The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

[M'Kyuun]

I was just notified that my copy of Mixmaster shipped so by this time next week, I should be able to assemble my first official Devastator. Something to look forward to.

[davidwhangchoi]

On 10/1/2025 at 4:20 PM, mikeszekely said:

I'm not going to judge the MPG line based on a repaint of a decade-plus old MP... I mean, with the old MP line dead where else does it go?  And with SS86 and Missing Link Soundwaves hitting in 2026 I don't blame Takara packing Soundwave into every line while he's fresh on people's minds.

I will, however, judge MPG based on their original molds.  Granted, so far the only one I've picked up was Super Ginrai, and he was rather underwhelming.  He was, in my opinion, a premium price for a toy that could have been in Generations if they dumped some of the accessories and chrome, and he suffered from a number of tolerance issues (the Super head liked to pop loose, the truck panels on the legs wouldn't stay tabbed in, too much wiggle in between ratchet clicks, etc).  But these days you haven't really Ginrai-ed until you God Ginrai, so now I also picked up MPG Godbomber.

My first impressions aren't too bad.  He's a lighter figure, but you kind of expect that on a figure with a largely hollow torso who breaks down into components that have to be supported by another toy's joints.  His joint tolerances seem better, too, and whether that's actually from Takara paying more attention and tightening him up or simply because the joints don't have to work as hard to support the weight, who can say.  The colors are pretty on-point (his pelvis could maybe stand to be a little darker).

Cartoon accuracy does seem to be a little less pressing in MPG than the original MP line, though.  His proportions are definitely a bit more heroic, with more of a tapered waist, higher wings, and massive forearms that put the fins closer to his shoulders than his elbows.  But perhaps the oddest choice is how is shoulder cannon sits.  There's a black part with a 5mm port attached to the top of his torso.  The instructions would have you fold it back, then the 5mm peg on the cannon is on an elaborate hinge system to angle the peg so it's pointing forward, allowing it to plug into the black piece.  There's even a support piece that folds out from the front of the cannon to help brace it.  But the thing is, there's a 5mm port on to the top of his back you could use without all the extra hinges on the cannon or the black part on his torso.

I guess that segues into accessories.  Well, you've got the aforementioned cannon, which is the only thing I think Godbomber really needs.  The missile can be removed, but it's not spring-loaded or anything.  Takara also gives you some more of the blast effect parts that came with Super Ginrai, little unarticulated slugs for the Headmaster Juniors, a trailer adapter, two stand adapters, and a big ol' sword because of that one time in that one episode.

At first I thought Godbomber's head might be a ball joint, because he can't look down much but he's got fantastic upward tilt and good sideways tilt in addition to swiveling, but closer inspection reveals a rivet swivel and separate hinges for sideways and upward tilt.  His shoulders swivel on a ratchet and they ratchet nearly 90 degrees laterally; make sure you're using the actual shoulder joint and not the transformation joint.  He's also got some butterfly hinges that bring his shoulders foreward 90 degrees.  He's got bicep swivels above his elbows, which bend just under 90 degrees, then another swivel below the elbow.  His wrists swivel, and his hands can bend backward.  His thumbs have a hinge at the base for pinching.  His other fingers are pinned at the base and mid-knuckle, with the index fingers being separate from the other fingers.  His waist can swivel 45 degrees to the left or right, but that's good enough for most poses.  His hip skirts move so his hips can ratchet about 90 degrees forward, just under 90 degrees laterally, and about 45 degrees backward.  His thighs swivel, and his knees ratchet a little more than 90 degrees.  No toe tilts, but his ankles pivot nearly 90 degrees on ratchets.

If you mount his shoulder cannon the official way, it can tilt down a bit or back so that it's straight up in the air, though you'll likely need to fold the support back in and you'll expose another handle if you bend it back too far.  If you just plugged it into the port on his back it can't tilt down, but it can still tilt up about 45 degrees.  The blast effects can plug into the guns on his forearms, as well as the blue details on the left side of his chest.  Godbomber can also hold the sword by plugging a tab on the handle into a slot on fingers.  His hands are too small to really close around the handle, though.

