02.09.09

Toynami 1/55 Shadow Fighter (Maia Shadow Chronicles Version)

Posted in 1/55, Alpha/Legioss, MOSPEADA/RT New Gen, Toynami at 5:43 am by micronian

Observations & Critique: A toy built so poorly it’s been recalled

Let’s start off on a positive note. The Maia Shadow Fighter comes packaged in the typical Masterpiece box. The sides of the box disguised as pages are no longer yellow, they’re white, and a splash of color has been added inside the book and it livens things up nicely. The decals included appear to be very nice and you’ll get the Destabilizer gun, pilot, Ride Armor, and Shoulder Array you would expect. A Cyclone for Maia in future episodes of Shadow Chronicles (should they ever happen) seems like an intriguing possibility. One bummer, the Destabilizer doesn’t work as well on the closed fist as it did with the claw on the original Shadow Fighter.

 

Limited to only 5000 pieces, this toy had real potential to be collectible (just as Jack Archer’s YF-1R toy from Battlecry is finally becoming a hotter item) but alas, it was not meant to be. My Maia didn’t have a number on the lid of the box and thank you Jared for pointing out that the serial number moved from being painted on the toy’s bottom to be painted beneath the winglet. It isn’t the scarcity that destroys the possibility of these toys being hot collector’s items some day. No, the quality of this product is absolutely horrific, but I’ll get into that more in a moment.

 

The first indication that something was terribly wrong with this toy surfaced when the first releases were opened in Hong Kong and pictured with the Beta MPC. The intakes on the chest, which were supposed to be shadow fighter intakes, were instead the normal Rook-style intakes. Initially I didn’t think this mech had a VTOL vent either but apparently I was wrong as the art packaged with it clearly shows a VTOL. There was one obvious improvement though, the wings and tail fins now had their stripes painted on. This is still the best looking Alpha toy made (maybe not this paint scheme) to date so I eventually could have over-looked the incorrect intakes if the toy was otherwise an improvement on the previously released Alphas… but it isn’t… by a long shot.

 

A while back Toynami partnered with Aoshima to release a modified MPC toy for sale in Japan. It seemed like a simple winning idea. Aoshima went through the Toynami design and made tweaks to it such as removing the diecast hips and replacing them with plastic ones featuring a ratcheting joint. When it came time to make these toys someone dropped the ball (insert picture of Toynami and Aoshima pointing their fingers at each other) and the final product was a terribly assembled and ultimately shoddy product. The toy was shunned in Japan and Aoshima and Toynami’s relationship suffered. Fortunately for Toynami they had already received a ton of help from Aoshima in engineering the Beta product. I don’t know what exactly happened next, but Maia’s Shadow Fighter drops all of the Aoshima improvements and returns to the engineering of the previous MPC Alpha efforts. I can only guess that this happened so that if Toynami decides to spit out any more of their remaining 15K of the original Alphas they will be exactly the same as the first releases. If that’s the case, it’s very unfortunate. It’s also entirely possible that Aoshima kept all the molds related to their improvements so Toynami had no choice but to use their inferior molds. Obviously, the end result is that no one should expect this toy to be any better than the original Alpha MPC toys.  On a humorously bad note, Toynami forgot to include the back piece in fighter mode that would allow the destabilizer to attach which leaves the owner relying on the friction of the two arms to accomplish this.

 

As you can see from all my pictures (and I’ve done my best to take pictures of the toy in as flattering a manner as possible), my toy didn’t make it… and if you scroll back up you can see it was already well broken before I ever pulled it out of the box. This was a sealed piece but it looks like whoever put it in the plastic tray looked down at the toy, thought of everything he hated in life, and started punching the hell out of it. I imagine a toy with this much diecast probably hurt that factory worker’s hand but it certainly didn’t gain anything from the pummeling. The arm and sensor array door had popped free. If you remember my MPC Alpha review, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this break in the arm. My Rook broke in EXACTLY the same way… but that was after months of sitting on a shelf. I can’t tell how this part of the arm is constructed but it almost looks like this key piece, a part that needs to be yanked on to extend an arm, is a peg that is simply glued into place. Hopefully I’m wrong and there’s way more to it than that. Okay, so an arm is missing, big deal right? The trap door that displays the shoulder array is mal-shaped so it now flies right off with any movement. Okay, that’s inconvenient, and clearly some bad build quality.  This was tough to stomach and I hadn’t even touched the toy yet. I was able to take some pics in fighter and guardian modes but when I went to transform it into soldier mode, a feat I was afraid of anyway, the first winglet I touched snapped off nearly instantly. The plastic is incredibly thin and obviously brittle. Happy I had already made arrangements to return the product, I went ahead and finished transformation so I could give you folks some pics. Of course, no MPC Alpha toy would be complete without random glue covered finger smudges. The landing gears don’t seem to lock into place any more so the weight of the heavy toy causes the back ones to push into the legs a little bit.  Finally, the shoulder array seems to be painted white instead of made from white plastic so the peg on the bottom is too big for the hole it fits into and there’s all sorts of slop from where the two pieces were put together (and, on top of all that, the antenna on top is frozen, probably from over-gluing).

 

It would have been nice if Toynami had revisited this toy to improve the hip articulation, it’s currently the only real weakness (from an articulation stand point). There have been no improvements though, and you shouldn’t handle this toy at all anyway. Put it back into its box now before it cracks apart in your hands. What about good news? The shoulders on mine were super stiff and the head did not sit cocked like it did on my original MPCs.

 

Toynami has acknowledged that this toy was built poorly and has offered all customers full refunds. I saw an eBay etailer who had 4 for sale, none sold, and now he’s showing them as sold out so I assume some stores are sending them back to Toynami already for full credit on the reissue Toynami hopes to have later this year. After the phenomenal MPC Beta effort I really hope that the next line of Alphas are built with a greater level of aptitude. I’ve seen and heard from other people who were flaberghasted by their time with these toys as well so if you’re still somehow considering purchasing one of these on the off chance it won’t suck I’d advise you not to waste your time and shipping charges.

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