REVIEW: Ocular Max PS-01R Sphinx Regenesis

Love them or hate them, Generation 2 Transformers are a thing. And love them or think they're insanely garish repaints that you wouldn't waste your time with, but Masterpiece versions of them are now also a thing! Whilst it all kinda started with MP-12G Lambor back in 2014 (where have those five years gone?), it's only been more recently that the unofficial scene has cottoned onto the idea that they can rerelease their designs in a ludicrous second colour scheme and some people (like me) will eat it up. You see, be it ever so loud and gaudy, there's nothing quite like G2. So here's Ocular Max with what I fairly confidently believe might be the ninth(!) version of their Sphinx mould, and boy have they gone for it, huh?

REVIEW: Alien Attack STF-01 Firage

Whilst putting this review together, I shared a couple of completed pictures of the figure with some friends of mine. "Who is that supposed to be?" came the immediate response from one of them, despite him having seen Dark of the Moon, the live action Transformers film from which the intended robot hails. Even when I pointed out that the character's name is Dino, they still had precisely zero recollection of him actually being in the movie, and it's perhaps not hard to understand why. If you check on Youtube, you'll find a video which collects all of the Autobot's scenes in that film into one handy package. It runs for a mere three minutes and fifty one seconds (by my rough approximation, that's about one hundredth of the total runtime, no? It just felt like it?), which is especially telling once you realise that most of that is spent in car mode or hanging around in the background. Still, Dino has seemingly made impression enough to be granted his own third party revision, and so here we are. Oh, and if you were wondering about the name, it's definitely not an unfortunate homage to that political pillock, Nigel Farage (puttup!), but instead a mash-up of Ferrari and Mirage, which was rather confusingly the character's name when he was originally realised in official toy form. And with all that cleared up, let's crack on with it!

REVIEW: Ocular Max PS-01S Stealth Sphinx

I've been a big fan of Ocular Max's Sphinx since first getting my hands on the original release late last year. I always liked Mirage as a character, and so it was exciting to see such a fantastic rendition of the character in 3D form. In fact, so great was my enjoyment of the first version that it didn't take much for me to be quite superbly enabled on the lighter-coloured "Alternative" version, and I don't regret this one bit. Arguably the Alternative brings out even more of the wonderful qualities of this mould. Then of course, we only recently had the striking red version in the form of Liger (my review of which can also be found here).

So, you might think that I am all "Sphinxed" out then, right? Far from it! As soon as I saw photos of this astonishing "Stealth" version, I just knew that it was something that I had to add to my collection somehow.