The transformation for Godbomber's not bad!  They didn't totally try to avoid partsforming like the Legends toy (which left it with needlessly complicated hinges to move the chest without disconnecting it, but they also didn't design him to totally come apart then get pieced back together like the G1 toy.  Instead, the front of his torso splits from the back half, taking his arms, head, and wings with it.  The crotch opens, allowing his hips to slide forward, then his legs come up and over his crotch and tab together.  Some flaps fold out of his back, and the unpainted, unchromed gray bits fold and tuck down so that tabs on them are pointing toward what will become the back of the vehicle.  Meanwhile, on the other part, the head folds in, the wings move out of the way, and the shoulders drop.  Things need to turn so that inside of the shoulder joint is now facing outside and the arms can swing and tab together.  Joints in the wings tuck into the spaces his shoulder joints were occupying, then they fold upward.  This bit uses some tabs to plug into his shins on the other part, then panels swing out from the sides of his legs to fill in the sides of the vehicle, tabbing into his bumper and the unpainted gray flaps.  The fins on the arms can tilt inward, giving you the clearance to plug the cannon into the black part.  For this mode, the cannon's peg is folded up so it goes straight down into the black part, but it seems like now would have been a better time to use those hinges to position the cannon so that the fins wouldn't have been in the way in the first place.

Aside from having to tilt the fins in to give the cannon room, I don't have any complaints about Godbomber's alt mode.  The mechanical detail on the inside of the shoulder joint is cartoon accurate, and a blue panel rotates up from the leg panels to help fill in the area around Godbomber's hands.  The proportions are about what you'd expect, and the whole thing holds together pretty solidly once everything is tabbed together right.

Godbomber's wings can fold down, and the boosters on them can rotate 180 degrees.  This allows you to plug the effect parts into them for a flying trailer mode.

Alt mode is also where most of the other accessories we haven't talked about come into play.  For example, the front opens to reveal and nicely-painted interior.  The Headmaster Junior slugs can sit inside, but here's where things get weird.  There are little slots at the bottom of the brown-painted seats, and tabs on the bases of the Juniors.  The tabs are on their front sides, so they can plug into the slots in the seats but they're facing backward.

Another alt mode accessory is the trailer adapter.  See, Godbomber's bumper but has a bit that flips out with a peg on the underside.  But there isn't clearance under Godbomber for Ginrai's legs, so you can plug the adapter into the trailer port on Ginrai and it adds a new port behind his feet, so he can tow Godbomber.

I'd expect that most people who bought Godbomber bought MPG Super Ginrai, not MP non-Super Ginrai, though.  Super Ginrai's trailer already has a port that can fold out from the rear, allowing Godbomer to attach without any adapter needed.

Of course, most people who bought Godbomber weren't doing it for the double trailer, they were doing it to form God Ginrai.  Sadly, this is where things kind of fall apart for me.  First, Godbomber needs to be disassembled, because this time he's back to totally partsforming.  In fact, my first complaint is that there are actually more parts than before.  See, you remember how I was just saying that Godbomber's forearms seemed to big?  Well, you have to open them up, and flip around Godbomber's hands to reveal another set of slightly larger hands.  Bigger forearms and bigger hands make God Ginrai's arms look a little small, so red parts are removed from inside Godbomber's waist to peg into his Ginrai's shoudlers, making them also look bigger... from some angles.  From other angles now they're horribly hollow, and to add insult to injury they don't stay pegged in particularly well.  The forearms don't fare much better, eschewing the Combiner Wars-style sliding connector on Godbomber for a 5mm peg into Ginrai's forearms.  Which brings me to my second big complaint, one of Godbomber's forearms was misassembled.  It had no bearing on Godbomber's robot or alt modes, but the flap with the peg was installed backward, so I had to take part the arm (five screws) and turn it around before I was able to connect it to Ginrai at all.  Godbomber's legs side off his hips, again, Combiner Wars-style.  The toe folds out, the thigh folds in, and the red detail on Godbomber's shins have to fold out, spin 180, and fold back in the reveal the connectors for Ginrai's feet.

