Transformers Generations: Goshooter w/ Go Shuta (Million Publishing Exclusive)

Million Publishing has previously released two exclusive Transformers figures in the form of Stepper and Artfire. The mail-away tradition continues with the newly released Generations figure in Japan, Goshooter.

While in the Generation One series, Goshooter's toy was a redeco Headmaster Siren from the U.S. series. This time however, Goshooter's new figure is based on Generations Bumblebee/Goldfire/Nightbeat.

Being a mail-away, the figure could pose some difficulty purchasing at or near "retail" price. There are several large online Transformers dealers offering the figure as well, but a contact I've used in the past for Japanese exclusives (Arthur) came through yet again for me. In fact, this was one of those figures I paid for quite some time ago and nearly forgot about!

The packaging is done is a vertical style box in black and white. While the pictures may not make it look at that appealing, it really does look sharp in hand. However I feel the cardboard used this time around is rather thin. If it had not been for the form fitting cardboard insert, the box could easily be punctured it's so thin.

  

One side of the box gives you Goshooter's tech spec rankings, while the other side shows how Go Shuta's transector form is now that of a helicopter as opposed to a Headmaster. Not just a helicopter, Go Shuta can also transform into a Plasma Power Rifle for Goshooter to wield.

The aforementioned cardboard insert that helps give the box it's shape, not to mention protect this beauty of toy inside!

Right out of the box I knew I was going to like this toy. I was always fond of the vehicle mold to begin with and even though it's a departure from his G1 vehicle mode, it works. You see more and more Police groups using muscle cars these days so it seems fitting that Goshooter would receive this modern upgrade.

My only complaint in vehicle mode is the blue section of plastic located just behind the front quarter panel on each side. I really wish this piece could have been cast in white plastic as it tends to stick out too much. However, that aside I do think this is a beautiful vehicle form.

One of the first things I noticed are all the extra paint applications versus other versions of this mold. You'll see some comparison pics later on in the post. Obviously the lack of a light bar stands out the most as this is supposed to be a Police car of course. However Takara Tomy didn't let this go completely unnoticed. Check out the head lights. Red on one side and blue on the other. Awesome looking in my opinion.

In the G1 series, the original Goshooter toy had the number designation C-301. As a nod you see this tampographed onto the rear bumper and again on the roof of the car. The exhaust system also received a rich, semi-metallic looking gray paint.

The undercarriage of the car is pretty compact and flat. It does a good job at hiding most of the robot parts. You can see the lower portion of the arms and hands, but that is about it.

Like with previous releases of this mold, Goshooter comes with two flame shooting guns. They can attach to the sides of the car if you prefer that type of thing. I guess you could also reverse the direction of the guns to and use as a type of flame powered booster.

Transformation into robot mode is pretty straight forward and painless. Pull out the doors; separate the hood; flip back the hood/roof of the car; fold down the legs and flip the feet around; pull down the torso to reveal the head.

Believe it or not this is the first time I've transformed this mold. I own Goldfire, but never bothered to transform him as I opted to display him in car mode. Generations Nightbeat was still MOSC before this review as well. More on him later.

Goshooter looks awesome. This mold surprisingly fits the character to a T. Goshooter sports a good deal of articulation, basically what you've come to know and expect from a modern deluxe size Transformer. However if you've been reading my posts for awhile then you know by now that I'm not the best with dynamic poses and what not.

The headsculpt was reused from the Nightbeat release, however the eye color was changed from red to blue. They also went with a translucent blue in order to take advantage of some light piping. While I'm glad they went with the translucent plastic, it should have stayed red to better match his G1 self.

Go Shuta has gone through his own transformation of sorts. No longer is his Transector a Headmaster head, but now a Police helicopter. The toy used here is based on Blazemaster who was originally packaged with Bumblebee.

In true Transformers fashion there is more than meets the eye with this new upgraded version of Go Shuta. In addition to his robot mode, he can now transform into a Targetmaster style gun for Goshooter to wield in battle!

I never cared much for the robot mode of this mold. The new colors are an improvement over Blazemaster's in my opinion, but it doesn't help much. Perhaps if the robot head wasn't on the end of the helicopter's tail piece.

I plan to keep Go Shuta in gun mode, displayed as such. Goshooter looks pretty tough. I prefer Go Shuta as his weapon of choice over the flame guns he also comes packaged with.

Which weapon do you prefer?

Now of course this wouldn't be a proper review without some comparison pics, would it? We'll start with Go Shuta and Blazemaster.

I kinda like the look of a dual wielding Targetmaster Goshooter. I wonder how the Decepticons would feel about that?

