Here we have Mirage in his officially licensed Porsche 911 Carrera mode, a beautiful classic model that marks the first time a Transformer bears the marking of this vehicle. Yes, a surprise standout character from a movie gets to be an official Porsche while all of G1 Jazz's toys fail to receive this recognition. And what a beautiful car mode it is! The silver paint apps that you'd expect on a shiny car, combined with the blue paint apps that include Porsche markings, the likes of which are unexpected due to Porsche's previous stance on the Transformers brand (similarly to how Volkswagon was initially against Bumblebee utilizing the Beetle until the release of the Masterpiece toy). We'll get to the comparison with the unlicensed version in a moment, but this is undoubtedly one of the sexiest cars in the BayKniCapverse, and certainly the one I'd be drooling over as a fan of cars and Transformers if I saw this in person. Would have been cool to see the car itself at the statue event where the Rise of the Beasts marketing trio of Optimus, Primal, and Mirage were present.
The biggest issue with this figure, however, is the way the Porsche paint apps are handled here. They were either slightly warped during the transfer or were scratched off from being tied to the cardboard tray. This might have been prevented if it was on a bubble tray as we are getting with Marvel Legends and Star Wars: The Black Series. But beyond that, man is this a nice car. We even get some extra etched details on the back and tail lights to go with the headlights!
For weapon storage, the gun goes underneath the car mode as is expected with a Transformer like him.
For a vehicle mode size comparison, here he is with his mainline counterpart, with a more mismatched car paint job, gray tires, and license-free deviations so as not to upset Porsche, which is odd since Hasbro DID get the license from them. Maybe it was so as not to make their toys more expensive than they already are? Or Porsche has a rule on what can be done with a transforming toy based on their cars. The latter might explain why Mirage ends up as he does in robot mode, as we'll get to.
And here we have him with the other Autobots in the movie. They all look pretty good apart from how oversized Arcee is, but otherwise, it's great to see how the only Autobot missing in the Studio Series line-up for this faction would have to be Wheeljack, and our favorite Pablito will get his figure in a few months!
Transformation is very panel-heavy, as the backpack is made up of almost the entire top region of the car, mostly the hood and the roof. Meanwhile, the doors end up on his waist while the rear of the car ends up as the feet of the robot mode. The chest is present on him and can collapse nicely, but that's about it. The resulting robot mode we end up with for Mirage is not that great-looking. I'm sorry, but it is not screen-accurate to him in any way, shape, or form when it comes to how the hips stick out farther from each other, or how wide the upper body is even with the collapsed chest. Honestly, if the doors and the rest of the car kibble on the legs were absent, and the backpack was able to collapse itself better, it wouldn't be as bad. As it stands, it's like he's trying to mimic Crosshairs' kibble management but nowhere near as cool since he at least uses his car kibble as a trenchcoat. A bigger issue has to be the use of clear plastic on parts of the toy. Yes, we have some nice paint apps for silver and metallic blue overall, but it could have been further extended on the forearms because that blue isn't enough to hide how see-through they are. If the figure did not utilize translucent plastic, it might have been easier to avoid. As is, not so much. He may look better in-hand than from those CG renders we got back in February when the crosspromo was made with Porsche, but it's not suddenly a much better toy.
Head sculpt is one of the best aspects of the figure, and I am happy to see that there is some added blue paint to better match the CG model in addition to him having a proper face to go with Pete Davidson's mannerisms in the movie. I'm sure there was more blue, but eh it's better than nothing. Mirage's articulation consists of ball joints for the neck, shoulders, hips, and ankles, swivels for the biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs, and hinges for the elbows and knees. His gun can go on his hand and is thankfully much easier to conceal than with the previous version.
For a comparison with other versions of Mirage, you can see how kibble and color management can really alter the look of a character. The Battle Changer is obviously the odd toy out, but we can see how the Studio Series version has the nicest deco yet is mixed when it comes to kibble while the mainline Deluxe has so-so color breakup that isn't screen accurate yet has a better level of kibble management and has better proportions. He is also the odd bot out for having the mask.
And here we have him in one image with Dino, who was sometimes called Mirage. As the film establishes that all media that called Dino "Mirage" isn't canon to the main film continuity, it's safe to say that these two are separate individuals from each other and are thus going to be as such. I joked in the past about how Mirage was a Sonic fan at first yet became more of a Mario fan after Sonic 06 pissed him off, hence the Italian heritage he now has. But in this case, I should comment on how despite people bitch over the way older Movie designs were a lot more involved, Dino ends up being a lot easier to understand which part goes where in robot mode than Mirage does. HA! Also, our Wu-tang guy goes decently well with the other Studio Series figures, but he is still far from perfect. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were obviously done numerous times by Hasbro, so there's not much else to expect when it comes to how easy it is to engineer toys out of their designs. Mirage, on the other hand, feels like a Transformer from AOE that has his budget scaled back like a majority of the line was back in 2014 vs now. It's a shame how the biggest star of the film didn't get much of a major push in merchandise, and when we get merch of him, it feels like there could have been ways to make them better than they currently are. I feel that if you were to combine elements of this guy with the mainline version, we'd have the best Mirage ever in the Deluxe scale. Until then, he is alright but not the best figure in the 2023 set of Studio Series figures tied in with Rise of the Beasts.
Final ranking: ⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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