New Pictures of MP 48 Lio Convoy Alongside Takara Encore Anime Big Convoy

Those 2 look absolutely fantastic together. They are beautiful

I might have to get him. I have the Anime Big Convoy and I love it. Wow!!!

It's pretty cool that both MPs of Optimus Primal and Lio Convoy were scaled to size up with the original Big Convoy mold, along with how the show-accurate Encore of Big Convoy was made to go with the two aforementioned MPs.

Damn, did not realize encore Big Convoy was anime color. Quick search on EBay and.......add to cart.

STngAR wrote:Damn, did not realize encore Big Convoy was anime color. Quick search on EBay and.......add to cart.

Oh yeah, that Big Convoy is fantastic!

He will look great with Lio Convoy. We need a 3-shot with those 2 and MP-38

primal up there like "remember who you are, simba"

Fellow Seibertronian Cobotron has informed us that there is a video review of Takara's Transformers Masterpiece MP 48 Lio Convoy. While it is in Japanese, you can see the Transformation and just how exactly the cartoon lion head becomes a robotic lion head on his shoulder in robot mode.

Hey all. Just stumbled across this on youtube. Just uploaded today.

This toy is still available at Amazon Japan.

If you'd rather deal with a domestic seller or an exporter that offers PayPal you do have options. Hasbro Pulse, TFSource, Big Bad Toy Store, Ages 3 and Up, Entertainment Earth, and The Chosen Prime are all asking $184.99 USD. Robot Kingdom is $142.99 USD. Hobby Link Japan and AmiAmi are asking 16,000 JPY while Hobby Search is asking 17,000 JPY. If you are in the UK, you can get him for £144.99 at Kapow Toys and In Demand Toys.

You don't really need to understand Japanese with this reviewer. He's thorough with showing off details and the transformation (not mention careful with fragile looking areas), not cutting off parts that are the exact same but mirrored (think of it as "in case you missed it")...

...and holy cow is the cradle for the lion head scary

Thanks to a multitude of Twitter users (who will be listed below), we have a slew of new images for you of the just released MP-48 Lio Convoy. MP-48 Lio Convoy is the latest in the Transformers Masterpiece line, and the newest addition to the Beast Wars section of that line. He is technically the 2nd Masterpiece figure from Beast Wars II following MP-38 Optimus Primal, done up in his Beast Wars II deco from his appearance in the Beast Wars II Movie.

Lio Convoy transforms from a white lion into a robot with a giant lion head on his right shoulder and a lion tail on his left, with a very nice Prime-esque face and wonderfully detailed chest.

You can check out the images below, and you can check out a review that showcases some of the more delicate sections of the figure and will give you a hand in transforming him, as can be seen here. Let us know what you think in the comments section below!

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@UNOYO





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@D_m6b

Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Did not know that no. got any pics?

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Did not know that no. got any pics?

Right here.

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Did not know that no. got any pics?

Right here.

That's really cool!

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Did not know that no. got any pics?

Right here.

That's really cool!

Beast Wars Neo had one too for its standard issue Maximal sidearm, the Matrix Cannon (most often seen being used by Stampy).

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?

Did not know that no. got any pics?

Right here.

That's really cool!

Beast Wars Neo had one too for its standard issue Maximal sidearm, the Matrix Cannon (most often seen being used by Stampy).

Now I kinda want one

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

D-Maximal_Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Oh, good. I couldn't remember if it had been shown that he comes with a Cybertron Buster.

Did you guys know they made a role play toy of that gun back in the day?[/
quote]
Did not know that no. got any pics?

Right here.

That's really cool!

Beast Wars Neo had one too for its standard issue Maximal sidearm, the Matrix Cannon (most often seen being used by Stampy).

Now I kinda want one

Takara did a lot of role play items back in the day. Imagine if Hasbro made stuff like this using the nerf brand.

I'm BUMMED Artimus was omitted. I was really looking forward to her being included.

chuckdawg1999 wrote:Takara did a lot of role play items back in the day. Imagine if Hasbro made stuff like this using the nerf brand.

They did.

So I just spent the last hour transforming him into bot mode. Definitely gonna recommend kid gloves on the transformation. There’s a whoooole lot going on with this toy. Good, and bad.

The engineering on him is pretty top notch, and he’s definitely interesting. Lot of twisting and turning. Lot of hinges and cradle-like structures. But with so much intricate engineering, and with such a thoroughly complicated transformation there’s a lot of areas that could end in breakage. Doesn’t help that there’s some parts of the instructions where it’s intensely difficult to tell what’s going on, but I don’t think that’s anything new. This is especially true with the abdominal section. It’s hard to tell how to move the side panels. The video posted above is recommended.

