Out of all three
Mospeada Ride Armor Cyclones being released currently by three different manufacturers, I think this MegaHouse version is the best looking. Having a couple poorly designed MegaHouse toys already, I pre-ordered this toy with some trepidation. But let me tell you up front, that it pays to have lowered expectations because I like this toy.
Not only does it look better than any other Cyclone on the market, it's fairly well made. I'm not sure what you might expect in a toy that is supposed to transform from a bike to a suit of armor, but suffice to say that the transformation is not what you might think of "Transformer-like". You don't pull off a bunch of origami like moves with precise engineering and all of a sudden get a dude on a futuristic motorcycle. It's more like you ease pieces of plastic off and pivot this part here and that part there and after about 20 minutes of folding and putting stuff back on, you have transformed the toy. Not quite seamless, but I was expecting much worse.
So it starts out innocent enough. You only have a few pieces to use in order to transform it into a Cyclone.
But the devil is in the details. You have to very carefully nudge the ride armor off the figure and be careful not to snap anything off in the process. There are quite a few very small parts involved. Definitely not for your 8-year old kid. Essentially you're stripping parts off...
A few careful twists, turns and folds and you have something that is starting to resemble a Cyclone.
and voila! You have a Cyclone to ride!!!
I will say to MegaHouse's credit, once the transformation was complete, I was expecting all kinds of parts to fly off willy nilly and any breeze, but once put back together in either form, it's fairly sturdy (in that model kind of way). To be honest, if you're like me, you're not going to bother transforming him back and forth that much. Just takes too much time. I could prolly get it down to just a few minutes either way now that I know how to do it, but it's just not the kind of thing you would do to play with it. You will probably display it and when you're tired of looking at it on one mode, transform it and leave it for another few weeks or months.
In conclusion, if you're a fan of Mospeada and you dig Cyclones, it's a no-brainer. Go out and get this toy (if you can find it). Just don't expect it to transform like a Transformer.
