The Energon Pub

How can any of you actually get excited over this? Does it take so little for Hasbro to mollify you people that you actually consider these paltry options in what is basically a pre-determined, re-hashed, overly-recycled-4-times-over figure to be acceptable to you? There is absolutely nothing new or even remotely inspired about this stuff at all!!
The stupid part is that every last one of you is going to run out and buy this Frankenstein POS after having already spent obscene amounts of money on the first 3 iterations of each and every figure that's going into this thing when, if fact, you will already have the damn thing thrice over (at least) if you just mix and match all your sets.
What is really going to chap all your asses is when Hasbro only releases the whole thing in one box set, makes it a Toys-R-Us exclusive and you have to pay TRU's god-awful prices to get the toy you all are so excited to have taken part in if you can even find a TRU that has it in stock.

Suckers and fools, each and every last one of you.

There will be retooled heads and perhaps parts for this... Based on how cool Windblade came out, of course I'm a little excited about this. It's a chance to get some new characters outside of the standard Optimus and Bumblebee shelf-warmer rehash... some really weird, outside of the box stuff. That's something to get excited about.

Heh - they're already doing the 'tired Optimus' rehash in Combiner Wars. I don't doubt they will pull Bumblebee into it somehow. They may retool some Bee mold and give him a couple extra pegs, and make him 'combine' with some other bot in the line.

CrankyOldTruck wrote:How can any of you actually get excited over this? Does it take so little for Hasbro to mollify you people that you actually consider these paltry options in what is basically a pre-determined, re-hashed, overly-recycled-4-times-over figure to be acceptable to you? There is absolutely nothing new or even remotely inspired about this stuff at all!!
The stupid part is that every last one of you is going to run out and buy this Frankenstein POS after having already spent obscene amounts of money on the first 3 iterations of each and every figure that's going into this thing when, if fact, you will already have the damn thing thrice over (at least) if you just mix and match all your sets.
What is really going to chap all your asses is when Hasbro only releases the whole thing in one box set, makes it a Toys-R-Us exclusive and you have to pay TRU's god-awful prices to get the toy you all are so excited to have taken part in if you can even find a TRU that has it in stock.

Suckers and fools, each and every last one of you.

You got it! Have some fun, man, lighten up a little bit. If the figure sucks, no one has to buy it. Simple solution!

Guessing there will already be so many competing bees on the shelf because of RID that it won't enter their minds. Guessing we can count on there not being a Sideswipe, Drift, Bee or Grimlock combiner.

CrankyOldTruck wrote:Suckers and fools, each and every last one of you.

we get it. you hate everything, including the fandom (nice one btw). so i wonder why youre even trying to be a part of it? cause ya aint makin any friends around here with that attitude.

try this (and i think ive said it already): constructive criticism. not everything has to be surrounded by soul crushing negativity.

I wonder if "hometown" will even factor into anything. Windblade ended up coming from an entirely different planet, after all.

william-james88 wrote:

So Onslaught-colored, Optimus-colored, or Hot Spot-colored, more or less?

This is the stupidest contest ever. Create your own fan repaint. At least a designer actually came up with a unique mold for windblade. And to add insult to injury, they pretty much tell you its gonna have both planes and cars which is stupid. Hasbro didnt do fans any favors here. A 5 year old could pick choices like good/bad guys, planes/cars, prettiest colors, etc. All hasbro is trying to do is sell you guys on the scramble city aspect of these figures which so many people dont give a crap about. They heard the alpha bravo complaints. They heard the why is drag strip in this wave complaints. They remember the failure known as powercore combiners. They are currently watching hero mashers fail as I write this. Hasbro is in denial. They continue to try and promote scramble city style frankenstein combiners as being cool. When I was a kid, I had bruticus, abominus, piranacon, and 3 stunticon limbs and I never once configured them any different than they were portrayed in the G1 cartoon. Hasbro really wants to shove playability down fans throats like if we were a bunch of 5 year olds. But notice they refer to the contest as "fan built" rather than "kid built". You even got "fans" who want to make it a blatant joke by viting the wackiest choices. What does that speak for this contest ? Hasbro should have taken a vote on what the votes should be if they really gave a crap about fans. Sure I expect a few replies reminding me that hasbro makes toys for kids. But if this vote is for kids, why the hell is it on facebook ? How many of you parents out there let your 7 year olds use facebook ? Lets be real here. Feel free to debate my stance, but please, please, please dont sugarcoat the crap out of this vote like most of the comments above.

