TF Views

Shockwave wrote:Eh, I kind of think Prowl just got a bad copy. Course, yours is one of the later ones from the run so they may have tweaked things a bit, but mine was one of the first and I personally didn't have any problems with it.

Most of my problems are pretty objective things that have little to do with quality control, unless there's Jazzes out there with totally different face-sculpts and chests that click into place. I didn't even mention the forearms in the litany of issues I rattled off because I know some people like those and they made a running change with molded-white forearms anyway.

Tigermegatron wrote:While some think the RTS Jazz toy has it's minuses/flaws. fact is, it's thus far the best updated homage new mold we have of Jazz based off the 1984 cartoon/toy Jazz designs. other recent/older newer toys to bear the Jazz name were worse as far as trying to look like the 1984 character in both modes & colors.

What else was there, though? If you're counting Movie Jazz, then those clearly aren't supposed to look like/be G1 Jazz (yeah, there was a repaint in G1 colors, but EVERYONE got a G1 repaint that year.). Oh, I guess there was Legends Jazz, but I've got no experience with that mold, and I've always been kinda baffled by the appeal of Legends in general (and yet I'm totally psyched for Cyberverse. What the hell?).

I have to agree with Prowl about RTS Jazz. It is a bad mould. (The face sculpt issues will be less an issue with Stepper, as the Stepper is not supposed to be cheerful.)

But, I will take off points for QC when the paint work is so consistently bad. My best copy of Jazz still has lines that are more crooked than I would like. And, I see copies on peg-hooks at stores that look like bad custom jobs.

And, pictures are surfacing.

http://millionhero.jp/tfg2011/stepper.html

It does not look like E-Hobby retooled the vehicle mode at all, meaning that Steppericochet cannot hold the nebulon in vehicle mode.

I had a feeling this would happen, but I am a bit irked by it all the same.


Dom
-it is still marginally better than a custom figure, but.....

Well that bites. How the hell hard would it have been for them to just drill a damned hole?

Still looks nice though. Isn't that the same Targetmaster that came with Cyclonus?

That is what it looks to be.


Dom
-could not have made a better one....but dammit...

And, at long last, here is my review of the Stepper figure that I got about 2 months back.

Because this figure has been out for a while and reviewed in detail elsewhere, this will be a shorter review.


Ricochet (robot/car) w/Nightstick (Nebulan/Gun: (Yes, I am using the American name for the character in reference to a Japanese figure. Deal with it. I am calling Nightstick a Nebulan rather than a Minicon however, because the only context that this character has assume "organic alien wearing tech bits" rather than "subordinated robot".)

Ricochet is a straight recolour of Jazz. White becomes black. Black largely (though not completely) swaps to white. The paint masking is appeciably different, with Jazz's striping being largely replaced with Ricochet's flame pattern. Some of Jazz's grey swaps to (painted) gold. The recolouring and paint look far and away better than anything that I could have done at home. (Base plastic always looks better than paint. That is simply a fact of the hobby.) But the colour mapping itself seems a bit off. Takara, (and the fan club), often try to force retro colour mapping on to figures that were simply not intended to accomodate said mapping. This is most obvious on Ricochet's chest/hood, where the fire pattern looks "painted to fit". Still, it looks better than anything most fans could have produced at home.

By virtue of being a different, (and canonically dour), character, the problematic face sculpt is mitigated. (Jazz not smiling is a problem. But, Ricochet looking serious is fine.) This figure also seems to improve on the floppiness of Jazz's chest/collar assembly. My copy feels a bit sturdier. Tightness on other joints (ankle and lower leg assembly) is consistent with this as well.

Besides the above mentioned paint masking issues, Ricochet sufferes from a lack of retooling, As was noted when the first pictures were revealed online, Richochet's vehicle mode has no place to mount Nightstick. This would have been an easy modification for Takara to make to the mould. They could have simply drilled a hole in, or added a clip to, the car mode's spoiler (as was the case with the original figure). And, frankly, given that this figure ran just shy of $100 (without the book), there really is no excuse for Takara to have not made the effort.

Nightstick is what one would expect, a partial recolour of the figure that has been released a few times in the US. Aside from some orange on the face, "United" Nightstick splits the difference between the TFU and RTS releases. The gun mode has the TFU release's black barrel while the robot mode has the RTS release's silver legs. (Ironically, I had considered the inversion of this colour scheme for a Fracas figure to go with custom Artfire before Takara released an official character model.)


Grade: B/C

All told, this figure is probably not worth going nuts to find unless you specifically like the mould or character. While it looks better than anything that most people would customize, the lack of new moulding is bothersome enough to make this figure not quite worth the ~$100 it is likely to cost. If you can find it for $60 or less, then it is worth considering.


Dom
-hoping that Artfire comes out better.