Dave's Alternity Rant A-02: Nissan Fairlady Z/Megatron (Premium LeMans Blue) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Japan/Alternity1 Alternity is sort of the successor to Binaltech, being licensed scale cars with metal parts. But unlike Binaltech, the scale is 1:32 rather than 1:24. Also unlike Binaltech, there's currently no indication that we'll get an all-plastic version in America. The first wave was Convoy (Optimus Prime) and Megatron, each available in two main color schemes plus the obligatory chase variant stuff. It's been successful enough that a second set is coming soon, including Bumblebee, but I'm not interested enough in the molds I've seen to pay $40. I got mine in trade from Wonkimus Major, and I specifically wanted the blue version, in part because people ragged on it. ;) CAPSULE Megatron: Good-looking, well-constructed vehicle mode. The transformation has a number of new twists on the usual carformer, and the robot mode is decent if a little unstable. Recommended if ignoring price, but like all Japanese imports it's pretty expensive. 3780Yen price tag. RANT Packaging: Unlike most Transformers, this is in a clear plastic box. The whole box is clear plastic about 0.3mm (1/100") thick with full color printing in place of a cardstock outer sleeve. The box is 18cm (7") wide, 9cm (3.5") tall and 9cm (3.5") deep, held closed by two pieces of tape on either flap. Inside there's a 3.2-sided (bottom, back, right and a little lip on the left) cardstock backdrop, and inside that is a fold-closed clamshell holding the toy in car mode. The clamshell is not taped, it's just held by press-together tabs. Gotta love the minimalist reusable packaging on Japanese toys. A baggie with the instructions and a "enter this code on the fan webpage for goodies" slip of paper is between the clamshell and the card tray. The swords are left on the car rather than in a separate bag, and they do tend to come loose in the package, so be careful on opening to not drop one. The general visual theme is a bunch of blue through black speedlines with a pale grid overlaid on them and some black paralellograms overlaid. This pattern is used on all but the back of the outer box and repeated on the cardstock tray. The front has artwork of the robot mode over the blue pattern on the right side, along with the Takara Tomy logo, their 25th anniversary logo (which is more script-style than the blocky US one) and a black strip with the altmode name in Japanese and English. The art's not too bad, certainly a lot more lively than the Universe zombies. The right side (as seen by you while looking at the front) continues the blue pattern with a clear Destron symbol outline in the middle that matches up with a similar hole in the card tray. Along the top are A-02 (the second Alternity toy, Convoy being A-01), "Transformers Alternity Nissan Fairlady Z/ Megatron (Premium LeMans Blue)" and the Takara Tomy logo. Under the window is "Destron" (Japanese version of Decepticon, if you're new to this). The left side has a more arbitrary clear space and the same information, just shuffled around (and without the Destron). The top is mostly open, with the Alternity logo in the upper left and the Fairlady Z logo in the lower right. The bottom has the usual legalese. On the back of the box, the left side has the Alternity logo at the top, the Fairlady Z logo below that, and then photos of both modes of the toy, a bit hard to make out in blue on a black background. Oh, and for anyone who doesn't know, the Fairlady Z is the Japanese name for the old Datsun 280Z and the new Nissan 350Z, so named because the head of Datsun back in the day was a big fan of My Fair Lady. The right side of the back has a series of insets showing the face, the rear angle, the hood and doors open, and then a three stage (and almost impossible to make out what with the blue on black motif) transformation. When you open up the right side, the top inner tab of the box has a cut-out for 5 robot points. The clamshell has a sticker inside of it with the Alternity logo, in the place where a regular 1:32 scale car toy would have the nameplate. There's a metallic Transformers logo on the upper left of the cardstock tray. When you take the toy out of the clamshell, "A-02" is molded into the clamshell, so you don't mix up which toy goes back in what shell. :) Because plasticard doesn't like bending as much as paper does, once you open the box it will tend to bow outward when reclosed, since the flap won't fold all the way. The instructions sheet has instructions in dark brown ink on one side and a big techspecs and storyline thing in full color on the other side. While the instructions don't fully show how to transform back to vehicle mode, they do include several helpful diagrams on points that you need to look out for, such as positioning the feet just right. American instructions could definitely