The Energon Pub

in any event, I sincerely hope Bruticus' head looks like THIS:


And not like THIS:


Because this looks a lot more like Bruticus than Hasbro's official image:


Maybe Hasbro should hire ME to do their photoshopping from now on

Some worries I hope they'll address before the actual release for Bruticus:
The overall look is good (if the head is taken care of). But it looks like he won't have his missile trailer backpack. Onslaught will because the chest plate becomes the missile launcher wien in alt/robot mode. But that flips to the front to become Bruticus' chest plate, so the pack will be gone for Bruticus. It seems like they just rotated Hot Spot's arms a different way to form the shoulders, and then plugged Hot Spot's guns (painted grey) into the fist holes. I hope, since this thing doesn't come out till next year, that they do something to address that, hopefully molding something additional for him. I wouldn't even mind a little partsforming as long as the signature backpack remains.

The use of the guns as the back cannons also means that neither Bruticus nor Onslaught will have any actual weapon to hold - except for legends Shockwave which is sold separate.

They have time yet to address these issues. Hope they do.

does sky linx split in 2?

Doesn't look like it, but I could be wrong.

Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

Nemesis Maximo wrote:

Hellscream9999 wrote:

padfoo wrote:

Hellscream9999 wrote:

Nemesis Maximo wrote:Holy ****, guys and gals. Not only is Onslaught retooled from HotSpot, he even transforms differently. Holy ****.

Yeah, that was an unnecessary but excellent design alteration; what's astonishing is HOW DIFFERENT it makes him look

I have to agree with you, he looks way better than I imagined he would. This version is running a close second to the Ultra version from several years back.

Indeed, while I'm still not sure about the new front-end (I was very partial to the odd and strange military/utility vehicle designs, similar to Hotspot, as a kid) the fists just look blatant and kinda strange; the upswing being, though, is that now Onslaught can punch you as a truck

While I also miss the more traditional truck cab (at first I didn't realize that was the front), I realized that the original Onslaught had his fists make the grill in vehical mode. So it's really fitting IMO.

Yeah, its a clever homage, and I like it, very industrial-military; I was just saying that the look of whatever hotspot and DotM sentinel prime was, is, perhaps, my favorite vehicle aesthetic ever; and seeing it toting around big cannons would've fulfilled many childhood dreams of mine.

If they don't give Onslaught/Bruticus a gun to hold (since both cannons will be stuck on his back to form the pack), what 'power' could they give him to vie with the other combiners? Galvatronus has 'mind control', Victorion has 'gravity control', and the other combiners are packing heat.

Maybe they could give Bruticus the POKE ('Punch Of Killing Everything' of Lugnut fame) to make up for his lack of a hand-held gun.

Shockwave7 wrote:If they don't give Onslaught/Bruticus a gun to hold (since both cannons will be stuck on his back to form the pack), what 'power' could they give him to vie with the other combiners? Galvatronus has 'mind control', Victorion has 'gravity control', and the other combiners are packing heat.

Maybe they could give Bruticus the POKE ('Punch Of Killing Everything' of Lugnut fame) to make up for his lack of a hand-held gun.

Dude, the guy has dual mini-guns and massive cannons on his KNUCKLES, he doesn't need anything other than his punchs to kill everything

All the combiners have the knuckle guns/missiles. Bruticus needs something to set him apart from the others since he won't have a hand-held gun (unless you count legends Shockwave).

Shockwave7 wrote:All the combiners have the knuckle guns/missiles. Bruticus needs something to set him apart from the others since he won't have a hand-held gun (unless you count legends Shockwave).

Yeah, but Bruticus always struck me as being more of a brawler, hence the brute-icus; but I totally get where you're coming from, hotspot's 'gun' was so weak, I gave Galvatronus menasor's sword and limbs, but I stick skydive's gun onto superions gun to bulk it out, it works pretty well.

Shockwave7 wrote:If they don't give Onslaught/Bruticus a gun to hold (since both cannons will be stuck on his back to form the pack), what 'power' could they give him to vie with the other combiners? Galvatronus has 'mind control', Victorion has 'gravity control', and the other combiners are packing heat.

Maybe they could give Bruticus the POKE ('Punch Of Killing Everything' of Lugnut fame) to make up for his lack of a hand-held gun.

