The Decepticon Air Commander has arrived! Masterpiece Starscream 2.0 revealed in latest issue of Figure King!
After this previous weekend of Hasbro's Pulse-con 2020 event and the unrelenting barrage of announcements, preorders, and Haslab crowd funding, it's easy to feel a bit overwhelmed with options and hype. It's all too easy to forget that Takara Tomy can still land a fatal blow to a collectors' wallet and they made sure we didn't miss their presence with the latest reveals in the pages of Figure King issue 272!
As one of the most iconic characters of the Transformers universe, Starscream holds onto second place next Optimus Prime in the Masterpiece line for sheer number of repaints and redecos. Starting off with MP-3 and then modified to remove kibble and improve issues with MP-11, Starscream has also been repainted as his Seeker counterparts (Thundercracker, Skywarp, Sunstorm, and Acid Storm), recast in clear plastic, and redecoed into the Coneheads (Dirge, Thrust, and Ramjet). This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg for Seeker repaints and redecos. Officially, there are 18 named Seekers with colorway variants from animation errors to unreleased figures boosting those ranks, though making MP's of them all seems unlikely.
As Optimus got his third MP figure and Megatron a much needed update to his original, Starscream also gets the royal treatment. This version lends heavily to the animation aesthetic for his robot mode, whereas the first two MP's went towards a cross between the toy and animation model look. No accessories are shown at this time as the null rays seem to be attached for perfect transformation (no parts-forming). No word as of yet about a 'coronation' set of accessories but that's usually a given with the MP line. It does include the updated flight stand. The images do show off a partial Gerwalk mode with his robot legs extended underneath the jet mode.
With no date or MP number, just the '2.0' marking this update, there isn't any indication of when this will be up for ordering, but it is rare to have another Masterpiece figure released before this gray prototype hits production. Collectors have been known to want a consistent visual across their displays and this new Starscream indicates a strong possibility several variants for a swath of Seeker updates.
--Stuart Christensen