I opted to use Generations Nightbeat as the main comparison piece for this post for a number of reasons, but if you look carefully at my Nightbeat you'll see he's a little different. Yep, he's pretty much a convertible! I mentioned earlier that I had not opened this toy until the other night when I took the pictures. Upon transforming him from his packaged bot mode to vehicle mode is when I discovered he was missing part of the car's roof. D'oh! Change of plans.

Now what's interesting here is that in the US G1 series, both Nightbeat and his fellow Headmaster, Siren, would be repainted into Minelba (Minerva) and Goshooter. However in the US Generations series, it would be Nightbeat that would be repainted into Goshooter. It works well obviously, I just find it a little ironic the way things worked out.

Goldfire (I still hate that name, can I please call him Goldbug?) works OK as a emergency fill in, but man had I wished I would've opened Nightbeat earlier. Of course now he's not as readily available at retail as he once was. At least he serves his purpose here. Great mold, but looks so much better as Nightbeat or Goshooter.

Thankfully Nightbeat looks alright in robot mode so we can continue to use him as we compare the two figures. As you can tell not much as really been changed here outside of the colors. Same head (minus the translucent versus solid plastic used for the eye visor). Goshooter just looks better in my opinion due to all of the extra paint apps. The headlights, chest piece, legs; even the rear painted windows stand out more and help make this figure just plain look better than other versions of this mold.

The burning question many may have left however is how does he compare to his original G1 self? Well I just happen to have myself a loose G1 Goshooter in my Ikea Detolf case so let me go and grab him real quick.

(this is a great time to remember to tell you that you can click on any picture for a larger view)

There we go. Nice. However upon taking these pictures I realized my vintage Goshooter is no where as white as the new Generations version. It's not yellowed, it's just not bleach white. That aside, the most glaring and noticeable difference is the lack of a light bar on the modern version. I really had wished Takara Tomy would have sculpted a new light bar piece for this release. Perhaps some 3rd party company will come to our rescue. Anyone?

Takara Tomy did a pretty good job at matching the original Police design for this release. From the door stylings, to the black bar across the rear quarter panel with the Police in silver paint. The windshield too has the matching silver stripe across the top. The hood emblem is very close to the original. Here, let's take a closer look at that.

  

On the left we have the Generations hood emblem while on the right we have the vintage G1 hood emblem. While there are very close to one another, you can spot the minor differences. The new emblem obviously features a tad more detail than the original.

All that is left is to look at the two robot modes. While the new Generations version is smaller than the original G1 toy, the similarities carry over into robot mode. The only thing that I didn't initially catch myself was the use of blue paint on the chest piece of the Generations figure. See how the blue paint helps recreate the white chest piece on the G1 toy? This piece of course reveals the Headmaster's tech specs on the G1 toy. Very nice, yet subtle use of paint there Takara Tomy.

Overall this is a beautiful piece and I can't recommend him enough...that is if you can get him for a decent price. I'll leave it up to you as to what is a decent price however. I may be a little late to the party when it comes to this particular Generations mold, but I find it to be one of the better molds I've messed around with. Great car mode, great robot mode. Slap on the new deco for Goshooter and we have ourselves a winner. No buyer's remorse here. I'm very satisfied with the latest Million Publishing mail-away release. If I have anything left to add is that I kinda wished I had held onto Generations Artfire and Stepper now. And one last thing...I should pulled out the black backdrop for this photo shoot. Oh well, live and learn. Thanks for stopping by everyone!

KO Korner: G1 Transformers Browning M-1910

This visit to the KO Korner is one that I'm most definitely excited about.  One of the trends in the Generation One collecting community one must face are knock-offs.  Thankfully there are many good resources and guides online to help you decipher the real vintage piece versus a KO.Most of the G1 KOs these days are tried to be passed off as the real deal.  From the toy itself to it's G1 identical packaging.  Up until recently the packaging used was the American Hasbro cards/boxes, but the upcoming G1 Scorponok will be using the Japanese packaging.  So frustrating!  Well today's topic thankfully falls into a slightly different category.  I've still yet to figure out who is behind this new release of Browning, but I'm so grateful the party responsible opted to use new, custom packaging for the toy so as not to confuse collectors.  Or at least MIB collectors.

There is no denying this "new" Browning is trying to passed off as the original.  That is one of the reasons alone I decided to grab this release once I found out about it.  The box used is just an ordinary brown cardboard box w/ some awesome looking brown ink line art.  I'm not 100%, but this appears to be original art too as this image wasn't used on the Japanese Masterforce release no was it used for it's pre-Transformers Microchange release.

The back of the box looks odd with the big blank area.  It almost looks like the area on a box where you'd apply the shipping label!  I'm wondering if there wasn't something else that was supposed to go here, and was left off late in the design process.

 

More line are found on each end of the box.

