Quote Originally Posted by Magnus View Post
The numbering does seem odd. I wonder if the MP11 derivatives were made exclusives- and this practice is continuing here - because the characters didn't sell as well as general releases the first time around with the original MP3 mould. It's easy to imagine most people would just want Starscream, leaving the colour derivatives to completists.





The original MP3 Starscream had the opening radome, as Shonji Kawamori wanted to make a really good, highly detailed F-15. The MP11 version kept it because a lot of the base moulding from MP3 was still present. It might feel like a step backwards to not include the opening radome on MP52, and it doesn't look like a particularly intricate or complex piece of engineering to include, so it's hard to imagine that it would be substantially driving up the price.

The answer to this question was hinted at in the Figure King interview for MP39 (Sunstreaker):



Sunstreaker had some great features in vehicle mode, namely working scissor doors and pop-up headlights, and including these details really sells the idea of a high quality, detailed, authentic replica of a car.

I have no doubt that there are aircraft enthusiasts who would appreciate the sort of authentic details of a real plane that were included on MP3/MP11, so why not keep that sort of thing for MP52? Is it any different to the high degree of detail we saw on Binaltech/Alternators figures, or the details on other Masterpiece figures like the Alitalia livery on Wheeljack and the aforementioned doors and headlights on Sunstreaker?
And there isn’t an aircraft enthusiast on the planet that would ignore that horrendous underside of the jet mode and go “Oh but it has the radome!”