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So I bought Mirage and Sunstreaker G1 KO's from ebay...
So after resisting for years I ordered G1 Mirage and Sunstreaker KOs from eBay. Mirage has been my holy grail because I never had him as a kid, and Sunstreaker is pretty up there too. What I got from the articles describing the differences between the KOs and the originals was that they were "good enough" even with minor differences. The pandemic weakened my resolve and I figured I'd take a shot. Worst case, I'd write down my experience since I can't find any recent reviews online about these guys.
I bought from a 1200+ point seller in China. This is actually the second time I tried to order these two. The first time was back in April and the seller scammed me. Got my money back, though. The second time I didn't go for the cheapest option, just the best seller. Ordered on July 5th, got it July 28th. The package was actually a styrofoam box wrapped in orange tape. Super mushy but actually good protection.
The TL;DR version is both figures have both issues that I've read about and have "new" unexpected issues that were disappointing. One was fixable, the other not.
Sunstreaker first: Generally what I expected. He has a brighter yellow and the car top is a clear plastic instead of dark. There's minor paint chipping on the left fender. Converting him to robot revealed that his arms don't swing out at all. They get stuck against the body frame and forcing them just made everything bend, which was worrying. I think mold degradation or just a bad mold copy made the parts slightly bigger and there's no more clearance. I had to shave off (marked in the photos) various areas for the arms to swing in and out more freely. Other than that one of the elbows is a lot tighter than the other, but that's no big deal. In short, he's not perfect but I fixed him and he's alright.
As for Mirage, I'm pretty sad. His chest and back are basically busted.I think the chest screw was put in with too much force and permanently bent those two parts. They warped pretty bad. I thought the original shiny grey chest piece was die cast? Here it's chromed plastic. For transformation, the wheel parts don't fold back easily without going at an angle and the folding the front onto the chest is stiff and doesn't feel good at all. Lots of parts with bad clearance due to the warping.
Since I figured he's already broken, I took him apart to look inside. It revealed a lot of defects like stress marks on the internal chest piece, screw holes, and misaligned parts. One of the black shoulder sockets has a stress crack.
What else? Wheels are pretty loose but I don't know if that's from the original design. The forearm pieces don't seem to fit very well. One fist doesn't align with the forearm correctly, like an imperfection to the mushroom peg inside. Probably fix that with a bit of sanding. I was thinking of getting a junker G1 and replacing the appropriate parts, but that feels like throwing good money after bad. And I think the color isn't quite the same. But it might not matter for the chrome/diecast parts.
I put him back together and asked the seller if I can get a replacement. Worst case, he says no. It's not the end of the world and I'm still keeping him in my collection.
That's it!
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