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Dave's Transforming Robot Toy Rant: Metal Cardbot

Machina Patrol Car Blue Star (police car)

Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/misc/Cardbot1

Metal Cardbots is a Korean cartoon and toy line that is starting to get some American releases. I ordered the first wave online from AgAbyss, and I may or may not review them all, but I wanted to do at least one. Since Blue Star is the main hero mech of the show (according to the fan wiki), I figured I'd start with him.
For now I'm not going to make a directory for these. If I change my
mind, I'll copy reviews into it rather than moving, so the old links will
still work.


CAPSULE

I bought the entire set of six for $213 from Ag@byss directly, but their website lists this as $25 bought separately.

Blue Star: It's definitely a different feel from Transformers, and
bigger than a Deluxe Transformer, but it's lacking in a few ways that suggest neophyte designers or some odd cost constraints. If you want to dip your toe into the series, though, this seems to be a good start, especially since it's the main hero character. Recommended.


RANT

Background: Okay, gonna be brief here because I'm really just
summarizing wiki pages. The Machina are machine lifeforms whose homeworld
was destroyed, making them all refugees. Many have ended up on Earth, and while there aren't warring factions per se, there's some malcontents and criminal types who have to be dealt with, plus a fallen mentor type who wants to turn Earth into a new Machina world. The way-too-on-the-nose-named Deus Machina provided a way to seal them into metal cards, adding a bit of a
Pokemon vibe to the series, but don't worry the toys don't try to turn into cards like some earlier lines I've seen. This binding is meant to help humanity accept the Machina and not fear them, as well as helping rein in the more troublesome Machinas (like the genocidal fallen mentor).
The main human kid charactere bonds with the heroic Blue Cop to help
deal with the more antisocial Machina, including a trio of space pirates.
Along the way, they find various power-up gear that also turns into cards
(Blue Cop's Big Damn Climax powerup involves ten cards at once, although only four seem to be used on the toy), and the toys DO include cards that
transform into powerups. The default look of the vehicle modes is kinda
cutesy with eyes on the windshields or cockpits, and a lot of the robots have somewhat "anime eyes" appearances. The card gear accessories are attached to removable plastic (not metal) faceplate cards with the character image on the front. The cards faces are just set aside, they don't attach to the robot.
The first wave set I got also includes a sticker sheet with alternate details (multiple kinds of eyes, non-eye windows, some other bits), and
another sticker sheet with alternate stickers for the card gear faceplates. There's also an actual metal trading card showing the group included with the full wave set. The default cards have art and no text, the alternate
stickers add the character names. Most of the toys got new names for this release, which aren't necessarily the same as the new names they got in English-language packaging for Russian release (found that info on the fandom wiki). Here's the six in this wave with the original names in parentheses.
Blue Star (Blue Cop) - Machina Patrol Car
Mech Tackle (Mech Trucker) - Machina City Dump Truck
Shadow X (Shadow X) - Machina Stealth Helicopter
Heavy Iron (Heavy Iron) - Outlaw Trailer Truck (first season Big Bad)
Bluster Gale (Buster Gallon) - Pirate Bulldozer
Steel Hook (Black Hook) - Pirate Battle Galleon (leader of the pirates)

Agabyss has decided on a few Classes for these toys. Blue Star and
Shadow X are Stealth Class ($25), Bluster Gale is all alone in Mega Class ($28), Mech Tackle and Steel Hook are Power Class ($35), and Heavy Iron is Warrior Class ($65). The full wave is $213 (technically 25 cents more expensive than individual purchases), but comes with the sticker sheets and metal trading card mentioned above.

