MetaGate G-05 Red Fantasy

(Femme-Bot Friday #85)

The Bumblebee movie didn't just bring a new, unprecedented coherence to storytelling in live action TransFormers movies, but a whole new aesthetic. Gone were the overcomplicated, oddly-proportioned Autobots and the insectoid Decepticons seemingly made of needles, knives and random metal shavings; the overabundance of grey and bare metal. The framing of each shot gave characters breathing room, allowing for physical characteristics to shine through, and individual robots were easily distinguishable at a glance, even in the thick of the action. No longer were we, for example, stuck looking at Optimus Prime's armpit as he cut a swathe through legions of Decepticons in the middle of a city, or watching Starscream gob up some lubricant in hyper-sharp, ILM-crafted detail.

Sure, the movie only really featured two Decepticons for the bulk of the story, but what Decepticons they were! Shatter and Dropkick were the ideal - not to say archetypal - pairing of brains and brawn, with the former even convincing the proto-Sector 7 team to work with them, despite representing themselves as "Decepticon Peacekeepers", a flagrantly oxymoronic description if ever there was one. Silver-tongued Shatter was the standout villain, exhibiting intelligence, cunning and a keen mind for strategy, with the dulcet tones of Angela Bassett breathing life into her. To cap it all, both she and Dropkick became Triple Changers, which naturally made it difficult for Hasbro to make toys of them.

To make them viable, Hasbro essentially made two versions of each in as many size classes as possible... The Deluxe class Studio Series car mode Shatter was a clumsy, flimsy mess, but the jet mode toy was excellent, if a little overburdened with vehicle mode parts on its backpack. However, it wasn't long till Third Parties started teasing their plans to make (loosely) Masterpiece scale figures that would actually feature both car and jet modes all in one. Toyworld announced theirs first, back in 2019, but relative newcomers MetaGate - creators of the stunning, triple-changing movieverse Drift, Haiku - were the first to actually ship theirs and, even at first glance, it looked substantially better.

But let's have a closer look and see exactly what kind of dark magic had been brought to bear on this character...

Packaging:

With Haiku, I noted a certain Unique Toys feel to the packaging, but this new release from MetaGate changes it up a bit. It retains certain elements of style - such as the photos of the figure's two alternate modes on the sides of the box - but has more of a unique identity. The box features a lighter background image on the front and back of the box, seemingly in reference to Shatter and Dropkick's first meeting with terrestrial human authorities in the movie. The front of the box slaps a large, detailed image of Shatter over this background - artwork based on the enclosed figure rather than movie-level CGI - while the back only shows a (slightly desaturated) version of the background image above the warning text.

Within the box, Red Fantasy is packaged in her car mode, enclosed in a clear plastic clamshell tray, alongside her weapon accessories and above a display stand. Where Haiku had an additional layer of plastic film over the windscreen, Red Fantasy is fully wrapped. The instructions are printed in full colour, but honestly aren't especially helpful on a lot of the steps, due to the small size and unhelpful angles of the illustrations. Thankfully, there are excellent video guides available on YouTube - personally, I will be forever grateful to Emgo316 and his Just Transform It! video.

Among the accessories are wing mirrors for the vehicle mode, which must be plugged into tabs coming out of the car's side windows. These parts are translucent plastic, and the tabs on the wing mirrors are so small and fiddly, as well as being an alarmingly tight fit for translucent plastic, I was a little concerned about breakage. Nevertheless, I got them fitted eventually... I'm just glad they don't need to be removed for transformation. They also come with a pair of chrome stickers to represent the mirrors themselves, which are not too difficult to apply, even on such small plastic parts, but it's probably wise to apply them before attaching the mirrors to the car.

Given the size of the contents, the box is once again remarkably compact: there's maybe an inch of space between either end of the car and the edges of the box. Equally, though, it's instantly apparent that Haiku and Red Fantasy have not been made to the same scale, which might upset or frustrate some collectors.

