Nofka
Maladroid

Mercenary who sold his services to the Maladroids. Never strikes when foe is looking.

In common with several Convertors figures, Nofka was sourced from one of Mark's budget versions of a Takatoku mould. In this case the original was the Orgroid from the Orguss series. The Super Dimension Century Orguss was a sequel of sorts to Macross, made by the same animation studio. Takatoku's toyline was a colossal failure, though, and would be the first of a chain of failed lines that would eventually lead to the company becoming insolvent in 1984.

The Convertors release of the figure was much simplified, and was available in two schemes - the first (reviewed here) had exactly the same colours as in the Anime series, while the second would have a unique, Select-devised black and silver scheme.

Nofka (no idea what that means, though Google indicates it's something in Albanian) actually has three alternate modes, as with the full-size Orgroid. The jet mode is shown to the left, the tank mode to the right. The original's gerwalk mode (named earth-walker on the Convertors card) can just about be formed with this version, but barely, and mine's too loose to hold the pose for a picture. It's basically the jet mode with legs, though.

To be fair on the old earth-walker, though, both the other modes are poor as well. The jet is the figure's primary mode, but suffers from a lack of detail. The Takatoku version looks faintly ridiculous even with the cockpit and other extra parts (notably a transparent cockpit) and weaponry - this version looks like some sort of mad robot attacking you with its' crotch. And the tank is just hilariously bad... I mean, it doesn't look like anything at all...

The robot mode is a little more natural looking - for a toy from the self-appointed creators of 'perfectly transforming' robots, it really is surprising just how much it dominates things.

The design is a little unusual, but does actually work as a villainous robot - there's something about the squat head and visor, not to mention the hulking shoulders. Those are the bits that look like upper arms - they're meant to stay at 90° to the body, but the plastic ball joints don't hold on mine. Not a bad thing,in a way as Nofka looks daft with such wide shoulders, but the arms have to be balanced just right to stop them looking stupidly long... Articulation isn't bad for something like this - as well as the shoulders, there are joints at the elbow, hip, knee and ankle. However, he's just not very dynamic.