Understandably, lots of fans were upset by this omission - it's hard to describe any of the robots from any of the live action movies as 'key characters' or 'important characters', but Dino at least had several lines of dialogue and a couple of cool action scenes, even if he did end up getting done in offscreen, between Dark of the Moon and Age of Extinction - and the Movie Advanced version, while not too difficult to obtain, was rather expensive for what was little more than a repaint, and became positively extortionate on the secondary market.
Enter Spring Thunder (ST) Studio - a customiser based in China - who, back in 2015, took a 1:32 scale Ferrari 458 shell, a Battle Blades Bumblebee figure and some ABS plates, and created a very accurate-looking, super-poseable and fully transformable custom figure, and offered to take orders for a limited run of duplicates. One of the Third Party companies then contacted him, and this offer was cast into doubt. Less than a year after images of the custom were posted online, it was announced that Alien Attack had picked it up for manufacture... but it was over than a year after that before it became available for preorder, and several months more before it was release. Was it worth the wait?
Packaging:
Firage comes packaged in a surprisingly plain, heavy card matte white box, with a gorgeous red-and-black watercolour-style design of Dino's head on the front, various logos and captions on the sides, and a single product shot on the back. The accompanying bio - set in a rather ugly font - puts Firage firmly in the middle-ground between G1 Mirage (holographic projections) and a unique character described in more detail than we ever got out of the way Dino was portrayed in the movie. There's also a cross-sell of Alien Attack's crack at a Leader class Age of Extinction/The Last Knight Optimus Prime, El Cid.
Inside the box, Firage is contained in robot mode within a polystyrene clamshell along with his two wrist blade accessories, his capture claws/grappling hooks and a set of sprues containing the parts for his fully-poseable hands. The instruction booklet and collectors' card are contained in a plastic bag that sits in a square depression on the outside of the clamshell. The former is a digitally-printed 16-page booklet which looks very professional, featuring photographic guidelines to his very involved transformation and another copy of his bio, in a more readable font. The latter is the standard, credit card-sized thing, made of plastic and printed (slightly fuzzily) on both sides - the watercolour from the box on one side, and his stats on the other.
Vehicle Mode:
I'm not quite so fond of Ferraris as I am of Lamborghinis, but do have a soft spot for them due to the old Magnum P.I. TV show, starring Tom Selleck, and Sega's seminal racing game, Out Run. Even so, I'd have to say that the 458 isn't one of their best... The front is rather generic, the proportions are a bit weird, and it's really only the back end that shows any of the usual Ferrari character. It's almost ironic, then, that this figure doesn't feature any branding, any mock branding, or even any sculpted details to indicate where branding might be on the real car. The other details and the curves of the vehicle are pretty faithfully reproduced (as one would expect, having been developed from a 1:32 model), and it does at least have the five-spoked hubcaps typical of Ferrari's vehicles.
I'm not sure if the car is molded in a super-glossy red plastic, whether it's red plastic with a clear gloss topcoat applied, or whether it has red paint over the red plastic, but the result is a beautiful shine on a nice, saturated red car. It seems a little plain, if I'm being honest, and the only variation in colour comes from the silver hubcaps, the translucent windows and head/tail lights, glossy black paint applied to the front grille and a couple of angled indentations on the back, and the triple exhaust pipes sculpted onto the rear and painted silver. Naturally, I wouldn't expect it to be multicolour - Dino in the movie is entirely red - but something about the finish makes it a little dull... Adding panel lines would have been too severe, but I wonder if it didn't need a slightly darker shade or red, or perhaps a bit of metallic glitter, to give it a bit more depth. The wing mirrors practically disappear in my photos and, while it's not quite so bad in-hand, vehicle mode doesn't look substantially better than a Takara Tomy release. Slightly more noticeable in person is the poor colour matching between the red plastic and the red paint on the translucent plastic - the latter being much yellower and, in places, quite thinly applied.
A couple of other things harm the overall appearance - first and foremost, the robot parts visible through the windows. Nothing out of the ordinary for a TransFormers toy, but possibly a sign that a darker tint could have been applied to the windows. None of this is helped by the fact that windscreen wipers are sculpted on, but unpainted. Additionally, the doors don't want to peg in fully on mine. They might slip into place if I put a bit more pressure onto them but, this being a Third Party figure, I'd rather not risk breaking it just to get the doors closed. At £45, it's was actually less expensive than some Takara Tomy Deluxes I've bought, but I wouldn't be inclined to buy a replacement if this one got damaged.
