MakeToys MTRM-12 Lightning & MTRM-13 Skycrow

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I was eagerly awaiting the release of Lightning and Skycrow to complete my original G1 Seeker line-up. Obviously both figures share a mould with Maketoys Meteor, which has both good and bad points. I love that Maketoys went for a super 'toon accurate style of figure, but am baffled by some of the design choices which prevent them from being the perfect Thundercracker and Skywarp. The biggest offender is Lightning, who should have a silver chest piece, grey hands and a blue nose cone, but instead has a sort of bluish-grey chest, black hands and a black nose cone. The hands I can live with, but the other things are just really odd choices, particularly given how toon accurate Meteor is. Skycrow fares a little better now that Maketoys has seen sense and included a set of purple fists (you have to swap them out with the pre-attached black ones), but why they gave him black fists to begin with is anyone's guess. Maketoys also appears to have cut corners by using hinges that differ from the colour of the surrounding plastic, so the hinges in the nose cones and the stabilisers are grey/black instead of matching. It just looks cheap. With that said, in bot mode they generally look very good and once you line them up with Meteor you'll quickly find yourself forgiving some of the minor colouration oddities. They're very poseable figures, the transformation sequences aren't too taxing and they look good in both modes even with the aforementioned caveats. For my money they blow Takara's dated moulds out of the water.