Friday, October 17, 2014

Transformers 3rd Party: Mech Ideas - Piston DC-03P

Early last year a few images surfaced online from a new 3rd party company, Mach 5, showing off their version of the Wrecker from IDW's comics, Ironfist.


I was really excited about the upcoming release and had planned on pre-ordering it as soon as they went up...then there was silence. No updates, no nothing. I still don't know what exactly happened to Mach 5, but in the end Mech Ideas ending up releasing this figure. Thanks to the good people at Captured Prey, I was finally able to own both versions of this toy, Gauntlet and Piston.

Now while I was excited about both versions of this toy, I'm starting off with Piston. He's an upgraded version of the Decepticon G1 Triggerbot, Crankcase. I figured by the time I get my post up plenty of other people and YouTuber's will have already shared Gauntlet.

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Mech Idea's first releases were Apex & Geminus (Top Spin and Twin Twist) and they were part of the Demolition Crue. As you can tell from the packaging, both Piston and Gauntlet are apparently a part of the Crue as well. While the box is nice, it's a little bland for my tastes.

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Sorry guys - this isn't meant for whiners children

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Once you open up the box you'll find your respective figure nice and snug in a form fitting plastic tray, reinforced with a cardboard frame if you will. Also in the box you'll find an instructions sheet and a trading card size tech specs.

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Going in I knew these figures would be small - and they are - but I'm OK with that. The original G1 Crankcase was a small toy so to me at least it makes sense that Piston here is like a small deluxe and not voyager size.

I think this figure looks great...in robot mode. We'll get to the vehicle mode next. For a short and rotund figure he seems to have a good bit of articulation. He has articulation points in his shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips and knees. You can also slightly move his head and toes. His legs and feet are sort of posed with a wide stance as you can see above.

Plastic quality is great. As time as gone on it seems more and more of these 3rd party companies are doing a better job in the quality department.

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One of my favorite things with this figure is the head sculpt. I absolutely love it. I love the green/blue big eyes and the yellow paint on the face makes the whole head stand out. Compare it to his G1 self and you'll that Mech Ideas did a great job capturing the original likeness.

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While in robot mode Piston favors his G1 self, in vehicle mode some liberties have been taken. No more does he look like an off road SUV type vehicle. Now he's more of an armored vehicle. I'm going to say this is because of Gauntlet (not-Ironfist).

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For this reason alone I don't care for the vehicle - for Piston. As for Gauntlet it makes sense, thus it looks great. Piston comes packaged with two dark blue guns. These can be pegged into his roof attachment as if his guns had been deployed on the G1 toy.

It's not a bad vehicle mode, in fact I like the compactness of it. It just doesn't fit the character in this case.

Piston photo IMG_1090_zps74aa7502.jpg

Now I can't bring up his G1 toy without a few proper comparison pics, can I? If you measure the height of the original toy from the backpack, then these two are nearly the same height. However as you can tell Piston is much stockier.

Originally I didn't catch the significance of the color blue that was used for the headlights of the vehicle. Notice the two small blue stickers on the chest of the G1 toy? It's little details such as these that I simply love. It shows that some thought was put into the release.

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The instructions showed that Pistons' guns could be positioned on his shoulders as if they had been deployed like the original G1 toy. However I could not figure out how to do that. I didn't see any peg holes for the guns on either side of his head. I did manage eventually to simply rest the guns on his shoulders to mimic the G1 look, but this was well after I had snapped these images for the post.

Piston photo IMG_1094_zpsdb05d3b8.jpg

Overall I really like this toy. In robot mode Piston retains the look and feel of his G1 self along with the addition of modern action figure technology. While the figure is on the smaller size, thankfully so is his price. At the time of this posting both Piston and his mold mate, Gauntlet, can be had at Captured Prey for only $29.00. In this day and age of $100 a pop 3rd party toys, it's refreshing to see that some figures can still be a little nicer to your wallet.

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Piston photo IMG_1098_zps6d51a59e.jpg     Piston photo IMG_1099_zpsc1dcddf1.jpg

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