Not only are the missiles gone, but a few other details have been simplified. The neck is mostly one rubber piece that is hollow up the center. This loses some ability to pose the dragon and feels a bit fragile at the base. Mine always looks to the side because the neck is a bit collapsed from being hollow.

 

Then the thruster things on his legs are now always closed. They can't open at all because they are molded that way. I haven't pulled out my Megatron to compare them. But there could be additional details removed.

 

This was basically the same thing they did with the Optimal Optimus bootleg. That one doesn't have firing missiles and the arm shields are only two pieces instead of three (and of course the electronics are missing).

 

I have heard some people saying that their joints aren't holding together. I haven't transformed or posed mine a lot, but for me that has not been an issue.

 

I wish I knew where these little dinosaurs included with them came from. I wonder what they were thinking when they included them.

 

For the price of an original, these are no replacement. As a matter of fact, I have seen MIB Optimal Optimuses go for just a couple bucks more on ebay. I think a loose Megatron is about $20, but well worth the price difference. IMO, the ko is really only worth getting for the fun of a ko, not for the fun of the toy it is trying to be, as is often the case.

Not only are the missiles gone, but a few other details have been simplified. The neck is mostly one rubber piece that is hollow up the center. This loses some ability to pose the dragon and feels a bit fragile at the base. Mine always looks to the side because the neck is a bit collapsed from being hollow.

 

Then the thruster things on his legs are now always closed. They can't open at all because they are molded that way. I haven't pulled out my Megatron to compare them. But there could be additional details removed.

 

This was basically the same thing they did with the Optimal Optimus bootleg. That one doesn't have firing missiles and the arm shields are only two pieces instead of three (and of course the electronics are missing).

 

I have heard some people saying that their joints aren't holding together. I haven't transformed or posed mine a lot, but for me that has not been an issue.

 

I wish I knew where these little dinosaurs included with them came from. I wonder what they were thinking when they included them.

 

For the price of an original, these are no replacement. As a matter of fact, I have seen MIB Optimal Optimuses go for just a couple bucks more on ebay. I think a loose Megatron is about $20, but well worth the price difference. IMO, the ko is really only worth getting for the fun of a ko, not for the fun of the toy it is trying to be, as is often the case.

:pfx

 

I was discouraged picking up the one at my local Biglots, because it had some of the vacumized paint chipped and it looked like the lever that makes the wings spread was busted..

 

No replacement of the original, by any sense of the word.

I saw these at the Big Lots here in Phoenix, but bought an Aerialbot KO set instead for $5. The plastic is chintsy as all get out, and it looks like it's going to fall apart if I sneeze in the room next to it, but still not bad for $5. They had some other sets there, too, including what I have to say is the wierdest gestalt set I've ever seen. It consisted of a bunch of tools, like a screwdriver and a hand saw. Really wierd. They also had a Protectobots KO set there, as well as some Japanese Beast Wars figures, such as a lion Prime. If you didn't get Universe Sunstorm, or whatever the name of the Yellow Thrust redeco was, he was at Big Lots for $10.

Ok.. my Big Lots finally got the Lio Convoy, double-sized Rat Trap and "Blast Punch Primal".

 

I alread had both the RiD Megs and RiD Galvy, and IMO they're pretty damn good, as is the almost-accurate-color OpOp.

 

The "Blast Punch Primal" is a seriously -sad- POS. I can't begin to describe how bad he is, but he was a real waste of $5. It's like they sat somebody down with a real BP Primal and a block of clay, and said "Here. Carve us a smaller, crappy copy of this."

 

Almost -NO- articulation. It's molded of hard, hollow plastic.

 

The transformation consists of opening his forearms and flipping the hands, flipping his gorilla head against his back and pulling the bot head out of the chest, rotating the waste and standing him up. All details are molded (and quite sparse), and his hands are just molded plastic rocks.

 

 

Rattrap is at least twice as big as a real TM Rattrap, and tail/sword has 2 whole points of articulation (the middle and the tip--simple plastic hinges). Bot mode is about the best part of him, as they left out small molded details required to keep the rat together.

