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.
