Masterpiece Road Rage MP-26

Look!  The Diaclone Masterpiece parade continues!  This is also known as "Figures I've Passed On As e-Hobby Repaints And Now Have To Pay Through The Nose For Them Extravaganza!"  That's...that's a mouthful.  Let's just get on to some pictures, shall we?

I'm not going to lie here - I really wasn't too enthused about Road Rage.  It really shows in the lack of pictures I took with her.  There really isn't any particular reason for my lack of enthusiasm - well, maybe there is.  Road Rage was released in close proximity to Tracks, and I don't think I've really absorbed Tracks completely.  Sure, there are some differences between the two, namely the newly sculpted thighs, and head, but it seems like she was rushed out the door too quickly.  Stupid, I know, especially since the Datsuns were all released within a month of each other I was excited about them.  Or Sideswipe and Red Alert.  Maybe it's because I knew about their history, their place in the fiction.  Road Rage?  I know that she was an e-Hobby release that is based on a difficult to find Diaclone version and even more difficult to find European Milton Bradley Transformers version of Tracks.  So...not much.  Hell, I wouldn't even know that much if it weren't for people like Maz or the TFWiki.
What I'm getting at is this - with the limited knowledge that I have of the character, I can't be seduced by it.  That isn't a bad thing, necessarily, it's just a fact. 

Still, that car mode is sexy, isn't it?  I don't even like Corvettes, and I can't help but like this car mode.  I even hate the color red, and I think that this color looks better than Tracks' blue.  Does that make me a hypocrite?  Probably.  Geez, I was so numb to the experience that I didn't even bother with the flying car mode pics.  Suffice it to say that it looks like Tracks', only red.  With the addition of a gun on the bottom.

How is it that the knees on Road Rage are tighter than the ones Tracks has?  Not that my Tracks has super loose joints, but Road Rage's are almost too tight.  Maybe it has to do with the new thighs.  It's gotta be the thighs.  I really like the added whites on her.  The G1 representation was pretty much red and black with a touch of blue.

Picture from TFWiki.net

The whites break things up a bit and make the figure brighter, which is a plus.  My eyes are constantly drawn to the white fists every time I look at Road Rage.

If the Masterpiece version of Road Rage swapped the whites for blacks, I'm not sure that she'd be as strong a figure as she is.  Although, I'm not overly fond of the blue under the Autobot sigil.  I mean, yes, the insignia wouldn't show up if the thing was red on red, but I think a different color would have been better. 

Road Rage comes with fewer accessories than Tracks, and I've seen some complaints on that, but she was available at a lower price point with the coin, which is a fair trade-off.  Again, I'm not huge on the extras, and I don't see the point of Twincast.  However, a flight stand would have been nice.  That is a very noticeable miss for TakaraTomy, and I'm a bit thrown off by that.  But the gun?  The gun almost makes up for that.  Almost.

The gun may look familiar to some of you.  It's the gun that Masterpiece Tracks should have come with.  Yeah, I know that the comically small blaster Tracks comes with is cartoon accurate, but when I think of Tracks, I think of that honking huge blaster.  At least Road Rage has it.  When I first attempted to position the gun in Road Rage's hands, I wasn't happy as it kept popping off.  Then I realized that there's a tab on the gun that slots into Road Rage's forearm.  If proper care is taken in placing the gun, it won't budge.  At all.

Man, those two Corvette's next to each other sure look nice, don't they?  Until I start thinking about the people that I have known in my life that have actually owned Corvettes.  So many mullets.  Of course, I'm sure things are different now...

Finally, a shot of Tracks and Road Rage back-to-back, sitcom style.  Overall, Road Rage is much better than I initially thought.  Just while typing this review, she has grown considerably in my opinion.  Think I'll go get her out of the case and giver her a whirl.

Masterpiece Clamp Down MP-14C

I've never claimed to be an expert on Diaclone; I'd go so far as to say that I know nothing about Diaclone.  That ignorance led to me passing on just about every E-Hobby Diaclone inspired reissue in the early part of this century.  In my impetuous early 20's, I saw them as a cheap cash grab by Takara and no real G1.  Yeah, I was a bit of an ass back then.  At any rate, once I learned all that there was to know about how these E-Hobby figures were really inspired by Diaclone decos - and I found out what Diaclone was - I felt like I needed to start tracking these guys down.  I haven't been too successful, because they have really gone up in value on the secondary market.  Thankfully, Takara has given us some of these characters in the Masterpiece line.  First, there was Tigertrack, then MP-18B Bluestreak, and now we have Clamp Down.  And Road Rage, but I'll get into her next week.

One of the first things that I do whenever I get a new Masterpiece figure is that I transform them into robot mode.  I almost instantly curse at myself when I do this because I then remember that I have to take pictures a day or so later.  Keeping the joints as tight as possible has become a priority for me over the last year, which means minimizing the amount of transformations.  There's a logic there that I can't explain, just go with me on this.  During the initial transformation, the light bar popped off.  It appears that mine wasn't glued on at the factory.

Gluing the bar on is certainly an option, but I think I'll leave it as it is.  Clamp Down certainly looks a little sleeker without it.

For some reason, having full knowledge that the E-Hobby Clamp Down was a repaint of Red Alert, I was still surprised to see that Masterpiece Clamp Down was a straight repaint of Red Alert.  I had just assumed that they would combine elements of Sideswipe's head with Red Alert's, like what was done for Tigertrack.  It feels like a bit of a miss.

For accessories, Clamp Down comes with a gun in Red Alert's colors, and the requisite shoulder cannon.  There are also slightly remolded pile drivers that I haven't even thought about using.  I like the extras, in theory, but I rarely ever use them.  They mostly just reside in a storage box.

See what I was talking about with the straight repaint?  The reds on Clamp Down are a little lighter, there is a different shade of blue on the legs, and the chest is obviously in a different deco.  Then again, they are both in law enforcement, so maybe they should share a common theme.  Aside from the whole Lamborghini thing.

Turns out that I didn't take any pictures of Clamp Down in car mode, save for the one with the missing light bar.  And a few others with the Lambo boys, but nothing with Clamp Down solo.  I'll finish things up with some fun pics, I suppose.  Before I wrap it all up, let me say that even with the missed opportunity of his head, I still feel like Clamp Down is a win.  I'm covering him before Road Rage because Clamp Down generated the most excitement in me.  He's a sure fire must have.

Cops and Robbers

On this episode of "Cops"

Dead or alive, you're coming with me

Corporate espionage doesn't pay

Lambo's just hanging out

All the colors of the Lambo rainbow...