like the mirrors in the accessory photo. I wonder if they’ll look different from the promo photos upon release.

 

No more wrong than the usual trolls, ehhr, I mean comedians!

 

 

I think you’re right about the shoulders flipping out from underneath. How about sequence of transformations? I imagine the most of the mid-section needs to be rotated/transformered in order to move the head out of the engine compartment.

 

It looks to me like those extra panels beneath the sides of the Jeep come from the outer part of his calves—which means that the car detailing is what’s under those larger calf panels that must flip up onto the thighs.

Or they could potentially swing 180 and flip up under his robot mode feet because I don’t really see where they could go under the front portion of Hound’s vehicle mode.

 

I'm not entirely convinced that they can detach, it looks like there's a pin through the hinge to only allow the mirrors to fold down and up.


Mirrors folded down.


Mirrors flipped up.

Unless, the mirrors are c-clip style.

 

It’s absolutely ok to nitpick the design choices. But we need to verify that it’s actually an issue before canceling preorders. The neck may stay on the hood just fine. We aren’t sure yet. I agree that the neck armature isn’t ideal and if people don’t like the look of it that’s ok. But we shouldn’t assume it doesn’t work because of a few shots from a trade show display. I’m not saying you are canceling a preorder for that reason. I’m talking about the comments some have made about canceling over that shot of the floating head.

It reminds me of the MP-43 crotch crack debacle. There are a few cracked from the factory for sure because they were assembled wrong. But most copies appear to be fine and the Amazon Japan rating for that figure remains good which implies that there aren’t widespread issues. And yet people are returning the figure unopened, keeping it MISB out of fear of breakage upon opening, canceling preorders etc. And there’s no reason for any of that. It’s a fantastic figure.