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I had to split watching the video over two days because I was getting angrier with each minute. I am NOT happy with what I saw. I was going into detail on Twitter but here are the bullet points:

-The sword blade HAS to store in the back, that is an iconic part of the character and original toy. The blade also looks WAY too short.

-The hilt is ok for toy accuracy but way too big for anime, also I still don't think the sword will be able to be held in animation style accurately, not enough clearance in the forearms. The MP covered this by including a smaller hilt that looks and works great.

-Unpegging the arms don't make them butterfly joints, you're just undoing the transformation for it to work.

-They ruined the head gimmick, I'm pretty sure the Robot Master and/or the Candy Toy kit worked out a way to have the helmet attach and turn, the MP did this perfectly.

-They ruined the Brainmaster gimmick on Saber, I hope the final piece isn't clear plastic or that's just going to start a clock on the life of this figure.

Victory Leo looks really, really good and is the best part of the set.

If this was a mass retail toy then I would say it'll be one of the best, if not the best toys ever made, but seeing as how this is a crowdfunded, made-to-order collector's item it needed to be way, way better. Unfortunately, it's too late now. At least we're finally getting a stand to use with other figures.

I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

chuckdawg1999 wrote:If this was a mass retail toy then I would say it'll be one of the best, if not the best toys ever made, but seeing as how this is a crowdfunded, made-to-order collector's item it needed to be way, way better. Unfortunately, it's too late now. At least we're finally getting a stand to use with other figures.

It's no excuse for a HasLab project, but the rumors/speculations were what this is a "water testing" project to gauge interest in N. America of Japanese TF characters in a mass retail market/budget down the road. HasLab was the platform Hasbro chose to do this with the least risk. That's why the mold is very mass retail in terms of design. But they increased the paint app budget.

I do think the theory is more likely than not credible for this HasLab VS project's intent. In that light, all the maddening stuffs you mentioned are understandable. Otherwise, they could've go for a HasLab Primus/Cybertron after Unicorn (Or maybe that'll never happen considering Unicorn almost couldn't be funded).

American funders had it (relatively) good. Hasbro's not asking that much more than a mass retail price considering what we're getting (with all the extra Tier unlocks). We in Canada have to pay for expensive extra shipping (comes out to $237.28USD total), we're in even more pain than you guys in the US of A.

This video is making me very excited to finally get the figures in hand. I'm glad I backed this!

cloudballoon wrote: We in Canada have to pay for expensive extra shipping (comes out to $237.28USD total), we're in even more pain than you guys in the US of A.

Not that painful especially if we buy two. Plus the total price is around the same as your average titan before the prices increase.

Interestingly enough, they seem to have used one of the "test shots" of Earthrise Optimus Prime for these comparison shots with this colored engineering prototype. Note the blue biceps, gray hands, and yellow eyes.

ZeroWolf wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

Why wouldn't they? Wasn't they going to do that with mp beast wars megatron....



Way too small for my liking plus Leo is too short. Pretty good but def not a mini mp. Even if third party's oversize it might as well stick to the mp.

blackeyedprime wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

Why wouldn't they? Wasn't they going to do that with mp beast wars megatron....



Way too small for my liking plus Leo is too short. Pretty good but def not a mini mp. Even if third party's oversize it might as well stick to the mp.

Easy, because this is all hasbro, thus all proceeds go to Hasbro. Masterpieces are Takara's baby. Also too small? This victory Saber looks big enough, he wasn't massive as Liokaiser was bigger then him.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:"Wing Saber"?

Yeah?

I mean, I get the reference, do you not?

He called the toy "Wing Saber".

Is that not what the Cybertron toy is called?

Not that, the HasLab toy.

ZeroWolf wrote:

blackeyedprime wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

Why wouldn't they? Wasn't they going to do that with mp beast wars megatron....



Way too small for my liking plus Leo is too short. Pretty good but def not a mini mp. Even if third party's oversize it might as well stick to the mp.

Easy, because this is all hasbro, thus all proceeds go to Hasbro. Masterpieces are Takara's baby. Also too small? This victory Saber looks big enough, he wasn't massive as Liokaiser was bigger then him.

Hasbro released dozens of Masterpiece figures before the agreement to sell Takara figures directly in the same packaging overseas. And Hasbro has been designing Masterpiece Bayformers so it wouldn’t be surprising if they re released MP Star Saber and crowdfunded an MP Victory Leo. I’m not saying it’s a bad figure I think it looks cool I just feel it’s more in line with something anyone can pick up while running errands on the weekend not something exclusive like a 20 pound 3 foot tall behemoth.