The front of Godbomber's torso splits again, so the pelvis detatches, which seems kind of unnecessary since it reattaches to the same part, just by folding the hips back, lifting the hip skirts, and plugging the skirts into Godbomber's waist.  That whole contraption will fit, loosely, onto Ginrai's back, with tabs on the trailer hitch plugging into slots under Godbomber's neck to help secure it into place.  Finally, Godbomber's back and butt slide over Ginrai's cab and tab into two places on each side... IF you have Ginrai's cab seated exactly right.  If it's off even a little Godbomber won't fit over properly and can't tab into place.

Aside from the new fists (which are articulated exactly the same as the smaller Godbomber fists), all of God Ginrai's joints are the same as his Super Ginrai ones and he has the same articulation as before.  The cannon plugs into ports where the top sides of the trailer folded up onto his back, using the same folded-in configuration as Godbomber's alt mode.  You can also fold out a handle from the cannon and have God Ginrai hold it in his hands using a slots that plug into the fingers, just like the sword (which, despite being held in larger hands, is still too big to really close the fingers around).  And he does look pretty good... assuming you can keep him together.  Again, I had the head popping up from the cab, the shoulder armor popping off, and the truck panels not staying folded against his legs.  Plus, there are joints that extend Ginrai's shoulders to outward a bit for God Ginrai mode that help make him look proportional with all the extra kibble, but using those joints made his shoulders kind of droopy.

On it's own, I kind of like MPG Godbomber.  I think it's one of the better Godbomber toys around, with decent articulation and all-around solid robot and alt modes.  But again, most people want Godbomer to complete God Ginrai.  Putting together God Ginrai was frustrating, and keeping him together is nearly as frustrating.  To be fair, a lot of the issues are still issues with Super Ginrai; poor tolerances, and the need to have little Ginrai's knees bend just right to line up his legs just so to seat him properly in Super mode.  But some of it is still on Godbomber.  He commands a premium price because he comes with accessories I don't actually want or need, plus a few things like the hinges in his cannon mount and the fact that you have to open is over-sized forearms to fold in his hands and fold out slightly larger hands when one pair of hands for both Godbomber and God Ginrai would have sufficed are over-engineered in ways that do nothing except inflate the parts count and price.

I think, if for some reason Godbomber is like your favorite character and you really want a good toy of him and don't care about Ginrai or combinations, then yeah, MPG Godbomber is probably the best Godbomber toy ever released.  Go pick one up!  But I don't otherwise recommend him... as an accessory for Ginrai he's just ok, but the real issue is that Super Ginrai isn't good enough to recommend in the first place.  Which, I suppose, is a really long-winded way of saying I agree with @lechuck— MPG does feel subpar.

@mikeszekely You know what really was disappointing with MP God Ginrai(Power Master Prime)?

 

They had an opportunity to make him as the artwork on the original box with the cab folded in the chest recessed to perfectly line up in the housing of the trailer. Instead, it's sticks out like the crappy g1 toy.

i want a power master prime! 

 

Edited Friday at 02:36 AM by davidwhangchoi

[mikeszekely]

8 hours ago, J.T. Silversmith said:

You said the shoulder joints looked a little droopy, Did you know there is a tiny sliding lock to hold the shoulder expansion joint at an exact angle, you might have missed in your transformation.

I saw that the instructions were indicating something, but the drawing for that step was not at all clear.  I'm happy to rescind my complaint about droopy shoulders, but everything else still stands- Godbomber is ok on his own, Super Ginrai has issues, combining the two into God Ginrai exacerbates those issues.

