>>10445195Most people started to really get irked with the MP series sometime between Ironhide and Inferno. Ironhide was a flawed figure, and Inferno was the first that truly embraced the "sunbow aesthetic", despite actually having a pretty straightforward and fun transformation. Within the next couple of years, we got MP-36 Megatron and Sunstreaker, which were probably the hard cutoff; both were crazy overpriced with unnecessarily complex, panel-heavy transformations to facilitate real world alt modes, but cartoon bot modes. Plus they were ABSURDLY expensive compared to the car/leader bots we'd had up to that point.
Genuinely curious what happened with the Honda City mold, though; it feels like a Hasui-era leftover. It's full of sculpted detail that evokes the Diaclone toy where the cartoon model had only flat, empty panels, and the Transformation is fun and intuitive with just the right amount of complexity, and the only accessories it comes with are guns instead of a ton of plastic rubbish to recreate "that one scene" and arbitrarily inflate the price, which, as I recall, floated right around the $60 range if you imported from HLJ or AmiAmi or whatever.
I was really hoping this figure was going to usher in an MP renaissance, but then Trailbreaker came out and shit on those hopes and dreams hard. Oh well.