stand to have this. The bio page is pretty impressive, and has been translated for TFWiki.net, so I'll just link to that rather than try to puzzle things out: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/To_Mega_Therion/src The accompanying illustration is reminiscent of the Actionmaster data cards, with text (as translated on the TFWiki link) pointing to random body parts. Um, his Inertia Manipulation Device callout points to his groin. Yes, the translation I linked to says it's the waist, but it's the groin. Insert your own inertial manipulation innuendo here. Vehicle Mode: The original Datsun Fairlady Z was the mold used for Bluestreak, Prowl and Smokescreen back in G1, but this is the neo-Fairlady's first appearance in Transformers. Well, first official appearance. I kitbashed a Spychanger into a 350Z Bluestreak back in 2001 or thereabouts. 13.5cm (5.25") long, it is indeed 1:32 scale. While they don't really enforce a scale, most of the Deluxe cars in the U.S. lines are about 1:32, so Megatron fits in. There's no metal on the exposed parts in this mode, but you can hear some metallic clinking as you handle the toy and bits inside rattle around. My version is a very nice metallic blue with smoked windows and silver hubcaps. I'm not sure if the wheel rims are silver plastic or simply painted over entirely. The tires are rubber, fortunately I no longer live in a place that makes rubberized plastic fall apart (this was a problem in my apartment back in Michigan). The windows, headlights and taillights are clear colorless plastic (painted with clear colors where relevant), the rest is a metalflake blue plastic. The roof is painted in an excellent match of the blue plastic, and all the windows have matte black borders. The front intake is also matte black. The taillights are painted clear red, and there's silver paint underneath the headlights. Silver is also used on the brake discs, door handles, exhaust pipes and on the molded Nissan logos on front and back. A paler silver "Fairlady Z" is printed on the trunk. The side mirrors are chromed silver, one of the few uses of chrome I heartily approve of on a toy. :) There's a black and silver Z in a circle logo rear of each front wheel and red painted middle brake light on the trunk, plus a red square between the exhaust pipes. The license plate is left blank. Opening the doors reveals a full front seat interior (but no back seat). All interior pieces as well as the insides of the doors are made of a very dark brown-gray plastic with no paint. There's pale gold plastic supports behind the seats. Since this is for the Japanese market, the steering wheel is on the right side. The seats fold forward and the steering wheel turns. The doors only open about 30 degrees. As is fairly normal, looking through the rear windows gives a view of the robot feet. The hood is difficult to open up unless you have long nails, but it helps to squeeze the front wheels together a little, which will pop the hood up enough to grab. You have to pull it forward as you lift it or it'll only open a little bit. At best, though, it only opens about 30 degrees. Inside, the engine block is unpainted and molded from the same dark brown-gray as the interior. The top of the engine is the back of Megatron's head, and it's this piece that does the rattling around against the metal surrounding it. It barely has ground clearance, but the clearance is there and it rolls along smoothly. The swords plugged into the underside are liable to snag on things if you try rolling on any sort of rough surface, though. Transformation: While pretty complex and involved, I was able to figure out most of it without reference to the instructions. His doors slide around a bit more than I'd expected in order to form his shoulder armor, and I needed to doublecheck to make sure I'd gotten the boots right, but otherwise there were few frustration among all the fiddly bits. Once nice touch was that the front fenders move forward and together, making the chest about a centimeter narrower than the hood and locking the collar in place so Megatron's head doesn't rattle around in robot mode. My only real complaint about the transformation is that the boots don't seem to lock together, they're just held together by joint friction. [Later note: there is a peg to hold the boots together, but it's on a clear piece of plastic and therefore hid from me in the manner of a chameleon. It's not the most secure of pegs, but it does help a little.] There's a bit of an automorph involved in folding the chest down, making the abdomen plate automatically swing forward so it can tab into place. On mine the tab doesn't stick as well as I'd like, but the joints involved are stiff enough that this isn't a big problem. And some of it is just making sure things are lined up just right...the work of a few seconds to get it adjusted. I guess that's the difference