The Energon Pub

Jones wrote:Does anyone have or remember seeing any very early prototype images of either Superion or Menasor with colors? I'm wondering if their first-look colors were as 'off' and unfinished as these seem to be.

I have got to believe that the final product will look way more refined than this in terms of accents, color mapping, and detailing.

Take a gander at Bruticus from Botcon compared to SDCC.

The Paint texture and quality are night and day.

Jones wrote:Does anyone have or remember seeing any very early prototype images of either Superion or Menasor with colors? I'm wondering if their first-look colors were as 'off' and unfinished as these seem to be.

I have got to believe that the final product will look way more refined than this in terms of accents, color mapping, and detailing.

If we're thinking about the same thing, with Superion and Menasor the issue was more about the hand painted and glossiness of the models. I think a good number of the dissenting voices on colors for this thing are that they don't like the color combo. I would imagine that by now, people know about the hand painted deal, and I think that is mainly used as a side step by people who don't like that a person dislikes the look of a toy. If people are being honest with themselves, they know that this toy will not be this shiny, as there has never been a mass retail Transformer that looked this glossy in actual hand.

Combiner Wars is just a joke now. They should have played it safe and stuck with the teams that were already combiners (where's Predaking?) and then took a chance with an all new team using new molds, but nah, they just like shoving everything in there now as an excuse to get as much use out of mediocre molds as they possibly can. The colours and molds on this one are just terrible and as a fan-built 'fembot' (i even hate that term) it just stinks of failure. Please do a better job when you get to the Preds please, Hasbro.

Delta Magnus wrote:Yeah, except my problem with them isn't just the awful colours. It's the fact they look like hideous caricatures of femininity made by someone who has never seen a real woman.

Just putting this out there, but are the variances in real women's appearances pretty much the same as the variances in real men's appearances? For example, there's a big visual difference between two people like The Rock and Peter Dinklage, and they're both awesome. You could correlate those two to bots like Grimlock and Bumblebee (again, both awesome), and we've never had an issue with that, so ultimately what does it matter if we have a stereotypically-feminine bot like Arcee and other fembots released that look more like these?

Isn't it just all good, in the end?

Upon first glance the colors look... garish? Gaudy? I'm not too worried though, they're most likely hand-painted prototypes, meaning its all paint. The shades of the colors can still be refined in both plastic and the paint itself.

Thinking about it, using two Alpha Bravo retools for the legs was pretty smart. That mold is one of CW's slimmest and most uniform looking. Having a pair as legs gives the combiner a pleasant shape, and makes her look awesomely symmetric, given the way the car arms are.

MCutter wrote:"Blood-flavored toothpaste" is a pretty bold color scheme.

HA! She IS toothpaste colored! Crestbot or Colgatetron? Hmmm...

Delta Magnus wrote:To be fair, those "fembots" are OUTRAGEOUSLY butch.

But isn't that a "good" thing? I mean I was under the impression that Hasbro wanted to shy away from the obvious fembot look (I.E G1 Arcee) for their figures because it upsetting female fans. I don't know I could be completely wrong on that but I think they've done a good job at that with such female characters like RID Strongarm, MP Roadrage, and MTMTE Roadmaster.

*Sorry if that all have been covered already, this thread is obviously blowing up right now (2 pages since I started my response, WOW).

Gearslide wrote:

Jones wrote:Does anyone have or remember seeing any very early prototype images of either Superion or Menasor with colors? I'm wondering if their first-look colors were as 'off' and unfinished as these seem to be.

I have got to believe that the final product will look way more refined than this in terms of accents, color mapping, and detailing.

Take a gander at Bruticus from Botcon compared to SDCC.

The Paint texture and quality are night and day.

Perfect example! Thanks!

A much less saturated view of her shows her colors to be not quite as loud and more subtle:

Sabrblade wrote:A much less saturated view of her shows her colors to be not quite as loud and more subtle:

I still don't like the colors, but more importantly, this photo is the first look I had at her hands.