It does roll - rubber tyres are always a bonus - but there are few robot parts hanging down from the bottom of the vehicle. I've never quite been able to get the legs properly stowed, so I'm pretty sure the feet shouldn't be quite so prominent at the back of the vehicle. Then again, they're slightly more subtle than those on some of Hasbro/Takara Tomy's offerings.
Robot Mode:
At first glance, it looks as though Firage is just an action figure based on the movie CGI - it's been reproduced that well. Of course, it only takes one quick look at his backpack to dispel that notion: while it may be tidier, or at least more compact, that anything Hasbro/Takara Tomy have produced (the plastic is certainly thinner), but it's pretty ghastly all the same. It's also not entirely stable, being secured in place by a single peg in a socket just behind his head.
The thing with the movie Autobots is that a lot of them appear to be fairly generic, overly complicated robots with bits of vehicle tagged onto them like armour for the sake of 'authenticity'. For some, it works, for others it just made turning them into toys an almost impossible task. Having been based on ebellished parts of the Battle Blades Bumblebee mold, Firage looks, from some angles, very much like a large Deluxe class figure from the movie lines. He's similarly detailed in terms of the sculpt but, where Hasbro/Takara Tomy would make a single part and (occasionally) paint in the difference between the inner robot and what was intended to represent parts of the car shell, the Alien Attack figure actually uses multiple separate pieces of plastic, molded in the appropriate colour, with paint applications to highlight finer details in the sculpt. Thus, the inner robot is molded largely in black plastic - some grey, particularly in the chest, and then the bizarre use of gold-ish plastic for the elbows - and the outer armour is either actual parts of the car shell - the thighs being a particularly clever bit of engineering in my opinion - or unique robot parts that are concealed in vehicle mode. It surely helped that Battle Blades Bumblebee was essentially the apex of Deluxe class engineering, but this has been taken to a whole new level, both in terms of detail and complexity. The actual parts of vehicle shell integrate just as well as the dedicated robot parts, though some of the latter were molded in a matte finish plastic that seems a touch less saturated than the glossy kind.
The paintwork is quite minimal, but used to excellent effect - touches of gold, silver and copper were applied sparingly but strategically on the arms, legs, chest and hands, and some of them are so subtle, one might almost wonder why they bothered. On the other hand, considering how good the figure looks with such small paint applications, one might equally wonder why Hasbro don't. In particular, the paint on the gears around the knee joints not only emphasises that this is supposed to represent a being made of metal, but also that those sculpted parts also serve a mechanical purpose in his vehicle mode.
As in the movie, Dino wields a pair of vicious, curved blades which pop out of his forearms - much like TFPrime Arcee's. Molded in black plastic, the supplied blade accessories feature silver paint applications and multiple hinges to make them as poseable as possible in their mountings. They're very finely detailed, even featuring what I assume are Cybertronian glyphs on both sides, on the blunter ends. The hinges themselves are molded in grey plastic with gold paint applications, and the mounting section is painted silver with a plain black plastic peg at the end. Both fit in nicely, though the peg is quite short and one of mine has a tendency to pop out because its articulation hinges are quite stiff, while the socket for the peg isn't especially snug. The capture claw/grappling hook things I'm not so keen on - they're small, just as intricated and multiply-jointed as the rest of the robot... and they're stuck on the ends of a pair of long twist-ties. This makes them great for capturing action poses, like Dino's highway surfing, where he was getting dragged along by Hatchet in Dark of the Moon, but a little pointless for having him on display unless you're lucky enough to have the square footage for a full-on diorama. I'm also a little dubious about how they're supposed to attach - they peg in to the same sockets as the blades, but there's this extra hinged piece, resembling a pulley, that comes out of his forearm, and it's not clear how (or if) the twist-ties are supposed to wrap around it.
The head sculpt is phenomenal - I'd have been satisfied with a reproduction of the Movie Advanced version, but this is entirely new and unique to Firage. It reminds me a lot of Beast Machines Cheetor, albeit clearly skewing more toward the overcomplicated, beady-eyed movie aesthetic. Early product shots suggested the face would be painted grey, but it's actually a gunmetal colour, with black detailing around the helmet, a strip of grey in the indentation running up his forehead, and a shiny metallic blue for the eyes. This latter detail ensure the eyes stand out well despite their tiny size and the thin strips of red plastic acting as 'eyelids'.