Top of the box

The tech specs are found on the bottom of the box.  It says "Dio & Tech Specs" and I'm assuming that means Bio.  However there isn't a bio anywhere to be found on the box or even inside.  Hmmm.

I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box to see a form fitting styrofoam "coffin" inside!  When was the last time you opened a new toy that had a styrofoam insert inside?  If you look carefully you can see faux screws in each corner of the styrofoam block.  Nice!

Browning comes packaged in robot mode and is all snug in the bottom half of the styrofoam block.  Both the original Microchange and Masterforce versions had him packaged in gun mode, but with today's safety laws and the general society we live in, I'm not at all surprised to see him in packaged in robot mode.  Browning comes with two fists, two guns and 5 yellow pellets.  Both originals came with two sets of fists.

This is my first experience with this mold so I really didn't know what to expect.  For instance, I didn't know the chrome would be so shiny!  I knew it had die-cast metal pieces, but where were they located.  Was Browning built similar to Megatron?  Also because of my inexperience with this mold I can't properly point out any differences, if there are any, between this and the vintage piece.  I was a little disappointed to see the round "scratch" on his chest when I first pulled him out.  Thankfully his chest sticker covers most of this up, but that was the only flaw I could find on the whole toy.

Sadly the same apparent quality that went into the packaging and the toy itself isn't present in the instruction booklet.  The instructions aren't bad, after all it's folded like the old G1 instructions and the step by step transformation instructions are easy to follow.  It's just that the booklet feels and looks cheap.  Oh well, I guess you can't have your cake and eat it to.

Mine came with two sets of stickers.  Since this release came in "Microchange red" and "Masterforce blue", two different sets of stickers were required.  I used the silver sheet on the right as those matched the Transformers release.  The stickers were cut pretty good, only one did I have a probable with.  The stickers are really thin, and don't want to peel off very easily.  Thankfully though once applied they smooth out nicely and look really good.

Sticker #3 is the lower chest sticker.  Some have suggested you trim off a tiny bit across the top to help with the application, but I found if you put the sticker on something thin and flat, you can get the upper part of the sticker up underneath the chest piece so the whole sticker applies nicely.

Of course Browning was a Destron (Decepticon) in Masterforce so the alternate #1 Cybertron (Autobot) sticker was probably thrown in for fun.

Once all the stickers were applied Browning looks so much nicer.  He's got a great look in robot form and most importantly, he doesn't suffer from "trigger crotch" like G1 Megatron!  His thighs and feet are made of heavy die-cast metal.  This gives the figure some needed heft and also some good stability in robot mode.  Browning easily stands on his own so no fears of him tipping over.

Articulation, as you can expect, is G1.  He's not quite a brick, but don't expect many dynamic poses here.  His shoulders are locking/ratcheting joints.  What I mean by that is the arm has to be pulled away from the body to be rotated.  It'll then turn one notch before "locking" back into place.  The robot head is on a spring so no turning of the head.  The hips do swing out due to transformation, similar to Megatron so you can move his legs for a better standing pose.

Each fist is removable as part of the transformation.  His left fist has a regular shaped peg that keeps the fist snug, while the right fist's peg is shaped like the end of one of his bullets.  The yellow tab once depressed will fire the fist.

He comes with two large chromed rifles.  The rifles feel like they have a little heft to them as well, i.e. they don't feel cheap at all.  Of course he can wield them in either hand, but he can also have them mounted on his shoulders.  There is a small round peg hole on the top of his shoulders on each side.  The guns are supposed to be attached there, but they don't quite fit.  I could get one in with a little effort, but the other side just didn't want to cooperate.  So I guess that's 2 flaws I've found now.

Now that we've looked at the robot mode in detail, let's take a look at his alternate mode.

Browning's alt mode is that of a Browning M1910 pistol.  It's rather small and compact when compared to G1 Megatron.  I apologize for the lack of comparison pictures of he and Megs, but I hate transforming Megatron!  Browning is so small it didn't want to fit very well into my adult hands.  It looks as if it would fit better into a woman or child's hands.  Perhaps this is why Browning was given to Cancer as a gift in the Masterforce anime.

Also of note the toy doesn't match his Masterforce anime colors, but neither did many of the toys from the Japanese series'.

I really, really like this toy.  Some of my buddies in my local TF collecting circle have given me crap for bringing a KO into my vintage G1 collection.  Let's face it though, I'm a collector on a tight budget and the real Browning can easily cost several hundred...when you can find one.  For me this release was right up my alley.  Now that isn't to say I don't want the vintage version some day.  If anything I want him more than I ever have.  

If you like what you see and would like to grab one without having the hassles of eBay, then head on over to Aces' Toy Store and grab him today.  For $45 you really can't go wrong.