Official Images: Takara Tomy MP-13 Soundwave and MP-14 Red Alert

Ah these look good but I might skip.... The thing that kinda bothers me is that I'd rather see characters that were never given a good toy form.... Prime I understand (maybe not the 2 versions) and well grimlock is grimlock.. The other masterpieces... Rodimus, megs, starscream and co all had shitty toys and sorely needed decent homages.

The original sound wave toy was IMHO one of the best g1 toys as It was close to the cartoon.. This version doesn't bring much more to the table.. For the price I'd liked to have seen some mp3 playing gimmick or some proper mass shifting lol. Sideswipe though was a blockformer looked like his cartoon self in both molds, besides which the classics versions are very good.

Ultra Magnus and Galvatron... Now those would be masterpieces worth selling a kidney for..

Very nice pic. Can´t wait until they are released.

Damn, these look good. Soundwave has a little more silver in him than I expected. I absolutely love the energon cube gimmick! I'm genuinely impressed by laserbeak too. I wish he was standing next to Prime in the last picture for a good size comparison.

MP-Red Alert is a solid repaint/remold. I think I may like him even more than Sideswipe.

amcgrath929 wrote:I wish he was standing next to Prime in the last picture for a good size comparison.

If memory serves right, I believe he's about the same height as Optimus, maybe half an inch shorter.

Soundwave is just gorgeous, as is Laserbeak.

And all those new pictures of Sideswipe finally forced me to put in a pre-order for one with Robotkingdom.

Still not at all keen on the fake shoulder wheels of Red Alert.

robotmel wrote:I thought Red Alert would have been the cooler of the the two but seeing those fake wheels stuck on his shoulders, what was the thinking behind all that then?
I mean, theres none attached to Sideswipes shoulders as they are shown in the transformation as being tucked in under bonnet (hood)sooooo...?

Red Alert in the cartoon had wheels on his shoulders in robot mode, while Sideswipe didn't in his animation model.



Masterpieces seem to be focussed on this animation similarity for the robot modes: hence the shoulder wheels on Red Alert and the lack of those wheels on Sideswipe. Logically, Sideswipe was the main inspiration, while Red Alert was the 'afterthought'. Of course, for true cartoon accuracy, those wheels on Red Alert should be much bigger, but design constraints made that impossible.

Ravage XK wrote:Is it only me that thinks the finish quality on Soundwave is terrible?

I notioced that myself.
I might be mistaken, but these pictures of Soundwave look to me to be handpainted. It's even more visible on Laserbeak. In that case, the production version of both will be a lot neater.

That sure looks like an SD card slot on the left side of Soundwave in the first pic.

Those slots... Are strange. It's not detail that's obvious in robot mode, and the location in alt mode isn't very visible either. As plain details, they might just as well been left out. Actually, I can't even really see where that part with the slots moves to in robot mode: it seems like those parts fold into the rear of his legs? The legs are the parts with the most available bulk to them to contain something like electronics: his main torso needs to contain a maximum of three casettes, so that will not have much available space.

Adding an MP3 player isn't very expensive, and the (pretty hefty) retail price for this item would definitely allow for something extra. The attachment below is the relevant detail, taken from the Amazon.jp site.

Sold.... Takara just take all my money.. Thanks..

SOUNDWAVE SUPERIOR, inferior mp-14's can suck it for all i care.