between a Deluxe sized toy at the $40 price point and a Leader sized toy: fewer problems, and the problems are easier to deal with. (Of course, this isn't really a $40 toy...thanks to Japanese inflation, toys are about twice as expensive there as here for the same product, so you're really paying Voyager prices for a Deluxe-sized toy. But the principle still applies, more money tends to mean better quality.) The seats become forearm armor and they're on sliders to move them into a better position than the Human Alliance Bumblebee's seats. They don't lock in position, though, it's just friction holding them in place. Robot Mode: Despite a failure in the paint job, the head is unmistakably Megatron's, so repurposing this as a "blue Bluestreak" would require some resculpting. Otherwise, though, it's a variation on the usual Autobot Car themes, with the doors hung as shoulder armor rather than wings. The overall feel is that of high tech samurai armor, reminiscent of Ronin Warriors, although the armor on the shoulders slopes down in a way none of the Warriors (or the Dynasty guys) armors did. The shoulderpads can be forced upward into Ryo-style points, but they're not really "happy" there, fitting better along the same angle as the doors as per the package art. 14cm (5.5") tall at the head, the car's hood sticks up a few millimeters above the head. His Tesseractal Swords are 8.5cm (3.25") long in total. In addition to the metalflake blue and clear bits from the vehicle mode, a lot of "black" (very dark gray-brown) is added to the scheme, plus some pale gold, metallic purple and silver. The eyes are clear plastic painted with transparent red, but there's no lightpiping input so they look black unless you shine a strong light in Megatron's face. The forearms, thighs, shoulderpads and armor kilt are metalflake blue plastic, plus much of each boot is made of vehicle shell and the outer part of the chest is front fenders. The Tesseractal Swords and forearm-mounted Gravital Blades (the "seat supports" mentioned earlier) are pale gold plastic as far as I can tell, they don't seem to be fully-painted pieces of non-gold plastic. There's really not much metal here, despite metal being a selling point for the line. The core of the chest is about all I can find, and it's painted to match the dark gray-brown plastic well enough that you have to do a "cool to the touch" check to find it. It's a non-ferromagnetic alloy, the only things on the toy a magnet will be attracted to are the pins. Metallic purple paint is used for accents on the shoulderpads, thighs, abdomen sides and kilt. A pale gold paint is used on the face and the G1-shaped abdomen vents. It's a bit paler than the blades, which is part of why I think the blades are cast from gold plastic. There's no paint detailing in his forehead, and a lot of the facial details just sort of wash together. The forehead crest is the more tridenty shape seen on Classics Megatron, rather than the flat arrowhead used in G1 animation. The head is on a slightly restricted ball joint, with a decent amount of up and down range. The shoulders are smooth universal joints, but the armor pieces keep the arms from lifting very far to the sides. There's a swivel just above each hinge elbow, and the wrists are limited ball joints. The Gravital Blades are hinged to swing out stiffly, but you may need to slide the seat pieces down to let the blades clear the shoulderpads. The waist does not turn, being plugged together. The hips are universal joints, moving to the sides smoothly and rotating on ratchets. There's swivels above the true knee hinges, and the thighs are a lot shorter than the shins, which leads to some range of motion issues. There's a transformation joint midway down the shin inside the armor that can be bent to push the feet back a bit. The ankles are ball joints on the ends of hinged struts. The metal bits are all in the chest, and the backpack sticks out pretty far, so balance is a significant issue, especially with the knees being so high up on the legs. The ankle articulation generally compensates for this, but you need to adjust them in advance since the ankles are stiffer than some of the joints holding the boots together. You can also shift the support points backwards by bending the false knees inside the shins. Pushing the feet back also makes for a more "baggy pants" look to the legs, heightening the samurai motif. Overall: Is this a good $40 toy? Not really. A few too many loose bits and kibble-blockages for that. However, in Japan the Voyagers are $40 toys too, and this is definitely as good as a typical Voyager. I definitely wouldn't recomment going for multiple color variants, and you might want to wait and see if one of the two colors ends up cheaper on the secondary market. Dave Van Domelen, may do some paint touchup on the face and look into making some of the sliders and tabs stiffer.