Toy Review - MP-33 Inferno

[GoktimusPrime]

I've ordered mine from PC so... should get it by New Year?

Not a particularly big fan of the character, but in the end decided I should get at least one of this mould, and i like me some fire trucks so Inferno it was!

I've always loved Inferno. As I kid I was enthralled by the toy and also loved the fact that he was a member of an elite Autobot fighting force, and the only Autobot Car to have been a member! #wreckandrule

Mitsubishi Fuso T951 mode
Opening it up, the first thing that struck me was that it's bigger than i expected - he's a good half a car length bigger than the MP cars and about the same width. I guess it's in scale so i'm not sure why i was surprised!

What is MP Inferno's length according to the instructions? Because the Diaclone data states that it's 11.55m but I find that it may not be as accurate as the stats provided by MP instructions.
e.g. Diaclone Lamborghini New Countach LP500S' data states that the vehicle length is 4.3m whereas MP Lambor's instructions state 4.14m, and 3 different sources I've found all confirm that it's 4.14m. So it seems that the MP stats are more reliable. Having said that, the Diaclone stats were only off by 16cm, so it's a reasonably close approximation (bearing in mind that Diaclone was targeted at children who wouldn't have noticed the discrepancy ), so I'd say that going off the Diaclone measurements would give us a reasonably good idea of scale.

So in order for Inferno to be in scale with say MP Lambor/Alert, it would need to be 2.79 lengths. Inferno would actually need to be longer than MP10, as Diaclone Battle Convoy's length is stated as 6.6m. So to be in scale, MP Inferno would need to be about 1.75 times the length of MP10! This would not only make Inferno massive, but much more expensive too; possibly approaching the RRP of MP10 or MP36. It would also make the robot mode tower over other Autobots. Basically, a scale accurate Inferno would probably look more like Super Fire Convoy compared to the Car Robot Bros. If you look at this photo you can see that Fire Convoy is roughly the length of 2.5 of the three Car Robot Bros (bearing in mind that the Hino Brandbilar is approximately 1m shorter than a Mitsubishi T951).

I think that TakaraTOMY have probably opted for robot mode scale over vehicle scale.

The back is unfortunately bare - just a small moulded ridge on the sides, with no painted or transparent tail lights. Seems especially odd considering he's a rescue truck! It's disappointing, but I can live with it since i'm not gonna display him facing backwards too often!

This is most likely to be show-accurate, as Sunbow rarely (if ever) painted additional colours on the rear of vehicle modes. This is a problem when toys become slavishly show-accurate, but it's what fans have been demanding... Btw, being in Japan you are in a privileged position of being able to access and use TakaraTOMY's online survey. I strongly advise you to do this and give direct feedback to TakaraTOMY so that hopefully they will improve things for future products. Those of us outside Japan are geoblocked.

Robot mode
Inferno comes with 2 helmets, each with 2 faces. They're not designed for the other head, so make sure you're attaching them to the right one! Both heads look good, in all honesty i'm not sure which one i prefer! The round shaped head is a little smaller overall, so it's a bit easier to get your fingers on it for posing.

Inferno appears with both heads in the G1 cartoon, one is based on the cartoon model (left) and the other is more toy-accurate (right). You can see that the cartoon model head has a broader face while the toy-accurate head has a more tapered face. Inferno actually appeared more frequently with a toy-accurate head in the G1 cartoon. IIRC he only appeared in the cartoon with the toon model head in just two episodes; Auto Berserk and Kremzeek!. In all other eps he appeared with a toy-accurate head. Inferno did use the Dery-model head consistently throughout the G1 comics though.