Transformer Advanced MF-37 Veteran

Not the easiest to transform, but compared to other versions, this is the best for the price!

Stating the obvious, MF-37 Veteran is a 3rd party attempt at making a G1-style Kup figure. I didn't know much about this one before purchasing but I really wanted another Kup to pad out my collection as there aren't many official ones to be had. The price-point was also somewhat attractive compared to most 3rd-party releases which land in the $100's, even though it was clear that this was a fairly small figure.Once I had it in-hand I was actually quite pleasantly surprised. This is not a bad little figure at all. The overall quality is quite good. The plastic doesn't feel overly cheap (even less so, I'd say, than current Hasbro releases) and the paint apps and colors are very nice looking. There is a good amount of detail in the sculpt for as small as it is (it stands just over 4 inches in robot mode). The head sculpt is a very accurate representation of the character (even moreso than most Hasbro versions of him). Poseability isn't mind-blowing but again, for the size of the figure it's much better than I would have expected. The figure overall feels really good in your hands and looks great standing on a shelf, though you'd want to find similarly scaled figures to put him with.MF-37's transformation is the one part I'm torn on. Overall it is very simplistic, requiring only a few steps to complete, yet unexpectedly clever. They manage to do a lot in those few steps with some very interesting design work. Particularly, how the chest/piece moves out of the way and then the whole figure basically flips inside-out. On paper, I wouldn't have though this would be all that great but it works really well in execution and creates a very clean looking robot (with almost no kibble) and a decent looking alt-mode. In stark contrast though, the whole thing is brought down a couple pegs by the fact that whole back panel of the "truck" (that basically hides most of the robot parts) has to simply be removed for robot mode and then reattached when changing back. This significant bit of parts-forming is really disappointing on what would otherwise be a pretty neat transformation. It would be nice if they could have engineered it in a way that that piece stays on during transformation, or at the very least, had a place where it could attach to him in robot-mode without having to use it as a "shield" accessory. He already has two guns so no matter what, one of his accessories is going to have to be left aside. It looks like it would be able to go on his back without looking too bad but there just isn't a way to make it stay there.And finally, regarding the extra "drone" thing that comes in a container and has a ton of little weapon accessories, I don't have much to say about it because it doesn't interest me all that much. It seems a bit nonsensical and entirely superfluous. I would much rather the figure had not come with it and instead maybe been a few dollars cheaper. For me, it will stay in the box and rarely be thought about.While certainly not perfect, MF-37 Veteran really is a fun and great looking little Kup figure that I am not at all unhappy with and it's making me consider picking up some of the other figures in this line.

Though some parts aren't cartoon accurate its still a great addition to a collection

This thing is tiny. Don't purchase. It doesn't even come with all the stuff shown. It's not in scale with any other tranformers