Just about everything on this toy is tight. Everything slides in and out of slots and cavities very smoothly, and everything tucks away neatly. All of which is cool. But there are some clearance issues. Mostly in regards to his lion claws. The slide right into the legs perfectly, but if you don’t have the leg bend, and instead have it straight like I did, when you go to twist the leg, you can easily snap the tips of the claws off. So be super careful. Luckily I only slightly bent mine on one leg, but I’m the only one who is ever going to notice the slightly imperfection,

I’d also be careful when it comes to transforming the legs. You might not think it at first, but there’s a lot of hinges down there, and a lot of twisting requires to transform them. My thigh swivels are insanely tight, so I had to use a bit more force than I was comfortable with, given the complex knee area.

Some of the cooler parts are that Lio Convoy is fully loaded in terms of weapons, and they all fold away and conceal nicely. His ratchets are good and tight, and have an oddly satisfying little click to them. Although the right elbow on mine appears to somewhat stuck. His colors are bold and beautiful. He doesn’t have ankle tilts, but he does have toe tilts.
Oh, and the ab crunch is great, and was unexpected.


All in all, Lio Convoy is a gorgeous looking toy, and he’s very cool. Personally I don’t know that I’ll be transforming him into lion mode again, but that’s okay. He looks amazing in bot mode anyway.

I've seen 2 breakage reports on Twitter already with the chest plate, did you have any particular issues there?

No. No breakage for me. I can see how too much force could potentially result in breakage though, but mine is just fine. The way the chest compresses, and folds away is pretty amazing.

I thought it might be prudent to also provide some images to better clarify the potential problem areas that I encountered.




Part of the final steps calls for you to twist the lion arm on its swivel. This is fine provided that you have the elbow bent, to allow the claws to clear the cavity that they fold into.



However, as you can see, if it is not bent, and is straight, the claws no longer have the clearance necessary for the twist. I had Lio’s right lion arm straight when I got to this step, and had I not been paying such close attention, I would have snapped the tips of the claws off, instead of just slightly bending them.



I also wanted to point out how if you Lio Convoy has insanely tight thigh swivels, as mine does, this complicated area of the leg can seem fragile. There’s a lot of hinges there, so it doesn’t feel particularly robust. Lio actually has two swivels. One at the hip, and one at his lower thigh. The lower thigh is what’s tight on mine,




There is also a twist on the cradle of the lion head that had me sweating bullets, but after watching the video to confirm that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, I got past it. There is clearance for the twist, but not much. If I were to transform this figure multiple times down the road, I’d be pretty concerned about that mushroom peg.


I do just want to reiterate that I experience NO breakage with mine. All you have to do is take it slow, and use caution for some areas. I do realize that that’s not ideal, but Lio Convoy has some crazy cool engineering, and he looks amazing.

Takara Tomy's official transformation video is highly recommended. Helps show some of the nuance that the instructions don't - or that they might describe, but I can't read Japanese. There was only one spot where I had a clearance issue on the first go through with the lion head rotation but I think angling the lower mane part sideways on subsequent attempts will help.

Like all recent MPs, do not transform stuff on this without having a grip near the pieces that are moving. They don't engineer these to work well using leverage anymore, so I'd agree with Bucky's comments on the legs. Rotating the thigh? Do it by gripping and turning near the rotation point and not way down around the ankles. There are physics reasons this is required when you have a high number of parts.

MP-48 is an outstanding toy as long as you don't harambe the thing to death by attempting to figure it on your own the first time through.

Fellow Seibertronian Bucky got Masterpiece Lio Convoy and due to a few early breakage reports (as is always the case with MPs the first week of release), he wanted to share his thoughts on the Transformation as well as some tips on how best to handle him. He also added some images to show those areas. This written review goes well with the recent Japanese video review, as an english language companion, which we also posted below.

"So I just spent the last hour transforming him into bot mode. Definitely gonna recommend kid gloves on the transformation. There’s a whoooole lot going on with this toy. Good, and bad.

The engineering on him is pretty top notch, and he’s definitely interesting. Lot of twisting and turning. Lot of hinges and cradle-like structures. But with so much intricate engineering, and with such a thoroughly complicated transformation there’s a lot of areas that could end in breakage. Doesn’t help that there’s some parts of the instructions where it’s intensely difficult to tell what’s going on, but I don’t think that’s anything new. This is especially true with the abdominal section. It’s hard to tell how to move the side panels. The video posted below is recommended.

