Toy Review: Banana Force MPL-01 Red Sharpshooter

A 3rd party company actually took a dive into Car Robots’ Fire Convoy? Take cover because the sky is falling!

Producer: Banana Force

Price: Approx. $190 USD

Release Date: Nov.-Dec. 2019

Item Height: 9.25″

Item Weight: N/A

Batteries: 6x LR521 Cell (included)

WHERE TO BUY: TF-Direct

Banana Force is making some waves with their first entry into their non-transforming Transformers homaging toyline with Metal Premium Line (MPL) 01 Red Sharpshooter. This homage to Car Robots’ Fire Convoy (or the American “Robots in Disguise” Optimus Prime) is a large-scaled, highly articulated beast of a figure and I can’t stop plain looking at it. This thing looks and plays pretty damned amazingly while having some things that could really take it up a notch. Check out the video above as well as my thoughts and gallery below and of course let me know what you think in the comments as well.

Note: This is a production sample and I have been informed that certain things like paint applications and box art may be different however the build and general quality of the product should be final so I feel confident in the assessments made but will certainly change/update if the retail (final) release has changes for better or worse.

Presentation: I was told by the company that the boxart/graphic design would be drastically different on the final release so while I won’t take it into account when scoring I’ll say that the box art on the one I received is actually not bad at all. Shows off the figure in different poses and modes utilizing the accessories. The box itself is a nice, solid cardboard with no see-through parts and the figure itself is packed well and firmly in its styrofoam clamshell for the main figure with a plastic clamshell underneath for accessories.

Build: The build and paint applications on this piece literally make it feel like it was made for me. Solid plastics, and tons of diecast in the frame including both the body and joints and everything is just damned solid. the joints feel so great to play with. Awesome engineering with moving parts in the shoulders and thighs the animate when limbs are moved. The color choices and paint applications are spot on and the LEDs in the chest and legs are easily accessible in terms of nothing needing to be removed to turn them on or off while maintaining a clean aesthetic having no visible switches. It just gives a very high end feel in both look and play.

Accessories: Here’s a list of the accessories taken from the product listings.;

– Alternate head
– Alternate hands, guns and swords

The accessories are well done and look really good (I particularly like the hand sculpts.) Although this piece has parts for both the base and Super Mode of Fire Convoy it’s clearly more geared towards the Super Mode in terms of size and aesthetic. My hope is that maybe in the future even there can be some more parts that give it more of a slavish base mode like an alternate chest for example.

The fit and finish of everything are pretty good but I noticed the the sword on mine holds within the hands but not quite as tightly as I would like. I know that this is a sample piece though so I do hope that it’s addressed in the final release.

Articulation: Red Sharpshooter is certainly what I would call a highly articulated piece but there are some areas like the ab crunch and butterfly shoulder joints that I wish had just a BIT more range to really get more dynamic poses out of it. This is a big bot with really exaggerated proportions so he’d need that extra to achieve the same poses that regularly proportioned bots with less articulation do. This certainly isn’t saying that his articulation is poor by any means but it’s one of those areas where it has potential to be great rather than pretty good.

Overall Score: 7.0/10 – This score may certainly change with the final release in the next month or two but as of now, Banana Force’s MPL-01 Red Sharpshooter is a really good entry piece in what seems like will be an incredible toyline. Large sizes, heavy diecast content, advanced articulation, and modular aspects tick quite a few bias boxes for me but even with that being said, I don’t think there are many that wouldn’t enjoy this one. It gives you quite a bit for the price and even though my gripes/suggestions are things I would consider minor they’re still there and keep the piece from being scored in that upper echelon.