Mirage

Finally! It's about time I got over my fear of knockoffs and bought Mirage. After a long personal nightmare, I finally have the Transformer I've been pining after for many years. Mirage was well worth the wait.

For those of you who are unaware, Mirage is one of the most counterfeited Transformers on the secondary market. More than likely if you see a Mirage MISB or MIB on eBay, it's a knockoff. Thankfully I've been studying HIGHENDTFS and their comprehensive ID guide to weed out any potential KOs I've run across. I actually did run across an auction for a MIB Mirage that was a fake on eBay and reported it and an hour later it was back up for 1/10 the price claiming that the box was a reproduction. Lucky for me there are a couple of sellers I trust implicitly, so I went to them.

Mirage has always been a favorite figure of mine, but I've never really cared for his fiction or character bio. He's old Cybertronian money, he's high society, he's not so trusted due to his unsure attitude about the war. Yeah, I don't care. Which is weird because I usually care a lot about G1 fiction.

What I do seem to care about is Mirage's gun. According to his tech spec and bio, Mirage comes with a hunting rifle. And not just a plain bolt action .243 or 30-06 hunting rifle. Mirage comes with a rocket-dart hunting rifle for hunting turbo foxes. I'm not sure how effective that is on the battlefield, but it must work. Then again, he never appeared again after the movie...

This is actually my second Mirage. I still have the first one and he's in the same condition as when I got him - terrible. I traded an older kid I knew for him around 1988. In the deal I have up a Masters of The Universe Stratos figure that was missing everything. In return I got this:

Who needs feet?

I still think I got the better part of the deal. Sure he didn't have feet or transform, but he was Mirage, dammit. Besides, he was one more Autobot for the cause.

This Mirage is in pretty good shape, not perfect, but still good overall. I'll need to replace some decals, but my fear of perfect Mirages necessitated one that wasn't. At least this one has feet and can transform!

Here's his vehicle mode. I just love it and I think it's the main reason I love Mirage so much.

It's just so sleek and sexy.


His robot mode is sweet as well. As with a lot of G1 figures, there isn't any leg articulation, but his arms swivel at both the shoulder and elbow. I had trouble figuring out where the middle launcher went, but it's pretty cool having it clip to the wheel axle.

I'm so amazed that I finally have a Mirage that can Transform!  And I'm pretty confident that he's not a K.O.!  Now that I have that fear pretty much conquered, I'm counting down until my next review.  You might find it...shocking.