Bot Reviews: Transformers: Studio Series Deluxe Mirage (Rise of the Beasts)

Y’know, it’s kind of odd that I’ve only been picking up the traditional vehicle Transformers from Rise of the Beasts, and not the Maximals. I think it has something to do with the Kingdom versions of the characters already being really good figures, and the new movie not really doing enough with the Maximals to make me as interested in getting new versions of them as I was in characters like Mirage, here.

As played surprisingly well by Pete Davidson, Mirage is the real lead hero of the movie, a sort of Hot Rod-adjacent energetic, slightly rebellious, but ultimately friendly young warrior, who becomes fast friends with leading human Noah. I wasn’t expecting to like this guy as much as I did, but something about him really worked. I think the toy-makers weren’t expecting him to work so well, either, since he’s only got three whole figures (and very little merchandise) so far, and two of those figures are a bit scarce. This newly-released Studio Series version is the easiest one to grab, and also the only one to have the correct headsculpt (the other two were based on concept art). But it’s also a controversial figure, thanks to it first getting teased with some of the worst stock photos I’ve ever seen, and generally giving the impression of being kind of an inaccurate, poorly-designed dud.

But at the same time, I’d seen some better-looking in-hand images from early samples, and, honestly, I just like the character, so I went out of my way to pre-order him. Good figure or not, I still wanted to have a look, and figure it out for myself.

Unboxing Notes

So, right out of the gate, there’s an issue as soon as you unbox this guy. Mirage’s backpack is pretty heavily mistransformed in his packaging, which is fine, plenty of Transformers do that in order to fit into the box. But, typically, the instructions start by telling you how to get that figure into his proper robot mode, and Mirage’s instructions mostly don’t, just telling you to fold down a single panel, and depicting the rest of him already put together, leaving me to figure it out on my own.

And let me tell you, getting him into his proper configuration without any guidelines was, at first a bit of a harrowing experience, a stressful game of manipulating tiny, painted, transparent panels on hinges, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it in place, while simultaneously feeling like I was going to break something, or scratch the paint. After squinting at some images online, I figured out why nothing was fitting: His waist is also mistransformed in the package, here’s how it’s actually supposed to go:

Properly setting it in place was the keystone to figuring the rest of him out, since it moved his backpack into a position where everything could actually fold away. Now, really, it’s mostly down to the instructions not telling you how to get him there, rather than the figure itself, but immediately having me mess around with fragile-feeling parts without knowing what I was doing certainly didn’t leave a good first impression.

Robot Mode

Once you get everything into place, you have a robot mode that’s making an attempt at imitating Mirage’s onscreen design. It’s kind of odd, looking at a render of his robot mode in the film and comparing it to this guy, nearly all the details are there, including really specific bits on his legs, torso (including that Kamen Rider-like fan at his belt), and arms. But for some reason, it doesn’t immediately scan as the Guy from the Film.

Well, I say for some reason, but it largely comes down to his proportions, which in the movie are the slim build of a runner, or swimmer, but on the figure, are wider and stockier, like an (Americal) Football player. That, and the fact that he’s got a bunch of car parts hanging off of him. Still, between the fact that his film design isn’t exactly toyetic (you’d think they’d be making that a priority seven movies in) and the fact that having a licensed car mode meant there was actual limitations on how he could transform (you’re not allowed to have seams on the car in ways that could look like it’s shattering), I think it was always going to have these issues.

They seem to have still managed to make a design that looks like a good Autobot carformer on its own merits. It helps that non-movie details like the doors on his hips, and the flared wheels on his backpack all feel designed to try and look dynamic. So, I don’t know that he looks like the guy from the movie, but I think he looks good on his own terms, and in hand, he’s a lot cleaner and nicer looking than a lot of stock images would suggest, though, make no mistake, he’s still got a big ol’backpack of car parts back there.

A part of why he works is his excellent heasculpt, which actually does capture his film likeness really well, complete with a small little grin that projects a nice sense of personality. It’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, especially considering it’s the only Movie Mirage to actually have his final head design (and the change happened late enough that the character render on the front of the box has the wrong head).

