A more Meximation accurate Juan Ginrai

Back in 1994 when I was living in El Paso, a Mexican television station started playing spanish dubs of Transformers cartoons that were previously only available in japan. So I got to see the entirety of the Headmasters, Masterforce and Victory series all in spanish. The afternoon lineup also included spanish dubs of Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z. Not knowing these were dubbed, I thought they were Mexican originals. I got into arguments with anime fans because I would refer to Sailor Moon as 'Meximation'.

Masterforce ended up being my favorite cartoon of the three never-released-in-the-US Transformer shows. The Meximation versions had good voice acting and I recognized many of the actors as the same ones who did the G1 spanish Transformers cartoon. Whenever they could they used character names that would be most familiar to the North American audiences, but many Japanese character names were kept. In Meximation Masterforce, Ginrai ended up being called Optimus Prime but they kept Godbomber's name. Godbomber was a toy that was released only in Japan that combined with Super Ginrai (aka Powermaster Optimus Prime) to make a larger robot called God Ginrai. I had never seen the Godbomber toy before so I thought it was just some crazy thing the mexicans made up. I never knew it existed until 1998 when I was on the internet and I ordered one from Tony Preto's Tempting Toys.

But when you combine a Godbomber toy with a Powermaster Prime/Super Ginrai toy it really looks nothing like it did on the show. In the cartoon God Ginrai (their combined form) was a magnificent looking dynamic robot with big wings and a gigantic cannon and it looked badass. Unfortunately the toy looked little like the cartoon character and that to me was a tremendous letdown. The wings were all tiny and the arms were spindly and overall it was crap. But then in 2004 an independent kit maker released a set of add on vinyl parts that made the combined form look a whole lot better. I bought the parts this last week and boy do they make a world of difference.

The kit includes new arms, wings, a head (which I decided not to use) and a shoulder cannon. It takes a bit of work to put it all together-you can't just pop the parts on. There's some flash that needs to cut off on many of the pieces, some further assembly of the parts is necessary and the arms of the regular issue Powermaster Prime/Super Ginrai need to be removed. The modifications are pretty permanent and they essentially make the whole figure one giant Action Master. The arms don't swivel at the shoulders but they're not locked on with screws or anything so they can be rotated by removing and reattaching them at a different angle. I had an extra Super Ginrai and Godbomber lying around so I decided to do the mod to those. The one on the right in the picture below is a stock US release PMOP with Godbomber attached and the one on the left is a Super Ginrai with Godbomber and the super parts kit. It is very obvious which one is more Meximation accurate.