Mastermind Creations Reformatted R-08 Azalea

So, Mastermind Creations is getting into the Masterpiece style market as well. I guess I can't blame them, as that's all the rage and they don't want to be in the same situation they were in with the now defunct Knight Morpher line. But there's still demand for toys of designs from the IDW comics, and oh man are they getting it on BIG with the Decepticon Justice Division. That Tarn looks positively SICK! And Vos is available, ready to demand someone to wear his face. (shame it's not painted on either side) And there's both Impactor and Turmoil, with plans for Drift and Wing... and of course Overlord the size of MP Star Saber.

But I've gushed about their stuff long enough. Mastermind Creations Reformatted R-08 Azalea. A femme named after a flower? Is she any good? Will she kill me if she doesn't like the answer?

Probably.



Azalea is of course based on Arcee, specifically her original look during Simon Furman's run of the IDW comics. The vehicle mode, however, is more of an amalgamation of that original body's vehicle mode and some of her other bodies/takes' futuristic hover-car vehicle modes. Cast in white and two shades of pink plastic, the darker shade of the two ending up as translucent plastic on most other versions of the mold, she relies on a fair deal of paint to bring out the details, notably some pink on the white side parts, orange for lights in the front, and some blue for the canopy. Some gunmetal peeks out on her feet, but it doesn't detract.

For the most part, Azalea looks pretty convincingly like a vehicle in this mode, but the back... is where it falls apart somewhat. For features, she can store her weapons and plugs into a small flight stand to give her the appearance of hovering about a centimeter off the ground. Her vehicle mode is also adjustable in its configuration to a small extent, but that's meant more for the other versions of the mold not named Azalea. But how does she compare in vehicle mode?



Azalea and friends are among the smallest figures released in the Reformatted line to date, and she seems rather... compact next to a Vehicon and Generations Springer in armored car mode. (of course the latter is a Voyager figure)



Transformations is... *sigh* where do I begin? The side parts don't have to come off, but either way do need to be pulled out almost to that point and it makes things much easier to just take them off anyway. Her head and neck plate have to fit through a multi-hinge assembly to get to where they're needed in vehicle mode, and it's not always cooperative. Not to mention getting the whole back assembly turned around is tricky. The instructions also make one minor error: they show her hands fitting into the space in her thighs over a peg with the tabs on the bottom of her wrists pointing up. They're supposed to go the other way so those tabs can fit into the slots the hips tab into to lock the leg together. The shape of her hands won't let them go down all the way in there the way the instructions show.

The robot mode is beautiful, however, and greatly resembles IDW Arcee, with some hints of other Arcee designs mixed in. She's slightly mistransformed in the packaging, with her back assembly improperly positioned so her neck plate doesn't tab in the way it's meant to. I'll come back to this in a bit. A few new paint colors become visible in this mode, with silver on her abs, a lighter pink on her face, and metallic blue eyes. The face colors are the biggest deviation, as Arcee had a silver face with yellow eyes and blue 'lipstick' at the time, but it's also classic Arcee... somewhat. Her proportions are about as good as one could ask for, with the hip armor helping to keep the flow of her hips to her legs until needed to move out of the way. She also escapes ending up with 'birthing hips'. Yeah, that back panel from vehicle mode becomes a butt flap of sorts in this mode, but it can be moved further up her back to hide it.

Azalea can also store her weapons in robot mode, which are coated in metallic pink paint with the sword blades covered in orange. Either type of weapon can store either on the peg on her thigh armor or on a tab on the back panels. The swords fit into her hands by sliding in from the side and then twisting so the thicker dimension of the grip fits between the front and back of her hand. (the guns can just slide in from the top) Unfortunately, this does make them kind of easy to knock out of her hands, so it'd be a good idea to be careful.

Articulation is Azalea's shining point, wielding an incredible 26 points of it counting a couple joints probably only really meant for transformation. The head is ball jointed, but with her properly transformed she can't look up without turning her head to the side first, but she can if left mistransformed, albeit the neck plate doesn't stay put well like this. Her chest connects to her abs via a ball joint, then has a hinge and swivel just above her pelvis. All of this gets locked up if you choose to have her butt flap moved further up her back since it is indeed attached to her butt. Her thigh armor are separate pieces, so they can be moved around to your liking. (or to keep the weapons attached to them out of the way. The 'proper' knee joint has excellent range, and the front of her knee has a bit of a lip at the top to keep things looking natural. Her feet are nicely designed, having her heel be flat yet still keep the look of Arcee's typical high heel foot design. Granted, while she's very well balanced and not prone to falling over on her own, she doesn't have much of a heel by necessity of the transformation, and is easily tipped backward. But MMC thought of that, and allowed the flight stand to plug into the back of one of her feet to keep her stable if needed. On mine, her right ankle swivel is kind of loose tilting inward... a bit of Pledge Floor polish should fix that.