I won't lie - Firage's transformation is downright torturous, genuinely less fun and intuitive even than FansToys' Rouge. There are so many fiddly little parts that I was expecting to hear a crack or a snap at every single stage. While there aren't any steps than involve wrapping one part around another, there are plenty where clearance is an issue, or a joint feels unnecessarily tight/loose, and there's variation on that score from one side of the figure to the other. It's a very complex figure, perhaps unnecessarily so, and the car shell gets broken up across multiple parts of the robot, albeit with a good chunk - running from the bonnet all the way back to the rear of the car - ending up folded away on the robot's back. The front of the car breaks apart, compresses down and folds in on itself at multiple points, while the arms unfurl from within, and the legs fold out somewhat awkwardly. I had a hard time following the instructions and am not convinced I've ever got the arms stowed away properly, nor am I happy with what I was able to achieve with the legs and feet. He holds together well in both modes, though the backpack does have a habit of popping out of its one connection, just behind his head. Switching modes, though, is not fun... and I think it's unlikely I'll be transforming him back to vehicle mode again anytime soon.
Firage appears to be made of joints, from the ball-jointed ankles, double-jointed knees, thigh rotation, ball jointed hips, waist rotation (somewhat hindered by the backpack and hip armour), ball-jointed shoulders on butterfly joints, bicep rotation (allowing the shoulder armour glide gracefully around the joint above), another rotation joint just above the double-jointed elbow, wrist rotation and tilt, not to mention a ball-jointed thumb and two knuckle joints servicing his joined fingers. This all sounds amazing but, in reality, the joint tolerances are all over the place, and some of the transformation joints don't peg firmly into a robot mode position - the hips being a prime example - so trying to move an arm or a leg into a specific pose is a lot more complicated than it would likely be on an equivalent-sized, yet simpler, official figure. The arms aren't too bad, but they require minute adjustments at multiple points for even the simplest pose. The legs are an absolute nightmare, not least because the ball-jointed hips are by far the tightest joint on the figure. Conversely, the tiny ball joints in the ankles are quite loose, so keeping him upright in any pose can require lots of fiddling. Along with the traditional posing joints, the 'scarf/collar' parts either side of his head can be rotated slightly on their mountings, but I'm not entirely sure how they're supposed to be positioned. Likewise, he has a set of spines on the backs of his ankles which can be angled up and down on extremely tight joints... so tight, in fact, that it's probably safest to leave the frail plastic wherever it stands rather than risking unnecessary adjustment. As mentioned above, he does come with kits for replacement hands with independently-jointed fingers, but these are reportedly quite brittle, and unlikely to stand up to much use, and I believe they're not recommended for use if transforming Firage into vehicle mode.
Had I been aware of Hasbro's intent to launch the Studio Series when I ordered Firage, the remote possibility of an official, licensed Ferrari version of Dino/Mirage might have given me pause. Of course, nothing's been announced as yet, and it looks as though the next couple of waves of SS figures might tie in with the Bumblebee movie, so there's a good chance it won't be happening anytime soon. Now, of course, if they do announce a Studio Series Dino, I probably won't bother with it unless it's particularly good, as well as being simpler and/or more sturdy than this figure (after all, I bought SS Lockdown after buying Unique Toys' Peru Kill!).
Considering its providence, Firage is a bloody good figure and, wacky joint tolerances aside, a remarkable achievement by ST Studio and Alien Attack. It's possibly a little overly ambitious for its size, and would likely have been much sturdier had they made it to Masterpiece scale rather than (approximately) Deluxe class scale. I'm also a little dubious about the use of die cast metal on parts of the feet. These parts are small enough that I doubt they make much difference to his stability and centre of gravity, and the way they've had to be attached means his toes and heel spurs aren't as easily poseable as they may have been had they been made of plastic.
Firage is too tall in robot mode to fit with most other mainline movie toys (particularly Studio Series) and far too small to fit with movie Masterpiece figures, but then, it's certainly not a 'toy' in the way both of those lines are. In the end, he's a beautiful, fragile oddity, but certainly not a must-have, even at its comparatively low price, and even for those who have a particular fondness for the movie aesthetic. For the time being, Firage fills the Dino-shaped void in the movie characters made available as toys, but his seeming fragility means he is likely to become less desirable to anyone but the Collector, should Hasbro get round to making a version of their own under the Studio Series banner.
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