Okay, if you haven't heard about these guys, then prepare to be amazed. They're knockoff/3rd party, reverse-engineered "Conehead" Seekers to finish up the 6 main G1 Decepticon jets. And they're awesome. (Despite a bit, um, morally "gray". More on that later.)
So we've finally got Thrust, Ramjet, and Dirge. Er, sort of. Technically, iGear calls them "Attack" (Thrust, in burgundy), "Jet (Ramjet, in white) "Elegy" (Dirge, in blue) to skirt legal issues with trademarks, but since they're coming from China, which is the Land of the Knockoff, they can pretty much do as they damn well please. They also sort of ripped off a Transformers customizer by the username of Wheeljack, by using his designs. Let's face it though, the real intellectual theft was from Hasbro/Takara, and the rest was just them being dicks. And yes, I bought them, so by association, well... You get the picture.
Anyways, to keep the review fairly short, they're pretty awesome. I didn't take these pics originally as a proper review, so there's no box or extras like the stand, but if you have any of the Takara or Hasbro Masterpiece jets (like Starscream, Skywarp or Thundercracker) then the other accessories not shown are the exact same, with a few Decepticon symbols missing to avoid trademark issues. Why, I don't know, because they're pretty blatant about everything else, but it's nothing that Reprolabels.com can't fix for me. They all 3 come with their own box, 2 missile clusters, a stand base, a stand mount, a little crappy 2-color pilot/scientist, and a clip to clip Megatron (that came with MP Prime) onto their nosecone. And some stickers that I'm not going to bother looking at again, as all the lines I want came tampographed on, save for the Decepticon sigils. Each box has illustrations instead of photography, but they did their best to mimic the Takara MP boxes as closely as possible.
Their construction is the same as Starscream, but there are a few fixes and bonuses. Gone are the awful hip kibble pegs, and iGear actually corrected the crappy design of the original Takara mold by fixing the tail-fins so that they're now adjustable, and connected to the feet, not the hips. Clearly, each figure has his own distinctive wings, armaments and tail-fins, and additional paint apps that are unique to each jet. The head sculpt is new (and shared by all 3), and transforms just fine, although their heads are a tad tiny compared to the Starscream head. Also, each arm has a pop-up display screen. Apparently each figure has a random sticker, as an added surprise. I thought this extra touch was neat, coming from a bunch of thievin' Chinese designers.
These shipped direct from China, and I had them on preorder since Christmas 2010. The first arrived back in June, and the other 2 arrived today. In total, they were around $100+ each, but the shipping from China for all 3 came to about another $100. Ouch. $400ish total.
The quality is top-notch, and I'd say the paint apps are either on-par or better than the ones from Hasbro, if not the Takara releases. So far, I have both the Takara and Hasbro Starscream and Skywarp, and also the Takara Thundercracker (Hasbro hasn't released an MP Thundercracker stateside as of this writing, nor have they announced plans to release him).
For $400, it's a bit pricy to finish off your 6 Seekers, but to me, they were worth it.
So we've finally got Thrust, Ramjet, and Dirge. Er, sort of. Technically, iGear calls them "Attack" (Thrust, in burgundy), "Jet (Ramjet, in white) "Elegy" (Dirge, in blue) to skirt legal issues with trademarks, but since they're coming from China, which is the Land of the Knockoff, they can pretty much do as they damn well please. They also sort of ripped off a Transformers customizer by the username of Wheeljack, by using his designs. Let's face it though, the real intellectual theft was from Hasbro/Takara, and the rest was just them being dicks. And yes, I bought them, so by association, well... You get the picture.
Anyways, to keep the review fairly short, they're pretty awesome. I didn't take these pics originally as a proper review, so there's no box or extras like the stand, but if you have any of the Takara or Hasbro Masterpiece jets (like Starscream, Skywarp or Thundercracker) then the other accessories not shown are the exact same, with a few Decepticon symbols missing to avoid trademark issues. Why, I don't know, because they're pretty blatant about everything else, but it's nothing that Reprolabels.com can't fix for me. They all 3 come with their own box, 2 missile clusters, a stand base, a stand mount, a little crappy 2-color pilot/scientist, and a clip to clip Megatron (that came with MP Prime) onto their nosecone. And some stickers that I'm not going to bother looking at again, as all the lines I want came tampographed on, save for the Decepticon sigils. Each box has illustrations instead of photography, but they did their best to mimic the Takara MP boxes as closely as possible.
Their construction is the same as Starscream, but there are a few fixes and bonuses. Gone are the awful hip kibble pegs, and iGear actually corrected the crappy design of the original Takara mold by fixing the tail-fins so that they're now adjustable, and connected to the feet, not the hips. Clearly, each figure has his own distinctive wings, armaments and tail-fins, and additional paint apps that are unique to each jet. The head sculpt is new (and shared by all 3), and transforms just fine, although their heads are a tad tiny compared to the Starscream head. Also, each arm has a pop-up display screen. Apparently each figure has a random sticker, as an added surprise. I thought this extra touch was neat, coming from a bunch of thievin' Chinese designers.
These shipped direct from China, and I had them on preorder since Christmas 2010. The first arrived back in June, and the other 2 arrived today. In total, they were around $100+ each, but the shipping from China for all 3 came to about another $100. Ouch. $400ish total.
The quality is top-notch, and I'd say the paint apps are either on-par or better than the ones from Hasbro, if not the Takara releases. So far, I have both the Takara and Hasbro Starscream and Skywarp, and also the Takara Thundercracker (Hasbro hasn't released an MP Thundercracker stateside as of this writing, nor have they announced plans to release him).
For $400, it's a bit pricy to finish off your 6 Seekers, but to me, they were worth it.
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... but the straight repaints are cheaper than the coneheads, just $100 shipped. I paid that much for the original seekers repainted from starscream, so the price doesn't seem out of line given the apparent quality of the product.
I really doubt we'll ever see these from Hasbro/Takara, and if we do, I won't need to get them as these guys are damned impressive.
