Focus
Spy

Very deceptive, looks innocent. Can be very deadly. Sells his services to both sides.

So there we go, Focus is basically Robo-paparazzi. The toy is actually a Mark original design, from a non-license line named Gokin Robo. Well, I say original, but Gokin Robo was a fairly obvious attempt to cash in on the success of Takara's Microchange series, also including a gun, a Walkman and some binoculars. There might have been more, but I think only those four came out in Convertors (the other five Spies seem to be drawn from another line).

The toy was originally issued as Focus Robo, which was simply shortened for the Select release. He's one of the better-known Convertors, even if people don't know he was from the line.

Unlike the Microchange figures, the Gokin Robo weren't 1:1 scale, presumably to keep them as cheap as possible. Focus is around a quarter of the size of an SLR camera, and to be fair to Mark is moulded from a mixture of diecast and respectable-quality plastic. However, the shoulder joints are fragile - many, including the one I had until recently, are missing one or both of the arms.

The toy was also meant to xome with a removable lens and flash cube for the camera mode (which was removable to make the robot mode sleeker, though as the thing would have been about the size of a thimble in practice this meant a lot got lost).

Focus is a great figure, and one of the best of the whole line. The tiny alt mode might be a bit weird, but the neat, sensible transformation is very well done (much better than the lazy, unimaginative three-way split Takara undertook for Microx/Reflector), and leaves you with a very neat robot.

While it's largely a side-effect of the transformation, Focus has quite amazing articulation for something of this size and age, with hinging hips and knees, and rotating feet and shoulders. Another fantastic little trick is that if you look in through the eyepiece at the back of the camera, you can actually see through the lens at the front - it doesn't magnify, and it's not particularly clear or easy to look through as the thing's so tiny, but for Mark that's pretty astonishing.

An excellent little figure, though decent-condition examples are tough to find. As Convertors go, he can be pricey, but he's still worth it over a lot of stuff from other lines.