PefectEffect continues their “Perfect Beasts” line with yet another beautiful fuck up.
Producer: PerfectEffect
Price: Approx. $180 USD
Release Date: Oct. 2018
Where to Buy: The Chosen Prime
Item Height: Approx. 10″
Item Weight: N/A
Batteries: N/A
PerfectEffect’s “Perfect Beasts” line of more Cybertronian styled Beast Wars homages has its latest entry with PE-DX09 Mega Doragon. This homage to the TransMetals 2 version of Megatron definitely looks the part but really falls flat everywhere else. As usual this article brings you a video review to check this thing out in motion along with these written thoughts and a full gallery below. Please take some time to check it all out and let me know what you think in the comments.
Presentation: The presentation of Mega Doragon is tops. A big thick cardboard box with awesome character and logo graphics on the front and back (see pictures,) and the item itself along with the accessories all nicely packed into the plastic clamshell. The size along with the immaculate color choice and application are just awe-inspiring from the second you take a look at this thing in-hand.
Build: And this is where things (literally) fall apart for Mega Doragon. For as nice as it looks it’s made of poor, lightweight materials on top of being shoddily constructed resulting in joints that I’d only describe as awful in that they can’t hold up it’s own weight. To get him into a pose and then have ratchets in the hips and knees begin to click and buckle back is very disappointing. Mix these issues in with a natural weight imbalance due to the size of the wings and it’s just a disaster in terms of play.
Accessories: Mega Doragon comes with a good group of accessories but they’re a mixture of modular pieces and permanently attached. He comes with two beautiful swords which store inside of his wings as well as an additional face that stores on the inside of his shield. The shield itself and his canon (which rest inside of the dragon-mode head) are permanently attached to either arm and the shield has a smaller dagger which can flip out from within. The accessories on this piece are absolutely fantastic. The wings themselves do come off as well but that is more for packaging purposes than anything else.
Articulation: For this section I implore you to watch the video. It has all of the makes for amazing articulation but unfortunately the poor joints and balancing issues don’t even let this piece scratch the surface in terms of utilization.
Overall Score: 6/10 – Mega Doragon had all of the potential in the world in terms of one of the best sculpts I’ve ever seen on a Transformers-homaging collectible (transforming or non) mixed with some fantastic engineering in terms of articulation and transformation. However nearly 100% of that potential has been Thanos-snapped into dust (squandered) due to PerfectEffect’s now norm of weak materials and poor quality control standards. It’s a damned shame and at this point I’ve begun to lose faith in PerfectEffect’s standalone products (vs. upgrade kits for existing figures.) Another amazing design/presentation with piss poor play.
Check out the gallery below and if you fancy one of your own check out The Chosen Prime and order yours!