So I'm thinking that the Silverbolt picture in the "bomber" category is to prevent them from leaking another new mold. If we take the rumors and the speculation to be true then you can take a stab as to what the "bomber" might originally be. If Cyclonus is going to be a retool or Silverbolt and have a Galvatron-esque gestalt form, then it would be very safe to assume that Scourge would be one of the limbs. Scourge being a "bomber" again makes sense. If you were to add in the speculation of a Bruticus after having seen the new mold for Hot Spot and add in Hasbro wanting to keep the vehicles more "in scale" by having Groove a Legends figure instead of a deluxe. It could stand to reason that Blast Off could have his alt mode changed to a "bomber" to "better" fit into scale with his teams alt modes and to also make use of the mold if Scourge will indeed be a "bomber" for the Galvatron gestalt.

Or I'm reading too much into it and it was supposed to be a picture of Air Raid or Skydive.

And to address the people complaining about these just being repaints, I don't care if they are or not. I can remember when about 50% of a toyline was (and still are) needless repaints or 100% as was with the first Universe line. Not to mention that a few toylines were 75% figures that had no relation to a cartoon or comic book and were released and bought simply because they were "cool" looking. So it's not exactly like this is some sort of new concept or anything. I used to be on the hate for repaints bandwagon many many years ago but now I'm kicking myself because of it. I missed out on a lot of really cool figures because I already had that mold in another color. Now I no longer mind that becasue I liked the mold the first time, I'll like it again as a different character in new colors. The CW figures also have the advantage of being Scramble City style combiners so for me, the more the merrier.

Rated X wrote:

I remember the days when you'd walk into Toys R Us during Beast Wars and only see two pegs of Transformers toys. That's it! I remember the days in the mid 90s when sometimes you wouldn't find any Transformers toys at all and you'd wonder if they toyline was canceled.

I look at all of the amazing Masterpiece figures that we've received. I look at my Combiner Wars Superion and think about how amazing it is to finally have this toy in my collection. I look at Generations Metroplex and continue to be amazed that we got him. I think what a lot of fans fail to realize is that profits generated by Transformers toys you don't like (such as Hero Mashers, Construct-Bots, and "marketing-gone-wild" Fan-Built Combiners) all go back into the larger pool for the Transformers brand which means more research and development, more products (for the fans and for the kids), more shelf space, etc. The profits get larger and more specialty items that are geared toward us are green lighted.

We're not going to like everything that comes out. I have a lot of Transformers in my collection that I'm not particularly fond of. But then I look at all of the really awesome stuff that we have gotten thanks to the success of the Transformers brand over the past 15 years and understand the bigger picture.

If Hasbro has to knock out some quick/easy products so that we can get Metroplex, Masterpiece Soundwave (who is still a cassette player), Combiner Wars, etc, then let them do what they have to do so that they can stay successful.

It could always be worse. It could be the late 90s all over again with only about 25 figures being released per year. I'll take things the way they are now!

Too bad. I'd have liked to see the decep color schemes. Black, gray and gun-metal. Purple, magenta and yellow.

But yeah, I could see the city factoring in to the deco and paint. Could be a rusted group of mercenaries... a group of ex-Decepticons... former pit fighters... Lots of ideas could come out of this stuff.

And again... I'm SERIOUSLY hoping for some awesome rusted bots. Might have missing panels, skeletal limb parts, missing face bits, rust colored paint... primer colored panels or parts from other bots welded on... bolts...

Also... some really great points by Seibertron above. Repaints are what fund this whole franchise... and pay for all the safety testing, research and development, expensive molds for the toys, copyright and trademark purchases...

This is at least a fresh way to throw us the ball regarding repaints. It's a fun notion.

