Maketoys Galaxy Meteor

 

Galaxy Meteor is an interesting piece, on a number of levels.

It is a third party rendition of Cybertron/Galxay Force Starscream, an anomaly by itself, as most of the third party market is still hyper focused on the G1 collector. It is also a figure that was seemingly rescued from oblivion by a concerted effort by some Transformer Twitter bigwigs spreading enough hype and etailers settling on a $99 price point, down from the initially projected $130.

And then, it’s a pretty interesting figure on its own.

Galaxy Meteor has some really excellent articulation, and is capable of holding lots of cool poses. Some of the articulation is the result of transformation joints, such as in the hips and knees, as well as a limited ankle that is an intentional joint. He comes with a pretty solid arsenal, including a blaster and twin swords which, like the original, official figure, are concealed inside the large wing parts that hang from the robot shoulders. The ends of these shoulder wing parts also display barrels of blasters, so the figure is quite heavily armed. The shoulder parts are mounted on hinges that allow them to move independently of the arms, a big step up from the original figure.

In order to deploy the swords, the original figure had to raise its entire arm, and then was basically capable of using them in a downward swinging motion, like a chop more than anything that one would do with a sword. The hinged parts on Galaxy Meteor allow for poses that feature the swords, action-y looks that take advantage of the dynamic, vibrant nature of the toy. While this allows for cooler poses and makes the swords usable, the entire shoulder block part moves on these hinges, and separates from the rest of the body. I’m not the best at posing figures, in fact, I really suck at it, but this means that the shoulder parts are visibly separate from the rest of the figure, and that ruins the profile of the toy. It can’t really be helped, because while I am also not an engineer, I cannot see any way that the design could have avoided this separation.

 

The little chest mounted blasters can be moved as well, as was the case on the Supreme class official figure, but not the Voyager. Galaxy Meteor comes with a Cyber Key which is unnecessary for play, but does store in the back of the figure, just like the original. It also has three different faces which are easily swapped in and out on the head, the best of which is a grinning face.

The transformation is surprisingly complicated, given the incredible simplicity of the original official figure. It follows the same basic pattern of the original, most noticeably in the legs and how they flip around and fold up into the front half of the jet mode, but this figure does a real good job of filling in all of the empty space underneath the rear half of the jet, which the original only did through the bulkiness of the plastic. The jet mode is futuristic and accurate to the Cybertron original, which is such a distinctive vehicle, and one that is only Cybertron Starscream. Both of the swords and the blaster rifle are accessible in the jet mode, which is really only as successful as the originals’ alt mode. This has always been a good design, as a robot, and an interesting idea for a jet, kinda sorta angling for the Cybertronian pyramid jet design that the Seekers had for those few seconds of the very first episode of the G1 cartoon. This jet mode comes in way short of that concept, but hints of it can be seen in the design, just executed far, far better and more aerodynamically. It is the best of the Cybertronian Seeker alt modes, better than the Generations altmode to be sure, and in this sleeker, thinner version, it does look pretty strong.

Galaxy Meteor has a pretty interesting back story. It was originally announced a while back, and had been dormant for so long that people had begun to wonder if the project had been shelved. Then reviewers started getting samples, and articles and pictures began appearing online. It seemed like the release was drawing nearer, and then, it came out that MakeToys was having trouble securing the numbers via preorder to fill out the initial production run. Talk circulated that the figure was going to be shelved, probably in an Indiana Jones-type warehouse filled with unknown treasures. Several reviewers took up a campaign to raise awareness and hype for the figure, which personally, was working, but the $130 price tag was too much of a turn off. From the first images I had seen of Galaxy Meteor, I knew that this was going on my list of “one of these days” purchases, the “Black Friday/Cyber Monday/TFCon Weekend/random price drop” sale buys.

And then, MakeToys themselves announced that they had, thanks to an uptick in interest, secured a deal with the major North American etailers to offer the figure at $99, for at least a limited time. My preorder was placed within minutes of this news. It’s hard to tell if this story is true or not, or if Galaxy Meteor was really in any danger of being forgotten, or if this was all some kind of strange maneuver to drum up support for a figure that may not have had much. It is a good figure, make no mistake, and at $99, an excellent purchase.

