REVIEW: Fans Hobby Master Builder MB-06 Power Baser

INTRODUCTION
Whilst still a relative newcomer to the third party transforming robot arena, Fans Hobby have already built up a pretty impressive track record. I've reviewed five of their figures so far in 2017, and have yet to see them make a misstep. So it feels rather appropriate to round off the year with the final review covering what is no doubt their most ambitious project to date in Power Baser. Many collectors, myself included, have been excited at the prospect of this particular character design being realised in "Masterpiece" style at some point, and so it's also an exciting release to close of what has been an incredible twelve months of releases.

REVIEW: TakaraTomy Masterpiece MP-12+ Lambor

It was only a little over a month ago that I was looking back at a variant edition of the first release of MP-12 Lambor, (Sideswipe to you and me), the write-up for which can be found here. Of course, that first release stretches all the way back to 2012, and was in fact the original Masterpiece carbot, so it's an unusual opportunity to be looking back at other versions of it twice in such close proximity all these years later. Yet here we are with the newest version, MP-12+, which sees the mould being given a bit of a makeover in an attempt to make it even more cartoon accurate and bring it more in-line with some of the current Masterpiece releases (such as the upcoming MP-39 Sunstreaker, which is released this month!).

REVIEW: Badcube OTS-01 Huff & OTS-13 Piper

Cubex Huff is an interesting tale. Released in 2014 by a then-brand new third party company, the figure was initially well-received and, in a lot of people’s minds, quickly became the definitive not-Huffer for your burgeoning Masterpiece collection. And a great figure it was indeed! Not only was it an almost-dead-ringer for the character’s animation model, but it proved to be a fun toy with two great modes and a relatively fluid transformation. But there was a twist... whereas most Huffs seemed ok out of the box, reports soon emerged of a variety of quality control problems, including loose joints and floppy limbs. However, the most notorious example was definitely the flaky paint, which in the subsequent years has proven to be something of an inevitability, much to the disappointment of a lot of collectors. Indeed, it happened to my own copy, previously thought to have escaped the dreaded curse, with Huff forever left looking like his has a bad case of cosmic rust.