Hasbro/Takara have also done a great job working in some heavy retools to make the "repaints" that show up something more exciting. Sandstorm/Springer are some of the best examples. Huge props for the design team for planning that so well. Hoping they keep some of that coming for these combiners. (And seeing a comparison between Motormaster and Prime, I have full faith that they will.)

Seibertron wrote:

Rated X wrote:

I remember the days when you'd walk into Toys R Us during Beast Wars and only see two pegs of Transformers toys. That's it! I remember the days in the mid 90s when sometimes you wouldn't find any Transformers toys at all and you'd wonder if they toyline was canceled.

I look at all of the amazing Masterpiece figures that we've received. I look at my Combiner Wars Superion and think about how amazing it is to finally have this toy in my collection. I look at Generations Metroplex and continue to be amazed that we got him. I think what a lot of fans fail to realize is that profits generated by Transformers toys you don't like (such as Hero Mashers, Construct-Bots, and "marketing-gone-wild" Fan-Built Combiners) all go back into the larger pool for the Transformers brand which means more research and development, more products (for the fans and for the kids), more shelf space, etc. The profits get larger and more specialty items that are geared toward us are green lighted.

We're not going to like everything that comes out. I have a lot of Transformers in my collection that I'm not particularly fond of. But then I look at all of the really awesome stuff that we have gotten thanks to the success of the Transformers brand over the past 15 years and understand the bigger picture.

If Hasbro has to knock out some quick/easy products so that we can get Metroplex, Masterpiece Soundwave (who is still a cassette player), Combiner Wars, etc, then let them do what they have to do so that they can stay successful.

It could always be worse. It could be the late 90s all over again with only about 25 figures being released per year. I'll take things the way they are now!

Well put, good sir.

@seibs
yes. to all of that.

also, why is this being judged so harshly when its still in the blue-print stages? has it been confirmed there will be absolutely no remolding? at least wait for the final stages of production before you pour your hate all over it.

Soo much hate I've read in here, guys, if you don't like it you don't need to destroy it with words, for years fans have been asking for cool combiners, now that they give us combiners we are complaining because there are repaints?? What if they are repaints, you guys are not being forced to buy them.

From my part, I might buy the Fan Build one if they give us new heads with each figure, which would be awesome. If not, I won't be whining like Kanye West, I'll just not buy them.

Congrats to Has/Tak for this great initiative, giving fans the chance to participate partially in the creation of a new combiner

I get why repaints exist, but making a whole event out of one when last time we got a brand new mold just seems cheap, especially when in all likelihood every one of these molds will have already gotten a few uses before this new one ever lands in store shelves. You'd think at the very least the torso bot would be a new mold, maybe the 'weapon' guy, too.

Not to mention we get too many cars, trucks, and jets as it is. It wouldn't be *quite* as disappointing if we were picking between lion and flying cannon.

gothsaurus wrote:Also... some really great points by Seibertron above. Repaints are what fund this whole franchise... and pay for all the safety testing, research and development, expensive molds for the toys, copyright and trademark purchases...

This is at least a fresh way to throw us the ball regarding repaints. It's a fun notion.

Hasbro/Takara have also done a great job working in some heavy retools to make the "repaints" that show up something more exciting. Sandstorm/Springer are some of the best examples. Huge props for the design team for planning that so well. Hoping they keep some of that coming for these combiners. (And seeing a comparison between Motormaster and Prime, I have full faith that they will.)

While I can understand some of the repaints are done for so called "funding" people forget hasbro is a lot bigger thab transformers. If im correct, isnt TMNT owned by hasbro too? Over the years how many TMNT figures have been straight repaints? (maybe a few retools here and there but definitely not the abuse the TF brand has endured) You dont see a TMNT fan poll to create a fan made fifth turtle ? Choose the color of his headband, weapon, personality, etc. You dont see it because it would be really stupid and the fans would blast it to hell. So why is the same concept so embraced by TF fans ?

Rated X wrote:

gothsaurus wrote:Also... some really great points by Seibertron above. Repaints are what fund this whole franchise... and pay for all the safety testing, research and development, expensive molds for the toys, copyright and trademark purchases...

