[Tokumonkey]

Hm. The clear sets remind me a little of the original and "starburst" releases for the Gokaiger minipla. You'd end up with a better-looking mecha if you combined the two together, replacing the cockpits on standard Trigger Machines with clear versions. Definitely not worth buying a second set.

I've now put together both LupinKaiser and PatKaiser.

Lupin's the better of the two, which is unsurprising: it feels like the Lupinrangers have gotten slightly cooler designs all around. Although the wings on the blue and yellow Dial Fighters get in the way of the elbow articulation, it's easy enough to work around this by tilting the cockpits of both vehicles slightly upward. You can fake a little bit of neck articulation between the face-dial and the fact that you can angle the red Dial Fighter a little to the left and right. The leg articulation is okay, although it lacks the articulated ankles of the last few Sentai mecha. You can at least tilt the angle of the feet so it doesn't look so wonky, but they don't do a lot for stability. I've never liked the look of the gray panels under the Dial Fighters, and I was pleased to note they're removable. If you're not interested in connecting them to the candy toy VS Changer, their only real purpose for now is as a Tamashii stand connector.

Oh, yeah: that's a really nice element for the Dial Fighters. You can stick the three Lupin mecha on the same stand if you have enough connectors.

PatKaiser is slightly less appealing. Both mecha use GoodStriker, so the legs and back are nearly identical. The faces have no neck articulation, and you can't fake it like you sorta-can with LupinKaiser because there's virtually no wiggle room. The arms are... weird. The equivalent of elbow articulation is at the wrists, not the hands, so they mostly look really stiff, and then look awkward if you slide the wrists forward. It's not awful, but it suffers in comparison to LupinKaiser's arms. Also, although you can slide the wrists forward and back, you can't actually turn them, which I found disappointing when posing the baton.

The clever design element for PatKaiser is the extra face piece. The designers were aware that a face that could fit into Trigger Machine 1 is terribly small and recessed, so although they supplied that face, they also supplied a second, larger face that plugs in front of the existing face. You can't do anything with it, but it looks drastically better.

Overall, I like them enough, but I'm definitely not motivated to buy Series 3, and I'll be waiting to see how Series 4 comes out rather than preordering in advance.