Masterpiece MP-18S

Hey you, yeah you.  The person collecting Transformers.  What are your thoughts on repaints?  Like them?  Great.  Don't like them and wish that they'd go away?  Tough.  Like them or not, repainted Transformers are always going to be in the offing.  It simply costs too much money to design and tool a figure for Takara and Hasbro to not try to recoup their costs by offering repaints.  For the most part, I have a rule about repaints: buy the ones that I like and that make sense.  I have broken that rule a couple of times, like with YOTH Optimus Prime, but I've pretty much stuck with it.  With Masterpiece figures, it gets hard to turn down certain repaints because of the history of what they represent.  Tigertrack is beautiful and represents an old Diaclone variant of the Sideswipe figure.  Another beautiful repaint?  MP-18S Silverstreak.

While MP-18 Bluestreak is a wonderful figure, Silverstreak just endeared itself to me as soon as I opened the box.  Upon seeing that gorgeous silver Datsun, I was transported back to Christmas of 1984.  It felt like I was 7 again, and getting my first Bluestreak.  The colors aren't exactly spot on to the G1 figure, but they're pretty freaking close.  The lighter shade of silver is amazing when comparing MP-18 to MP-18S.

While MP-18 is, like all regular Masterpiece releases, as cartoon accurate as possible, Silverstreak is toy accurate.  The darker colors on Blustreak are great, but they're not something I'm accustomed to after 30 years.  Sure, I recently purchased the Anime Streak eHobby figure, but that's only been in the past few months.  While I grew up watching a black hooded Bluestreak on TV, I played with a silver one on a daily basis. 

One thing my G1 Bluestreak cannot do?  Drive around with missile launchers mounted on his sides.  MP-18S comes with two outstanding red and silver launchers.  My MP-18 only came with one, and I have yet to get off my duff and buy a second one.  Having a second launcher really adds to Bluestreak's look.

Once Silverstreak is put into robot mode, with the launchers added, he's wonderful.  I'm confusing myself with all of the switching between Silverstreak and Bluestreak.  They're the same freaking guy, right?  But I don't really like doing the MP-18 and MP-18S thing.  Conundrum time.

One thing that I learned when I got ol' Silvertreak is that I apparently have a stock pose when placing the Datsun Brothers into my Detolf.  Smokescreen, Prowl, Bluestreak, and Silverstreak all have the same pose.  I know what I like, it seems. 

Here's a little closeup of the 'Streaks.  The lighter silver really makes the reds pop on Silverstreak.  Of course, the addition of the launchers really make the look complete.  Bluestreak is by no means a lackluster figure, but I'm very partial to Silverstreak.  Typing this up and thinking about Masterpiece really has me looking forward to Wheeljack.