...And yet, when Hasbro finally released their Studio Series Dino/Mirage back in 2021 (a whole ten years after the film was in cinemas), I didn't bother picking it up. Not because it wasn't a licensed Ferrari - that particular license being owned by another toy manufacturer - nor even because I already have both the Takara Tomy Movie Advanced version and the Alien Attack figure, Firage, but because the whole thing was lacklustre. Typical Hasbro dull red plastic and significant transformation cheats, yet most of the vehicle mode still ended up folded onto the robot's back.
Facing facts, though, the Movie Advanced figure simply isn't a screen-accurate rendition of Dino/Mirage, and the Alien Attack version is a fussy, fragile-feeling little thing whose approximately Deluxe class vehicle mode transforms into a robot mode in a scale that somehow fails to match pretty much anything else, either from Hasbro or other Third Parties...
So, when Unique Toys revealed their take on a (roughly) Masterpiece-scale Dino/Mirage, I was very much on board. Their pattern of basically turning a car inside out - introduced with Peru Kill, refined with DX9's La Hire - made for simple, enjoyable and sturdy transformations and, while their robots have sometimes been accused of lacking the movie CGI's intricate detail, early photos of their Red Dasher looked impressive. Of course, the real question is whether it's as impressive in-hand... So, let's take a look.
Given that this is a Third Party Masterpiece-analogue, I was surprised by how small the box actually is. At a mere 16cm x 20cm x 5.5cm (approx 6.5" x 8" x 2"), it's remarkably snug, and a little smaller than the box that La Hire came in. That said, it's also smaller - in both width and depth - than the box Firage game in, despite this being larger in both vehicle and robot modes!
While there's nothing particularly outstanding about the packaging, per se - though the front features an image of the figure in both robot and vehicle modes - there were a couple of surprises inside the box. First and foremost, along with Red Dasher's own collectors' card, Unique Toys included the card omitted from La Hire. On the subject of omissions, as is becoming increasingly common with Third Party figures, there was no instruction booklet/leaflet. Instead, the back of the box features two QR codes, one of which links to a YouTube demonstration video, while the other links to the equivalent on BiliBili. Both cards are plastic, printed in full colour on both sides... and both feature the same - pretty awful - typos in half of the categories on the chart: "STENGTH", "ENOURAUCE", "BANK" and "FLREPLAST".
Red Dasher is packaged in vehicle mode, inside his own plastic bag within the clear clamshell, alongside his two battle blades, while his grappling hooks and wing mirrors are kept in a separate, resealable plastic bag packaged below the tray.
Vehicle Mode:
While I'm no aficionado, I can still tell at a glance that Unique Toys have not reproduced the 458 down to the minutest details. It's missing obvious details like the Ferrari badges, but some elements of the car's shape have been either toned down or removed entirely. Thus, the headlights still lead into little cutouts on the front of the bonnet, but they're much shallower and not open, while the indentations on the outsides of the lights are not as pronounced. At the back, the 'scoops' on either side of the rear windscreen are barely there, the exhaust pipes are much simplified and the sets of fins either side of them just aren't present. The lower indicator lights are present only as unpainted sculpted detail, the rear windscreen itself is broken up and the numberplate panel interrupted by a couple of sockets, both due to transformation. Aside from the absence of badges on the centre of the hubcaps, the wheels are fairly accurate in terms of their design, and each one is mounted over disc brake detailing that is painted as well as sculpted.
Windows, headlights and main tail lights are all translucent plastic, with a dark tint on the windows and the headlights, unusually, being backed with black paint rather than silver. Colour matching between the paint and plastic isn't perfect, but it's close enough, mainly deviating in the thin strips of red paint either side of the windscreen, though the doors also look a touch off. As far as the rest of the car goes, I'm not sure whether the gloss on the main red car shell is paint or just a layer of gloss over the red plastic. Either way, the glossiness looks fantastic, with silver and black accents front and back. Oddly, unlike MetaGate's Red Fantasy, the wing mirrors feature neither stickers nor paint to represent the actual mirrors. Looking back over my MPM-adjacent third party figures, UT's Peru Kill and MetaGate's Haiku have mirror stickers, but DX9's La Hire doesn't... and, given that Red Dasher comes with La Hire's collectors' card, it almost feels as though this was planned as a DX9 release.
There are probably more visible transformation seams on this compared to Firage, and even a couple of sections of bonnet that never seem to align perfectly. While Firage ended up with most of the car shell folded up on his back, this figure clearly makes better use of its mass, even though that means it uses UT's typical cheats in transformation. One oddity is that the hinge right in front of the front windscreen is painted on the top, to at least partially match the surrounding plastic... but similar hinges - in front of the rear wheels and several at the back of the car - are unpainted, making them something of an eyesore. I know it's not necessarily practical, and that there are 'unpaintable' plastics, but it shows an uncharacteristic inattention to detail for UT. That said, the same might well be true of Peru Kill were it not for the fact that he's basically all dark grey.
