It's split in two. The plastic tip of the nosecone folds up inside, and the tip of the 'nosecone' in bot mode is a separate diecast piece permanently attached to his crotch.

 

i reached out to tcp and they replied today saying they’ll get it in 30 days

 

I dont have my copy yet, but I concur.
Clearly, the difference is the result of Phoenix's inaccurate transformation scheme; The forearms forming front of the fuselage - result is a jet nose that simply sticks forward too long. It just feels proportionally off and then I dont care if it has a few gaps less. Both Phoenix's leg ends stick out too far from the backpack as well, making the gap inbetween them even more pronounced.

Furthermore, there's a tonload of screwholes and pins/rivets on Phoenix. People just need to compare the underside of the wings on Phoenix to MP57's wings and tell me which ones actually look clean. I mean, that amount of screwholes/pinheads doesnt jive with the toon aesthetic of today's MP's....at all.

As for the overall robot mode aesthetics; I know, subjectuve interpretation & preference, but to me Phoenix looks too rectangular and blocky. I vastly prefer the slanted, triangular lines on MP57, a more dynamic kind of look.

 

Kronos better than Siege 
Iirc that version was raked over the coals severely.

 

Optimus brought closer to Skyfire from this chart: The *Definitive* Sunbow Scale Chart

that fucker is huge

 

Finally a proper SkyFire. Sold my T30 and Siege JetFire to partially fund and make room for this guy.

Only remaining ones.

 

yeah I must admit I’m baffled at TT making him so small. But it is what it is

 

I dunno, perhaps it's good that he's the size he is; potential plastic bending/warping if he'd be bigger.

 

I owned Kronos. It was NOT good, and I had a perfect QC one.

 

Because hes big, actually more than big enough, for the Japanese market.

 

As long as Primes head is in the vicinity of SF’s elbow , I’m plenty satisfied.

 

The thing with Kronos is that visually it looks decent, the issues were really just the fact that it broke way too easily haha.

There's also actually another "MP" Skyfire attempt, Mechaform Sky Guardian. But uh... whilst the alt mode for that is decent, the robot mode... yeah not so much.

 

Ouch! 

 

Oof! I can’t un-see that.
Looks like he went to a head shrink or one of the Pygmys from The Mummy Returns.

 

Pretty sure Seige rates ahead of Kronos, greeble or not it was a failure of a figure. I still think Phoenix is a great figure , I just never thought it or their dinobots were a great as they we're hyped up or people were willing to pay for them.

 

From what I've seen, the average collector definitely seems to prefer figures that are scaled accurately if at all possible; once honoring scale results in robots that absolutely tower over the rest of the collection, however, most folks'll concede to the realities of the hobby. TV Skyfire falls into the same category as bots like Star Saber; they were so oversized on-screen that having the same scale reflected in plastic would probably be too cumbersome for a lot of displays/collections even though it'd be 100% correct.

 

Good point, well stated. I think having FansToys Phoenix for 6-7 years now has paved the way for what a lot us expected a TT MP Skyfire would display like, at least from a scale perspective. I’m actually surprised Takara let FT be the bigger bot and not try to outdo them.
Oh well, MP-57 looks great. Literally my only gripe is his size being a bit small. Maybe he will seem bigger once in hand?

 

Phoenix is nice, but the transformation takes so much strength that I am often afraid to try in case it breaks again. Also I got a toyhacks sticker set for him and whilst it looks amazing, i'm terrified that messing with him too much will make the stickers peel off like happened with the ones I got for my Siege Rainmakers.

Also Phoenix has pretty bad leg articulation...

 

I could use a little extra head room, I don’t mind Skyfire being a touch smaller for space

 

I'm very glad MP-57 isn't one millimeter taller than he already is. For me, the larger a character gets--even if it matches the scale chart--the less it feels in scale from an actual physical toy perspective. Yes, Skyfire is a behemoth according to the chart, but he often wasn't shown to be that large in the cartoon. Frankly, when a character's size is depicted inconsistently on the show, I prefer Takara to err on the smaller end of the scale as long as the size relative to other characters is accurate.