Toys are a lot bigger these days.
Loooong ago, Japan had their very own redeco of Jazz which they gave Cyclonus’s Targetmaster gun, and they called it Stepper. It was very expensive to buy in America, once America figured out this thing existed. Years later, it’d get released as “Ricochet” in America as a Toys”R”Us exclusive for $30, eventually clearanced to… less than that. Long story short, if you bought an original Stepper as an investment or something, let’s hope you sold yours before like 2002.
There’s a new Jazz in town, and that means there’s a new Stepper. He’s once again a Japanese exclusive, and once again he’s stolen his concurrent Cyclonus’s gun. Given the circumstances, he’ll probably be more hotly contested on the secondary market than the original.
Reveal the Shield Jazz, from whom this was redecoed, is a pretty fantastic, solid toy, so I’m happy to have a second character from it. (And we’re bound to get at least one, if not more, of this toy in various colors at BotCon this year.) I don’t have a huge fondness for Stepper/Ricochet the character, but I do love Targetmasters. And I’m enamored with the comic which featured Stepper that came out earlier this year.
Maybe the Targetmaster partner can get his own little sidecar.
I do wish they’d taken the time to drill a 5mm hole into his roof so Nebulan/Nightstick had somewhere to go in car mode. That seems like a missed opportunity. And the white paint on half his knees doesn’t quite match the white plastic on the other half. It’s a conspicuous difference in most lighting. Otherwise, I’m pretty happy. I also haven’t gotten a new Transformer in what feels like an eternity, so I’m probably going to be a little happy regardless. But I feel confident I’ll still like him later.
Though, man, somebody update his flame deco, okay?
Nice, I wish I had the cash to drop on that guy.
His color scheme has always been really nice, but I think what I love about it the most is that white helmet. Not nearly enough white helmets in TFdom.
Maybe somebody could craft something that uses the catches the speakers sit on? Sounds like something that a Maker Bot could do easy. (That plastic printer thing.). Admittedly, you’d likely have to find a college or something to have this made.
Sooooo tempting, but soooooo e’spensive. And no, whatever you do, don’t update those flames. They are tacky retro perfection.
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/sunlink
This Shapeways designer does clip on weapons for Transformers. No, nothing for Stepper just yet, but you can submit messages. If you really want something, might be worth your time to check it out.
Stepper’s cool. I kind of wish they would reissue the other rare targetmasters or at least Artfire. But Takara’s probably saw Stepper as a failure, so we never got any more TMs reissued. Their idea of “success” is rather confusing.
If anyone is interested interacting directly (or indirectly?) with Takara-Tomy some dude on TFW2005 that goes by the name of Tcracker claims to work for the company.
Hit up the forum and harrass him to release more diverse vintage era product and not just lazily reissue Devastator as encore in response to 3rd party Bootlegs. There’s also a rumored armored Ultra Magnus Masterpiece remake, a resized MP Megatron remake and a rumored MP Galvatron. They can also do much better than Alternity.
Devastator was so not lazily reissued. They had to make one from scratch, since they no longer had the tooling.
(Unless “lazy” means “most effort spent on a reissue to date,” then sure.)