Nevertheless, it's still a nice-looking car, and it's certainly closer to the 458 than the weird custom Ferrari-adjacent vehicle Hasbro created. As I said in my write-up of Firage, the 458 isn't one of Ferrari's best machines, looking quite generic in some respects... but then, most car manufacturers these days seem to me to be making variations on the same car, rather than creating something truly unique to their brand. It's disappointing that some of the biggest names in sports cars are falling into this trap - many Porsches these days are unrecognisable - and it's really weird that the most outstanding feature of the 458 is the tidiness of its back end... Everything else seems like Ferrari-by-the-numbers, but without their usual flourishes. Then again, since I'm no connoisseur, it could well be that I'm missing something.
One gripe I have about this vehicle mode is the fact that the wing mirrors are packed separately, and have to be fitted to the figure by the end-user. It's a ridiculously fiddly process because the mirrors are small, the pegs are an extremely tight fit, and getting a good enough grip on both the mirror and the door is rather tricky when dealing with a fully-assembled figure. There's a chance it would have been easier if I'd waited till I'd got him into robot mode, where it's easier to hold onto both sides of the door but, having them partially fitted, I've not been able to improve on their situation since. On the other hand, it would have been even easier for the mirrors to be pre-fitted - it's not as if they would have presented a significant problem for packaging.
Robot Mode:
Now, I've got no complaints about the way Firage looked in robot mode, but he's an awkward size - too small to be considered Masterpiece Movie scale, too tall to fit with official Deluxe class toys, the choices made for some of his joints were a little weird, and he had a massively unwieldy backpack that didn't even try to emulate the movie's CGI. Broadly speaking, Red Dasher has far greater fidelity to the CGI in terms of Dino's shape and proportions, but that's not without its caveats...
Obviously he follows UT's pattern of cheating a lot of the robot mode elements: the chest it entirely fake parts, concealed inside the rear windscreen in vehicle mode, while the vehicle's actual headlights end up on the robot's back, with the outer sections of the front bumper flipping up to become his shoulder blades. The rest of the detailing on the back is similarly fake, and sits inside the front windscreen in vehicle mode. As with other figures from UT, the depth and intricacy of sculpted detail isn't especially impressive, but they've broadly got the right shapes, and the silver and gunmetal paint on his 'ribcage' looks good. Where they have used actual car parts to form his armour - the thighs and knees - it works very well, and the cheating of the stars on his hips, while lacking in sculpted detail, is certainly far more sturdy than having part of the hubcap pulled out, as with Firage.
The sculpting of his limbs is similarly shallow and, in places, imprecise - the biceps looking too flat, for example - but there's more than enough paintwork around the figure to elevate it above the average Hasbro Masterpiece, even if it looks as though Firage got a more thorough paint job in some areas. Dino was one of the few Autobots to really make use of his vehicle mode's bold primary colour, and Red Dasher reproduces this admirably, with the internal robot details picked out with gunmetal, silver and gold paint on his cuffs, knee joints, calves and feet. Additionally, the colour matching between holdover car parts and the robot-specific parts is certainly a lot better on this figure than on Firage.
Probably the strangest feature of the sculpt - and I challenge you to unsee this - is that his groin looks very much like Bumblebee's battlemask from his 2018 solo movie... but that does appear to be broadly accurate to Dino's CGI model.
There are a handful of disappointing aspects of this figure. First and foremost, the way the front of the car flares out from his back really impacts his silhouette, though I have to concede that there's no obvious way UT's designers and engineers could have fixed it, given the way other sections of vehicle shell tuck away in that area of the torso. Secondly, the hands are both plain in their sculpting and simplistic in their execution. For a figure released in 2024, they are decidedly outdated and, while I don't demand individually articulated fingers, a separate index finger has now become so conventional, even Hasbro are tending to do that with Leader and some Voyager class figures. Lastly, while Red Dasher lacks the extending pulley 'wheel' in his forearms for his grappling claws (which were present, albeit rather awkward on Firage), the whole black plastic inner section of the forearms is a touch loose, which initially made me think part of it could be extended. Additionally, his 'scarf' is awkwardly executed, split as it is by the butterfly joints at his shoulder and a couple of small sections of vehicle panelling which fold in behind the head. I had got the impression from the CGI that the 'scarf' is tipped with the wing mirror on each side but, here, there's just a little nub.
Weapons-wise, Red Dasher comes with the battle blades and grappling claws Dino used in the movie, just like Firage... however, while the claws with this figure are not articulated and so feel less fragile, they're still attached via twist-ties. The ties themselves are tipped with plastic connectors rather than plugging directly into the arms, so the fit is far more secure... however, the ties are a touch loose within the connector piece, and the weight of the claw can cause the wire to twist around in its socket. I've found that pushing it further into the connector helps but, short of adding some glue, it's not a permanent solution. The blades, meanwhile, are more extravagantly painted than those of Firage, but they're not articulated. In many ways, that's a good thing, and the hinges are present as sculpted detail... but, having seen what's possible with Firage's articulated blades, being reduced to simply angling the blade's connection tab within the forearm's socket is a bit of a let-down.