Is it possible that these new hands and feet are made to be much better and real hands and feet becuase as a boxed set, they don't need to be extra weapons or accessories? The hands don't look like they turn into weapons, so maybe that allowed for them to be better hands since they only needed to be hands.

That other site snagged some pics from the presentation. There's a shot of Victorion on production level quality, and she looks muy bueno.

It is a weird color combination, no doubt, but we've fallen in love with uglier palettes before (Action Master Thundercracker and Armada Tidal Wave anyone?).

Sabrblade wrote:A much less saturated view of her shows her colors to be not quite as loud and more subtle:

And once again, the Groove mold is upside-down: the wheel is supposed to point up in chest armor mode.

We will have presentation slides shortly too!

Va'al wrote:We will have presentation slides shortly too!

Yippie! Keep'em coming!

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:A much less saturated view of her shows her colors to be not quite as loud and more subtle:

And once again, the Groove mold is upside-down: the wheel is supposed to point up in chest armor mode.

Her box art and other promo art has the windshield up top for the Chest Plate, not the wheel.

Gearslide wrote:

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:A much less saturated view of her shows her colors to be not quite as loud and more subtle:

And once again, the Groove mold is upside-down: the wheel is supposed to point up in chest armor mode.

Her box art and other promo art has the windshield up top for the Chest Plate, not the wheel.

That orange reminds me of a scallop's foot. If these were Seacons that would be great, but they aren't so it isn't.

Ummmmm........yeah.







No.


You would think that the world's king of toy repaints would have added a little more variety to this set, but I guess the suit who's usually in charge of retooled color schemes is on vacation.

Money saved...

Carnivius_Prime wrote:Combiner Wars is just a joke now. They should have played it safe and stuck with the teams that were already combiners (where's Predaking?) and then took a chance with an all new team using new molds, but nah, they just like shoving everything in there now as an excuse to get as much use out of mediocre molds as they possibly can. The colours and molds on this one are just terrible and as a fan-built 'fembot' (i even hate that term) it just stinks of failure. Please do a better job when you get to the Preds please, Hasbro.

Predaking was confirmed at the panel to NOT be in the works. And with a product cycle of at least 2 years that means you wont be seeing a predaking anytime soon. My best is that Predaking will come out eventually as a Titan to mirror his toy scale in G1.

Guys...

Guys...

Something awesome this way comes.

Remember this teaser for Victorion?


Look closely at the Groove mold component on her chest.

See the little bits of Cybertronian text on there? That's "Ancient Autobot".

On her left (our right) reads "far away", and on her right (our left) reads "never roam".

What do these words mean? Well, here's the full quote they come from:

"If Cybertron be your home, far away never roam. Hear my message, listen and fear. Danger comes, the end is near! Just like us, you soon will rust. All shall be turned to dust."

And here's where this quote comes from:


The G1 episode "Cosmic Rust".

Why is this relevant? Victorion hails from the Sea of RUST!

Plus, her sword's hilt is totally beetle-esque, like the Lightning Bug:

You are a wonderful type of nerd sometimes, Sabr.

Hah that's a good catch

To be honest, someone else caught it first. I just passed it along to spread the word.

Sabrblade wrote:To be honest, someone else caught it first. I just passed it along to spread the word.

I wonder who are the bigger nerds: the one incorporating all the references, or the ones actually managing to discover them

Here are the names of the individual Autobots that make up Victorion:

Pyra Magna (Head/Chest/Torso - Hot Spot with new head sculpt)
Jumpstream & Dustup (Arms - Breakdown & Dead End remolds)
Stormclash & Skyburst (Legs - Alpha Bravo remolds)
Rust Dust (Chest - Groove remold).

OmarJT82 wrote:Here are the names of the individual Autobots that make up Victorion:

Pyra Magna (Head/Chest/Torso - Hot Spot with new head sculpt)
Jumpstream & Dustup (Arms - Breakdown & Dead End remolds)
Stormclash & Skyburst (Legs - Alpha Bravo remolds)
Rust Dust (Chest - Groove remold).

And together, they are the Torchbearers, charged with preserving Cybertronian artifacts (or so I'm told).