Just about everything on this toy is tight. Everything slides in and out of slots and cavities very smoothly, and everything tucks away neatly. All of which is cool. But there are some clearance issues. Mostly in regards to his lion claws. The slide right into the legs perfectly, but if you don’t have the leg bend, and instead have it straight like I did, when you go to twist the leg, you can easily snap the tips of the claws off. So be super careful. Luckily I only slightly bent mine on one leg, but I’m the only one who is ever going to notice the slightly imperfection,

I’d also be careful when it comes to transforming the legs. You might not think it at first, but there’s a lot of hinges down there, and a lot of twisting requires to transform them. My thigh swivels are insanely tight, so I had to use a bit more force than I was comfortable with, given the complex knee area.

Some of the cooler parts are that Lio Convoy is fully loaded in terms of weapons, and they all fold away and conceal nicely. His ratchets are good and tight, and have an oddly satisfying little click to them. Although the right elbow on mine appears to somewhat stuck. His colors are bold and beautiful. He doesn’t have ankle tilts, but he does have toe tilts.
Oh, and the ab crunch is great, and was unexpected.

Regarding possible breakage:

I can see how too much forcing could potentially result in breakage at the chest plate area, but mine is just fine. The way the chest compresses, and folds away is pretty amazing.

I thought it might be prudent to also provide some images to better clarify the potential problem areas that I encountered.




Part of the final steps calls for you to twist the lion arm on its swivel. This is fine provided that you have the elbow bent, to allow the claws to clear the cavity that they fold into.



However, as you can see, if it is not bent, and is straight, the claws no longer have the clearance necessary for the twist. I had Lio’s right lion arm straight when I got to this step, and had I not been paying such close attention, I would have snapped the tips of the claws off, instead of just slightly bending them.



I also wanted to point out how if you Lio Convoy has insanely tight thigh swivels, as mine does, this complicated area of the leg can seem fragile. There’s a lot of hinges there, so it doesn’t feel particularly robust. Lio actually has two swivels. One at the hip, and one at his lower thigh. The lower thigh is what’s tight on mine,




There is also a twist on the cradle of the lion head that had me sweating bullets, but after watching the video to confirm that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, I got past it. There is clearance for the twist, but not much. If I were to transform this figure multiple times down the road, I’d be pretty concerned about that mushroom peg.


I do just want to reiterate that I experience NO breakage with mine. All you have to do is take it slow, and use caution for some areas. I do realize that that’s not ideal, but Lio Convoy has some crazy cool engineering, and he looks amazing.

All in all, Lio Convoy is a gorgeous looking toy, and he’s very cool. Personally I don’t know that I’ll be transforming him into lion mode again, but that’s okay. He looks amazing in bot mode anyway. "

It wouldn't be an MP if didn't have easy breakage.

"as is always the case with MPs the first week of release."

Is this true, or just Stockholm syndrome? It took me a while to get on board with the MP reboot post-MP-10, but I don't remember hearing a lot about breakages for him, or for the likes of Sideswipe, Prowl, Wheeljack, original MP Bee, Iron Hide, Grapple, Hot Rod 2.0, Shockwave, Soundwave... you know, I've got a whole shelf full of MPs I have never felt like I'm gonna break!

Seems to me it's only in these past few years, with their converging trends of more fiddly transformations and cheaper materials, that reports of breakages have become routine.

I think that’s exactly what is meant. It’s really only with contemporary MPs, and not every MP that’s ever been released. That last couple of years have seen an increased number of breakage incidents, compared with previous MP releases. And I do think it has more to do with smaller, and inherently more fragile pieces, creating more complicated and complex problem areas. In these cases these areas obviously have to be treated with more care. To the best of my knowledge I don’t think that quality of materials has gone down.

TheForgottenTaxi wrote:It took me a while to get on board with the MP reboot post-MP-10, but I don't remember hearing a lot about breakages for him, or for the likes of Sideswipe, Prowl, Wheeljack, original MP Bee, Iron Hide, Grapple, Hot Rod 2.0, Shockwave, Soundwave... you know, I've got a whole shelf full of MPs I have never felt like I'm gonna break!

Seems to me it's only in these past few years, with their converging trends of more fiddly transformations and cheaper materials, that reports of breakages have become routine.