Maybe he uses "Brute Force", a special energy that increases his physical strength.

Regarding Blast Off's new altmode, remember these bad boys?



Oh yeah, he's going back to his original roots.

And let us not forget Bruticus' FINEST hour....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Fender Bender wrote:Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

pass then

BERSEKAEL wrote:

Fender Bender wrote:Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

pass then

I won't pass on him, but I won't be using him as a combiner.

Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

Burn wrote:Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

It's like Transformers has become a swingers' party.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Burn wrote:Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

It's like Transformers has become a swingers' party.

Burn wrote:

BERSEKAEL wrote:

Fender Bender wrote:Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

pass then

I won't pass on him, but I won't be using him as a combiner.

Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

It seems we've come to a point where the the line is so beholden to its gimmick that, if we're to expect to get any toys of any characters in the Deluxe or Voyager size class, they'll have to have the gimmick incorporated into them, no matter what characters they are.

It's kind of like the mentality of the Unicron Trilogy lines when you think about it. No matter who the characters were, every big toy in Armada had to have a Mini-Con gimmick, every big toy in Energon had to have both an Energon Star port and either combine in some fashion (Autobots) or have a Hyper Mode (Decepticons), and every big toy in Cybertron had to have a Cyber Key gimmick. The only ones exempt from this were the Mini-Cons, Omnicons, and Terrorcons, with the latter two having (in addition to Energon Star ports) the feature of Energon weapons instead of combining or having a Hyper Mode.

Hey guys, why are we calling those official stock pics photoshopped? the uncanny symmetry and blinding digital colouring indicates much more that these are digital 2D/3D renderings instead. I believe most of those are, like Skylynx and Smokescreen, ect.

william-james88 wrote:Hey guys, why are we calling those official stock pics photoshopped? the uncanny symmetry and blinding digital colouring indicates much more that these are digital 2D/3D renderings instead. I believe most of those are, like Skylynx and Smokescreen, ect.

I use photoshopped for lack of a better term to convey 'artificial' You're probably right. Many of these pics look unnaturally clean, and seem a lot like 3D renderings from some Autocad program or whatever they use to do their mock-ups. But it doesn't account for that weird thingy they put behind their official pic of Bruticus' head. There's something back there that looks like they didn't do a proper clipping path....

Shockwave7 wrote:

william-james88 wrote:Hey guys, why are we calling those official stock pics photoshopped? the uncanny symmetry and blinding digital colouring indicates much more that these are digital 2D/3D renderings instead. I believe most of those are, like Skylynx and Smokescreen, ect.

I use photoshopped for lack of a better term to convey 'artificial' You're probably right. Many of these pics look unnaturally clean, and seem a lot like 3D renderings from some Autocad program or whatever they use to do their mock-ups. But it doesn't account for that weird thingy they put behind their official pic of Bruticus' head. There's something back there that looks like they didn't do a proper clipping path....

Thanks to your pictures above I just caught that, thanks, thats a good eye you have. Where do those different images come from, I thought there was only one official pic?

Sabrblade wrote: snip* line is so beholden to its gimmick *snip
...and then a really good comparison.

It's not really a shock though, right? It's been happening on and off like that from the get go, i.e. the 80s.

william-james88 wrote:Hey guys, why are we calling those official stock pics photoshopped? the uncanny symmetry and blinding digital colouring indicates much more that these are digital 2D/3D renderings instead. I believe most of those are, like Skylynx and Smokescreen, ect.

Oh Yeah! all those images are most certainly at least digi painted.

william-james88 wrote:Hey guys, why are we calling those official stock pics photoshopped? the uncanny symmetry and blinding digital colouring indicates much more that these are digital 2D/3D renderings instead. I believe most of those are, like Skylynx and Smokescreen, ect.

Yeah, they look like they stepped right off the set of ReBoot season 1.

Or, wait, maybe off the Cybertron seen in the "Theft of the Golden Disk" minisode.

Or, dare I say, off the Generation 2 toy commercials.

Sabrblade wrote:

Burn wrote:

BERSEKAEL wrote:

Fender Bender wrote:Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

pass then

I won't pass on him, but I won't be using him as a combiner.

Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

It seems we've come to a point where the the line is so beholden to its gimmick that, if we're to expect to get any toys of any characters in the Deluxe or Voyager size class, they'll have to have the gimmick incorporated into them, no matter what characters they are.

It's kind of like the mentality of the Unicron Trilogy lines when you think about it. No matter who the characters were, every big toy in Armada had to have a Mini-Con gimmick, every big toy in Energon had to have both an Energon Star port and either combine in some fashion (Autobots) or have a Hyper Mode (Decepticons), and every big toy in Cybertron had to have a Cyber Key gimmick. The only ones exempt from this were the Mini-Cons, Omnicons, and Terrorcons, with the latter two having (in addition to Energon Star ports) the feature of Energon weapons instead of combining or having a Hyper Mode.

Until we start seeing Beast Wars characters come out witht the ability to combine, I'd prefer to think of Skylynx as follows:

Some of us (myself exluded) really dig the character of Skylynx. So Hasbro wants to throw us a bone. So maybe he should've been a leader class to properly represent who he is/what he does, but to Hasbro, while he may be a very unique character, his "robot" mode isn't distinct enough from his alt-mode to justify that size and price, especially when he needs to appeal to kids as well as us adult collectors.

Another thing: who could they repaint/remold a leader class Skylynx into? So far, 2/3 of the leader figures have had two different toolings. And whereas with Ultra Magnus, even if they don't retool him, the demand is there from the fans, the size is right, AND he has recognizeability to the younger generation of fans, through TF Animated and TF Prime; that's not necessarily the case with Skylynx.

So Hasbro tries to meet the middle ground: giving fans of the character a great looking representation in a Voyager figure, that can HEY also combine. Plus, they have a little more room to possibly retool the figure into someone else, say Hun-gurr or or possibly even the other half of Skylynx (whatever they called it).

Is this making sense?

At the very least, Combiner Wars isn't as intrusive a gimmick as the days of Armada/Energon/Cybertron. Yeah, all deluxe figures have the combiner pegs, but they don't get in the way too much of the aesthetics of the figures, though admittedly, some figures succeed at this far better than others. They certainly tuck away a lot more neatly that minicon pegs and holes, wonky transformations to accommodate a much stranger combination gimmick, or large ports with "keys" colored like hard candies sticking out of the most random places on a vehicle or robot. The voyagers especially hide most of this CW gimmick well. If you don't want to display CW Sky Lynx in Sky Reign form, then you don't have to. It'll look fine on your Classics shelf as is. It's not like it'll look like an incomplete torso missing its arms and legs otherwise, unless you do that intentionally.

Sabrblade wrote:

Burn wrote:

BERSEKAEL wrote:

Fender Bender wrote:Skylynx does NOT split in two. The combiner head/lynx head is in Sky Lynx's ass.

You may be able to turn the legs around and kind of have the shuttle head as a tail for Lynx mode though.

pass then

I won't pass on him, but I won't be using him as a combiner.

Sky Lynx though is a perfect example of Combiner Wars going too far. We don't need everyone hooking up.

It seems we've come to a point where the the line is so beholden to its gimmick that, if we're to expect to get any toys of any characters in the Deluxe or Voyager size class, they'll have to have the gimmick incorporated into them, no matter what characters they are.

It's kind of like the mentality of the Unicron Trilogy lines when you think about it. No matter who the characters were, every big toy in Armada had to have a Mini-Con gimmick, every big toy in Energon had to have both an Energon Star port and either combine in some fashion (Autobots) or have a Hyper Mode (Decepticons), and every big toy in Cybertron had to have a Cyber Key gimmick. The only ones exempt from this were the Mini-Cons, Omnicons, and Terrorcons, with the latter two having (in addition to Energon Star ports) the feature of Energon weapons instead of combining or having a Hyper Mode.

Thing is though, with A/E/C the gimmicks were implemented into what were essentially new characters.

What we have with Combiner Wars is 30+ year old characters suddenly being shoe-horned into a gimmick they had no part of back in the day.

I know I sound like 1984forever, but I just don't think it's necessary. Especially when we have a number of characters who have already been given a modern update, and a character like Sky Lynx who has had his original gimmick replaced with one that we already have plenty of.