Packaging: While the six boxes are in five different sizes, they have fairly consistent design. They're all window boxes with the figure held in a blister clamshell inside. The Metal Cardbot logo includes the tagline,
"ROBOTS SEALED IN THE CARD" and it appears on the front, top, and back of the box. The box front has art of the robot mode in a dynamic pose (might be the show model, might be the toy render in a filter, I've not watched the show)
and a render of the vehicle mode below it. The nameplates in the bottom
right include their role (all of which I listed above), and the corporate
logo for SAMG Entertainment. The images of robot mode consistently have
their card gear weapon attached on the front, top, and right side. The top
has an upper body robot shot, the right side a different full body pose along with an inset for their card accessory at the top and their motto/quote at
the bottom. The left side has the robot in a more static pose above and
behind the blue-haired hero kid who is posed as if summoning them from their card. On the back are renders of both modes, a repeat of the nameplate, and
an inset showing the card and the transformed accessory. "Transform from
Robot to Vehicle" is in a red oval, I guess trademark dilution strikes
again. On the bottom of the box is the usual legalese, incuding Agabyss
(well, Ag@byss) being the official US distributor. They're a small enough operation (for now, anyway) that I doubt the toys will make it to chain store shelves.
Inside, a silver metallic backdrop card is behind the blister shell
(which is taped shut). In theory, the instructions are behind this silver card, but not every figure I got had instructions, oops. (I opened Bluster Gale first, no instructions there.) The instructions are grayscale and
include both the figure and the card gear, they're in English so definitely produced for this release.


MACHINA PATROL CAR: BLUE STAR
Altmode: Police Car
Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps (Blue Star), 7 steps (Justice Gauntlet) Card Gear: Justice Gauntlet
Motto: "Every living being can trust in a Star Guardian's protection."

According to the fandom wiki (metal-cardbot.fandom.com, unfortunately
the antifandom.com version seems to be missing a LOT of stuff), Star
Guardians are an elite organization serving Deus Machina, and only two named characters are part of it...and one of them has been "excommunicated" for deciding Earth needed to be Mechaniformed.

This toy is the original season 1 version of the character. Going by
the fandom wiki, his "Ultimate" form in S1 looks to have been a retool that allowed attaching two gauntlets and two boots (at the very least it's a
redeco with more gold). Season 2 reformtted him into Blue Cop S, and season
3 into Blue Cop W, although he always keeps the same basic vehicle mode and visual motifs, the main changes are his accessories. As a season 1 design, this toy gets a little slack from me because the design team is still working out the kinks. If a season 3 Blue Cop/Star toy retains the same issues, though, I'd be a bit less charitable.

Packaging: Robot is in the box with legs spread apart and toes tucked under I guess so they don't need to use a taller box. Additionally, the cape formed by the rear window pieces is tabbed together and needs to have the
parts separated, and the fender pieces on the boots need to be rotated back. The pistol is already stored on the inner right boot rather than being
packated separately, and the instructions draw attention to this. There are
no other "getting it into proper robot mode" steps in the instructions. The box is 8" (20cm) tall, 7.25" (18.5cm) wide, and 3.5" (9cm) deep.

