Dave's Alternators Rant

     7: Meister - Mazda RX-8

     Ordered online along with Tracks.  Once I find a spare one, I will
probably painted it up in the pastel colors of that "Idol Special" auctioned
on Yahoo Japan in Fall 2004.  Ships with Tracks, but is either shortpacked or
people prefer buying it.  As with Tracks, reprolabels.com has a G1 sticker
set for this car. [Clarification: the email I got about this said that the
sheet had been designed, but at the time was not yet available.  Guess it
STILL isn't available.  Should be eventually, though.]

CAPSULE

     Meister: Nice if slightly bland vehicle mode with very good interior.
Transformation is mostly good, although not without issues.  Robot mode is
good.  Recommended.  $19.76 at Wal-Mart.


RANT

PACKAGING

     In the same new box style as Autobot Tracks (see that review for more
details).  The box pictures show the robot mode mistransformed in a somewhat
silly way.  Dead End is the co-sell on the bottom.
     There's two plastic straps around the car, but not enough to keep the
front end from shaking apart in shipping.  The muffler gun is packaged in the
bag with the instructions, since it would otherwise come loose from the car
in shipping.  The instructions are single-sided and include 30 steps.
     I suppose here is as good a place as any to discuss the name.  This is
clearly meant to be G1 Jazz, but for reasons of trademark they couldn't call
this toy Jazz.  And this time, "Autobot Jazz" wouldn't be enough, because
there's a brand of car out there called the Jazz.  And it's NOT made by
Mazda.  So calling this one Jazz would probably come too close to
infringement for comfort (even if it's not strictly a trademark violation).
Meister, on the other hand, is what at least one version of Jazz has been
called in Japan, so it made a reasonable substitute.  Especially since this
line is aimed at collectors who might know about the name Meister already.
And it's better IMO than "Zoom-Zoom," which is what they called the early CG
model of this used in Mazda online ads.


VEHICLE MODE
     
     Model: Mazda RX-8 hardtop.  Originally done in red, because red was the
main color for the RX-8, but changed to white to make it more like G1 Jazz.
It's a coupe, with full front doors and half-doors for the rear seats.

     Size/Scale: 7.25" (18.5cm) long, 3" (7.5cm) wide at the wheels, 2.25"
(6cm) tall at the roof.  At 1/24 scale, that translates to 14.5 feet long, 6
feet wide and 4.5 feet tall.

     Mechanical Aspects: The hood opens with a rear hinge and the trunk
opens, but neither opens far.  The front doors swing open on extending hinges
like on Smokescreen and Silverstreak, but unless you have good fingernails
you need to grab the rear view mirrors to open them.  The rear half-doors can
only be easily opened once the front doors are open (as per the real thing),
and are on a hinge at the end of an arm that can swing out.
     The front wheels are joined by means of conical pegs going into
depressions on a crossbar held to the underside of the hood.  The front end
needs to be snapped together all the way for this to work, but it doesn't
cause problems in transformation or robot mode.
     On the interior, both front seats can fold forward, but the rear seats
are fixed in place.  The steering wheel adjusts up and down, but does not
need to be tucked away for transformation, so it only has a "real" range of
motion. 

     Color and Details: White body, very lightly smoked windows with black
borders.  Most of the white parts are a white plastic that glows brightly
under blacklight.  However, a couple of bits around the windows are painted
white over clear plastic, and the white paint not only doesn't glow under UV,
it's clearly different under normal incandescent light.  The white plastic is
faintly translucent, while the painted parts aren't.  The tires are black
rubberized plastic, the hubcaps and muffler are silver-painted.
     On the hood is a slight triangular-bordered hump at the back.  At the
front of the hood is a silver Mazda symbol that's just painted on, not
molded.  Below that is a black air grille, and below that a sort of open
framework mini-airdam.  Clear headlights flank this, with a bit of orange
clear plastic inside them for turn signals.  Below the headlights are black
slits with chromed knobs sticking out on the ends near the centerline, not
sure if these are decoration or lowlights.
     Both sides have clear turn signals ahead of each wheel and black air
grates behind each wheel.  The side mirrors are solid black (at least on
mine), with no chromed mirror surfaces or even silver paint.  I have just
fixed that with a metallic paint pen.  :)  There's handle moldings on the
front doors, and a gascap cover on the driver's side over the rear wheel, but
otherwise not much detail on the sides.
     The rear window has pale orange defroster lines on it.  Going down the
centerline, there's a red clear plastic taillight, a molded Mazda logo
painted silver (the logo does not split...the transformation seam goes around
it to one side), and a white license plate with an Autobot symbol on the
driver's side and "MEISTER" on the passenger side.  The taillights are clear
plastic on the outside halves and clear red on the inner halves.  Along the
bottom black part, the center is a black air grating with a point-down
triangle molded in the middle.  Small exhaust pipes peak out on the edges,
linked by pipe molding to the muffler gun.
     The underside is mostly neither very robot or very vehicle, although you
can clearly make out the robot arms and legs.  The muffler gun stowed on the
underside looks pretty good.
     The interior is black with silver paint on the dashboard, center "hump"
and on the backs of the front seats.

