Scott Bernard
Review by Showapop
Many Macross, Mospeada, Southern Cross, and Robotech collectors have mixed feelings about the non Bandai and Takatoku Robotech toys produced by Matchbox, specifically its 3 3.4 scale figures and their accessories.
There is a few gems in the line like the Hovertank/Spartan from Southern Cross and the various Regult Battle pods and Invid vehicle play sets mostly because no other toys of their size were produced back in Japan where their respective series first ran. But generally Matchbox’s own Robotech line was failure due to unavailability, bad engineering and art design and a general lack of familiarity with the subject with the designers of the line.
Only 22 figures were produced when the line was released in 1985. Some of the figures were easy to locate and are still available on Ebay. These figures include Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes Dana Sterling, Rand, Max Sterling, Miriya in red, Robotech Master Micronized Zentraedi, Bioroid Terminator, Corg, Zor Breetai, Exedore, Khyron, Dolza and Armoured Zentraedi Warrior. The more difficult figures to locate are Scott Bernard, Roy Fokker, Lunk, Rook Bartley, Mirya in black, large Miriya and Lynn Minmei. A special note must go out the Lynn Minmei figure as it is the Holy Grail of the line as only a handful were made and were extremely rare to locate even back in the 1980’s.
With the current release of Megahouse and CM’s Brave Gokin’s Mospeada Ride Armor I thought I would review some of the previous Ride Armor toys. With Josh B already reviewing the legendary large scale Gakken Ride Armor I’ll move ahead to one of Matchbox’s foray into Ride Armor toys.
The Matchbox’s Scott Bernard figures is one of more difficult figures to locate and never seem to appear on pegs at the department stores. I managed to locate the figure through the Sears catalog around 1986. Sears known for having exclusive toys only available through their catalog must have got the only catch of the Scott Bernard figures. Scott was available through mail order in a set of three figures along with Rand and Corg for $15.00. Even though it was available in their catalog I was rightly concerned that the figure would be substituted for unavailability or the order cancelled all together as another company from New York The Robot Store had done to me around the same time with some of the other Robotech action figures. Two weeks later arriving at my door was a set of three Robotech figures and in that package was one Scott Bernard. There was no special packaging just an envelope in mail that had the three figures on their respected cards.
The figure includes one carded Scott Bernard figure, one rubber helmet and one laser carbine. A cutout file card was on the back. It is assembled like a 1980’s GI Joe figure with a screw that holds the body together, and the metal T leg hook that is held together by a rubber band. The arms swivel and head turns and legs bend at the knee. These figures were not assembled well as my Scott Bernard has a split in the swivel arm area that has been there since I first bought it.
Although I am glad I still own it all these years later there is a lot of disappointment in this figure. First Scott does not come with the standard rider armor but an already transformed Mospeada Ride Armor. The arms do not have any the armor on the wrist and instead of gun being attached to the wrist he holds it in his hand on a peg. The gun is a Rand/Ley type and not the Scott/Stick missiles type as seen in the cartoon. Accordingly in Matchbox’s backwards way the only way one could get the standard Mospeada laser rifle was you had to purchase the Corg action figure and even then the rifle was under scale.
It would have been a better figure if the it came with a “backpack” of the wheels and nozzle Mospeada jet pack but sadly it did not. More importantly I still wish that it had came with the standard riding armor. It would have looked great and it is a shame something that should have been so easy was completely overlooked. I would have been to be able to exchange the heads with the Rand figure so he could be in his riding armor as well.
The face sculpt of the figure looks OK but it does not capture the anime look of the character designs of the series. The rubber helmet looks a bit out of scale and is long in the glass and mouth protection area. It would have been great to attach the gun to his wrist but it only a peg to attach to the hand. In the 1980’s I painted the yellow on the sensor and leg lights to give it some color and added the Mars Base decal from one of my Mospeada toys to round out the look.
