A recent acquisition from my main man up north, John, is the awe inspiring Super Fire Convoy. Whilst it is a tad late to be reporting on him as of June 13, 2003 following his redux release as Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime; some things simply NEED to be said about this bad mutha.
Let me first touch on one basic thing that we all need to come out of our Cybertronian closets and admit... TransFans are friggin' snobs. Particularly those annoying twits who import figures on a regular basis and then go out of their way to criticize the North American and European releases. These guys are so bloody uptight about the foreign figures they paid $200 for some guy to smuggle out between some poor immigrant's buttocks from Hong Kong, freshly stolen from the Chinese Takara factory, that you might simply pay $20-$30 in the United States for its eventual domestic release with some minor differences. These people of which I speak are so uptight about their Transformers being better than yours that if you rammed some coal up their asses, they'd crap diamonds in about an hour! Those types of people really suck...
One of those people is writing this review. :)
Okay so that's not entirely accurate... Besides being a bastard in my spare time, I'm also a snob by nature when it comes to ME versus EVERYONE ELSE. I do what little I can to snatch up japanese releases and I loves 'em to pieces! Just seeing the figure in a nice looking package, covered in all that funny looking gibberish I can't even begin to translate were to be read aloud and go out of my way to mock when I finally see the translation, makes me feel all warm in that place where my black, cynical heart should be; coursing something like tar through my hollow veins. In short, I'm a jerk and I love myself for it.
As for SFC (Super Fire Convoy) and RID OP (RID Optimus Prime), we're talking a distinction that actually had me do a triple take! At first glance there's there's only a mild difference between the two red gargantuans, but if you're like me and scoffed at the import prices (Yet went out of my way for ALL the variants of the car bros., LioConvoy and the japanese Optimus reissues...), you don't know what you missed on this one. While I'll be the first in line to express how utterly breathtaking RID OP is and how refreshing it is to see the anal retentive detail that went into this homage to his Prime-ness, Fire Convoy 'ere cements that impact more stongly than painted on Autobot symbols ever could...
Why he sucks: Well, he cost me about twice what I paid for RID OP when he was new. Those poor suckers who exploded in their pants when he was released paid twice, if not, THRICE what I did for my SFC. So if you're really hot for this guy, it helps to be a little eccentric and and to have a little extra padding in your wallet. It also helps to keep in mind that though he talks... He talks in japanese. He says something that sounds remarkably like "I am a blowfish!" and a few other things along with his somewhat annoying blast sounds and siren, all of the sounds being coupled with the flashing lights on his cab/back. I suppose that's either an incentive or deterrent based on your perspective, but being extremely limited on my use of Japanese besides knowing how to ask for more beer, if a girl is single or if they charge for bathroom use; makes me utterly clueless with what this big guy yells... whatever it is that he yells. I only catch fragments. Oh yes, and if you're eplileptic this may be a no-brainer for either version of this mold. Duh! Speaking of the mold, why Takara went and dropped the Matrix after their super sweet Big Convoy BW Neo figure is beyond me. That they would follow up something so friggin' cool in terms of original molds and then just piss away the chance to mold a second removable matrix or at the very least, have a molded in matrix like LioConvoy's is just... mystifying.
Besides that, he's in Japanese packaging which I suppose is a buying point or deterrent, much like what he actually says. There's two or three variants floating around out there, one being something like the RID OP's with him in vehicle mode facing left in the package, another (mine) having him floating, in a plastic tray, inside a large cardboard box. While I'm not all that big on the Car Robots style packaging, Takara can at least make the figure look awesome and actually transform the damn thing properly as opposed to having a monkey (and a damn stupid, cross-eyed one at that!) transform/pose the figures and then have an actual human take the god awful pictures as opposed to using readily available CG box art and photos like SOME companies that distribute Transformers all over the world. Got the name on the tip of my tongue... hmm... what was that again? I dunno...
*coughHASBROcough*
Ah yes, and finally, SFC doesn't have those Autobot symbols painted on that I thought were so neat on the RID OP. A personal preference, true... but who's rant is this?!? Yeah! That's right! Keep readin' if ya know what's good for ya!
Why he totally rules: First off, the colors are much sharper and overall he remains more visually appealing in all three modes because of this. The attention to paint detail is phenomenal! His vaccum metallized robot chest and Autobot symbol on his Super robot chest seems to be a little sturdier when faced with knicks and scratches than the RID OP. Always a plus. The joints are extremely tight on this bad boy without being annoyingly stiff. The pegs and clips for the super armor are MUCH tighter than RID OP's comparatively floppy bits. He comes with a snazzy lil card like all the Japanese figures, some detailed instructions (What's sad is that they're in a language I can't read and they STILL are better detailed than Hasbro's! Not to mention more visually appealing. Ouch!), and a catalog that I didn't get. Yar. RID OP comes with a trilingual box and some instructions.
Overall: Besides the comparatively exciting packaging, the tighter joints, stronger plastic, finer attention to paint detail, comparatively more solid transformations and the fact that he calls himself a blowfish... RID OP simply can't compete. They're both children of the SAME MOLD, of that there's no doubt, but SFC does not maximize, nor does his armor flop around or loosely peg together. As an addition to an already spilling over collection of RID Transformers, he is a welcome addition. It's utterly shocking. Everything from the packaging down to the frickin' joints just screams of quality. If you liked the RID OP figure, you will LOVE SFC. It's about as simple as that. If you've never seen RID OP or SFC, then you might want to at least look into a secondhand market SFC. If you can't find anything, jump for an RID OP in the meantime and see if he's worth upgrading. For an Optimus freak it's a no brainer, or a completist this is something you'll want to stick in your collection ASAP. I've got both and I'm keepin' both, but I'm not blind and I will admit that SFC is the better figure, but RID OP is the cheaper buy.