Fansproject Causality CA-09 Car Crash Review

I did something bad about a month ago.  I went and ordered a pair of third-party Transformers and ended up loving them far more than any human should.  The Demolition Crue was only the first step; I had heard that Fansproject had a great reputation and wanted to try something of theirs.  Luckily they have just started putting out their versions of the Stunticons under their Causality sub-line.  There will be four total cars and a not-Motormaster truck-trailer combo.  They will combine to build Fansproject’s version of Menasor, I don’t think they have a name for him yet.

The first chronological release is Car Crash who will be playing the part of Transformer’s Breakdown.  Car Crash comes in a very sharp-looking window box packaged prominently displayed in his bot mode.  These Fansproject boxes are as professional looking as they come.  The box art shows both illustrations of the character along with pictures of the toy in various poses on the back.  Car Crash comes packaged with his gun as his lone accessory, instructions, and a bio card.

Different people look for different things in their figures.  What I look for in a third-party Transformer is as close to masterpiece quality as possible for a lesser-known Transformer personality.  In other words I want great paint, sculpt, articulation, and aesthetic for a character that would otherwise probably not get the official MP treatment.  I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect this from these figures, otherwise what is the point of making them at these price points?

The first thing I felt when I unboxed Car Crash was a little bit of disappointment.  He felt small to me.  And at the $70 price point I paid for one Car Crash, I paid about the same price for both Demolition Crue figures who are both slightly bigger.  I sat on these feelings for a couple of days after getting the figure and the sting faded a little bit.  These are still very expensive figures, but unfortunately that is the price you have to pay when you import third-party Transformers.

One thing that helped ease the sticker shock of this guy was when my MP Ravage and Rumble tapes arrived.  I needed something that was a worse value to make me feel better about the last purchase, and Takara really helped me feel better about Car Crash.  As I noted in my MP Soundwave review the prices of Masterpiece Transformers has really ballooned since my MP-01 Optimus Prime purchase many years back.  It almost seems like Takara is trying to compete with third-party prices by raising theirs.  Why not?  They see people paying these crazy prices for unofficial stuff, why shouldn’t they be paying the same or more for the official releases?  That could become a dangerous and expensive road to go down.

I spent far too much time bitching about the price.  If you are already in the third-party world, none of this matters to you because you are used to throwing down large amounts of cash.  If you are new then the discussion may have been helpful.  But the real issue we need to tackle here is how good of a toy is Car Crash?  I’m pleased to say that Car Crash is an all around awesome action figure.

You see the bot mode first since he comes packaged that way and right from the beginning you can tell he is a solid robot.  His body has perfect humanoid proportions, so you have no need to worry about gorilla arms or anything like that with this guy.  His hands are in fixed positions and both hold his gun very snugly.  The arms have a great range of movement with double ball joints at the shoulder and a bicep swivel.  The articulation scheme lets you get very expressive with his poses, and this is the exact thing you should be looking for with a Fansproject release.  I do wish his head had a little more movement potential, only because I like to make my robots look up … I’m weird, whatever.

Car Crash’s transformation is fairly straightforward but can be a little scary at first.  The instructions are decent, but one part they fall short on is when you fold the legs into the waist.  The instructions don’t really do a good job of explaining how you need to pull the knee-joint out of a peg to complete the transformation.  I ended up going on YouTube to figure it out.  This is also the scary part of the transformation both ways because I had to apply more pressure than I am comfortable doing to snap the knee in and out of that tiny peg.  I found it got easier after a few transformations, but I do worry about such a tiny peg snapping in time.  If you are going to transform him a lot just take it easy on that part.  The rest of his transformation is fairly simple as you connect the tabs with their respective holes and you are golden.  There are no real crazy arm folds that go into the hood of the car, those always drove me nuts.

His car mode is fine.  If you are going to buy these and leave them in car mode forever you might be better off dropping that kind of cash on something else.  But his car mode is serviceable and the wheels turn.  You will need that car mode whenever Motormaster comes out since he should be able to hang out in the trailer.

The paint on Car Crash is sharp all around.  Between plastic being molded in various colors on top of the painted parts he has a great look that the paint helps to pop even more. Car Crash will be one of the legs of not-Menasor.  You can find various hidden sections on his body that will most likely be used for his combiner mode.  His chest section flips up to reveal a peg hole, and also his body extends at the waist about a half an inch.  The Menasor foot is not included so I assume it will be a separate part that will either come with Motormaster or part of the pack with the huge sword we have seen in prototype pictures.

If you are a fan of Breakdown you will not be disappointed with Fansproject’s interpretation.  This is a great, solid Transformer action figure.  If you are into the Stunticons I would suggest getting in on a preorder for Car Crash and T-Bone soon because the first shipment sold out in no time.  I can understand being a little hesitant because of the price, but like with any high price ticket item that sticker shock will fade as you actually get to play around with the figure and feel the quality.  I’m a big fan of combiners so this is a great year to get into the third-party scene, there are some great releases coming out from various companies.  Car Crash was a great start, I can’t wait for the next in the series, T-Bone … oh wait I have him too!

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