[Shin Densetsu]

With the recent release of the long awaited Beta Fighter, the most recent addition to Toynami's MasterPiece Collection(MPC), it looks like Toynami is off to a great start for 2009. Aoshima is credited with engineering the toy, and man what a difference that made! This toy is already being called the best toy, that Toynami has ever made! This is a huge difference with their Alpa Fighter, which came out a couple of years ago and has had mixed reviews and questionable quality. The difference between the Alpha and Beta with regards to overall quality and design is night and day.

Simply put, the Beta is a true masterpiece, and the Alpha could have been so much better, but isn't. With this Beta fighter finally arriving on the market, most fans wish a better Alpha was available to connect to the Beta fighter. The new Beta fighter is such a solid and robust toy, that the Alpha does not even compare.

Sure the Alpha was distributed in Japan by Aoshima, and retooled by them, but the quality control was suspect and many of the improvements were cancelled out by the questionable quality. The Beta fighter is not like this at all, and engineering from scratch makes a HUGE difference, as shown by how much better the Beta fighter is compared to the Alpha.

So with the current Toynami/Aoshima Alpha and Beta, you get one AWESOME, and sturdy toy(Beta), that combines with a good looking toy(Alpha) that has questionable parts and a lot of things that go wrong. It just doesn't add up.

Sure, the Alpha fighter could have been better off with no diecast, as the diecast seems like it was just added just to add metal content, not for durability or sturdiness. The hands were made from PVC...I'm not sure why, as the fingers were articulated, and often sheered off from the metal pins. The alignment on the wings for my red one is off, oh and a shoulder pin wasn't even installed! So...mine has a limp arm. This isn't just me, a LOT of fans have had problems with their MPC Alpha fighters! Sure, it looks great, but that is because it is based off of an old Aoshima model kit, and if it didn't look good, being based on a model kit, well that's just wrong!

The MPC Beta proves to me that Toynami and Aoshima can do much better. Aoshima's engineering on the Beta is brilliant, when everyone was afraid of lemons, we got a winner instead. So for me, I'd love to see an all new MPC Alpha Fighter, compatible with the Beta Fighter, with quality/engineering equivalent to, if not better than what Aoshima did with the Beta Fighter. The question is, do you?

DISCUSS!