But at the original price, one questions if Galaxy Meteor is worth the money. That $100 threshold is a mystical demarcation: below it, and practically everything seems like an amazing value; but above it, and many things start to fit the description of being “nice, but.” And Galaxy Meteor would most definitely have been the later. Also strange is that at TFCon USA 2017, physical copies of a Thundercracker and a Skywarp repaint were on display, and it seems a bit strange that a company that had such difficulty getting interest for the actual character usage of the mold would already be teasing or advertising repaints as characters that never appeared in this form. It is totally possible that those repaints were just there to serve as display pieces, and that there is no real intention to release them, as now months have passed and no additional word on this matter has surfaced. But here arises a pair of interesting questions:

 

Would anyone buy the repaints? And, why did MakeToys have such difficulty selling Galaxy Meteor?

The answer to the first part is pretty easy: yes, I’d buy the other two, but. Galaxy Meteor is such a good figure, both in hand and aesthetically, and I am a Seeker fan, so if a quality Seeker figure is repainted into other Seekers, it pretty much automatically makes my shopping list. If the repaints were available at the $99 price that Galaxy Meteor wound up at, I would eventually get the other two. There wouldn’t be much of a rush, (he lies to his reader…. –mr), as it would probably be the case that the repaints would be lower priorities compared to some other third party pieces that are currently being actively pursued, and unless preorders were for figure several months in the future, I may not even preorder them, but rather wait for them to come into stock (he lies again….. –mr). The trio would certainly look good together, and again, the base figure is a good one, so the other two would be a pretty easily justified purchase. Will they ever happen? Who’s to say? But, in the event that they do, I will probably buy them.

The other question is a bit harder to answer. Why was there no real enthusiasm for the figure? Seems strange, as other MakeToys products are generally highly anticipated, and the third party market is still humming along, despite think pieces predicting its demise or a sense of apathy that may be developing among fans. There’s a theory of mine that goes like this: Galaxy Meteor is a piece from an era of Transformers that the third party market isn’t looking to fill.

Even looks clean from the rear.

From its beginnings, the third party market was mostly concerned with plugging holes in Hasbros’ “Classics” or Masterpiece rosters, specifically are related to G1 characters. There was no “Classics” Devastator, or at least, not an acceptable one, and so the third parties set themselves to fill that void. Even prior to that, there was no acceptable “Classics” Ultra Magnus, and so the City Commander add on was birthed to address that need. But Galaxy Meteor is from a far younger series, as Cybetron/Galaxy Force comes in 2005-6, just before the first live action movie and Animated, and so, at this very moment, is only 12 years old. Has enough time passed for there to be a real market for the nostalgia for that series? Or, are collectors and fans for whom Cybertron is their G1 old enough and possessed of the disposable income enough to buy in to a third party market that is producing figures of the characters they grew up with? I think I’d have to guess no on that. My wife and I were talking about this once: if you have a fan who grew up with Cybertron, they are probably in their late teens or very early 20’s right now. For that fan, who may very well be a collector as well, a $100 figure is a great expense, and even if we work under the wonderful assumption that said fan could just appeal to their parents for such a pricey piece is likely to be met with some degree of skepticism as to why a toy costs $100. Parents just don’t understand, you know? So it may be the case that the market for this era of figure is just not large and self-sufficient enough right now to sustain itself, and Galaxy Meteor wound up being the first potential casualty of it. Maybe had MakeToys waited a few more years this would have been an instant success, as the target demographic may have had better the means to buy in. But, at the same time, something different in the third party market is usually a real good thing, and aside from being a good piece, it is nice to see something that isn’t just another G1 character hit the market. It’s not like G1 fans and collectors have no interest in a Cybertron character, they just may not be as enthusiastic to jump at the preorder for one. There has been a fairly noticeable move in the third party realm to the Beast era of Transformers at present, as well as a few preliminary attempts at filling gaps in the live action movie roster, so it may be the case that the market is beginning to move away from the straight G1 offering; where this ultimately goes, and what figures we get in the process remains to be seen.

Overall, Galaxy Meteor is a very good figure, and it deserves a spot in your collection. Certainly the fact that it is a Cybertron character may not interest some collectors, but the figure is of quality all around, and if people are able to look beyond the series it honors, they should be pretty happy with the outcome. But as a qualifier, the truest sense of value for this piece is getting it at the $99 adjusted price. Any higher than that and it might be best to wait for a sale.