With that said, how about a size comparison?



Vehicons get no respect, I tell ya. No respect! Anyway, Azalea is a bit taller than a Vehicon but shorter than Generations Springer. Couldn't tell you if that's accurate or not to the comics, but she's about the same height as First Edition Arcee, who is a slightly tall toy for her time.

I want to give a shout out to Ages 3 and Up for this figure. You see, I bought Azalea from them, and when I got her in the mail, I found an assembly error with that back piece that prevented her from transforming correctly. So I emailed A3U's customer support with the order number I received with my order, informing them of the problem and sending a picture of it. Unfortunately, they were all sold out of Azalea, and waiting for MMC to send out a replacement could take a long time. But, the store owner was willing to send his copy as a replacement in exchange for mine. I didn't even need to send back everything that came with her, just the figure herself. So the Azalea seen in the A3U Review of the toy and the one I've just reviewed here, aside from the weapons, are one and the same. For going out of their way to make things right when they could have easily just said "sorry, we're all sold out", I'm extremely grateful.

Now then, is Azalea worth it? Do I recommend her? For the most part, yes. She's a great figure for about $60, but transforming her to vehicle mode the first couple of times will require patience. And if you don't want another Arcee, there are three other easily available versions of her, one of which may be reviewed at a later date. (hint: it's Salvia/Solus Prime)

So when will MMC make Psyaxus/Jhiaxus? Azalea needs him around for her to kill again... and again... and again... and again...

Who knows what they might make next, at the mo, the main rages seem to be across the whole third party sector:
1: MP style
2: IDW style
3: Combiners
4: Upgrades

Numbers 1, 3 & 4 are the primary ones at the mo, I'm kind of wishing that Hasbro would create for the Generations line, a more ordinal charater, or maybe prehaps a totally different faction, prehaps a band of pirates who aren't cons nor Autobots as such, it would kind of work well for MMTE comics, they could have an Event where they encounter space pirates and Hasbro could promote it with their toys, thou that seems unlikely at the moment with the Combiners around!

SuperOmegaPrime wrote:Who knows what they might make next, at the mo, the main rages seem to be across the whole third party sector:
1: MP style
2: IDW style
3: Combiners
4: Upgrades

Numbers 1, 3 & 4 are the primary ones at the mo, I'm kind of wishing that Hasbro would create for the Generations line, a more ordinal charater, or maybe prehaps a totally different faction, prehaps a band of pirates who aren't cons nor Autobots as such, it would kind of work well for MMTE comics, they could have an Event where they encounter space pirates and Hasbro could promote it with their toys, thou that seems unlikely at the moment with the Combiners around!

Star Seekers. Considering the first, last, and only Star Seeker (outside of Fun Pub) made was Thundertron, they're not too interested in branching out from Autobots and Decepticons.

As for Mastermind, they've shown much of what's coming down the pipe line at TF Con. Kaon and Tarn of the DJD, (still need to see what horrifying implements of torture Helex and Tesarus turn into) Overlord, Wing, Drift, Impactor and Turmoil, and... MP-style Insecticons. (not so sure that's a wise decision considering Badcube already have their bugs out in a three pack and Fans Toys has had preorders for theirs up for a while now...)

And you left out Legends scale.

Detective Barricade wrote:And you left out Legends scale.

From what I seen, only one third party company is doing legends scale, so its not worth counting because if you go by that, you would need to add FOC figures from Planet X, of course, now that I think about it, I did leave out, Dinobots

DX-9 War in Pocket
Iron Factory
Shapeshift Inc.

And there's likely a couple more I'm forgetting.

Detective Barricade wrote:DX-9 War in Pocket
Iron Factory
Shapeshift Inc.

And there's likely a couple more I'm forgetting.

That's part of the problem these days, to many companies to count, to think, it started with just one, Fansproject and their upgrades, then it came figures, then third party figures with upgrades, then combiners hit the scene and as usal Hasbro was late to the game but they are making their mark for sure!

dam an MP Arcee would be awesome!!

Get to it Hasblo or 3P fuckers!!