Car Mode:

While Hasbro may have nailed the customised 1971 Plymouth GTX vehicle mode with Studio Series #40, MetaGate have done a frankly astonishing job with this. Sure, it's got a huge amount of visible parts from other modes - most notably the jet's wings, hanging out below the chassis, while the robot's pauldrons and feet are visible from the front and back, respectively - the bonnet and roof may be covered with transformation seams, but the overall impression is of a good, solid vehicle mode that's fairly true to what was seen in the movie. The boot appears a little on the long side initially but, on comparison with the Deluxe class toy or photos of the real-world car, it seems more as though the car's roof is too low, and the rear windscreen comes down too early. It might also be argued that the front wheels are a little too far forward in their wheel wells but, compared to the images Toyworld released of their attempt at a triple-changing Shatter, the proportions of the vehicle and its wheels are far closer to reality.

In terms of specific detailing the very front of the car lacks the miniature grille, below the row of headlights, largely because of the necessities of the engineering. The tail lights lack the large chrome frames and the striping on the bonnet isn't quite right. The '722' labelling is present both on the bonnet and the rear wings, while several smaller decals are absent. Some of the car's curves, particularly toward the back, aren't precisely those of the Plymouth GTX, but it's nothing critical. Due to some rather clever - if potentially risky - engineering, the front indicator lights are represented by a translucent orange plastic hinge on each side. This, again, is not in precisely the right position, but it's close enough. Some images I've found online suggests there may have been a spoiler at certain points in development but, as far as I can tell, the car used in the movie didn't have one, and neither Hasbro's toy nor Red Fantasy feature a spoiler. Similarly, some images of Shatter suggest there's chrome around the rear wheel wells, if not the front as well, but it's not apparent in the movie. One very curious feature of this figure is that, while the Plymouth roundel is absent from the front of the bonnet, there is a sculpted depression to accommodate one, either as a sticker (I'll be keeping an eye on Toyhax) or as a more substantial, perhaps 3D-printed attachment.

The split between red and black on the car, along with the arrowhead detail behind the doors on each side, seems about right in terms of the car's length, the door handles are painted, and the small, yellow and white triangular details are stamped on to each side. All the lights, both on the front of the vehicle and mounted on the roof vial the rollcage over the windscreen, are all translucent plastic, though there's only paint behind the head- and tail lights. The windows, too, are translucent plastic, but dark enough in their tint that the engineering inside the car is functionally invisible. The protruding engine on the front is die-cast metal, which is just part of the reason this figure feels so heavy in-hand.

Most of the shell of the car is either red or black plastic, but the glossy finish of the plastic - and the red in particular - seems far too good for bare plastic, so I suspect it's either painted or covered with some kind of lacquer to boost the shine. Where paint has clearly been used - mostly over grey plastic - the colour matching looks better in person than it does in some of my photos. The one thing I'd note about the red is that I'd have preferred a deeper, darker red, perhaps even a metallic paint the scarlet used. Additionally, it's a bit of a shame that MetaGate only used silver and gunmetal paints on the front of the car and the exhaust pipes, as a touch of chrome would have been more accurate to the movie car, and would have looked awesome on this figure. That said, standard paints tend to be more durable than chrome. Additionally, the hubcaps aren't even painted, let alone chromed which, on balance, is probably the more significant mark against Red Fantasy in terms of her fidelity to the CGI.

While Shatter never used any weapons in her car mode, it is nevertheless possible to tab her blaster onto the back of the car... though it just sort of sits there looking awkward - not fixed in place, but not prone to falling off - pointing up at an angle that just about clears her roof. Missiles can be attached to the blaster, but it only has slots for three of the four missiles provided... unless you count the socket in the gun barrel, that is. The blaster can also be attached the opposite way round, so it looks like an afterburner protruding from inside the boot, mirroring the supercharged engine at the front. This orientation also seems more secure, and it hugs the boot lid mode closely. Neither is really ideal, but the only other option is pegging the accessories into the base of the stand provided.

So, overall, this is a remarkably solid and reasonably accurate car mode based on Shatter from the Bumblebee movie... On the downside, the visibility of kibble from other modes isn't the only problem with this mode. There are some parts which, on my copy, at least, never seem to sit flush. The windows attached to the rear wings of the car never quite line up with the roof, and there's a surprisingly wide gap between the door panels and their windows. It doesn't seem to be a matter of finessing the transformation as the windows don't fold down any further and the doors peg in securely, precisely where they are. This interpretation of the 1971 Plymouth GTX might not be accurate enough for car purists, and there's no way anyone would mistake it for a licensed model car, but given that this thing also turns into a jet and a robot, I'd still say this is an excellent compromise on a movie character's ground-based vehicle mode.

