Tuesday 1 April 2014

Headmasters Trainbots and Raiden

Picked this up today. The Trainbots were one of those Japanese G1 sets that really appealed to me, I don't know what took me so long to pick it up. I opted for the gift set. The box isn't perfect, but I'm more concerned about the figures anyways, and they are in great shape.

First up, Yukikaze. The younger brother of Shouki of the team. He vastly prefers cold.





Shouki is the leader of the Trainbots and the fastest of the team.


He has a pretty neat transformation. I am actually pretty impressed by the complexity of this set.


Seizan is a "mountain train"...whatever that means lol.



Kaen has some remolding to remove the diaclone driver door. Maybe it was too fragile for the TF release or something. He's the tough guy of the group.


His transformation is pretty neat. I really like how they pulled off the torso transformation.


Getsuei is the team's night fighter. He shares a transformation with Yukikaze.



Last but not least is Suiken, the rugged member of the group.  Him and Seizan also share a transformation.



I don't have a bot mode group shot yet, but here's the trains, all of them can be connected via the green connector pieces that come with the set into one giant train. I'll take a pic of that later.


The combination is incredibly complex. The way Shouki and Kaen transform to form the torso is pretty neat. The orange part on the front of him was added for the Transformers release to make the torso sturdier than it was in the Diaclone release


A parting shot of the box. has a tear in the front, but it's still nice enough for me.


13 comments:

  1. nice acquisition im so jealous :D, this is one of the few transformers that epitomize Japan vehicles. Never realised the individual head scuplt were cool and detailed. the box isn't bad If you dont plan on displaying it, I think the real deal breaker for me is if the tear was across the images of the robots or Raiden. Good thing it doesnt tear into the C-127 image.

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    1. I agree, the box will still get displayed, the tear is unfortunate, but what can you do lol

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  2. I have a few individual MIB Train bots that I acquired years ago when they were still cheap. Love 'em.

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  3. Are the pull-out legs of Yukikaze or Getsui loose at all on your copy ? I have ones that are horribly loose and am not sure if it's at all fixable. I keep having a suspicion that you need to pull the legs out until it "clicks", but I don't think this is the case, and I certainly don't want to keep pulling and break something. Can anyone tell me if this is the case or not ? - or if Yuki/Getsui's legs are held up purely by friction. In which case it's not very good design since once the legs become loose it's finished for displaying in robot mode. (I guess Mirage & a number of others also have this problem.) I really don't think in general they should design robots whose legs pull out and have to stay up purely through friction. And forget about attaching their "backpacks" since that's just going to make them even more top-heavy.

    Sorry for the long-winded comment. Great photos, as usual (longtime lurker). I look forward to the combined shot.

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    1. both are tight, no issues here. no clicking that i'm aware of either. with the backpacks on and tight legs they can stand. I attached them all last night with no problems.

      Thanks. combined shot is there?

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  4. I bet the TFwiki would love to have some shots like this. At the moment they have no photos at all of the individual trainbots!

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    1. They asked me once for a photo, I said yes, I dunno why they didn't use it

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  5. Lovely, Bryce, congratulations. For TF they also added the part at the back that keeps the two grey wings connected, Diaclone never had that.

    In addition they removed the orange plastic launching buttons on the top of the yellow and green train. Diaclone versions could fire off their cabs with the drivers inside.

    Regarding the names, quoting from something a friend wrote a decade ago:

    "Shouki -> hot weather, sunstroke, or heatstroke
    Getsuei -> moonlight
    Yukikaze -> snow wind or snowy wind... perhaps snowy breeze
    Suiken -> water dagger, tempest, or downpour
    Seizan -> blue or green mountain
    Kaen -> flame or blaze

    Not that they are all nature based names... perhaps Takara was trying to get us to realize that Raiden is a force of nature. (P.S. Raiden means thunder and lightning.)"

    All the best
    Maz

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    1. NIce info, thanks Maz.. If you see a Getsuei gun hanging about, I need it lol

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  7. Awe-inspiring review & pictures! :-) Will you be going for the soon-coming MP iterations of these characters as well? An inevitable comparative review would be sweeeeet! 👌

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    1. Thanks. I'm planning on getting the takara ones, but if time is constrained on them, I'll go for the moon ones. I don't have the vintage pieces anymore, but i will submit some sort of post on them at some point

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