The colors are more or less in the same boat. He’s got a ton on him, but not in ways that necessarily make him read as accurate. He’s mostly cast in different shades of gray, silver, and black, with the strange choice to cast his forearms in smokey transparent plastic (since they share a sprue with his car doors). Overtop of it, he has an extensive deco of metallic silver and blue, with a couple bits of orange on his chest. It’s a nice-looking colorscheme, and it reminds me of a more down-to-earth industrial automaton that you might find in a factory today, instead of a crazy space robot.

That being said, most of his deco isn’t really laid out the way it is in the film, it’s all in different places, and he’s missing the sort of tarnished light bronze color accents he also had in the movie, the big exception again being his headsculpt, which is the right combination of different shades of metallic silver and blue (another extremely late change to the figure, he’s got different colors on the back of the box). I think it’s the same problem that’s dogged a lot of Studio Series figures, where their onscreen colors are just too ornate to replicate on a retail figure, so all they can really do is hit the highlights. And in Mirage’s case, a bunch of silver has gone to his car mode parts, and away from his body. And yet, he doesn’t look underpainted, or bad, really. It might not totally be his screen colors, but what’s here looks complete, and good.

His build quality started to feel better once I got the backpack in place. The robot at the core of him’s got nice, tight joints, and the car panels that hang off of him are on similarly tight swivels. The big issue, though, is how much of those car parts are either made of translucent plastic, slathered in silver paint, or both. I will say that none of the translucent parts feel like they’re going to break, including the forearms, but I do worry about that silver paint, it feels like it could pick up scratches and chips very easily, especially the folded-up bumper behind his head.

That’s sort of the big problem with him, really. The materials he’s made out of, the complexity of him, it all gives him a feeling of being slightly more fiddly and fragile than he ought to be. I often talk about toys where it feels like you can throw them at the wall, this is the opposite. It doesn’t feel like I’m going to break him, I’m not afraid to mess around with him, but I worry he wouldn’t survive a couple tumbles onto my tile floor without picking up some serious, possibly fatal damage. I can’t really see a kid messing around with this one, it really does feel like they’d break something, probably while trying to get his backpack in place.

On the upside, at least he’s got good articulation, more than I was expecting. His ankles are on ball joints, he’s got knee swivels, thigh swivels, ball-jointed hips, a spinning waist, a tiny bit of ab crunch thanks to a transformation joint, swiveling wrists, elbow and bicep swivels, ball-jointed shoulders, and a swiveling neck. But it does feel more challenging to make him look dynamic than he ought to, thanks to his car parts getting in the way.

Folding his knees is an exercise in maneuvering around his wheel wells, doors, and wheels, and I tend to position those wheel wells a different way than instructions and photos suggest to mitigate it. Meanwhile, his waist, and his thigh swivels are both technically usable, but a bit limited thanks to bumping into his backpack. He’s got the joints, but he’s not as bendy-feeling as I’d like him to be, especially considering the jumpy, active physicality of his onscreen character. The actual figure’s linebacker-style bulkiness does suggest he’d be less flexible, at least.

For features, Mirage has a snap-on arm cannon, cast in dark gray, which can fit over either hand, to simulate his hand morphing into a blaster.

This is the only weapon he used in the film, so it works great here, too, though I kind of wish he had somewhere to store it. At least it can fit over either hand, something surprisingly few of these arm-morphing accessories can actually do.

Transformation

Okay, so, this is a pure Studio Series Shellformer, which is to say, you’re mostly unfolding his backpack, and rotating and compressing his body so it fits inside what you unfurl, and hoping that the panels hanging off his body parts all snap together. One bit that does impress me, I’ll note, is that his car-hood-chest isn’t fake, those headlights do go on the front of the car. But this is a tricky transformation, no matter what way you slice it, because it’s a game of trying to get the panels all locked and pegged together across the car body, and fitting one in will sometimes make the rest of them pop out. It doesn’t help that the instructions suggest a pretty bad order of operations: You need to compress his waist a bit, and for some reason, they tell you to do this after you’ve (hypothetically) got most of the car mode sealed together, instead of near the start, when things are nice and loose.

