I’ve got to head out of town (again) this week, so I’ve just got a quick review to finish of the week. I couldn’t find much in my toy room that would be a good fit for a quick look, but then the postman arrived with something perfect: a repaint in the same colors as the original!
Well, a repaint in the same colors as the original is a bit of fun on my part. MW-01C does differ from the original thanks to a fancy bit of vac-metal “chrome”.
When I was a kid, I didn’t really know the difference between G1 & G2. My original Optimus Prime had lost pieces in The Great Flood™ and when my parents brought home the black-trailered G2 Prime – I didn’t enjoy it any less. During that same time frame, a few of the G1 mini-vehicles were released in chrome. I had two; a chrome red Cliffjumper (it’s really Hubcap, I know, but I got him before there was a TFWiki) and a chrome blue Seaspray… oh, nostalgia, I spit at thee…
When iGear announced a chrome version of their third-party Spray, I waffled a bit. Did I really need this? Is it a good fit for my collection? I wasn’t sure. And, honestly, I’m still not, but I did pass on a lot of the Rager repaints and ended up paying for them later. I figured, at the very least, I could be guy the selling it to the guy who waffled instead of the being the waffler who paid more. We’ll see.
Like most of the Mini-Warriors though, Spray is a great Transformer. I would like it better if his sides were a little more seamless in alt mode, but it’s otherwise slick, and his bot mode is even better. And then they went and made him shiny. Jerks. Anyway, it was enough for me to pre-order Chrome Spray though I more or less forgot about him (good sign on the needing him thing…) until the postman arrived with him this week.
My only real complaint about this figure isn’t even really about the figure. In the past, toys I ordered directly from iGear came packaged well, often in boxes that seem perfectly designed for their products. That wasn’t the case with ChromeSpray. He came packaged in a bubble mailer and as you can see, he didn’t fare well. Luckily, I’m not an MIB collector, but I have been keeping most third party boxes either because I like the packaging or in case I decide to purge them later. I appreciated iGear offering free shipping, but I would’ve glady paid a few bucks for shipping to get the thing here in one piece. Continue to Page 2…
ooh, shiny thing!
/Cat
I think with paint redeco’s/variants, it comes down to a personal taste in aesthetics. You like, you buy; you don’t like, move on to the next thing. with these three, there are just enough differences they can be separate characters, like your Hubcap/CJ comparison. (or BB/CJ, the Seekers, Rumble/Frenzy, your last pic, etc)
That sucks about the box being damaged in transit. I’ve had a few problems the last few weeks with sending out my ebay auctions. One return (“failure to pick up”) almost looked like it had been stomped on! did yours go through Texas, too? LOL
also, two things that would annoy me: “Till”[sic] means to turn over ground, as for planting, or storage like a money till. Then there’s the “funky hollow type” that’s impossible to read.
fyi- glitch in p2 link = whole article on second page. 😉
Yeah, bulletproof packaging, it ain’t. Sorry to hear it, bro. I hate it when that happens.
I’m always a sucker for chrome paint on my figures, but given those comparison shots, I might just stick with the first version. It’s nicely tricked out, by the way. And I love that last pic with him “catching up.” LOL. 🙂
I would argue that the biggest fail here lies in not evening out the seams more properly. The alt mode really does suffer for it. But as a G2 update/homage figure it ought to suit completists of the era just fine.
Sweet review, neat toy, great pictures.
I was thinking about getting this, but eventually decided against doing so. As you’ve said, vac-metal coatings and articulation do not always get along well.
Still, nifty to get to see him for a bit!
I got mine in the mail last week. My box wasn’t damaged (despite the bubble mailer), but I had the same issues with the toy itself. Looks sharp (or at least it will look sharp after some Reprolabel windows), but the joints are super creaky and tight because of the chrome. The ball joints are already flaking.
I tighten joints all the time with clear nail polish. Is there a similar trick to loosen joints? If not, like you, I may just spin the joints around a bit to get all of the chrome off of it.
I detest chrome on my figures, most because I’ve never had one that held up at all. The things are usually flaking right out of the package (as you’ve noted, yours is already shedding). I have an awesome Takara Car Robots Fire Convoy that my friends got me for my birthday the year it came out (before any of us knew it would be imported to America as Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime), and hwile it’s an awesome figure, its chest is now almost entirely a dull gray plastic rather than the shiny chrome it started as. And most of that happened long after I’d stopped “playing” with it and left it on the shelf as a display piece. The same thing happened with my Tripredacus Agent and a few other Transformers of that era, before Hasbro/Takara wised up and stopped vacuum-chroming their figures. That crap just does not hold up.
still gotta get my hands on one of these…
Noisy, you might want to try sticker sheets, available at Staples or other office supply stores, for the windows. They come in many colors, All you have to do is cut them down to the window size, peel and stick. It should work better than painting over the chrome.