Masterpiece Thread
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I’m not keeping them in train mode anyway. So the vehicle mode is not important to me.
I don't understand the train mode excuse. 3P Raiden's train modes are dumb and stubby. How the Masterpiece's more realistic trains produced a stubbier robot is a mystery.
How does that explain it? If everything was designed around the realistic train modes I would expect a lanky Raiden, not a stubby one.
I don't think MP Raiden is stubby so much as thick (or thicc 
). That's where the Alternators reminder comes in - they had to have near-complete interiors (without robot parts crammed in) which made them all pretty bulky in the torsos. Unlike the 3P Raiden that is able to cheat in any number of ways and sacrifice perfect-scale, Takara had to be able to not compromise all those small components that make it work like a train car. The bogeys alone add a bunch of kibble that is hard to hide, and therefore interferes with stashing other parts. Meanwhile, Radiatron just has little bogey-shaped tabs that fold neatly out of the way.
In the end, it's just a different set of priorities and there are still budgets to be met. It's funny that Tak has gone all in on cartoon accuracy in the rest of the MP line, but this team went the other direction for this piece. I recall the early articles mentioning just how big the train enthusiast community is in Japan, so they must have decided it was worth it. Ultimately, were I to buy one of these, I'd choose Radiatron, but I'm not a train guy; maybe I'd feel differently if I was.
). That's where the Alternators reminder comes in - they had to have near-complete interiors (without robot parts crammed in) which made them all pretty bulky in the torsos. Unlike the 3P Raiden that is able to cheat in any number of ways and sacrifice perfect-scale, Takara had to be able to not compromise all those small components that make it work like a train car. The bogeys alone add a bunch of kibble that is hard to hide, and therefore interferes with stashing other parts. Meanwhile, Radiatron just has little bogey-shaped tabs that fold neatly out of the way.
In the end, it's just a different set of priorities and there are still budgets to be met. It's funny that Tak has gone all in on cartoon accuracy in the rest of the MP line, but this team went the other direction for this piece. I recall the early articles mentioning just how big the train enthusiast community is in Japan, so they must have decided it was worth it. Ultimately, were I to buy one of these, I'd choose Radiatron, but I'm not a train guy; maybe I'd feel differently if I was.
Thing is (as far as I can tell), most of their MP line is now aimed at old Japanese guys who want G1 cartoon accuracy (and possibly nostalgic, old fashioned misogyny) over anything else. Adding another aesthetic (train accuracy) seems like a misstep or an excuse to me.
Let's be real, here. Nobody really cares about Shouki, Getsuei, Yukikaze, Suiken, Seizan, and Kaen as actual characters. They've barely had any personality in all of their appearances over the years, and the most they've ever gotten has mainly boiled down to "generic good guys".
The allure of the Trainbots is that they're the other combiner team that originally accompanied the Constructicons back in the original Diaclone line, but which wasn't first used for Transformers until the year that the G1 cartoon ended in the West, and only in Japan, even. Plus the fact that they're a team made entirely out of train engines, a rather uncommon altmode type making them feel all the more unique as a combiner team.
Raiden is basically seen as this long-lost G1 combiner that has eluded most of the Western World for all of his existence, and whose name is commonly mispronounced by most Westerners anyway (partly thanks to Mortal Kombat).
The allure of the Trainbots is that they're the other combiner team that originally accompanied the Constructicons back in the original Diaclone line, but which wasn't first used for Transformers until the year that the G1 cartoon ended in the West, and only in Japan, even. Plus the fact that they're a team made entirely out of train engines, a rather uncommon altmode type making them feel all the more unique as a combiner team.
Raiden is basically seen as this long-lost G1 combiner that has eluded most of the Western World for all of his existence, and whose name is commonly mispronounced by most Westerners anyway (partly thanks to Mortal Kombat).
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Bingo. He’s like one of those exotic TF characters, even 25 years removed from the first time I heard of him especially since there haven’t been many homages/updated.
It takes you back to a time in the fandom when we saw Headmasters as that hypothetical fourth season we never got, and it was cool to see screen grabs of 1984-1985 guys next to 1986-1987 characters.
