Fansproject Menasor, Assaulter and more

[UltraMagnus]

I believe that is In's Point in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong. Whole building of toy shops. So is Sino Centre in Mongkok, about 5 mins walk further up.

$200 for Assaulter? Wow, that is pure robbery.

Maxirod is right.
HD and I usually go to In's Point in Ya Mai Tei (On Nathan Rd directly above Ya Ma Tei station.

As for the price, my fans project store (now called Action Robo) usually holds them for me. So he will get them cheap cause he knows the guys.

[Sam]

Maxirod is right.
HD and I usually go to In's Point in Ya Mai Tei (On Nathan Rd directly above Ya Ma Tei station.

Ah, I thought so. Cheers.

[SuspectimusPrime]

In-packaging pics of Armored Battalion: Blockade, Teardown, and Plunder.

[Trent]

In-packaging pics of Armored Battalion: Blockade, Teardown, and Plunder.

Sweet!



In other news, I got Assaulter today. I sat down and opened him tonight and had a play.

At first I was really disappointed with it. But I persevered for a good hour and is I really like it. Not as good as SteelCore but still worth the money. He is fairly huge too!

[kup]

In-packaging pics of Armored Battalion: Blockade, Teardown, and Plunder.

For a second I thought you meant in-package pics of the FP Stunticons!

Cool anyways, I am looking forward to the dlx Insecticons.

[Trent]

Thought I'd post up a few thoughts and photos of Assaulter.

They do a great job of shoe-horning him into the same size box as the other 2 Warbots, because the first thing you realise is he is HUGE and heavy. He has a fair bit of die-cast in his legs so that is where the extra heft comes from.

First thing I noticed when I got him out of the box is how solid he feels. The weight adds a lot to this butit really does seem to be very well built.
Articulation is good, but his hips have ratchet joints that were VERY tight to move at first. I actually thought I was going to snap the joint before it gave and clicked. Phew!

Anyway here is the robot mode next to classics Screamer for scale. As you can see he is pretty big. He is a little patchy from the back but I don't see it as a problem. If you're a bit nit-picky you might but remember he is a triple changer!







There is an alternate robot mode which apparently is more reminiscent of Broadside in the Marvel comics. This is done by flipping up his face shield, rolling the plane canopy and rotating the legs 180 degrees. His guns can also become axes by folding out the blades.

First time I saw this look I hated it. But letting it sit infront of me while I was watching the cricket last night made it grow on me. There is actually a fair amount of detail in the face sculp which is nice. And I now quite like it. I still like the classic look best but this is a nice extra this is completely unobtrusive.






On to the transformations.

First one I did was the SDF-1 style carrier (this is the first one in the instructions). As usual I found FPs instructions l a little hard to follow. As there are no words, it is hard to understand what they are trying to tell you, but I got there in the end. Transformation on this guy is actually fairly easy and intuitive. That is not to say there is not a lot to it, just after the first time I have not had to look at the instructions again.

From what I have seen, in a triple changer one mode is usually compromised due to the level of complexity of the toy. And in Assaulter that is the carrier mode. It is very busy/messy with a lot of holes. But it still is a pretty good mode considering. The more I look at it the more I like it.

The comic shows Assaulter as a little bigger than normal, but states mass shifting as the way he can achieve super-massive size. (Has Hasbro ever laid claim to the term 'mass shifting'? Or is it more a fan term??)








While the carrier mode is messy and has many holes, the plane mode is the exact opposite. It is very neat and... enclosed. It is great. While I have no idea what (if any) plane it is supposed to look like, it doesn't matter. he folds up really well to make it with no indication that this mode has been compromised for any other. Considering his size and bulk this is a very well executed alt mode.








I like the approach that FP used here. Rather then have 3 ok modes, the were able to give us 2 great modes (3 if you count the alternate bot mode), and one ok mode. They sacrificed one instead of all 3.

I do however have to QC problems with the plane mode. There are 2 sections that are supposed to tab together, as shown in the below photo, 1 is the nose and the other is at the rear. But no matter how hard I push, wriggle or twist, they will not click together. I think the tabs are too big for the holes. Does any one else have this problem?



While this is not a massive flaw, it does irk me that I have this awesome bot with these 2 niggly little problems. But overall they are the only issues I have with it so I am very impressed.

I rate this guy up there with SteelCore, which I rated pretty highly. He is not as poseable as SteelCore but still well worth the money and an excellent attempt and a triple changer.


tl;dr: I like this guy

[kup]

Awesome review Trent!

I also had the same issue as you in the plane mode. After some persistence I actually managed to get the 'tail' part of the plane together. What I did was I 'pinched' the two halves together from what would be the top of the shoulders and it worked nicely! It was much easier afterwards, kind of how it was hard to lock in the leg tabs in carrier mode at first.

I also noticed that the nose of the plane suffers if something is unaligned but it's not perfect.

[SuspectimusPrime]

Great review, Trent! I'll look for those same signs of QC issues when I get around to shipping my POL

[Trent]

Thanks guys.

I also had the same issue as you in the plane mode. After some persistence I actually managed to get the 'tail' part of the plane together. What I did was I 'pinched' the two halves together from what would be the top of the shoulders and it worked nicely! It was much easier afterwards, kind of how it was hard to lock in the leg tabs in carrier mode at first.

Huh. Whadayaknow. Thanks for that Kup. It actually worked. I had to push pretty bloody hard but I managed to clip the shoulders together. Hopefully that loosens up.

[kup]

My pleasure

For more reference for the cockpit and for others who are having difficulty, here are is trio of pics: