Thursday, 6 October 2022

MetaGate G-01 Haiku

I have quite a few excellent Third Party figures in my collection now, with an increasing number based on movie characters, and in a loosely Masterpiece-adjacent scale. Considering the couple of Hasbro-produced, Deluxe class figures of Age of Extinction Drift that I own are less than stellar, the announcement of a Third Party MP-analogue version certainly piqued my interest... And the fact that it was to be a triple-changer, taking both his Bugatti Veyron and futuristic helicopter modes into account, seemed like a tall order.

Add to that, the creators, MetaGate, were previously unheard of, and suddenly launching themselves toward an eager - and frequently highly critical - fandom with such an ambitious debut project. There have been rumours - as there were with DX9's La Hire - that Unique Toys have had a hand in this figure's creation but, so far, there appears to be little or no concrete evidence of that.

However, it quickly became a figure I was intent on acquiring, and the recent sale of my Game Boy Color game collection gave me just enough breathing room in my finances to risk taking a punt on a stunning-looking figure from an untested company. I preordered from Iacon.Store at the start of September, and it arrived a little over three weeks later... so, let's take a look at MetaGate's inaugural offering, and see how it compares to the output of some of the more established Third Party figures.