Today I received my Encore Metroplex reissue from Hobbylink Japan. I would have had him a couple days sooner, but for some reason they could not charge my credit card, so I had to use paypal. For those that are interested here is a little back story to Metroplex. He was a character that was introduced after the original 1986 movie. Here is a quote from Transformers Wikipedia
“Metroplex rose out of the ruins of Autobot City after the Battle of Autobot City. During that attack, he was seen transforming from city to battle station by manual control. During the fighting, his Transformation Cog was destroyed. After the battle, he received a new Cog with the help of Sky Lynx, Wheelie, Blurr, and Marissa Faireborn, and it was installed by Pipes. Unfortunately, Metroplex was unable to stop the newly-constructed Trypticon from destroying the Ark, but he did defeat the Decepticon afterwards and hurled the dinosaur into the ocean.”
I originally had this figure as a kid and he was one of my favorites. The city mode works best with the smaller mini bot figures like Bumblebee. This Encore version is closer to the first release which had rubber tires and more chrome on the upper legs. Hasbro later on I believe to cut costs changed the rubber tires on most of their Transformers to plastic. The one I had as a kid was the plastic tire version. It is nice that Takara is going all out on these reissues by making them closer to the original releases.
Here is the original commercial for the toy.
Finally here are some pictures I took of the unboxing. This guy had a ton of stickers to apply. The final picture shows him with Trypticon the dinosaur mentioned in the wikipedia article who also turns into a Decepticon base. Mine is missing a lot of pieces still, so I am holding out in case Takara decides to reissue him as well.
Takara has gone all out this year with the releases of Sky Lynx and Omega Supreme on top of Metroplex. These are all figures that were thought to be too big for a reissue, but I believe they are selling well, so hopefully others will follow.