GrangerPerry wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

blackeyedprime wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

Why wouldn't they? Wasn't they going to do that with mp beast wars megatron....



Way too small for my liking plus Leo is too short. Pretty good but def not a mini mp. Even if third party's oversize it might as well stick to the mp.

Easy, because this is all hasbro, thus all proceeds go to Hasbro. Masterpieces are Takara's baby. Also too small? This victory Saber looks big enough, he wasn't massive as Liokaiser was bigger then him.

Hasbro released dozens of Masterpiece figures before the agreement to sell Takara figures directly in the same packaging overseas. And Hasbro has been designing Masterpiece Bayformers so it wouldn’t be surprising if they re released MP Star Saber and crowdfunded an MP Victory Leo. I’m not saying it’s a bad figure I think it looks cool I just feel it’s more in line with something anyone can pick up while running errands on the weekend not something exclusive like a 20 pound 3 foot tall behemoth.

My point was more that this was Hasbro's baby exclusively through money via haslab, unlike masterpieces (the non-mpm stuff which has to go through Takara.)

In any case, if hasbro had believed this could sell at retail they would have done it, but as the theory goes, this was a test to see the fan demand for representation of Japanese G1. What better way then fans putting money where their mouths are with the haslab system.

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

blackeyedprime wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:I bought Unicron because it honestly felt like a figure of such magnitude would be impossible to create outside of crowdfunding. But this is odd I feel a re release of masterpiece star saber and then crowdfunding masterpiece Victory Leo would have made more sense. This just seems like a standard toy you find at Walmart even with additional paint apps added to the final

Why would Hasbro re-release something that Takara did? This is purely Hasbro's baby and is Generations styling. I doubt they would have been brave enough to try a retail CC release of Star Saber, besides, this way offers no risk to Hasbro.

Why wouldn't they? Wasn't they going to do that with mp beast wars megatron....



Way too small for my liking plus Leo is too short. Pretty good but def not a mini mp. Even if third party's oversize it might as well stick to the mp.

So I have the MP. This is what I wanted, not another Masterpiece. The MP Star Saber is too dang big to fit into a CHUG shelf. It's not far off asthetically, but the sheer bulk of it, he should not be able to ab crunch Skyfire and he looks like he could.

This toy is not perfect; I agree with many of Chuckdawgs gripes, but where I lose track is the idea that this was going to be anything other than a Generations Star Saber. The first giveaway was the fact that they priced this as a Titan at what is estimated to be a third to a quarter of the average production run. The final sales number blew out that threshold so the data skews somewhat on the final balance, but the important fact is that they budgeted for 10k units at what was it 193? Yes, they could have made MP2.0 Victory Saber and it would have e cost $400 and done all of what the original MP did but I feel like ot was very clear from the get go they wanted to make a more budget accessible, (realizing that Ha a Lab is not an accessable platform) Generations style Victory Saber.

So I am happy with the sword stowing on the back and the blade having to go somewhere else if it was sacrificed to make the toy work better, which it seems it was. I would have liked a second sword blade that was longer.

I am growing weary of these bellbottom sleeved robots that cannot hold their weapons the right way, Siege Ultra Magnus.

I would not have minded Star Saber being slightly taller, in order to make Saber slightly bigger. I want to see him with the Earthrise Seekers because I am totally doing a dogfight scene and I worry he is going to be tiny.

I actually expected Leo to be closer to Leader than he is, and NY rights he should be closer to Star Saber in height, but I like what we are getting here. I do feel like a flip up 5mm peg in the platform shoes mode to allow him to weaponize would not ha e gone amiss, might have been able to further secure the combination joint, and stow out of the way if not. Likewise, if they had put some 5mm ports in the lion paws then we would have e had two more ports on Victory Sabers back for storage and I could put blast effects in the paws like he is flying in Lion Mode Voltron style. Is it too late to change the tooling?

I really don't care about the whole Brainmaster thing. The detachable head is not my fave, but I don't really care either. I hope Chuck is wrong about that plastic being on a clock.

My OCD wants the V Lock Cannon to mount symmetrically. Maybe I can belly mount it with the stand hole?

And to echo Chuckdawg; if you have to design the shoulders rjoint to come apart so he can two hand his sword then so be it, but detaching his shoulder does not a butterfly joint make.

So far Haslab has crowdfunded the main antagonist of the first movie and the final leader of the g1 autobots. I just hope we’re not seeing a trend starting where they hold off on the key characters to get your money early. If Legacy Deathsaurus gets announced the aftermarket price is doubling immediately

GrangerPerry wrote:So far Haslab has crowdfunded the main antagonist of the first movie and the final leader of the g1 autobots. I just hope we’re not seeing a trend starting where they hold off on the key characters to get your money early. If Legacy Deathsaurus gets announced the aftermarket price is doubling immediately

Dai Atlas was the final leader of the autobots in JG1 Animated fiction (Star Convoy took over from him in the non-animated continuation)

As for Deathsarus, someone on the design team was really pushing for him back in power of the primes...

