First-Aid wrote:Honestly, I love details and detailing. I like the little tiny extras that make something different than before. havnig said that, when you put this new Unicron next to the Armada version it just looks....bland and boring. Monocolor face without highlights, matte orange paint pretty much everywhere...it may be a replica of the movie character, but it just doesn't have any character to me.
(ducks rocks thrown his way)
You guys ready for my harsh review of this figure?
I've got no rocks to throw your way, First-Aid, because I kind of agree with you. I was rather disappointed when I got this figure in hand. Somehow, I feel like the head sculpt is rather lackluster and looks less evil or angry that his Armada counterpart does. The head itself is an OK sculpt, but the implementation of the head was extremely disappointing to me. The head is just 5 pieces essentially ... the back half, the front half, the eyes, and the 2 horns.
It is extremely unfortunate that they made the sculpt with the face as part of the front half of the head sculpt instead of a separate piece that slides into the head piece (like many deluxe and voyager figures are like). Because of this oversight, you end up with a toy that has two layers of paint ... one with the dark gray which you can see on either side of his face and the whitish gray color they used for his face. Unfortunately, they painted the white OVER the gray, so you end up with small blemishes. I thought it was just a problem with mine, but after seeing two others with similar blemishes, it appears to be an issue with more than just mine. You can clearly see the 5 blemishes mine has in the following picture.
The plastic they used for the eyes is actually a greenish color, but they dropped the ball in my opinion by using a red light inside his head instead of a green light. I was really bummed about that after seeing that they had a way to do the light up green eyes with Unicron of Light.
And what's up with the light-up right hand? Do we, as collectors, really need this "feature" that I would be believe was intended for kids? I would rather that they have stripped out the light and the batteries used for this feature and given us a normal right hand. I don't think this is an item that is going to end up in a lot of kids' hands.
How about the "racing stripe" down the middle of his chest? I know they were trying to emulate the look of the G1 cartoon character, but to me it just ended up looking like a racing stripe. They should've either remolded the chest as well or taken some creative liberties with painting orange down the middle of chest that took advantage of some of the molded in lines in the toy. There had to be a better solution than this route.
Other issues I had with the toy:
- the choice of grey for the "planet" mode pieces. It ended up just looking wrong to me. I would have preferred a more metallic and lighter color.
- The horns also ended up with less paint detail than the original.
- I would've preferred the detailed look of the arms have been applied to the rest of the figure.
I don't like that the issues that I have with this figure were most likely considered at one point but dropped to save some money. I would rather have paid $200 for a figure done right than paid $150 for a half-assed figure. I'm very critical of paying this kind of money for a Transformers toy and it not being "right". I'm very frustrated about the blemishes on this toy's face. If I spend $150, it should not have blemishes on its face.
To sum up my thoughts about this figure ... if you own the Armada version and are more selective about which Transformers end up in your collection, then don't buy this unless you're an absolute G1 purist. If you don't own any previous version of this toy, I'd recommend it as long as you're ok with the imperfections I mentioned above. Personally, I wish I didn't have this thing. I would've rather they'd done it right than half assed.
First-Aid wrote:Oh and btw..."2131th"? Shouldn't it be "2131st"?
Fixed.
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