06.19.09

Mega House 1/15 Black Ride Armors (Event Exclusives: VR-052F and VR-041)

Posted in 1/15, Cyclone/Ride Armor, MOSPEADA/RT New Gen, Mega House at 4:10 am by micronian

 

Observations & Critique: Once you go black…

 

The first thing that grabs you about this toy is the untraditional black and white box. The VR-052F release marked the first appearance of the upgraded inner plastic tray but the improvement was minimal. The extras are standard fare, for their respective releases but the Stick-type now includes a sticker sheet.

 

Mega House sold the Stick type for three days (1 day at Summer Wonderfest, 2 days at C3) and hasn’t specified how many were available. Similarly the “Yellow/Black” was limited to a Mega House event but it seems less popular and more readily available than the Stick-type even though I believe it was only at the one show. The box, to my knowledge, doesn’t mention anything about a limited status so I think that leaves a small chance we will see this toy appearing as other convention exclusives. That said, it’s probably more likely that Mega House would just give Ray the black treatment at future events if these models prove exceedingly popular. All feedback I’ve heard so far has been great so if you want one I wouldn’t dilly-dally too long on picking it up. Just the same, it never appeared in the show so I imagine that will keep some people from chasing it down.  To further knock the chances this will be a super hot collector’s item, it seems that Mega House may be leaving the Mospeada license as there hasn’t been any news on a Fuke ride armor despite several trade shows having come and gone.  The third picture below shows the Yellow/Black Ride Armor posed next to a “dark” VR-41, not a black VR-41, I’m including it here so you all can see the differences in Dark Ride Armors and Black ones.

 

The rider figures are still hideously misproportioned with a giraffe neck, wide shoulders, and stubby legs. This has been a huge gripe of mine all along and while black may be slimming it doesn’t hide proportion issues. Once the rider is on the bike and posed things look a little better and, fortunately, once the armor is on everything looks just right. The new paint scheme uses great touches of ultra shiny plastic, matted plastic, gray tones, and metallic highlights to look absolutely superb. The black visor is an immediate upgrade from the standard purple visors although it’s a bit of a shame that it isn’t more transluscent. The rider is obviously just a repainted version of the original characters. You can make yourself a sweet Jonathan Wolff (Robotech name) special ops figure with the included decals and the Stick figure (decals shown below with promotional weapons package, the weapons set is NOT included I’m just showing it here to show the sticker sheet the two items share). A common hope was that MH would revisit their tire size, that did not happen with the Stick release but did with Yellow.

 

The black Stick figure marked Mega House’s first big upgrade in the line by incorporating a swivel just after the figure’s elbows that the original releases lacked. The swivel was incorporated in the standard Yellow release, the Dark Ride Armor release, and the Black Yellow release.  Should Ray’s Ride Armor ever be released the swivel would really come in handy.

 

Black plastic shows stress marks REALLY well and so I was relieved to transform mine and not see any stress marks when I was done (phew). The area the arrow is pointing at below had been stressed on my Stick bike but is fine here. Also note that I was willing to transform this sweet little figure, you will see in my very limited CMs posts that I took no such risks.

 

With the new swivel joint at the elbow must come slightly improved articulation. Unfortunately, nothing has been done to improve the toy’s ability to stand on its own. I eventually got it into a couple poses without the stand but it was quite the effort so expect to be using the big black display stand more often than not.

 

As exclusives go, I really love these guys. If they had actually appeared in the animation at some point it would have been even better. I hope there are more black Ride Armor variants in our future but I definitely have my doubts. If you’re wondering how much you should pay for one, they retail at the events for approximately the same amount as the regular edition toys so it’s all up to how much of a premium you’re willing to pay for the rareness/coolness of it.
NOTE: This review has been updated, it now includes the black VR-41 review.

Original Post Date: August 11, 2008

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