Flashwave wrote:So I have the MP. This is what I wanted

I have the MP and this is not what I wanted

I think MP looks fine on a Chug shelf next to Jetfire especially with similar height to the G1 Starconvoy toy.

Glad there are those out there that like it -though I will be forever confused why they didnt buy the MP when it was hanging around cheap or a KO which hung around even longer. If the brainmaster was titan master sized and everything scaled up to match -with Leo being same height as Starsaber then maybe this toy might not seem as superfluous to me.

GrangerPerry wrote:Hasbro released dozens of Masterpiece figures before the agreement to sell Takara figures directly in the same packaging overseas. And Hasbro has been designing Masterpiece Bayformers so it wouldn’t be surprising if they re released MP Star Saber and crowdfunded an MP Victory Leo.

Yeah, it would be surprising. Even when Hasbro was doing their own color versions of MPs before simply importing TT's releases they almost always used molds that were actively being used by TT, they rarely (if ever) pulled out a mold for their own use. Since Hasbro's only involvement with Masterpiece designing is MPM it would be weird for them to suddenly decide to finish something Takara Tomy started. So there's no real reason to think they'd just randomly use the Star Saber mold when TT isn't actively doing the same and had no intention of doing the figure in the first place (it won a poll).

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

GrangerPerry wrote:Hasbro released dozens of Masterpiece figures before the agreement to sell Takara figures directly in the same packaging overseas. And Hasbro has been designing Masterpiece Bayformers so it wouldn’t be surprising if they re released MP Star Saber and crowdfunded an MP Victory Leo.

Yeah, it would be surprising. Even when Hasbro was doing their own color versions of MPs before simply importing TT's releases they almost always used molds that were actively being used by TT, they rarely (if ever) pulled out a mold for their own use. Since Hasbro's only involvement with Masterpiece designing is MPM it would be weird for them to suddenly decide to finish something Takara Tomy started. So there's no real reason to think they'd just randomly use the Star Saber mold when TT isn't actively doing the same and had no intention of doing the figure in the first place (it won a poll).

Emerje

I was thinking of that poll the other day, did they do a breakdown of who got what votes?

ZeroWolf wrote:I was thinking of that poll the other day, did they do a breakdown of who got what votes?

Note that only three figures on that poll even got MPs despite Armada Prime placing second.

Emerje

ZeroWolf wrote:I was thinking of that poll the other day, did they do a breakdown of who got what votes?

This Japanese blog is the only place I could find that still has pics of all eleven commanders with their voting percentages.

ZeroWolf wrote:Easy, because this is all hasbro, thus all proceeds go to Hasbro. Masterpieces are Takara's baby.

Factually incorrect. Takara gets a cut of ALL transforming toys Hasbro makes.

Flashwave wrote:And to echo Chuckdawg; if you have to design the shoulders rjoint to come apart so he can two hand his sword then so be it, but detaching his shoulder does not a butterfly joint make.

Disagree. We're getting into semantics, but the joint is about the movement. If designing the joint in that way allows for that movement, it's a butterfly.

It's exasperating when folks zero in on the "it HAS to be THIS way" flavor of critique. It risks coming off as entitled, and misses the forest for the trees.

Watching the video, I thought 2 things:

1. This toy was well worth the price of entry.

2. It's going to be a heck of a lot of fun.

Therefore, I am excited.

megatronus wrote:It's exasperating when folks zero in on the "it HAS to be THIS way" flavor of critique. It risks coming off as entitled, and misses the forest for the trees.

I think Transfans rank second only to Star Wars fans for whiny-ness if things aren't EXACTLY the way they should be...aka not G1 enough.

I agree. This looks like it's going to be a fun figure. And honestly, the price point isn't that far off based on its size. One figure is pretty much Commander class sized and the other is Leader class sized...PLUS you get a small deluxe. So Commander at $80, Leader at $55, and deluxe at $25. The total is is $160 and we invested $190. That's perfect...the extra is for custom packaging.

megatronus wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:Easy, because this is all hasbro, thus all proceeds go to Hasbro. Masterpieces are Takara's baby.

Factually incorrect. Takara gets a cut of ALL transforming toys Hasbro makes.

True, but I'd imagine more proceeds would go into Tamara's pocket of they were reissuing then simply going this route where takara will be getting the bare minimum owed.