 

His chrome parts are a shocking fuschia color. Compared to the Primal, this is a dead-on copy. :P

 

And then we have Lio Convoy (an oddly yellow-colored lion with a translucent, sparkly gold mane.

 

The space for the mechanism that's supposed to rotate the mane is there, but the mechanism, itself, is not.

 

The head and front part of the mane are a single molded piece. The hinged parts of the mane are intact, but only really serve move to get out of the way for transforming. While the rotation mechanism is gone, the head still spins (manually). *shrug*

 

The body is this peculiar light yellow. The mane and entire tail are clear golden yellow with sparkles molded into the plastic. The Lion's face is silver with a pink tongue. Bot mode is "highlighted" with grey/silver arms, groin, head, leg pieces and chest. The chest is molded complete with golden Maximal symbol. (damn, but they're pushing their luck, aren't they? :P)

 

He comes with a gold-painted replica of Blast Punch Primal's sword (I've got him holding the two black ones that came with the Primal), and two silver missile-launchers with missiles of the same plastic as his mane and tail. Amazingly, they even launch!

 

I'm amazed at how WIDELY the quality varies between all of these, since they're the same "brand" (Space Warriors: BEAST-tech Fighters). Especially that lame Primal. :P

 

Big Lots even has a whole new collection of the mini-gestalts they had before, but these are called "Salvation in a Box" (at least, that was the most prominent wording on the front), and they're half-again larger (at least) than the previous ones. They also look to be slightly better quality, but that's probably just an illusion. :punch

Don't forget the KO of that Japanese BW racoon clock guy! I find it funny we're getting KOs of toys that never saw North American release.

Yeah...Heinlad is there, but no ones buying him. OpOp, TM2 Megs and RID Megs are 7.99. I have the Beast Mach Primal- which is a completely original mold- and though it lacks in articulation it sure looks shway on a shelf.

well, I love KOs, mostly because they can act as cheap fillers till up can get the real deal

I got the red one and I'm luving it~! the dragon arm was loose though so I've fix it up big time. now it'll hold up like it's suppose to.

It's awesome looking, seriously.

I got the RID Galvatron knok-off from big-lots. It's very good for 7.99 but some of the alt modes are missing (bat mouth gone and such) The tail-nose pice is hollow and the wheels dont turn but I like it because I never had the orginal.

Well over the past few months here in China I've picked up a number of knockoffs - well, all I've picked up is KOs, since that's all I can seem to find in Quanzhou and Xiamen...

 

Anyways, some of these were totally new to me, so I'll post desciptions of them here. Apologies if you know about them already...

 

DOUBLEDEALER

"Missile Truck Transformers". If I didn't have Generations to check against, I'd believe it if someone told me this was the real thing. Practically bang-on accurate colours on the toy, the only giveaway is that the few parts that should be red are

not red, but other colours to match the rest of the body - everything else is dead on. The stickers are identical to the original, all foil stickers and nicely placed, except for the big Autobot sigil on the side of him in launcher mode, and the Autobot sigil on his head in bird mode. But despite that, it looks like it *does* belong there. The quality of moulding, of the plastic, of everything, matches a Hasbro/Takara product. And, it comes with both of the Powermaster figures. Though the MP Convoy KO is of great quality, beside this it looks knockoffish, that's how good this is. I'd really like one day to compare this to a real Doubledealer. The only other really noticeable differences are gold-painted windows instead of red, and no red stripes on the wheels. The package is the usual blister card, labelled "Missile Truck Transformers" on the front, the back has a repro of the English Hasbro instruction sheet. An absolutely amazing KO. I'd bet this of pretty recent production. I can't say enough how amazing this one is, and to think I almost didn't buy it because I wasn't sure it was a TF or not despite the Autobot sticker, but I chanced it...I'm very glad I did!