Robot Mode: The fender shoulderpads remind me of Earthspark Bumblebee,
but the head has a sort of baseball cap with winged badge motif going on.
Like, it has the rough shape of a baseball cap with brim, and then a winged badge on the front, a closed faceplate, a clear red visor (but no lightpiping for it, oddly), and additional wing-like bits attached to the ear caps
reaching from the cheeks to behind the head. A lot of vehicle stuff is
folded up on the back, and the rear fenders on the boots are folded back to look kind of light boosters for speedy running. The hands are in mostly open poses, but with little blocks and gaps that let them hold the pistol in a way that looks like the index finger is on a trigger.
6" (15cm) tall at the head, a bit of car hood kibble pokes up behind the head a little higher than that. The colors are mostly blue and white with
bits of black and gold. White plastic is used for the majority of each shoulderpad, the outer faces of the forearms, the two armor skirt flaps in front, the thighs, the shins, the toes, and a lot of the vehicle shell bits. Black plastic makes up the shoulder roots and the collar area connecting
them, some details on the shoulderpad fenders, the wheels (shoulderpads and boot fenders), the elbow joints (most of the upper arm is just the shoulderpad), the hands, the pistol, the cape parts, hip joints, hinges on
the kneecaps, the inner parts of the shins, and some bits in the backpack.
The head is blue plastic, as are the inner forearms, most of the torso and pelvis, and the boot shells other than the shins. The headlights on the shoulderpads are clear bright blue plastic, the visor on the head and some taillights on the boot fenders are clear red plastic. Other plastics are on the backpack, I'll cover those in vehicle mode.
The faceplate, helmet side wings, collarbone area, abdomen, and some of the cape are painted white. There's blue paint on the upper outer corners of the shoulderpads, on the boot fenders, and some other bits on the backpack
that all connect together in vehicle mode. Gold paint is used for the
forehead badge, details on the upper and lower chest, belt buckle, forearm armor, edges of the armor skirt, vents just below the kneecaps, boot fenders, and bits on the backpack. The wheel hubs are painted silver. While the packaging has a sort of faction symbol that all the toys share, that symbol
is not found on the toy.
Articulation is a little lacking compared to a similarly-sized Transformer, but not by a lot. The neck is a ball joint with the socket in
the torso, and it pops out a little more easily than I'd like, especially
since moving the arms can result in him decapitating himself with his shoulderpads. No waist articulation, even though there's nothing about the transformation to make it difficult. The shoulder roots are ratcheting
hinges, but can really only be in two positions (trying for one more click up is how I first decapitated mine). The shoulderpads are connected to the
struts by ratcheting swivels with 45 degrees per click. There's smooth
swivels right above the ratcheting hinge elbows (15 degrees per click). No wrist articulation. Hips are hinge and swivel with both of them ratcheting. Swivel is 18 degrees per click, swing-outwards hinges are 10 degrees per
click. The armor skirt pieces are on smooth hinges to get out of the way of
a lifted leg. There is no thigh swivel, which is probably the most
significant lack, since it greatly limits the kinds of poses the figure can make and stay standing. Ratchet hinge knees 10 degrees per click, but the hinges are well below the tops of the shins so it doesn't look very good bent mode than a little. Hm, technically there's a smooth hinge knee above this, but it's so stiff on mine that I can't get either knee to bend more than a little at that point. The toes bend down on transformation hinges that
aren't too useful for stabilizing poses, but some flaps on the insteps that
are used for transformation can sort of help. The cape flaps on back are on hinge and swivel joints meant to let them spread out and back a bit. It's difficult to keep the figure from falling over backwards unless you have the figure in a specific "feet as far apart as the shoulders" sort of pose.
There are no standard connectors, but the hands are molded to let the pistol grip fit firmly into either hand. There's also two 4mm sockets on the right forearm that are used to attach the card gear gauntlet. There are tabs and other shapes on the inner face of each boot that let you store the pistol on either boot, and it stays between the boots in vehicle mode (so, store it before you start transformation). I keep bobbling the gun when I remove it from boot storage, sigh.
The gun is hard to find when dropped because it's a single piece of
black plastic 36mm long. It's shaped like a revolver with some sort of box accessory under the barrel. The right side has some extra hollows,
indicating it's meant to be held in the right hand to hide those.

Card Gear: The Justice Gauntlet, according to the instructions and the side of the box. This is his original card gear, but later designs retain something like it, if sometimes with more details and parts.
Like all of the cards, there's a removable faceplate that is not
involved in the gear accessory, and which defines the size in two dimensions. The thicknesses of the gear pieces behind the faceplates vary, and the pegs
and tabs used to attach the faceplate to the gear also vary. The faceplates are all 3.25" (8cm) tall, 2" (5cm) wide, and about 1/8" (a little over 3mm) thick. They're made of a single piece of plastic with an irregular tech-greebled border with a line of gold paint on a detail in the top part of the border and on a zigzag across the lower left. Each has a sticker with
the box front art of the character (but without the card gear attached in
some cases...Blue Star's card has the Justice Gauntlet attached, but Bluster Gale's doesn't have his Bluster Gatling) inside the border, with no text.
The full wave set comes with a sticker sheet that lets you replace this with the same art but also the character name.
In card mode, the Justice Gauntlet is 12mm thick not counting the pegs
and tabs that go into the faceplate. It's made entirely of the bright clear blue plastic used for the shoulderpad headlights. There's silver, gold, and black paint, some of which is hidden inside until you transform it.
Transformation is fairly simple, the first step is to fold it in half along the long axis, bringing the 4mm pegs on either side together so they
can fit into those 4mm sockets on the right forearm. The back end folds up into a sort of flared cuff, panels on the sides fold down to cover up Blue Star's forearm, and then bend the fist down a little.
In gauntlet form, it's about 4" (10cm) long, there's silver paint on the back of the fist and the cuff area, gold along the tops of the sides of the forearm and on the fold-down flaps, as well as a bit on the flared cuff. There's gunbarrel-ish details down the centers of the forearm sides that are painted gloss black, and details on the side flaps are also painted gloss black.
When placed on Blue Star's right forearm, the figure's hand sticks out a little, but otherwise the arm is pretty well covered. It bumps up against
the shoulderpad, so there's not much useful range of motion when it's
attached. The right hand is able to hold the pistol even with the Justice Gauntlet attached, but it works better in the left hand.
The backside of the faceplate has a molded Machina logo (vaguely reminiscent of a cross between the Mini-Con logo and the Blentron logo)
that's in chrome silver. I'm a bit annoyed that there's nowhere on the
figure to mount or store the faceplate. Okay, I can stick it on the flared
bit of the Justice Gauntlet, but that's not particularly aesthetically
pleasing or stable. I suppose when the figure's on display you can just set
it at the feet or lean it against the shins.