The head sculpt is nicely done, and seems accurate, except perhaps around the eyes, where the concept art and CGI suggest more bare metal visible behind the red 'eyelids'. He has quite a 'squinty' look to his eyes on every figure, official and otherwise but here, it's to the point where the metallic blue paint in there is barely discernible. At this size, it seems clear that Dino has the Cybertronian equivalent of 'resting bitch face'. Silver and gunmetal paint has been used to highlight the larger bare metal details of the face, and the entire back of his head is painted silver - something not even the Alien Attack figure had. I've said before that there's something about Dino's head that reminds me of Beast Machines Cheetor (the angular 'nose' and extended philtrum), but now, in the wake of Rise of the Beasts, there are parallels to be drawn with the movie version of Cheetor as well... albeit through Dino's characteristic Bayverse aesthetic of overly intricate detailing. It really is a shame that Dino was a one-and-done movie character, as it would have been interesting to have some idea of why the construction of his face tends more toward the insectoid look of the movie Decepticons than the nightmarishly overcomplicated, but broadly humanoid Autobot visages.
As with all of Unique Toys' previous movieverse figures, Red Dasher's transformation is simple, largely intuitive, and very satisfying, without any of the fussiness of Firage. I will admit that, in preparation for this write-up, I pulled Firage off the shelf and tried transforming him again... and I really did him a disservice in describing the process as "downright torturous", because I managed to transform him back to vehicle mode without referring to instructions or any video guides. Nevertheless, Red Dasher is far more straightforward, and superficially similar to other Third Party movieverse figures, including Peru Kill, La Hire, and even Metagate's Haiku. The pelvis and legs make up most of the rear and sides of the car - both wheels on each side remain on the legs, but are hidden either on the underside of the feet or inside the thigh - while the arms fold in between them and the torso opens up to reveal the front and rear windscreens folded up around the roof, with parts of the bonnet having been pegged in to the sides of the waist to keep everything together in robot mode. There are no points where parts have to be carefully finagled around other parts, requiring any of the plastic to be flexed, but it's certainly not a flawless process. The main weak links are the edges of the rear windscreen, which peg into the inner thigh to fix the thigh armour in place (but frequently don't stay in place, and can pop out when moving the legs), and then are an absolute pain to reposition when going back to vehicle mode. The fact that the shoulder armour doesn't peg together in its robot mode configuration is puzzling - each half is joined by a hinge and, for whatever reason, they decided that the hinge's friction would be sufficient to keep them together. Granted, they don't fall apart at the slightest touch, but nor do they feel very secure.
Where Firage relied on a lot of ball joints, Red Dasher is basically all pinned hinges and mushroom pegs, making for a much less fussy posing experience. In particular, his feet have far greater range despite lacking the individually-articulated 'toes' and heel spurs. The front of the foot and the heel spurs are hinged for transformation, but the 'toes' sticking out on either side of the feet are fixed, since those details are sculpted on the inside of the car's front wheel wells, and they don't actually make contact with the ground at all. Red Dasher's footprint is basically the wheel, the very front of the toe and the pair of heel spurs on each foot... So it's actually fairly surprising how stable he is. The feet can rotate and tilt at the ankle, but the position of the joint leaves a weird gap between the foot and the leg in more extreme poses. The knees are double-jointed and can bend about 135°, while the hips are largely unimpeded, but for the armour sticking out of the top of the thighs clashing with the waist. The waist itself can rotate but, again, can clash with the thighs, and there's no ab crunch. Shoulders can rotate a full 360°, swing forward about 45° on a dedicated butterfly joint and out to the sides a little under 90°. Elbows are on double-joints and can fold the forearm right up to the bicep, while the bicep can rotate freely except when the elbow is folded right up against it. The hands can rotate and tilt at the wrist, the thumbs are ball jointed at the base and have a single hinge, and the fingers are - unfortunately - all fused together with just two hinged joints. The head can rotate, and is on a double joint for tilt, which allows him to look almost straight up or straight down, albeit at the loss of any sideways tilt. Finally, the doors are mounted on three joints which allows them to flare out from the shoulder or pull in toward the spine, rotate around (on a rather odd axis) and swing back and forth (or "open and closed", in car mode).
Honestly, if I'd had any issues with Red Fantasy, Red Dasher would likely have been a shoo-in for my figure of the year. Granted, it cheats a lot of its transformation and aspects of the robot mode's appearance, but it does so in service of a clean, simple, intuitive and fun transformation, as well as great articulation via more straightforward joints - each a significant improvement over both Alien Attack's Firage, and Hasbro's clumsy Studio Series figure. The hands are perhaps a little basic for a modern Masterpiece-analogue, but they're also good and sturdy. Nevertheless, he shows how far Unique Toys have come since Peru Kill, and that they're hopefully going to be able to keep up with newer entrants into the Third Party market for Masterpiece Movie-analogues.
It's really disappointing that this nobody of a character had such a striking look in both vehicle and robot form, yet played so small a role in his one movie appearance, and Hasbro and Takara Tomy have been unable to reproduce it adequately. Now I have Red Dasher in my collection, I'm not sure I'll be getting rid of Firage, as each has its own place on my shelves... but I now have even fewer reasons to hang on to the Movie Advanced figure, based on the RotF Sideways mold.
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