Jet Mode:

The fact that this thing can transform into a jet, let alone one that's actually recognisable as analogous to a Harrier, is quite an achievement on MetaGate's part. At first glance, nothing of the car mode remains here, but a closer look reveals the door panels between the wings and the car's rear wings making up most of the upper part of the tail section. This figure is also remarkable for how uncluttered the undercarriage is, particularly compared to the likes of Masterpiece Movie Starscream. While the robot's feet are just as plainly visible at the back of the jet as they were at the back of the car, and the tail section is far chunkier than it should be, the overall effect, at a distance, is pretty good, even if the proportions are rather condensed.

However, on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this is by far the most compromised mode, and that the downward-angled wings somewhat conceal a multitude of problems. While the area of the jet's intakes is a bit jumbled - with the frontmost section neither connecting nor even aligning with the part directly behind it - the section from the middle of the jet to the tail is full of holes - some of which show through to the other side - and parts that just sort of sit there, not actually tabbed into anything. Even some of the parts that do tab together - the nosecone, for example, and the reconfigured wings - don't sit flush, and the jet's tail section is quite a mess. The horizontal stabilisers are oversized, too squared-off, and they don't actually tab or clip into position, so they have a habit of drooping or swinging upward as the figure is manipulated. There's also the small fact that some lights - seemingly from the car mode, but actually specific to robot mode - are visible inside the jet's intakes.

However, this mode does score points for getting the Harrier's landing gear right: a single wheel up front, a pair of wheels which deploy from the body of the jet, just behind the wings, and then single stabiliser wheels on long, die-cast rods stemming from the wings. What's more, all of these wheels roll. Those hanging off the wings aren't the most stable, but their hinges are stiff enough to keep it standing. It's also impressive that the cockpit canopy can open, wholly independent of its transformation, though there isn't any cockpit detail within. Something possibly could have been added, but that would likely have required additional partsforming, which is otherwise kept to a minimum on this figure.

A lot of grey paintwork is revealed in this mode, appearing along the full length of the jet, with red added to the wings and the tailfin, but most every other element of colour coming from either robot mode or car mode. Technically, far too much red is left visible on the underside of the jet, which should be mostly grey, and none of the ID numbers have been added, possibly because they would have also been visible in car mode. Because of the mix-and-match approach to filling out her jet mode with car parts, this is likely the least screen-accurate mode in terms of its colour distribution, but it works well nonetheless. The decoration of the wings is missing the black stripes and the military insignia, but these are details that weren't especially apparent in the movie, and it's not as if Hasbro's jet mode Shatter got everything right on that score. 

Naturally, this mode supports the attachment of her missile accessories, which tab in under the wings, as is traditional. Curiously, with four missiles available in total, there are three slots per wing. This gives plenty of options for customising the Harrier's loadout, but then the blaster can't be attached anywhere. Before I got this figure, I'd assumed there must be some way of attaching it - perhaps at the back, like an afterburner, considering that can be done for car mode, or under the nose, where she deploys a gun in the movie - but it's not mentioned in the instructions, and I've been unable to find any slots that are arranged such that they could accommodate any of the blaster's pegs. Considering how meticulous the engineering is in every other respect, this is certainly a disappointment... but it's not entirely unusual, even among Third Party Masterpiece analogues.

Also, as with car mode, and in spite of the untidy midsection and tail, this is still a vastly better Harrier than Toyworld's proposed version, which looked like an absolute mess, with most of the robot's legs seemingly protruding from the body of the jet, barely concealed below the wings.

Robot Mode:

Here's where the magic really shines because, somehow, MetaGate not only turned a decent car into a serviceable jet, but they crammed in a robot mode that's surprisingly true to the movie CGI in its proportions. She's also really, really tall. As MetaGate's second unique movieverse triple-changer, I was expecting her to end up around the same height as Haiku - just under 9", or approx 19/20 cm depending on whether he's measure to the top of his head or the top of the crest on his helmet - but she's about 10.25"/26cm. That may not sound like much of a difference, but she absolutely towers over him in person.

