Once upon a time, a game company called FASA capitalized on the popularity among science-fiction fans of the powered-armor/giant-robot genre by producing a game called "Battledroids". It was set a thousand years in the future, after a massive interstellar confederation (the 'Star League') had risen and collapsed, and the 'Successor States' fought over its remnants. The primary weapon of war was a giant two-legged machine called the Battledroid. The original images used for the Battledroids were copied directly (with proper liscencing) from a handful of popular Japanese giant-robot cartoons.
They were promptly sued by George Lucas, who was feeling posessive of the term 'droids'. Chosing not to fight the Lucasfilm juggernaut, FASA changed the name of the game to "Battletech", Battledroids became Battlemechs, and the game went on to be the most fabulously successful giant-robot wargame in the history of the universe.
A few years later, FASA found itself sued again, this time by a much smaller company called Harmony Gold. HG had liscenced one of the Japanese series that FASA had borrowed images from ('Super-Dimension Fortress Macross', known better to older American fans in its Harmony-Gold incarnation as the first half of 'Robotech') and wanted FASA to pay them for use of the Macross images. This time, FASA refused to give in, and successfully fought out the lawsuit. To avoid further legal trouble, however, FASA ceased use of the borrowed battlemech images, and they became known as "the unseen". By this time, FASA had a plentitude of original designs to work with, and it was expected that the older ones would simply be forgotten.
It was not to be. The players of the game had decided, apparently, that these battlemechs were "classics", the original and best, and vociferously demanded their return. For years FASA refused to act on this desire. Eventually, however, FASA simply went out of business, and the Battletech properties were passed to WizKids, who promptly moved to market a new version of the game under the "Mechwarrior: Dark Age" title. The original game was liscenced to FanPro to continue publication, and the two companies quickly prepared a new series of images for the "unseen" battlemechs, allowing their return.
Of these new images and sculpts, which became known as the "reseen", some are quite true to the original, and others are quite distinctively different. Whether the difference is good or bad is often in the eye of the beholder.
Okay, history lesson's over. Now we come to the meat of the review: The 'Marauder', a much-loved heavy battlemech whose image was originally copied from the Zentraedi 'Glaug' Officer's Battle Pod from 'Macross'. It had an elongated, bulbous torso, spindly reverse-articulated legs, and a pair of massive cannons in each arm with another slung over one shoulder. The new sculpt is obviously based on a similarly-vague description of the original.
Look: The new sculpt is very different. The legs are even thinner and more birdlike, the torso flattened and extended to the sides, and the over-the-shoulder gun mount is moved to the top front of the torso. It's not an ugly look, although I had gotten the impression that it was from the pictures provided. It does, however, look a little ungainly, with too-long legs and too-small body for its supposed massive size. Overall appearance: 4 out of 10.
Packaging: Like most minis, it comes on metal sprue in a simple blister pack. Nothing special here, nothing bad worth noticing either. 7 out of 10.
Where this particular miniature falls absolutely flat...
Assembly. The figure comes in no less than fourteen pieces, of which one is a spare foot, so you're left with thirteen actual pieces to work with. This is a LOT of parts, most figures of this size have no more than four or five pieces -- and, judging from the shape of each, many of these could have been consolidated with trivial ease.
For example, the arms. While obviously intended to maximize poseability, the result is a ball-and-socket joint at the shoulder (quite acceptable) with a break at the elbow, where we find what is supposed to represent a round hinge joint that actually breaks around the hinge, giving the assembler a very thin area to secure the pieces together. This results in an incredibly fragile joint. Worse, the small laser cannon beneath the main cannon on the arms is molded as a separate piece, about the size of a grain of rice, with another tiny joint area to deal with.
The torso itself comes in three pieces - main body, 'hips', and the aforementioned gun mount. This particular group isn't too hard to put together overall.
The legs are another break point. They attach to the hips in the same manner as the elbows on the arms, with a very thin joint area, then the legs themselves are whole except for the feet. One leg is extended forward, the other drawn up as if in mid-step. The feet themselves attach with another pair of ball joints. The problem here, aside from the ultra-problematic hip joints, is that the unmatched legs leave the whole figure almost completely unable to be balanced. It requires a very careful placement of each leg, or a heavy weight added to the extended leg (which has the base molded into it) to keep the figure from falling over. I managed to balance it by setting the folded leg so that its toes touch the ground behind the straighter leg, but this leaves the figure in a rather strange-looking posture, like it's bracing for an impact or something.
The next main problem is the delicacy of the joints. In simple handling and transportation I've seen the elbow and hip joints break repeatedly. This is the only figure I've ever assembled that's been this delicate. I can only imagine what it will be like to try to pack it into the high-pressure confines of the common rifle-case foam that many people use to transport their miniatures.
Assembly grade: 1 of 10.
Total grade average: 4 out of 10. A very disappointing purchase, especially at $9 US for a single figure.