TRANSFORMATION

     Okay, Tracks had some panel-popping issues.  Meister has a LOT of
panel-popping issues.  Again, I got it transformed without instructions, but
the legs puzzled me for a while.  There's a lot of twisting and dancing to
get the legs and feet all in the right places.  
     Speaking of the feet, there's a black panel on each foot that initially
doesn't seem to have a reason to be there, among all the folding panels that
DO (and there's a lot of 'em).  It seems to be intended for pose support
rather than transformation.
     The shoulders have a tendency to come off in transformation even if you
do things in the right order.  And you really need to get the windshield out
of the way before folding down the hood, or the hood will prevent the
windshield from moving.
     Don't forget to remove the muffler before separating the legs!  You can
rip a peg off if you forget.  The official instructions have the rear bumper
as toes, but it's been pointed out to me by a few people that if you leave
the rear bumper as heels, you save a few steps of leg gyration and have a
transformation that's more G1-style.  Like with Smokescreen and Silverstreak,
the rear bumpers pull down to be articulated toes.  Unlike those previous
two, there's that "mysterious" black panel that can be pulled down a bit to
keep the wheels from being the heels.  It's not terribly stiff, but it seems
to be just enough.  [Clarification for those who haven't read the Smokescreen
review, yes, I KNOW there's heel spurs on Smokey and Streak.  But they're
obvious.  Meister differs in not being obvious.]
     The muffler gun folds out in two steps.  First, the stock and grip piece
folds out, and the grip swings down.  Then you use one of the connector pegs
to fold out the barrel.  Kinda nifty, although it looks hollow from one
side. 

ROBOT MODE

     Size: Only 6.5" (16.5cm) tall at the head, this is the shrimp of the
Alternators, a full half inch (one foot at scale) shorter than the next
shortest.  His car doors form wings with a span of 6" (15cm).  The unfolded
gun is 3" (7.5cm).

     Colors: Most of the non-car bits are white, with some gray joints
(shoulders, ankles).  The elbows, head, fists, abdomen/pelvis and shins are
black plastic, with some silver paint here and there.  The silver backs of
the front seats form his flanks.  There's some metallic blue paint on the
thighs, near the top (the backs of the thighs are black.  The face is silver
with a mouth molded on (expressionless straight line).  The visor is clear
blue plastic, and the eyes and nose are molded behind it, painted silver.
There are red Autobot symbols on both shoulders, with silver outlines to set
them off against the white plastic.
     The effect is pretty good Jazzness, if a little bland.  I expect the pop
idol version will look more...colorful.  Heh.

     Joints: The head is ball-jointed, although moving the head tends to make
the hood come loose.  The waist turns freely, although the "cape" formed by
the roof of the car can get in the way if the legs are spread apart.  The
shoulders are hinge-and-swivel universal joints.  The elbows are double
hinged, but there is no upper arm swivel.  The wrists are ball joints, and
the fingers are the usual "forefinger on one hinge, the rest on another"
arrangement.  The gun does not clip into the hand, and is held a little
loosely.  [Later correction: there is a peg that holds the gun to a hole in
the palm, but it's really short and doesn't always catch the first time.]
     The hips swivel front to back and ratchet to the sides, with nothing to
speak of inhibiting their range.  The knees ratchet in two clicks to 90
degrees, with the middle click at 45 degrees.  There's a swivel above the
ankle, but not on the thigh.  The ankle has a hinge to swing back to front,
and the toes are adjustable.

     Stability: The joints are stiff enough, but the hood just won't stay
down when the toy is handled, especially if you move the head.  The
triangular hood bump that goes behind the head flops around loosely, and the
whole roof kibble is just sort of hanging there (although the joint on the
rear window I just found helps stabilize it a bit).  I'm not worried about
him falling over, but there's a lot of unnecessary flop.

     Weapons: Just the muffler gun.  However, there's some holes in the black
jointing area behind the head that could hold pegs for missile launchers.
However, as they are ovals 6mm wide at the narrow side, they can't really
hold Energon weapons unless aided by poster putty.

     Kibbleosity: There's a few too many panels on the feet, but the main
problem is the "cape" he wears formed from his roof.  Otherwise, not too bad.

     Fragility: So far, after a couple of days of playing around, I haven't
noticed anything liable to break.  The roof sometimes pops off in careless
transformation, but it's on a ball joint and pops back on pretty easily.

OVERALL

     The roof, the hood and the oversized feet tend to dampen my enthusiasm
for this mold a bit.  It's good, but I can't help thinking that a few minor
engineering changes could fix a lot.

     Dave Van Domelen, wonders if Gundam Markers might be a better idea for
customizing Meister into J-PopSter....