What's more, she looks extremely solid from most angles, and you have to get in quite close to see the gappiness of her torso, which is only really visible from the sides. The arm compression for transformation does leave obvious gaps in her biceps as well, but the dark metallic paint goes some way toward concealing them from a distance. Similarly, the lower legs are basically hollow but for the rear wheels, unfolded and pegged into the backs. The existing mass of the figure's vehicle modes is repurposed just as cleverly in robot mode as it is in both car and jet modes. On top of this, the sheer quantity of die-cast parts makes her feel just as substantial and imposing as she looks.

The backpack is surprisingly compact in terms of how far back it extends, and the smaller wings on her back are hinged to allow a certain amount of freedom in arranging them. The larger wings and the turbines mounted behind her shoulders are less adaptable and, given the way they work, I'd expect them to become looser over time and with repeated transformations. While these, in particular, reflect specific instances of Shatter as she appeared in the movie, rather than being features that were consistently present in her CGI, it feels like a bit of a cheap cop-out to leave them dangling on Red Fantasy's robot mode... but, let's face it, if they weren't present somewhere, she wouldn't have a jet mode, and there aren't any convenient places to stash wings that large. The whole thing is handled far better than Hasbro's rather wasteful Deluxe class jet mode Shatter toy, not least in the way the shape of the wings changes between modes.

As far as sculpted detail goes, for most of Red Fantasy's body, MetaGate seem to have taken a leaf out of Unique Toys' book in that, aside from the obvious car detailing left over from that vehicle mode, much of the torso is quite minimal and shallow-sculpted. In fact, aside from the most obvious group of pistons on her belly, the only detailing is a clump of indeterminate mechanical stuff directly below the span of headlights across her chest. Everything else is either a slightly protruding or slightly recessed section of an otherwise flat panel that sits inside the rear windscreen in car mode. One of the more prominent details of the CGI model - the landing gear running down the centre of her belly - has been faked, with a hinged arm sitting over a sculpted section of wheel, which just happens to be the ab crunch hinge. The arms and legs are a reflection of the new, cleaner, clearer aesthetic and, while there is sculpted detail, it's nowhere near as over-the-top intricate as the average Bayverse figure, since most of Shatter's inner workings were - quite sensibly - covered over with armour panels. As with the belly, what detail there is has been kept fairly flat, such as the handles on her pauldrons, which are sculpted into the faux-wheel wells rather than extending from them.

Early images of Red Fantasy - and, in fact, some of the early versions of the 'finished' figure shipped to YouTubers - had the colour split mainly between red, black and white, but the final production version uses a more accurate pale grey paint for the wings, the undersides of the forearms, the vent-like panels above her knees, and most of her lower legs. Some faux-car mode details, such as the silver-rimmed black panels on her forearms featuring the number 722, are simple paint applications. Others, like the roof lights on her collar, are supplementary plastic parts, because the actual car mode roof lights are concealed inside her torso. The bulk of the paintwork for this mode seems to be applied to the die-cast parts, most of which form her legs, giving the figure added weight and stability. Two types of dark gunmetal paint have been used - one for her thighs, toes and forearms, which has a multichromatic, almost oily sheen, while the other, on her biceps and knees, has a plainer shimmer. The detail of the paintwork is quite impressive, with stripes of red and silver appearing in her lower legs, that could just as easily have been missed. The pistons on the torso are picked out with silver, gunmetal and metallic blue paint, while the mechanical parts below her chest feature a copper trim at the top. The pelvis features gold paint on the inner part of the hips, and the turbines behind her shoulders have gunmetal paint on some of the raised details. The 'handles' on her pauldrons aren't fully painted, but seem to simply pass through the paint for the faux-wheel well. 

