TimothyR wrote:Bowspearer wrote:TimothyR wrote:Bowspearer wrote:Except that it's not just about scale; everything from MP-10 onwards is cartoon accurate. With one or two exceptions, the others of the line weren't and those that were, were happy accidents. Everything from MP-10 onwards however has been deliberately designed with that paradigm in mind.
i always thought that all of the MP's were designed with toon accuracy in mind. grimlock and hot rod definitely were.
hell, i think hot rod is more accurate that mp10 is.
i think the initial starscream mold is the only figure that you could really make a case for.. especially with his original colors. i think at that point they were trying to make a G1 looking real life jet (if that makes sense)
you could say MP05.. but, at that point in time, i don't think they thought outside the box enough to make a better looking robot. hopefully they'll give it another try.
but MP01 definitely seems like they were going for toon accuracy. to me, MP01's chest looks more accurate than 10's.
I'd agree that from Grimlock onwards, it was definitely heading that way, however it wasn't until MP-10 that the reboot was official - where he's deliberately in scale with everything beyond MP-10 and where there's a definite move to Cartoon accuracy.
You're way off base with everything else. Prime and Magnus were designed to be in scale with and compatible with the BT line - if you don't believe me, check out MP-04's box art, which clearly shows the interaction between it and BT Meister (? iirc). Furthermore the Jets weren't even in scale with Prime and Magnus, neither was Megatron. There are countless pics out there showing size differences if you want to dispute that.
Edit: found the following image with Tracks and Ginrai to show MP-01/02/04 in scale with the BT line:
way off base?
just because binaltechs could fit in his trailer does not mean that prime was made for that line.. otherwise he wouldn't have been called a masterpiece and packaged completely differently.
and you say check out MP04's trailer.. well, there you go.. MP04.. not even MP01, the line had already started.
megatron and prime's molds were bigger because they were the two main characters in transformers.
MP10 is definitely not the beginning of "2.0" .. i don't see how you don't see that.
i believe takara began with MP01.. then they figured okay, that went well.. let's try more characters. and once they realized that people would rather have more in scale figures.. they gave us a second prime which would fit the scale that they had started with starscream.
if mp10 was the beginning of "2.0" .. then how do you explain the heights of starscream, grimlock, and hot rod?
It turns out that in addition to being way off base, your entire argument can't even maintain its own logical consitency.
As Hasbro releases are essentially irrelevant to the development of the Masterpiece line, I'm going to focus entirely on the Takara/Takara-Tomy releases.
First off, at best, you could claim that the original Masterpiece Convoy was based around how the original toy would have been made were it made by today's standards.
However that argument completely falls apart when you get to the next Masterpiece figure- Ultra Magnus. Magnus was designed around his Dreamwave comics appearance in G1, Vol 2, issue 6. That is a statement of fact as the booklet he comes with proves this in spades.
Then you have Starscream at MP-03. Starscream's design, though an F-15, is completely cartoon inaccurate and actually defaults back to the design acumen I brought up with MP-01. The figure is coloured to be accurate to the standard colours of an F-15 in jet mode, is completely out of scale with Prime, and has side skirts far more in line with modern Japanese mecha design than either the original toy or the animation sheets it was based on. Furthermore even if you forget about the design being completely cartoon inaccurate, MP-03 is completely out of scale with MP-01. In fact the only similarity the figure originally had with MP-01 was the price point at retail.
Then you Have MP-04. The fact is that the trailer released with this version of Convoy was intentionally designed to work with Binartech figures (as an aside, I have yet to see a credible explanation as to why it's Binaltech as opposed to Binartech as the typical Japanese marketing convention with names is to amalgamate 2 English words as opposed to 3 which is what would be required with Binaltech) rather than it being coincidental. This was proven by the official promo pics which showed up on fan2fan at the time when it went up for preordering.
Then there is MP-05, which again was based around MP-01's design acumen, and much like MP-01, MP-02 and MP-04, is completely out of scale with MP-03. In fact at this point, it was MP-03 that was the exception rather than the rule.
Then you cave MP-06 and MP-07. Both are not only in more toy accurate colours, but again the jet paint schemes are far more consistent with how a custom painted F-15 would look than cartoon accuracy- as indicated by the colours of the back air vents. As with MP-03 the figures have completely cartoon inaccurate, mecha style side skirts.
At this point, the line has had nothing whatsoever to do with producing a toy line which is entirely based around producing a line that is consistently cartoon accurate. You might try and argue about Convoy's axe and Matrix and Megatron's mace, however the Takara Transformers Collection reissues already retconned the G1 toys to include these as accessories.
Then you get to MP-08 and MP-09. Certainly in the Case of Grimlock, you could argue that cartoon accuracy was driving him. Not only were his weapons actually stripped down to those he had in the cartoon, but his accessories (with the exception of MP-08X which was intended to be comic accurate) were entirely carton accurate and gased around his appearances in "Madman's Paradise" and "Grimlock's New Brain". The same could be said for Rodimus, although issues with his Matrix make that claim slightly shaky. However even if you ignore the Matrix issues, you still have a situation where MP-08 and MP-09 are exceptions in the line rather than the rule at this point. To be fair though, by MP-09, I have no doubt that a design paradigm shift was already planned, though unofficial.
MP-10 however does mark a shift into a Masterpiece 2.0 line, by virtue of being the first figure given a version 2.0 release. This was quickly followed up with a version 2.0 release of MP-03 in the form of MP-11. From this point, cartoon accuracy changed from being isolated to individual figures to being consistent in the entire line.
Did MP-03 have an influence on where the 2.0 line went in terms of the size and price point of figures? Given that the MP-03 body was merely significantly retooled (including retooled legs, torso and head - in other words, everything but the cockpit and arms) rather than an entirely different figure being produced, the answer would be definitely. However the only contributions it has arguably made were in terms of those of a size:price point ratio. However your assertion that somehow MP-03 was the norm, when the fact is that it had to be radically re-engineered to fit with the "Masterpiece 2.0" in the form of MP-11, is both completely baseless and outright wrong.
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