I very very very very very rarely buy non-Hasbro/Takara transforming robots.  As such, I am kind of... entrenched, I think the best might be, in certain expectations.  And I don't even know what those expectations are, really, since I so incredibly seldomly travel outside that box.  There might be all sorts of things, small things, that I take for granted.  Again, what are these things that I take for granted?  I don't know!  It is a strange world out there outside of my little world of robots from only one property.  It's like traveling to Canada.  Generally, our civilizations kinda work 99.999% the same, but there's always a surprise at what little stuff is different.  Like, their Taco Bells have fries, man.  Fries.

Anyway, this is Eagle Robo from Machine Robo, or as most folks here would know him better, Leader-1 from Go-Bots.  I may SHOCK you by revealing that Japan didn't get "Challenge of the Gobots."  They got Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos instead, a 47-episode anime series with anime peoples and anime robots and whatnot.  There's no Guardians, no Renegades, just a buncha humans and robots fighting bad guys.  And everyone looks like their toys, because why wouldn't they?  "Leader-1" doesn't have a face with a mouth, "Cy-Kill" doesn't have a five-o'clock shadow, and they're actually both good guy robot mech folks.  You know how in all the Pre-Transformers stuff, all of the toys were good guys, even "Megatron" and "Soundwave"?  Same approach here.

There's now some new toys based on this old anime, and I thought, sure, I wouldn't mind having a modern-technology Leader-1-ish guy, and so now I have an Eagle Robo.  Size-wise relative to Transformers, he's essentially a large Deluxe Class toy.  He's got some die-cast parts.  And how intricate he is varies very wildly, depending on what part of him we're talking about.  

He transforms very similarly to how the original Leader-1 did it: Back 2/3 of the jet pulls down for legs, arms pull out from the sides, nosecone folks onto the back.  However, Eagle Robo tries to make this a little more complicated, but not all over.  The legs?  Still giant chunks you easily pull down from 2/3 of the jet, easy-peasy.  Nosecone folks back easy, too.  But, damn, this torso.  Someone spent a long time designing that part of the toy, and they had quite a few clever ideas, but it's all very small panels and flipping and flopping and cramming and it's definitely not very fun.  It pegs very nicely into place in either mode, but that middle part of the journey is not particularly rewarding.  

The result of your work is a great-looking jet, though.  A great-looking jet with Leader-1 chest vents piggy-backing on the middle of the jet's back, but a great-looking jet nonetheless.  There's not a lot of undercarriage junk, if any.  The bottom is a series of folded robot panels, sure, but they're flat folded robot panels that tuck up into the jet itself.  The jet has a narrow profile, as a jet should.  

The robot's weapon separates into missiles and... extra wing chunks?  Sure.  But they have a place to go, which is good.

The robot is less exciting.  The arms' jointing is kind of awkward, and the knees are so tight it's hard to bend them without getting lots of leverage.  There's less range of movement than one'd like from a product like this.

Frankly, the part that might excite me the most is the modular display stand that Eagle Robo and apparently everyone else in the line comes with.  You can assemble the display stand parts in countless ways, and the extendo arm that holds the figure over the ground is strongly ratcheted so you don't have to worry about the arm collapsing under any weight.  Which is good, because of the die-cast.  The more Machine Robo guys you get, the bigger and more intricate display stand you can build, in theory, since the parts are all modular.  But I only have the one right now.  Very unfortunately, the pegs are too large to be compatible with the toy-stand pegholes appearing on Transformers these days.

Eagle Robo, to me, exists in some strange Transformer uncanny valley.  There are many of the same principles that govern Transformers toys, but there's just enough that's off that I feel a little detached and wary as I go through its motions.  Not the toy's fault, obviously, but that feeling is there.  The choice of what kind of joints and where to use them, the structure of the toy itself, the general aesthetic... so much is close to familiarity, but just shy of it.  And you never know what the tolerance for roughhousing is on a toy that is 100% for collectors and doesn't have to withstand any child playtesting.  Am I going to break this if I force it? is a question you have to keep yourself guarded with.  Things did come off as I've tried to transform Eagle Robo, usually  the head and nosecone, but thankfully not in a way that they couldn't go back on.  Phew.

there, see, i tried something different, MOM