Being a huge GI Joe 3 3.4 scale figures fan, the Matchbox line had so much potential but delivered so poorly. For whatever reason a second series of figures were never produced which was unfortunate. With Scott, Lunk, Rook and Rand produced only two more figures, Lancer and Annie, needed to be produced to create the main cast of the series. And trust me at the time I dreamed about those figure releases often. It is a shame that Hasbro or Kenner did not produce this line, as I am sure they would have handled the line better. Matchbox’s Scott Bernard represents the worst of their Robotech line with unavailbity and a lack of basic knowledge of the subject. Trying to locate all 22 of Matchbox’s Robotech 3 3.4 line of action figures is quite a daring feat due to the extreme rarity of a handful of figures not to mentioning trying to locate an original Matchbox Minmei as opposed to the recent Harmony Gold reissues from a few years back. Unless you are trying to make a run for the Matchbox Robotech series or you are a Mospeada completest, or you come across the figure for cheap at the marketplace I would pass on this one. And I am sure you already have.
Leonardo Flores “ModCineaste”
Comments
11 comments postedCool review, Leonardo! I like how this toy feels so connected, and yet also disconnected, to what we normally cover here. ("It's the same thing, only different", as Tommy Chong once said.) I was a big fan of GI Joe and similar figures back during this time and yet I don't recall ever seeing these. It seems somehow I was just completely oblivious to Robotech in all media back then.
"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High
one of my favorite figures from the line. I think I like the line because of its freakishness. Plus in the 80s the whole line was blown out at toys r us stores for a dollar a piece, so as a kid i had a lot of them.
about the arms- most of the ones i've owned (about 7 or 8 in an insane quest for a Scott with a nice paint-job)
I had an almost complete set of these figures for a long time, I was missing Lunk and the Black Miriya.
if you're interested in this line of figures, they can had for cheap on ebay, in the 90s, they were re-issued by Harmony Gold, except for Lunk, and most of the reissue macross figures didn't come with helmets, except rick hunter. Both the Matchbox and HG versions are made of really cheap plastic.
It's pretty common for loose figures in this line to have broken thumbs, splitting shoulders, loose knees, and for the foot-peg holes to be filled with broken pegs (the holes were a little too small for GI Joe figure stands and most kids found this out the hard way!)
The order of these figures, from most difficult to find to easiest, is:
Lunk (very rarely comes up for sale, maybe once every year or two at the most)
Black Flightsuit Miriya
Matchbox Minmei
Matchbox Roy Fokker
6" Miriya
Matchbox Red Flightsuit Miriya
Matchbox Max Sterling
Scott Bernard
... and the rest are about the same to find. At least for me, when I was putting together the set in 2000-2005.
It really is a great line of figures to make a run for, and it's great that you got so close to completing it. I do own the Black Suited Miriya as it was my original figure I bought back when I was a kid, I also thought the Red one looked better I didn't realize until a few years ago what a rare variation it was.
You're right, freakishness is the perfect word for the line! It really puts my brain in a knot! Looking back they seem to be a bit charming to me now like the Vinyl Macross toys and such.
We'll fight them on the Beaches!
Thanks for the comment on the review! The line kind of came and went and half of the toys were unavailable to purchase. There were so many great toy lines out in 1985, GI Joe's Brilliant 1986 line was soon to be released, not to mention Mask, Inhumanoids, Transformers, He-Man, etc. and quite frankly most of the Matchbox produced Robotech toys were unattractive and out of proportion. As you can with this figure the designers didn't seem to have a clue with what made the series click. It was a huge let down! They really isolated their own fan base!
Cheers!
Leonardo
We'll fight them on the Beaches!
The thing about the Minmei figure is not that it is hard to find. It is. It just was not released during the Matchbox run at all and was only released as part of the later Harmony Gold-only run. You can tell because the cards are different and plastic is a lot s******r. This Scott looks like it came from the HG run, by the way. For what it's worth, I have a Minmei I got off of eBay for about 5 bucks a couple of years ago.