This is at least a fresh way to throw us the ball regarding repaints. It's a fun notion.

Hasbro/Takara have also done a great job working in some heavy retools to make the "repaints" that show up something more exciting. Sandstorm/Springer are some of the best examples. Huge props for the design team for planning that so well. Hoping they keep some of that coming for these combiners. (And seeing a comparison between Motormaster and Prime, I have full faith that they will.)

While I can understand some of the repaints are done for so called "funding" people forget hasbro is a lot bigger thab transformers. If im correct, isnt TMNT owned by hasbro too? Over the years how many TMNT figures have been straight repaints? (maybe a few retools here and there but definitely not the abuse the TF brand has endured) You dont see a TMNT fan poll to create a fan made fifth turtle ? Choose the color of his headband, weapon, personality, etc. You dont see it because it would be really stupid and the fans would blast it to hell. So why is the same concept so embraced by TF fans ?

TMNT is owned by Playmates

Noideaforaname wrote:I get why repaints exist, but making a whole event out of one when last time we got a brand new mold just seems cheap, especially when in all likelihood every one of these molds will have already gotten a few uses before this new one ever lands in store shelves. You'd think at the very least the torso bot would be a new mold, maybe the 'weapon' guy, too.

Not to mention we get too many cars, trucks, and jets as it is. It wouldn't be *quite* as disappointing if we were picking between lion and flying cannon.

Well it is six TFs compared to one. Also what's wrong with repaints they have been there since the start of TFs, Also there is no guarantee that the pictures shown are the final molds.

Shockwave7 wrote:I was excited about this initially. But not so much anymore. Unlike Windblade, this 'fan built' combiner will not be new figures, or characters, from the ground up. It's just going to be another slew of repaints. They're kind of already doing that with the Optimus Prime figure (which is just a Motormaster repaint that was (for some bizarre reason) released BEFORE the actual Motormaster figure.

So the only part we fans can participate in this 'fan built' combiners is choosing which CW figures get repainted, pick a very limited selection of colors in which these figures will be repainted, and if we're lucky, maybe pick their names. Oh, and the faction too, we at least got to pick THAT.

I'm getting less and less enthused over this as time goes by. I'd rather just get the G1 inspired combiners.

Hope they do Abominus and Predaking...

Maybe we get to decide their personalities this time.

leokearon wrote:

Rated X wrote:

gothsaurus wrote:Also... some really great points by Seibertron above. Repaints are what fund this whole franchise... and pay for all the safety testing, research and development, expensive molds for the toys, copyright and trademark purchases...

This is at least a fresh way to throw us the ball regarding repaints. It's a fun notion.

Hasbro/Takara have also done a great job working in some heavy retools to make the "repaints" that show up something more exciting. Sandstorm/Springer are some of the best examples. Huge props for the design team for planning that so well. Hoping they keep some of that coming for these combiners. (And seeing a comparison between Motormaster and Prime, I have full faith that they will.)

While I can understand some of the repaints are done for so called "funding" people forget hasbro is a lot bigger thab transformers. If im correct, isnt TMNT owned by hasbro too? Over the years how many TMNT figures have been straight repaints? (maybe a few retools here and there but definitely not the abuse the TF brand has endured) You dont see a TMNT fan poll to create a fan made fifth turtle ? Choose the color of his headband, weapon, personality, etc. You dont see it because it would be really stupid and the fans would blast it to hell. So why is the same concept so embraced by TF fans ?

TMNT is owned by Playmates

I dindnt know that. But you still sidestepped my question. Why is it that transformers the only brand of action figures that abuses the repaint ?

Hey Rated X... while I get where you're going comparing with different toy lines... the big difference is how much engineering goes into Transformers. If you've ever assembled one from scratch in a Botcon class, you'll start to get it. Hundreds of parts for just a tiny figure.

TMNT and Joes and other figures are like five parts... all based on the same measurements and engineering. Basically, their ENTIRE toy line is a line of heavy retools... like Hoist/Trailbreaker.