[J.T. Silversmith]

I am sorry that the Quality control is so bad on your copy of the trailer and Super Ginrai. I have not had the problems getting the panels on the leg to hold together.  My copy spends most of its time asSuper ginrai or God Ginrai and I enjoy the set quite a lot. I did have to tighten the pegs on the extra shoulder armor for god Ginrai with a clear top coat (Pledge with FUTURE Shine). That said the QC in my Cab robot makes me unhappy.  One of the little chrome tabs one one of my exhaust pipes was cracked out of the box and snapped off when I tried to transform it the first time.  The other tab is still fine.  I have not has as much trouble with the iegine popping off as some people.  I do really dislike the hip joints.  The hip dropping mechanism is always too loose, and the distance the legs spread going too the first detent on the hips spreads his legs too far to look good.

I do think there could have been a better way to tuck the arms in better on the trailer, and i ordered the DNA design set for super Ginrai to see if it improves things.

[pengbuzz]

19 hours ago, davidwhangchoi said:

@mikeszekely You know what really was disappointing with MP God Ginrai(Power Master Prime)?

 

They had an opportunity to make him as the artwork on the original box with the cab folded in the chest recessed to perfectly line up in the housing of the trailer. Instead, it's sticks out like the crappy g1 toy.

i want a power master prime! 

 

Wondering if someone could make an add-on kit for this that corrects the chest issue (extend the sides a bit so they line up with the cab)? Perhaps 3D printing could help with that; I'll have to check Yeggi and see if anyone has addressed this yet.

[sh9000]

Retro G1 Wheelie and Outback.

[mikeszekely]

As much as I don't like Wheelie, I kinda like that Wheelie.  I'm definitely in for Outback, been expecting him since they did Brawn.  Still waiting on Swerve...

[Hikuro]

Outback would be rather very much on the list of want since he's had some season 3 episodes. Wheelie though, he looks different. Maybe it's the neon colors throwing me off, but he doesn't even look like the Legacy mold. But I think unless I can view him in person I'll probably pass. I'm still really happy with my Titans Return variant. 

[Scyla]

I got Binaltech Laserwave to finish my Binaltech/Alternators collection (of two items, the other is Nemesis Prime).

The RX-8 is nicely painted (and super heavy due to all the die cast; almost to a detriment). I especially like how the transformation changes the seats and floor of the car to the, nicely tapered, lower torso. 

Of course on mine the hood pops up constantly during transformation. The fact that is made out of die-cast doesn’t help with that because it is so heavy.

There are some outdated solutions on the figures like not having a thigh swivel - which I hate because you cannot achieve natural looking poses - but overall I’m quite happy.

It is so nice to have something that is not G1 Shockwave. I’m super excited for the Shockwhale and the Kuro Kara Kuri SG Longarm that was revealed this week. Funny how Shockwave is a Jazz/Meister retool quite often now.

[Scyla]

The other item I got was Mattel Hot Wheels Nemesis Prime.

It is similar to Binaltech Laserwave in that he is made out of a lot of metal, a wheeled vehicle and probably the last piece of my Mattel Hot Wheels collection I need (). I can’t see how they could make more characters I want.

The only other Transformer I could think about would be Cliffjumper.

As for Nemesis Prime, as something that was  scheduled for November it arrived very early. 

Nemesis Prime is super tiny and as someone who never owned a G1 Optimus Prime he is kinda interesting and neat. However, with no nostalgia for either Hot Wheels nor Optimus I feel I’m missing out on the main appeal of the piece.

So he feels like an expensive novelty in the same way the Missing Link Transformers feel like an expensive novelty to me. 

Looking at the current aftermarket prices they don’t seem too outrageous to me and I don’t see them skyrocketing like Optimus did. So if you are interested to check it out, and missed the preorder, now might be a good time to buy one from the aftermarket. 

Edited 21 hours ago by Scyla

[Hikuro]

I used to have a ton of the Alternator figures, think the only one I didn't own was Rumble since it was I think a comic con exclusive. If I recall correctly the only one I might have left is either Optimus or Nemesis. Sold all the other ones.