The Chinese Zodiac has provided Hasbro Asia a theme to use for annual repaints and redecos of previously released figure molds that could be reissued in several world markets and give access to many who had missed out on these molds the first time around. They're also made to address the changing world economy in the Asian region where Transformers are growing in demand for a rather thirsty audience.
The redecos and remolds have utilized molds from Generation 1 all the way up to Masterpieces, with a number of them being from the Car Robots/Unicron Trilogy era.
Next year's Zodiac choice is the Year Of The Monkey, with an Optimus Prime colored redeco of the
Super Class Air Attack Optimus Primal from 2001's
Robots In Disguise, a late release figure that was a holdover from the Beast Machines toyline that didn't make it to retail before that series had ended.
Today's galleries focus on exclusive repaints/remold of Transformers Energon Leader Class Optimus Prime and Supreme Class Omega Supreme.
Full stats of today's galleries:
The who:
Leader Class Optimus Prime,
Supreme Class Omega Supreme. (<--- You can see the Energon originals by clicking the hyperlinks to the left of the arrow.)
The What:
Year Of The Snake repaints (in Prime's case) and a remold (in Omega's case).
The Where:
Exclusives to Asia, based on the year of the Snake, part of the Asian Zodiac system.
Courtesy of
Wikipedia:
The Shēngxiào literally "birth likeness", is also known in English as the Chinese zodiac. Zodiac derives from the similar concept in western astrology and means "circle of animals". It is a scheme and systematic plan of future action that relates each year to an animal and its reputed attributes according to a 12-year mathematical cycle and it remains popular in several East Asian countries including China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and Thailand.
The When:
2013.
The Why:
Asian region exclusive repaints and remolds aimed at the Asian audience, addressing the recent change in the economy for that part of the world and to meet the new demand for Transformers that's growing on a global scale. They became shared exclusives in North America through retailers such as
Amazon.com and Seibertron.com sponsor
Big Bad Toy Store.
You can click on the images below to be taken to either figure's respective galleries:
Platinum Edition Year of the Snake Omega Supreme
Platinum Edition Year of the Snake Optimus Prime
Keep your optics tuned to Seibertron.com for the latest in news and updates, plus the best galleries around!
NOTE: Realize that I am not a perfect Christian, nor do I profess to be. I apologize if anyone's ever offended by me, I'm not perfect. Don't hold my posts and opinions against other Christians.