Still, after a few transformations, I was able to figure out the quirks, and ins and outs of the thing, (plus a better order of operations), and I can even go from memory. Still, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a final “massage everything together to try and make all the tabs pop in and all the seams go away” step. One big trouble spot is his robot arms, which form his door windows, and also don’t really lock in, so it’s easy for them to get a bit bent out of configuration, until everything is tabbed together, but I found I can adjust them by pushing on them from beneath the car. It’s not impossible, it’s not too complicated to learn, but it is fiddly. And I feel like I still can’t get the roof to sit totally flush. Meanwhile, when going back to robot mode, the big trouble spot for me is the bumper that folds up behind his head, which scrapes against his body as it folds in, and if there’s a way to avoid that happening, I’ve not found it.

It hasn’t become scratched or worn as of this writing, but it’s a concern.

Car Mode

The big story, here, is of course, the fact that Mirage is a licensed Porsche (of some kind, I don’t know cars), something that was an impossibility for a long time, due to the company not willing to play ball and license their cars.

And in this case, part of playing ball means “all the paint went into the alternate mode” and “the car’s lines aren’t allowed to be broken during the transformation.” And, y’know what, to be fair, this is a really nice sports car mode.

I’m not a car guy, but it looks pretty slick, and comes with lots of extra sculpted details, like windshield wipers, door handles, all the little things that would come with a good model car. The funny thing is, it’s still broken up by a ton of transformation seams all over him, including a big multipart joint in the roof. I don’t mind this, since that’s the nature of making a transforming car, but I feel like the restrictions that led to his shellformer-y transformation were kind of pointless, because it’s not like the altmode’s clean anyway.

For colors, Mirage is almost entirely covered in silver paint, with bits of metallic blue, smokey transparent windows, and painted head and tail lights in orange and red. I think the only thing he’s missing is his license plate, and painted wheel rims.

And it’s a pretty color scheme, it really shines in person. But, of course, I’m worried it’s going to pick up scratches. He had one out of the box, on the metallic blue on the front of the car, near where he’s got a tiny Autobrand, and some of the blue on his spoiler wasn’t quite properly applied.

I’ve got a silver Gundam marker ready to go if it does pick up scratches, but I’ll need to find a match for the metallic blue, or just accept that his car mode isn’t factory-fresh.

I get the appeal of covering it in flashy silver paint, because it is pretty, but the whole package would have felt nicer, and probably looked better as a complete figure if it had just been a plastic color instead.

His build quality in this mode’s good on a macro level, in that he holds together well. But on a micro level, a lot of the panels that make up the car mode are kind of gappy, and it’s the kind of altmode I find myself reflexively squeezing and adjusting, trying to shrink them down. He’s not going to come apart, but the seams might not all be flawless.

For his lone altmode feature, Mirage rolls very well, which I wasn’t expecting, and goes a long way to making the car mode feel better. Another refreshing surprise is that his weapon store really nicely and tightly underneath the back of his car mode, after Studio Series Last Knight Hot Rod couldn’t do so.

Overall

Okay, so, here’s the thing. On a conventional level, this is not a very good figure. It’s not accurate to the source material, he’s covered in car parts that are fiddly and fragile-feeling, he’s got a complicated, janky transformation, and an altmode that, well pretty, also feels fragile, and is the source of most of his problems. And yet. And yet! I don’t hate this guy.

I find him interesting. I can definitely say he’s better in person than his stock photos would suggest, and looks a lot more cohesive. Importantly, I find myself messing around with him and having more fun than I did, say, Studio Series 86 Brawn, a figure that’s technically proficient, but lacks any spice. This guy, he’s got spice, soul, personality, whatever you want to call it.

Maybe I just like the character, or maybe his shortcomings just make him interesting. So, I don’t think I can earnestly recommend him as a good figure, but if you know what you’re in for, and you have the same kind of brain-worms as me, there’s fun to be had. But you’ve been warned.

On a semi-related note, there’s a different mainline Deluxe of him, with a non-licensed car mode, that I hear is a better figure, but a) he’s not easily available to me, his single-packed release didn’t come out in the West, and he can only be found in a three-pack with two other figure I’m not interested in grabbing, and b) he’s got the wrong headsculpt, the masked concept-art one, which is enough to make me disinterested.

Maybe if they re-released it with a retooled head, I’d get onboard. But for now, this one’s my guy.

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