I've not delved into the Masterpiece lines a great deal, and have been particularly selective with the Masterpiece Movie branch, picking up only those characters whose mainline Deluxe class toys didn't quite deliver what I wanted. Consequently, I've not bothered picking up MPM Optimus Prime, 2007 Camaro Bumblebee or Ironhide, but snapped up Barricade and Jazz pretty swiftly (and MPM VW Bumblebee, but I've since sold him off), and the most recent two - Starscream and Ratchet - were on my want list. Even the MPM Megatron mold piqued my interest, being a surprisingly good, albeit still seriously flawed attempt to turn the bonkers movie CGI into plastic reality. However, the stock Hasbro/Takara Tomy paint jobs on all three of them ended up being utterly dire, making a complete mockery of the 'Masterpiece' concept and making some excellent new molds look cheap and unfinished.
Then, all of a sudden, and with very little fanfare, alongside the KO/upscaled versions of certain Studio Series toys, images emerged of KO versions of Megatron... then Starscream... then - seemingly just days after the official MPM toy was released - Ratchet. More fully painted, more elaborately decorated, more accurate to the movie in both vehicle and robot modes... more, generally. By comparison, what had been a slightly disappointing entry in the Masterpiece Movie line suddenly looked like an unpainted sample, despite being appreciably more expensive.
I had not, up until recently, even considered replacing my original movie Ratchet toy but, when something like this exists - at a fraction of the cost of the official Masterpiece - it's not hard to convince oneself to upgrade...