A MP Raiden is not a priority for me at current prices. But if he was screen accurate I might feel sad to miss out. As is, it’s another HasLab Unicron situation for me. The released version doesn’t scream “that’s the character” to me, whereas a 3P product pulled it off with style.
I’d be all over a Legacy (or whatever the successor line is called) version. Again, spot on with that analysis and why a character I’ve barely seen seems so…alluring to own.
It takes you back to a time in the fandom when we saw Headmasters as that hypothetical fourth season we never got, and it was cool to see screen grabs of 1984-1985 guys next to 1986-1987 characters.
A MP Raiden is not a priority for me at current prices. But if he was screen accurate I might feel sad to miss out. As is, it’s another HasLab Unicron situation for me. The released version doesn’t scream “that’s the character” to me, whereas a 3P product pulled it off with style.
I’d be all over a Legacy (or whatever the successor line is called) version. Again, spot on with that analysis and why a character I’ve barely seen seems so…alluring to own.
Raiden has always been a curiosity to me. He has long held a spot in my mind, right next to Overlord, for toys that I really wish that we could have gotten stateside in the original G1 run. I can't speak for every western kid, but I know that when I was an impressionable age, I liked trains a lot. And having six trains facing off against six construction vehicles (The Constructicons being the ones I would have used as foils) would have given me hours of play ideas back then. Alas, it was not meant to be.
I applaud Takara for the mere existence of this set (it is/was extremely ambitious). Ultimately though - as has been expressed in this thread - this particular representation is just not for me. Like Kup, I would certainly be on board (pun intended) if Hasbro wanted to do a Legacy/Whatever version at some point in the future. I know that I would definitely throw down on a HasLab offering as well, that wasn't a cool grand and had a more aesthetically pleasing combined mode. But time will tell. If there's one thing that I have learned about this hobby over the years, it's wait and see. I've waited a long, long time for a good Raiden, and I will continue to wait; if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But I hope that it does...someday.
I applaud Takara for the mere existence of this set (it is/was extremely ambitious). Ultimately though - as has been expressed in this thread - this particular representation is just not for me. Like Kup, I would certainly be on board (pun intended) if Hasbro wanted to do a Legacy/Whatever version at some point in the future. I know that I would definitely throw down on a HasLab offering as well, that wasn't a cool grand and had a more aesthetically pleasing combined mode. But time will tell. If there's one thing that I have learned about this hobby over the years, it's wait and see. I've waited a long, long time for a good Raiden, and I will continue to wait; if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But I hope that it does...someday.
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All that rings true to me. Raiden is something I've always been interested in and would be happy to own as a curiosity, but it's not something I need and definitely not for Masterpiece prices.
Saying this as a train guy, the alt modes on the 3p Raiden are intolerable. Almost every detail is wrong in some way and Kaen especially is unrecognisable. And frankly when a team is named after theyre alt modes and its one of the main things theyre known for, id like said alt modes to be good. Said alt modes also explain a lot about MP Raiden in general. from the proportions, to lack of posing on the big guy, it all makes much more sense when you remember how excelent the train and individual robot modes are. (that and also the fact they tried to minimize partsforming where on g1 the fronts of every figure just partsformed lol)I don't think MP Raiden is stubby so much as thick (or thicc
In the end, it's just a different set of priorities and there are still budgets to be met. It's funny that Tak has gone all in on cartoon accuracy in the rest of the MP line, but this team went the other direction for this piece. I recall the early articles mentioning just how big the train enthusiast community is in Japan, so they must have decided it was worth it. Ultimately, were I to buy one of these, I'd choose Radiatron, but I'm not a train guy; maybe I'd feel differently if I was.
I'm not a trainspotter myself but I've seen some of the Japanese trains (or similar versions) in real life over here and I would say the 3P versions look similar enough to me.
No, similar enough to the original, real life trains.Similar in that they are oblong boxes?
I mean 'similar enough' isn't good enough for train enthusiasts.
Yeah - no one is going to confuse the 3P versions as being based on anything more than generic train'ish transportation devices. It's (appropriately enough) like the difference between Earthrise Sideswipe and MP Sideswipe. Earthrise Sideswipe is close enough for most of us but if you're into scale-models of real cars, you'll never be fooled into believing it's a Countach. One of the major design goals of the MP train bots was for them to be able to match up to anyone's favorite train set as real replicas.