For the MP-10 through ~23 era, these were still designed like toys, just nice ones. Now they're designed more like "collector" action figures that have a transformation feature. This means more parts and dramatically more paint, and since probably around MP-36 a shift in how these should be handled has been required.

As for QC things noted near release, only some of which are true widespread issues but social media freaked out about most anyway:

• MP-28 Hot Rod had some actual chrome problems in at least its first run, top coat on mine has held up nicely over time at least
• MP-30 paint chipping
• Some folks couldn't handle MP-34 Cheetor's small joints
• MP-35 paint chipping took awhile to manifest but is a real thing. Guess that's not an example of early feedback, but it is an actual issue with it.
• MP-36 paint chipping from rubbing parts too much + joints getting broken
• MP-39 window clips
• MP-41 had folks breaking shoulders
• MP-43 Beast Megatron broken crotches, though the reports slowed down pretty quickly. This was a fair example though and not necessarily collectors being dumb.
• MP-44 had folks breaking the knees because they didn't transform it properly, also had some paint chipping because basically everything is painted on it and still we haven't figured out how to be more careful
• MP-45 Bumble has easily broken tabs and Takara put out images of dire warnings about it but no one cares because the figure stinks and it doesn't impact it much. Most of these are avoidable with plenty of care.
• MP-47 Hound has some areas that are probably too thin and one screw almost definitely needs a bit of loosening up, so this is another case where there are some fair, actual issues but it's likely there were plenty of alarm bells from folks that still can't handle these responsibly as well.

And btw, MP Buzzsaw and Laserbeak can apparently crumble to pieces these days

I accepted that MP stuff is just not made to be something played with to a high degree. Some of them can hold up over time with repeated handling, but many can't and I'm not sure they're truly designed to.

ScottyP wrote:I accepted that MP stuff is just not made to be something played with to a high degree. Some of them can hold up over time with repeated handling, but many can't and I'm not sure they're truly designed to.

Yeah, it's just responsible for my dwindling enthusiasm about the line. To bring it back to Lio Convoy, this is a character I have no attachment to, but dang if the toy didn't look pretty cool. But after reading this (very helpful!) post, my interest has evaporated. I just don't have an interest in it if it's not gonna be fun to handle.

Actually, let's not bury that in a parenthetical: This was a great, super helpful post! Thanks Bucky!

I find things like MP 44 making itself more complex for the sake of duplicating the cartoon's dumbing-down, and Lio Convoy's turning the lion head inside-out to copy the animation cheating, to be excessive, and more than a little misguided.

I look forward to them doing Unicron Trilogy MPs. There's going to be a lot less shenanigans with those, excepting Armada Optimus Prime if they articulate his super mode legs.

TheForgottenTaxi wrote:

ScottyP wrote:I accepted that MP stuff is just not made to be something played with to a high degree. Some of them can hold up over time with repeated handling, but many can't and I'm not sure they're truly designed to.

Yeah, it's just responsible for my dwindling enthusiasm about the line. To bring it back to Lio Convoy, this is a character I have no attachment to, but dang if the toy didn't look pretty cool. But after reading this (very helpful!) post, my interest has evaporated. I just don't have an interest in it if it's not gonna be fun to handle.

Actually, let's not bury that in a parenthetical: This was a great, super helpful post! Thanks Bucky!

Well I hadn’t intended to sway anyone’s opinion in one direction or the other, but I’m glad I was of some help! I mostly just wanted to caution other forum members about certain areas. But honestly if your interest in Lio Convoy was dwindling, and you don’t have any attachment or affection towards the character, I don’t see a reason to pick him up. Unless you see him for a real steal! Because he does look fantastic, and the engineering, although not without it’s potential hazards, is very inventive. I am personally pleased with him.

So, the talk about this guy made me want to go check the BWII Lio Convoy gallery on the site.

And I discovered that the gallery is still screwy. Multiple thumbnails link to the large version of the previous image, rather than the one actually in the thumbnail.

Well, bollocks!! Again.

Perhaps there has always been some issues, since these are mass produced items, but it feels like things have really gone south lately with these Takara releases. Hound is really something different indeed...and not in the good way. Like Hound, this doesn't look bad as such, but I really wouldn't want to worry about the transformation every time I would like to transform it. That most likely wouldn't happen very often, but if the very first transformation attempt can break it, then not good.

Does this feel as flimsy as Hound, because I'm pretty sure that Hound wasn't even made from the same plastic than the others before? It feels so different.