-Jeremy
Hey Jeremy Hope all is well,
I actually bought Scott figure with the Rand and Corg figures from the Sears catalog back in 1986. I wish I had the Catalog page to go with the article.
I guess that's the real question, was Minmei released back in the 1980's? I never saw it, but they must have made a few as they are in the catalogs and print ads at the time and the molds were used to produce the HG reissue. If a collector is content with the HG reissue, so be it it, but if the Minmei figure was issued in the 1980's with a Matchbox package then it would be difficult to locate. I personally believe it would be like chasing ghosts and would be content with the HG reissue.
Cheers
LF
We'll fight them on the Beaches!
The HG run lasted for years and years and trickled out of China between the late 80's/early 90's and the start of the Exo-Squad/Robotech reissues which was about 1994. Check this out:
http://www.toyarchive.com/Robotech/st1/3minmei.html
I still see this one on eBay from time to time and it never goes for that much. The big problem is with the Chinese factory HG was using, the molding is all sloppy and soft. I don't know if they didn't let them bake long enough or what. It's similar the quality drop between the original Micronauts and the Palisades reissues from a few years back.
If your Scott is from the original Matchbox run, I guess you just got really unlucky and had bad examples. My Matchbox Dana is much nicer than my HG Dana and my Matchbox Rick and Lisa are both way nicer than my HG Roy.
-Jeremy
Great review, Leonardo...love the history lesson it comes with! I had Rand to go with my Cyclone bike...but the foot pegs on the bike broke off in Rand's feet and, yes, Rand's thumbs snapped off. So sad...
This review (and the burst of modern Mospeada products coming out now) makes me wish for an inexpensive line of Revoltech-ish action figures of the Mospeada cast, plus in-scale bikes they can ride on, and another line of the characters wearing non-transformable ride armor. That'd be cool...
--
Sanjeev
Maybe that's the fourth problem with these toys...quality control was never up to par with the other toys at the time. GI Joe is very much the benchmark to judge 80's 1:18 scale figures with. I think we all agree our Matchbox Cyclone Motorcycle pegs are broken off...more on that later when I review the Cyclone.
I've just picked up Microman Evangelion MA-40 Ayanami Rei Uniform Figure and I've seen the Lupin figures and that would be a great line to license more anime characters to. $6.00 isn't alot for the figure and it would still be a Japanese toy and be in the spirit of a inexpensive GI Joe style toy.
Thanks Jeremy for that link and It seems I did get a crappy version of the toy!
Cheers!
LF
We'll fight them on the Beaches!
...but it was just so, so hideous in many ways.
I got mine back in the late 80's. He was at a Toys R Us down in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, marked down to like under 2 bucks. The quality does seem a bit off in a few areas from mine.
What a happy day it was when I found his (non-transforming) cycle. It was at a Kiddy City that was going out of business up in the Lehigh Valley Mall area of Pennsylvania. (As I recall, it was sitting next to an Interchangeables green and black version of Baron Karza).
Thanks for clearing up the issue on his gun. I liked it, but something seemed wrong. As you said, it wasn't his gun to begin with!
If I ever find Scott and his cycle amidst my toy bins, I'll probably have to go on eBay and hunt down the figure who has his real weapon!
You threw me a bit on the yellow node on the gun's front and the sticker on his side. I thought I had a weird, cheaped-out variant until you mentioned you'd added those lol. You should mention things like that sooner.
: p
Thanks for the reply,
I never saw the Scott Bernard on the pegs in So California, I've always assumed they were sold on the East Coast for some strange reason. I'm glad I own it but I was so let down by the experience.
For a while there, when I was kid I got hung up on painting my figures, which I now regret, luckily I didn't paint Scott except for his gun.
Cheers!
LF
Leonardo Flores
CollectionDX Staff Writer-West Coast Bureau