Transformation: I mostly figured out the transformation on my own
(pretty standard "arms snug against the sides, legs fold double at the knees, fiddle with panels otherwise" transformation), but I was missing one
important bit until I checked the instructions. The upper shins fold up to become parts of the bumper, solving a problem I had the first time (the rear windows wouldn't quite go all the way down) as well as filling in the gaps "rear half is boots" transformations often leave.
And yeah, going back to robot mode the gun will probably pop out as soon as you separate the boots. That's the big downside of being able to peg onto either side, it's not guaranteed to stay on either and is just a likely to
end up loose enough to fall out. Otherwise, the main hassle of going back to robot mode is getting the backpack all folded up properly. I managed to
avoid popping any parts besides the gun off, though.

Vehicle Mode: So, this is an unlicensed Lamborghini style sports car
with a police lightbar and windshield eyes (but not Cars-style). The eyes
are TFPrime-style iris rings painted on black plastic behind the clear windshield, in fact, so the included stickers that allow changing things
won't look as good by comparison. The car proportions are close to a Rescue Bot sort of thing, a slightly chibi car with bigger tires and greater width compared to the length than the real thing.
6" (15cm) long and 3" (7.5cm) wide in mostly blue, white, and black.
The rear window louvres are the cape bits and are black plastic like the wheels. The bumper fillers from the robot shins are black plastic as well,
as are the front grille, bottom edge of the front end, and intakes on either side of the grille. It's less obvious, but the middle bits of the side
windows are black plastic with white paint that does a pretty good job of coverage on the top border. Even LESS obvious is that the windshield is
backed by black plastic. The limbs and front bit of the lightbar are clear
red plastic, as are the taillights. The headlights are direct from the robot mode shoulderpads, and their clear bright blue is used for the windshield
(but no other windows). The only blue opaque plastic in this mode are the non-black parts of the rear, and the "eyebrows" section over the windshield. Otherwise, it's white plastic.
Most of the blue in this mode is paint, the center strupe on the hood
and the stripes along the upper sides from front to back. The side windows
are painted black except for the bits that are black plastic. Stripes under the blue bits on the doors and rear fenders, on either side of the center
blue stripe, and the non-stripe outer edges of the "eyebrows" are painted
gold. The wheel hubs are silver. The black plastic behind the windshield is painted with irises in some color bright enough to show through. There's
white on the top edges of the side windows as mention, as well as on the bits of the cape that are frame instead of louvre slats.
While the alternate eye stickers don't look as good as the original
eyes, since the side windows are opaque black the eyeless windshield sticker matches them as long as you apply it correctly.
The wheels work quite nicely, but there's no other articulation or connection points.

Overall: It's decent for a first year mold, although some of my issues around articulation do not seem to have been addressed in the S and W
variants, and there's only so much you can do about giant shoulderpads or big kibble capes. A friend has said their copies suffer from issues of untrimmed mold flash, and while I didn't see that on Blue Star, I'll be keeping an eye out. If nothing else, the missing instructions for Bluster Gale suggest an issue in QC.


Dave Van Domelen, will probably be more terse on the rest, referring
back to this review for common elements.

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