Friday, December 8, 2017

Maketoys Meteor - Starscream

The Masterpiece Seekers and Coneheads are my least favorite Masterpiece figures. Increasingly bad engineering and lack of posability limit my enjoyment beyond having them stand in a line behind Megatron and Soundwave. While not perfect, Maketoys Meteor is a worthy alternative.

Jet mode looks alright. There are more panel lines than what I remember being in Masterpiece Acid Rain and Sunstorm. His underside has some gaps, but is fairly clean for a jet Transformer. He has three retractable landing gears, that may as well be struts because the "wheels" do not spin. The cockpit does open, but there is no cockpit detailing. His nosecone does not open so he probably does not have a radar dish inside it. He also does not have a deployable airbrake nor engine detailing. His vertical and horizontal stabilizers have one too many loose hinges that aggravate my OCD.

Transformation is involved, but not too complex. The legs are very reminiscent of Combiner Wars jets. Unfortunately, the nosecone and bits of the wings are prone to popping off. I do wish his horizontal stabilizers would tab to the back of his legs in robot mode. They tend to flap about when you manipulate his legs. Going back to jet mode is typical of Maketoys, with a last step of futilely lining up a bunch of little tabs. I wasn't able to get every panel to line up perfectly. His null rays cannot stay in place through transformation.

Maketoys seems to be aiming for that clean cartoon look. He's missing some details found in Masterpiece Starscream, like the linework in his shoulder pylons and the nipple fans. The body lines are a bit messy in a few places; most noticeably the forearms and hips. The back is not very clean, with all the visible hollow bits. I would have appreciated one more hinge in his butt flap so it could fold up smaller. My rather nitpicky complaint is that his head seems a bit small. His face is really dark. The red paint on his torso is nice and shiny, almost like Masterpiece Ironhide. The gold of his cockpit is simply beautiful. He has Die-cast in his back and pelvis. I believe his thighs are also Die-cast.

His head is on a ball joint. With the default head, you get a wide range of motion, except upward. His shoulders are on hinges and swivels. The swivels are not ratcheted, but there are hard stops on the four cardinal directions. As expected, his wings limit his reverse swing. He can raise his arms up and to his sides all the way up to 90 degrees. His double-jointed elbows can perform full curls. He swivels at his biceps, wrists, waist (yay!), and thighs. His thumbs are fixed. The rest of his fingers are single pinned. His pointing fingers articulate separately from the wrist and have an extra knuckle each. His waist swivel has a couple of hard stops. He has a forward and reverse ab crunch. His hips are on universals with ratchets along the front-to-back axis. He can perform a full side-splits and a full front splits. His knees are double-jointed with ratchets in the upper halves. They can curl well past 90 degrees. His feet are on rockers while his toes are on ratcheted double-jointed tilts.

His accessories include his null rays, two alternate "barrels", two alternate faces, and an alternate head. Despite not having any paint, his null rays look fine and can swivel on their pegs in his arms and wings and extend on double hinges. The alternate tips make the null rays resemble bombs for jet mode. His faces include his default neutral expression, a smirk face, and a scared face. The alternate head has the scared face, along with Despotron's hand choking him. Unfortunately, you have to pop the heads off the ball joint in order to use any of the alternates. Also, the choking head gimmick doesn't work that well because Despotron's wrist bangs into Meteor's chest. I suppose I can make it work with some creative camera angles.

What do I like more about Meteor over Masterpiece Starscream? He has much better articulation in his torso, legs, and feet. His alternate faces and heads are fun accessories. I also like his more cartoon driven aesthetic. His paint application seems more premium. His neck panel is even with his shoulders, which is something that really bugs me about the official Seekers. However, the panel gaps in his forearms are a bit unsightly. He doesn't come with a coronotion set or a mini-Despotron gun. Like the Masterpiece Seekers, his abdomen will detach from handling, albeit in a different way. Masterpiece Starscream has a much better head sculpt. Maybe it’s worth seeing if the heads are swappable. From what I remember of Acid Rain and Sunstorm, the Masterpiece jet mode looks and holds together a bit better.

Maketoys Meteor will go on my Maketoys shelf. It's a great stand-in that addresses some of the issues I had with the official Masterpiece version. Is it worth getting if you already have Masterpiece Starscream? For me, it is because I'm a huge fan of Maketoys figures. I'm definitely all in for the inevitable Skywarp and Thundercracker repaints and Coneheads remolds. If I had room to display jets, I'd display the Takara figures as jets and the Maketoys figures as robots. I hope Maketoys goes all out and gives us actual Tetrajets for the Welcoming Committee and Rainmakers.












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