Weapons-wise, there are some interesting choices available. Actually attaching the blaster can be a little fussy. Its underside has a cutout area to accommodate her thumb, meaning the hand should be rotated 180° before the blaster is attached - but aligning the thumb to the cutout can be fiddly, and it fits well enough on either arm with the hand in its normal position, but balled up into a fist. The tip of the blaster is hinged so that it can be raised when attaching or detaching, and then closed to wrap around the knuckles, but it doesn't really seem necessary, since it plugs from the side, at a point where the position of the hand is only an important if it's also open. As in car mode, the three slots on the back of the blaster can be used to attach missiles, and the fourth can be pegged into the hole on the front of the blaster. It's not clear whether this is intentional, or if the hole is only coincidentally the right size to accommodate a missile. Alternatively, the slot on either forearm that the blaster tabs into can be used to attach a single missile. Perhaps the weirdest thing about the blaster is that there's a small, barrel-shaped, metallic grey plastic attachment that pegs onto the top, just in front of the rearmost missile socket. There's no obvious reason why this wasn't simply designed as part of the blaster itself and, while it attaches quite securely, it's another small part that could be prone to getting lost. The blaster is nicely painted with red and silver paint over its black plastic, but the barrel of the gun hasn't been highlighted with any glow... That's not necessarily inaccurate, given that Shatter seems wield more of a machine gun than an energy weapon, but weapon glow is a common enough paint application that its absence is noteworthy. The missiles are largely bare plastic other than rings of red paint along the shafts, but even that's more than Haiku's missiles got, and certainly better than the average Hasbro figure these days, even in the Masterpiece line.

The head sculpt seems to be very accurate to the movie CGI but then, given the size of this figure and the level of fidelity they achieved with Haiku, I wouldn't have expected any less from MetaGate. While the dark gunmetal paint over her face looks great, I can't help but think highlights in a lighter shade would have helped bring it to life. To be fair, though, the angles of the sculpt are more than enough to catch the light and give the impression of colour variance. Smaller paint applications, such as the silver on the rim of the helmet, the 'ears' and the antenna emphasise MegaGate's commitment to measuring up to the movie's CGI, and do a better job of meeting 'Masterpiece' level expectations than most of Hasbro's Masterpiece Movie figures thusfar. The eyes are painted rather than LED, but they've even gone to the trouble of using two shades of red to give the impression of the 'pupil' being brighter than the 'iris'. It might have been fun to add some jaw articulation, but that aspect of Shatter's CGI was perhaps a little too involved to do it justice in plastic, even at this scale.

 

Red Fantasy's transformation is not thoroughly intuitive, and it's certainly not as simplistic as Unique Toys' Peru Kill or Red Dasher, or DX9's La Hire but, for what it does, it's remarkably coherent and easy to follow. There were nevertheless a couple of points where I had to refer to a video review. The way the jet parts fold out of - and then partially conceal - the car, and how the robot somehow collapses down and compresses into both vehicles is the closest I've seen real-world figures come to actual mass-shifting. Once I'd gone through the transformations a couple of times, they became far easier to accomplish. While it's never going to be straightforward, as such, simply because there are so many steps to switching between each mode. One particularly impressive point is the way the jet's front landing gear comes out of the robot's head - very clever management of the available space, though to does mean there was no room for electronics to make her eyes light up. Car mode is the most solid of the three though, after transforming it a couple of times, the wing section that folds into the underside of the car seemed to become a little loose on one side. It's a friction joint rather than a pinned hinge, and sometimes it stays in place perfectly well, but sometimes it's inclined to flop down. Jet mode has quite a few parts that don't peg in at all, let alone securely, but these are tucked in below the wings. The most frustrating aspect is pegging the tail section together: the car's rear wings have to peg into the centre of the rear wheels which, themselves, don't peg in anywhere. They also have to clip together, but the slightest pressure between them causes them to unclip, inevitably also unpegging them from the wheels. Robot mode is mostly all solidly built, but there are odd little details that can mess up its stability. The way the transformed tyres plug into the calves can be undone all too easily by incautious handling of the shins, and the thighs are held together by just two connections, one of which - the hinged red panels on the outsides of the thighs - is a surprisingly loose fit. Neither are inclined to come apart on their own, but manipulated the legs can cause either to come apart unexpectedly. 

