After falling head over heels in love with the Core Class Bomb-burst, I started looking round for a MIB or sealed G1 bomburst.
I came across a pristine minty fresh Japanese release of Blood, and was comparing it to a slightly cheaper MIB version that said unused but couldn’t be sure. I was so close to hitting buy it now, but then I noticed that the colours on the sealed one were more vibrant. Maybe the MIB was showing a little sun fading, or age. I compared the photos back and forth, and then it hit me - the eyes of the Pretender shell are blood red! Just like the art on the box, but I knew that the original toy (and I confirmed this with the seibertron toy gallery, as well as other eBay loose listings) was clearly gold eyes.
I looked back at the box, and it was minty fresh with no shelf-wear.. And then he had a second one, the same, with Cloudburst for the exact same price……
I’m no expert on Japanese Masterforce releases, so I guess it’s technically possible there was a running change/variant…… but I’m pretty sure this is ‘too good to be true’ and is a very cleverly done KO. But when doing it, they went off the box art, and made the eyes red. Looking too at the bomburst inner robot, his eyes are the same ‘blood red’. Also the eyes on the the second listing for cloudburst with the inner robot look different to the G1 release too, like a modern paint app.
Would someone be able to shed some light on this, and correct me (I’m hoping to be corrected, as I’d still like to buy it) that there was a variant version? Because otherwise KO are moving to really high end Japanese toys now. We’ve already seen a G1 Galaxy Shuttle, and I believe some of the headmaster heads have been KO’d too.
The listing (not for sales promotion, but so you can see the pictures) is https://www.ebay.com/itm/314694138203 and if you have a look at the 3rd or 4th photo (even closer up) you can see the red eyes.