 

SUPERION:

This looked good in the package. An oversized Superion (about 14" tall or so when combined, individual small jets about 6" or 7" long in jet mode). It's on a massively large card with Chinese text only. Then I opened it. Shoddy moulding, shoddy plastic, moulded so you have to combine them in a certain way, etc. etc. Crap. But it looks alright. But it's still crap. Silverbolt is white and light orange with small bits of black, and on the nose of the jet mode the word "Kitten" is written (right way up on the right side, inverted on the left side). Why? I don't know. Kitten. Slingshot is solid red with chromed wings; Fireflight is the same light orange overall as found on Silverbolt, also has chromed wings, and his tailwings (not the vertical stab) are painted blue. Skydive is dark blue overall with chromed wings and nosecone; Air Raid is grey with chromed wings. Again, visually not bad, but constructionally awful.

 

SIXSOMETHINGOROTHER:

This thing is one-half Sixwing, one-third Sixturbo and one-sixth Sixbuilder. Then it gets interesting. This is number 6 in the InterChangeRobot series (the blue MP Convoy is No. 1), and is called R-BLAOE. It is oversized compared to standard micromasters. The three jets from Sixwing are Missilerun (here completely red), Supersonic (here completely white) and Raker (here green, orange and red). They

all transform as the originals do. The two from Sixturbo are Discharge (red with green ladder) and Sireen (green with red lights and trim)...but these do not transform! Neither does the lone unit from Sixbuilder, Crashbull (who looks quite good in white with a red scoop, the wheels painted silver and the treads painted black). Crashbull is useless here, as he cannot transform, nor can he be attached to the combined robot. The combined robot uses the parts from Sixturbo, with the upper piece in red and the lower piece in blue, but with what seems to be a unique head. The quality of the plastic is alright, nowhere near as good as the MP Convoy KO, but better than average, though the colours are very plasticky. I don't know what to think of this one...bizarre.

 

BRUTICUS x 2

I got two Bruticus KOs, both called 'WAQONSOLDIER". There were two others I didn't buy (listed below as V3 and V4), and now I'm annoyed, because these are of decent quality.. And, being oversized (Onslaught is better than a foot long in vehicle mode), look quite impressive. Decent enough to have salvaged the day on the toy front.

 

Onslaught:

V1: Olive green with black and white camo, mid blue/dark blue cannon, bright green cannon mount

V2: Bright green with black and white camo, mid blue/black cannon, bright green cannon mount

V3: as V1

V4: as V2

 

Swindle:

V1: Bright green/blue, yellow cannon

V2: Bright green/blue, blue cannon

V3: Tan/blue (can't remember cannon)

V4: Yellow/black (I think black, yellow is certain; can't recall cannon)

 

Brawl:

V1: Tan/blue with purple camo

V2: as V1

V3: G2 colours

V4: G2 colours

 

Blast-Off:

V1: White/black

V2: Navy blue/white

V3: White/black

V4: Navy blue/white (I may have V3 and V4 reversed here)

 

Vortex:

V1: Navy blue/white

V2: White/black

V3: Navy blue/white

V4: White/black (I may have V3 and V4 reversed here)

 

SIXBUILDER

This is not, as one would expect, in the same series as the King of Supercar Sixturbo, but in the same series as the FIREFIGHTERM Defensor and FREIHTERPAN half-Menasor. This is on a blister card of the same design, and is called SLUSHERCAR. Good thing it's from this series too, as the quality is considerably better than the Sixturbo KO. The card back has a copy of the Takara instructions. The colours on the toy are hit-and-miss. The parts that are used to build the spaceship and to combine the six individuals have the correct colours, but unique sticker design; the moulding is quite clear. The bulldozer (Crashbull?) is dark green instead of light green, with a grey dozerplate instead of blue and black treads instead of grey. The crane (Ironlift?) is red where he should be white, but yellow where he should be yellow; the crane arm is grey instead of blue. Digger, the power shovel, is almost correct, just lighter shades of the proper colours, and the windows are black instead of blue, and the shovel-arm is grey instead of blue. The shoveldozer (Granarm?) is much as he should be, but orange instead of red overall, and red where he should be white. The dumptruck (Treader?) is orange overall (instead

of black) and black where he should be silvery-grey. Lastly, the mixer-truck (name? Mixsog??) is a much darker green than normal, with a green mixing barrel instead of grey, but the rest is fine. Overall, though, when combined he looks pretty decent.