Bottom line, Transformers have more complicated engineering and are more expensive to make than more simple toys... so they need to recoup on those front-end costs more than other toy lines.

Thus, repaints are kinda important to Transformers.

Seibertron wrote:

Rated X wrote:

I remember the days when you'd walk into Toys R Us during Beast Wars and only see two pegs of Transformers toys. That's it! I remember the days in the mid 90s when sometimes you wouldn't find any Transformers toys at all and you'd wonder if they toyline was canceled.

I look at all of the amazing Masterpiece figures that we've received. I look at my Combiner Wars Superion and think about how amazing it is to finally have this toy in my collection. I look at Generations Metroplex and continue to be amazed that we got him. I think what a lot of fans fail to realize is that profits generated by Transformers toys you don't like (such as Hero Mashers, Construct-Bots, and "marketing-gone-wild" Fan-Built Combiners) all go back into the larger pool for the Transformers brand which means more research and development, more products (for the fans and for the kids), more shelf space, etc. The profits get larger and more specialty items that are geared toward us are green lighted.

We're not going to like everything that comes out. I have a lot of Transformers in my collection that I'm not particularly fond of. But then I look at all of the really awesome stuff that we have gotten thanks to the success of the Transformers brand over the past 15 years and understand the bigger picture.

If Hasbro has to knock out some quick/easy products so that we can get Metroplex, Masterpiece Soundwave (who is still a cassette player), Combiner Wars, etc, then let them do what they have to do so that they can stay successful.

It could always be worse. It could be the late 90s all over again with only about 25 figures being released per year. I'll take things the way they are now!

One of my beefs with repaints is that hasbro isnt using them in the same fashion they did during the 1980s. Back then the cartoon dictated repaints. Repaints were reserved for "brothers" hence seekers, datsuns, cassettes, etc. Many G1 molds didnt even see a repaint until the 90s with G2 or RID. Now hasbro gives you a repaint in the next wave and pretty much dictates the repaints that have nothing to do with any cartoon, comic, etc. Hasbro needs to keep their hands out of the fiction and stick to making toys. Leave making characters to the animators and artists. Keep the corporate guys in the office and out of the fiction making decisions.

Rated X wrote:

leokearon wrote:

Rated X wrote:

gothsaurus wrote:Also... some really great points by Seibertron above. Repaints are what fund this whole franchise... and pay for all the safety testing, research and development, expensive molds for the toys, copyright and trademark purchases...

This is at least a fresh way to throw us the ball regarding repaints. It's a fun notion.

Hasbro/Takara have also done a great job working in some heavy retools to make the "repaints" that show up something more exciting. Sandstorm/Springer are some of the best examples. Huge props for the design team for planning that so well. Hoping they keep some of that coming for these combiners. (And seeing a comparison between Motormaster and Prime, I have full faith that they will.)

While I can understand some of the repaints are done for so called "funding" people forget hasbro is a lot bigger thab transformers. If im correct, isnt TMNT owned by hasbro too? Over the years how many TMNT figures have been straight repaints? (maybe a few retools here and there but definitely not the abuse the TF brand has endured) You dont see a TMNT fan poll to create a fan made fifth turtle ? Choose the color of his headband, weapon, personality, etc. You dont see it because it would be really stupid and the fans would blast it to hell. So why is the same concept so embraced by TF fans ?

TMNT is owned by Playmates

I dindnt know that. But you still sidestepped my question. Why is it that transformers the only brand of action figures that abuses the repaint ?

What? Hotwheels constantly does repaints, so do all the Marvel Iron Man/War Machine figures, as well as the Mattel Batman figures over the years. And so did some turtle toys for their torso and legs over the years. The ninja turtles themselves are just repaints of one another by principle. They all had red bandanas in the comics but when they had to make a television show, they needed them to look a little different so that kids would want to buy all four. Hence why they had different colored bandanas.

As for the question "Why 5 redecos instead of 1 new mold", what would be more cost-effective (read: cheaper): 1 stand-alone combiner mold without a team, or 5 redecos that are a team of their own?