Thankfully, all these moving parts have led to neither omissions nor compromises in those joints needed for the robot's articulation, and some of the transformation joints actively supplement her articulation. The head is on a ball joint which, itself is on a hinge. This combination frees the head to look both up and down quite a way, as well as rotating a full 360° despite the raised collar pieces on either side. The hinge is weirdly loose, but only to the extent that, wherever it's moved, it will wobble a millimetre or two if the figure is shaken. The shoulders not only do the prerequisite 360° rotation (with some manoeuvring around the wings), they swing out to the sides - both on their transformation joint and a dedicated, ratcheted shoulder joint behind the pauldrons - and can even swing forward on a butterfly joint. There's an unrestricted bicep swivel, and the single-jointed elbow nevertheless allows the arm to bend almost fully back on itself. The wrists can rotate and tilt down - which would have been ideal if a sword had been included in the package - while the fingers are hinged in two places (independent index finger, while the other three are together) and the thumb supplements its two hinges with a ball joint at the base. She has waist rotation, though various bits of her torso make it rather fiddly, and she also manages a touch over 90° of ab crunch. The legs have a surprising amount of swing range front-to-back - something in the region of 270° can be achieved by finagling the wings on her back - though the shape of the hips means they don't manage much more than about 75° out to the sides. However, the position of the joint means that they can swing inward by one or two clicks - not quite enough for her to cross her legs. The hips can swivel through about 90°, knees can bend far more than 90° due to transformation, and the only thing stopping them from collapsing right back in robot mode is the small fins sticking out of her calves. The feet are... awkward. The arrangement of hinges allows them to tilt upward, but not down, sideways tilt is limited by the shape of the heels, but the range is decent nonetheless, while the toe parts and heel spurs can be adjusted slightly due to transformation. Red Fantasy is a remarkably stable figure in and of herself, but the included stand allows for more extreme poses without the need to spend ages balancing her.

As with Haiku, this is a fantastic figure... though, on balance, I'd say this one is the better of the two, and shows significant improvement in MetaGate's engineering skills. What's incredible about this figure is that, despite being significantly larger, heavier, more complex, better painted and generally more impressive than Haiku, it cost just £10 more when bought from TFs Express (it would have been £25 more if I'd bought Haiku from there as well, but that's still a massive bargain). Yes, it's both confusing and disappointing that she's been made in a scale all her own - in robot mode, the top of Haiku's helmet crest just about reaches the bottom of Red Fantasy's chest, and their car modes are hopelessly mismatched - but that's not such a terrible problem because these two characters are not only from different movies, but from wholly different movie continuities. They only way Red Fantasy's size/scale will be a problem is if MetaGate's upcoming take on Dropkick - G-06 Blue Boy - is either to another completely unique scale, or to the same scale as Haiku. That said, I know some collectors prefer Masterpiece-style figures to be at Masterpiece scale, and Red Fantasy is certainly not that. Either way, impressive as their engineering may be, consistency of scale is going to be important to MetaGate's continued success.

While I've been effusive in my praise for this figure, it's not without its flaws, quite apart from the patchy jet mode. My main gripe would be the sheer number of screws left visible on the figure, all of which are bare silver. In most instances, they're used in ways that aren't overly conspicuous, but the screws in her pauldrons and on her belly stand out all too well against their black background. Black screws could have been used to help them blend in here, and on her knees, or plugs could have been fitted over them to conceal them completely. It seems like such a small thing, but it does have an impact on the presentation, which is otherwise pretty stellar.

If I had to make a guess at what will be my top figure when this blog's sixteenth anniversary rolls around in a couple of months, I'd be very surprised if it isn't this one. Figures like this are the kind of thing I could only dream of back when I first started this blog after getting back into collecting as an adult. Back then, I might have hoped that Hasbro might eventually develop something like this... but it's becoming increasingly obvious that the Third Parties are going to beat Hasbro at their own game sooner rather than later. MetaGate's second triple-changer actually transforms in ways that even Hasbro/Takara Tomy's Masterpiece Movie figures sometimes have to fake, yet it's cheaper than the average official Masterpiece Movie figure and the non-transforming action figures from Threezero. While Red Fantasy may not match the intricate detailing of the latter, it absolutely blows the former out of the water.

Even if the proliferation of KO toys eventually outstrips the official merchandise, the idea of robots that transform into vehicles has a lot of mileage left outside of the TransFormers brand, the engineering is constantly improving, and new ideas are constantly evolving... Whereas Hasbro keeps retreating to G1 and cutting costs in terms of both physical size and complexity of engineering.

I know which I'd prefer to support, going forward.