 

LANDCROSS

It's in a half-box half- blister card package labelled "Super Action Transformers" on the front; on the back of the box is that chart that can be seen in Generations showing all the possible 2-unit combinations. Drawback is no transformation instructions, but playing with TFs for 20 years now, I didn't have much trouble figuring it out. :) The mouldings are clean, the plastic is good, this too is better-than-Estrela quality, I'd say, probably on a par with your average Hasbro minibot. If you look at the combined Landcross from the knees up, he looks practically identical to the original. Near-correct stickers (including correct Autobot sigils), accurate colours an all four of the upper units (Dash, Wing, Waver, Mach). The only colour difference is when it comes to Tackle and Tacker. Both are overall green, with orange foreparts in car mode (hood, etc); Tackle (the truck) has correctly blue canopy over the pickup bed. The accessories are all correctly coloured too, though perhaps the blue of the crotchplate is a bit darker than proper. Unlike most (read: all) other KOs I've seen, this has all the small guns for the individual units! So, it's complete, it's of good quality, and it looks good too.

 

LIOKAISER

A miscoloured Liokaiser on a very large blister card labelled "Attack & Defend Arms Assemble Super Change Series". It comes with a very large black gun, a big sword with red ovals on the blade that you mount inside what appears to be Leozak's nose cone, and another gun that looks like the white one of Liokaiser. Quality of plastic is dodgier than that of the above mentioned, but a bit better than the Star Saber. This one has painted areas, the paint apps are tolerable, barely. It does not come with any of the breast units, sadly. Leozak: Daaaaaaaamn, he's ugly. Literally

day-glo orange, it hurts the eyes to look at. And....yeah. Day-glo orange. Gaihawk looks decent wearing a darker shade of Leozak's usual teal green; Hellbat is solid white with bits of green, blue, red, gold and orange paint here and there - he doesn't look *too* bad. Killbison makes me hungry - he's the colour of Kraft Dinner. Drillhorn looks the best of the lot in a medium green, grey treads, with silver painted canopy and what become feet in robot mode and a *chromed* nosecone. I've never seen chrome on a KO before. Jaruga doesn't look bad either in solid black with light blue painted windows and silver painted front bumper, though the stickers are a bit garish. Overall not a bad looking toy, but the quality of the plastic leaves much to be desired.

 

MASTERPIECE CONVOY

"InterChangeRobot Convoy". Blue/red/black with a hot-pink-and-neon-green Roller Force. A very good quality knockoff. Accessories: regular black gun, axe in black with the blade-edge painted silver, and solid black Megatron with folding stock. Clearly simplified from the regular MP Convoy, he is rather oddly coloured: Torso and feet are blue, forearms and lower legs red, hands, head and thighs black. The moulding is very sharp everywhere. This is very evident on the head, which is very nice in black with gold eyes and silver faceplate. He has short stacks, and the four stickers are all metal foil. The grille is silver chromed; everything else is painted - the outline of the cab windows and the stripes and the headlamps in silver, the four little running lights up top and the headlamp frames in gold; also his crotchplate is painted silver with blue trim-paint, and there is also parts painted silver on his legs. Overall the paint is applied impressively well, better than any other KO I've seen. If you can look past the colours, he looks very sharp. His hands are not articulated but just the usual solid fists with holes for the weapons, so unfortunately there is no way he can hold Megatron. His feet are articulated, but his knees are not; his legs can swing out at the hips as well as rotate at the hips. Looks quite decent in truck mode too, transforming easily: fold the head down and the arms in like on original Prime; remove the crotchplate and rotate him at the waist around. Push his legs in and fold them up, fold his feet up, stick the crotchplate into the two holes on the roof in the arm-parts, and done - looks good in truck mode too. The quality of the painting and the plastic and the moulding well exceeds licensed products made by Estrela and Antex, and is almost as good as some of the regular Takara products. The Roller Force.... He's PINK. *Bright* hot pink. And *neon lime green* and purple. But the moulding is clean, and the quality of plastic as good as regular TF releases (certainly better than the Fun4All keychain minibots, and better than Antex and Estrela too). And, it has the closest thing I've seen to a copystamp on a KO: Under the front nose wing, on the back, the single word "CHINA".