04.13.08

CMs 1/48 Legioss/Tlead (Part 2: The Tlead)

Posted in 1/48, Alpha/Legioss, CMs, MOSPEADA/RT New Gen, Tread/Tlead/Beta at 2:10 am by micronian

 

Review: Finally… a Tlead for the (rich) Masses!

NOTE: As stated in Part 1 of this review, you can not purchase the Legioss and Tread (aka Tlead, I still prefer Tread) separately. However, since there are two fully functional toys here I felt it necessary to split the review into two posts. This post focuses primarily upon the Tread. The first post focused primarily on the Legioss.  I have decided that there will be a THIRD post dedicated to this toy.  Once I have the Red and Green versions in hand I’ll do a summary post with pictures of all three versions of the toy.

 

Packaging & Extras: (4/5)
To summarize what was written in the first post: The packaging is generic and lacks collector’s touches, the plastic tray with cardboard support looks cheap, but there are a ton of extras. For a picture of the front and back of the box see my Legioss review, the picture shown above shows how the Legioss/Tlead packaging compares to a Toynami MPC box (in terms of overall size). The picture below is a close-up of the plastic, painted figurines that comes with these toys (and the hands which come detached for shipping purposes).

 

Charm & Collectability: (4/5)
As mentioned in my Legioss review, the Tread has been the dream of many Mospeada fans for a long time now. The only previous Tread toy was a 1/72 version made by Gakken (of Singapore, Gakken of Japan didn’t make it past the prototype stage) in the mid/early 1980s that was sold in France under the Lansay name. That Tread is known to be very fragile and was released in very small quantities just as Gakken was apparently exiting the toy business. Since it’s a fragile toy and released in such limited numbers (only the blue version was ever mass-produced) it demands a huge secondary market premium. The toy itself though pales in comparison to this CMs offering. Of the CMs offerings the green ought to be the most rare as it is a CMs website exclusive and CMs only ships within Japan. Typically red variants of Mospeada products don’t sell very well so expect that to eventually become the second most collectible.

 

Sculpt, Detail, and Paint: (8/10)
This toy is only a very slight re-imagining of the Tread in comparison to the hack job which is CMs’ Legioss. Certain parts of the Tread were thinned out, a few curves are more rounded, and it’s a little bit more streamlined which makes it go better with the CMs Legioss. The scale doesn’t seem perfect, I think it’s too small but I haven’t busted out the tape measure to do the math. Some parts are clearly too small though. For example, check out the picture below of the pilots of the two CMs products. I’ve already demonstrated in my Legioss review that CMs shrank that pilot so it’s funny to see that they continued to shrink him even more in their Tread toy. There’s plenty of detail etched into the plastic but in comparison to the tampo-rich Legioss the Tread does look a little bland. It would have been nice to see gun barrels actually looking like barrels and more detail or fancier paint relating to the various thrusters.  The second picture below demonstrates the otherwise hard to photograph line work on the toy.  Since a lot of people don’t like what CMs did with the Legioss, I’m including a third picture which shows you what the Tread would look like mated to a Toynami MPC instead (I simply pointed the Tread upward and then settle the Toynami on top of it).

 

Design: (6.5/10)
I guess it’s time I brought up the craptastic connecting arm that CMs included with these toys. The arm is made of diecast which makes it very strong and fairly heavy. The first problem with the arm is that it has two nubs that stick out ot be caught by the included display stand but those nubs also limit what you can do with the Tread’s legs if you don’t want to have them up in the booster position.  The second problem is the Tread’s landing gears are actually built into the connecting arm and not removeable. For the most part the landing gears will be concealed by whatever pose you may choose for your toys but occasionally they may prove to be eye sores. Obviously this means the Tread doesn’t have opening doors that reveal landing gears which makes it a very simple piece. CMs seems like they really wanted to go out of there way to put their own unique stamp on their take of these vehicles so on the Tread they made it so the rear missile cluster sits above the body at all times. It makes absolutley no sense at all and it would make me feel better to know whoever allowed this to happen was dragged out into a street and shot (that’s an old Garfield reference, I try not to condone violence).  The profile picture below does an excellent job highlighting the weaknesses of the combined figure from the Tread’s awkward missiles to the Legioss’ fins that don’t collapse correctly (the Legioss also sits too low, needs to push it’s arms together too far, and still leaves a gap betwixt it and the Tread).  The second picture provides a better shot of the connecting arm and landing gears, the third picture shows how a tread would look without the arm (for example, if you placed it on a flexi-display stand).

 

Durability & Build: (9.5/10)
The Legioss felt like a well built toy.  The Tread feels just as well built but less complicated so it’s hard to imagine someone breaking this thing unintentionally.  All the joints are beefy and all aspects of the toy in any mode feel solid.  It doesn’t have the heft of an old chunky monkey (Takatoku Valk) so it might not immediately strike you how well put together this toy is.  The paint application and build on my sample offered absolutely no reason to complain.  As mentioned in my Legioss post, these toys are very new and I will keep an eye out for bloggers encountering problems and will update this post if necessary.

 

Ariticulation: (9/10)
As I mentioned in the design section, the connecting arm does do a bit to hamper articulation but that’s the connecting arm’s fault.  Otherwise this toy is much can do some pretty mean poses.  The only point of articulation not present that I would have liked to have seen would have been a twisting point at the knee.  The foot posts offer a little bit of articulation but don’t expect to get too crazy with them.

 

Total Score: (8/10) Packaging/Charm, (28/40) Legioss, (33/40) Tlead, (69/90) Overall
What you have her is an average toy (the Legioss) packaged with an above average toy (the Tread) that can combine via a below average link. It’s all well-built and fun to handle but over-priced for what you get. CMs is a confusing company, they did such a good job being faithful with the Ride Armor (but screwed up by making it fragile and tiny) and then did a horrible job being faithful to these vehicles but made them solid and fun. In the end I have a bunch of toys, as a big Mospeada fan, I really enjoy but nothing I feel I can strongly recommend to anyone other than Mospeada collectors. It seems a pretty safe bet that this CMs Tread will be far more dynamic, sturdy, and fun than whatever Toynami makes (although Toynami looks to be giving a very strict line art interpretation so it ought to easily trump CMs there). I wouldn’t be surprised if a year or two from now these CMs toys are very sought after, especially if the Toynami tanks or becomes vaporware.  I’m adding a couple bonus pictures to this review.  The first picture is Artmic art that depicts the Legioss and Tread in all sorts of kick-butt glory, the second picture was my attempt to recreate that art with this toy.  It should be noted that I did have to Photoshop out the stock display stand, a 5″ prop used to hold up the connecting arm, and a Mega House stand to hold up the Legioss’ foot.

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