After coming clean about being a “Rumble is Red” guy in my last post I started thinking about my personal Transformer Prejudices. For example the reasons that, for me, Rumble is red, Thrust is the best Seeker (with wings behind his shoulders BTW) and Twin Twist is an important character is all due to the fact that I owned the toys as a kid.
A lot of the G1 arguments we have in the fandom are topics where both sides are technically correct. Of course, my side is more technically correct, but I digress.
Scale
We talk about this a lot; Masterpiece Ultra Magnus is too big (disagree), Masterpiece Grimlock is too small (conditionally agree), Power of the Primes Predaking is too big/not big enough (too early to tell). Lets be honest, there is no possible way that you can make everyone happy using a physical object to represent anything animated in the original cartoon.
Scale – I don’t think that word means what you think it means (photo from TF Wiki)
With deliberate mass-shifting and abundant animation errors it’s simply impossible to represent the characters as they were shown.
Takara decided to base their post MP-10 Masterpiece scale on the following guide (photo from TF Wiki):
This is great-ish. We have a standard scale for the robot modes that is consistent across the line. However, take Bumblebee…
…looks about right…
…wait, is that a child’s pedal-car model of a Volkswagon?
Personally I like the approach that Takara took since I primarily display my collection in robot mode.
However, eagle-eyed readers might notice MP-8 Grimlock standing between Ultra Magnus and Optimus Prime, a clear violation of the scale chart. To compound the violation is Bullsfire DB-01 Air Strike, my Swoop stand-in which, unlike every other Masterpiece themed Swoop, is scaled to match MP-8. I did pick up FansToys’ FT-05 Soar but it is far too large to fit into my display.
Ultra Magnus
I don’t think of Ultra Magnus as a repainted Optimus Prime in armor because I didn’t get the toy until I was in college and the animation model always transformed straight from the car carrier to the bot.
Sure, I’ve read the Dreamwave comics where he was “revealed” as wearing armor and I’ve read the IDW comics where he was “revealed” as Minimus Ambus, just one in a long line of Ultra Magnus cosplayers, but that was long after my opinions were solidified.
Takara vs. Hasbro vs. Third Party
There are a lot of fans that will, very emphatically, argue that one is inherently better than the others, often followed by declaring how poor those other two options “really” are. I tend to double dip into Takara for my main collection when a deco (Henkei chrome) or additional accessory (Targetmasters) warrants it then use third party versions to fill gaps, primarily on the Masterpiece side. If I have a third-party version and an official version comes out I tend to display only the official.
