The Energon Pub

Hiya, I’m a bit confused by all the series of toys at the moment. Can someone explain? Sorry I know this is a silly question.

Masterpieces- have they stopped making these?

Studio series- is this just a new collectible range? And does it cover all sorts of films and TV series? Ie some are movie 86, others are from games and stuff

Primes - is this a new TV show with the 13 primes?

I’m confused lol it seems like Studio is the new masterpiece but less expensive and with more fun toy like transformation. Which I think is the way forward. Madsterpieces I love but they do feel too fragile and complicated to transform. Which kinda takes away the fun from the whole point of Transformers.

Masterpiece is still around, it got incorporated into the MPG line (the Trainbot line) and both are just MPG. It also now includes some new stuff like the upcoming original Optimus Prime figure. It rarely sees physical retail release, but they can be found easy enough online.

Studio Series launched in 2018 and was originally a line devoted to the live action movies, then it got expanded to the 86 animated movie, video games, and soon comic books.

Age of the Primes is not a new animated series, it's just the latest main line, preceded by the Legacy trilogy, the War for Cybertron Trilogy, Prime Wars Trilogy and so on.

The most recent animated series is Earthspark, the upcoming one is Cyberworlds.

Hope that helps. Any other questions just ask!

Emerje

Ah brilliant, thank you @emerje - I didn't realise with MPG, I didn't think I needed any more Optimus bug that upcoming one looks pretty amazing.

So is Studio series an umbrella, with the Age of the Primes and everything in it too?

Thanks for explaining, I guess it doesn't matter that much but I've been confused about how the lines work and the differences.

Emerje wrote:Masterpiece is still around, it got incorporated into the MPG line (the Trainbot line) and both are just MPG. It also now includes some new stuff like the upcoming original Optimus Prime figure. It rarely sees physical retail release, but they can be found easy enough online.

Studio Series launched in 2018 and was originally a line devoted to the live action movies, then it got expanded to the 86 animated movie, video games, and soon comic books.

Age of the Primes is not a new animated series, it's just the latest main line, preceded by the Legacy trilogy, the War for Cybertron Trilogy, Prime Wars Trilogy and so on.

The most recent animated series is Earthspark, the upcoming one is Cyberworlds.

Hope that helps. Any other questions just ask!

Emerje

That's great, thanks for explaining - I've wondered for ages how it all works. So basically most stuff is going through the Studio Series, but there are different categories within that, like the 86 Movie and Age of Primes?

I love the look of the the new MPG Optimus, I didn't think I needed any more Optimus figures but that one looks particularly cool.

Jackatron wrote:That's great, thanks for explaining - I've wondered for ages how it all works. So basically most stuff is going through the Studio Series, but there are different categories within that, like the 86 Movie and Age of Primes?

Close. Hasbro's branding of these lines is way, way less distinct than it used to be though, so it is totally normal to have a fuzzy understanding of it.

Right now, the main "collector-focused" lines from Hasbro that may be found at Target and some Walmarts are:

• Studio Series
• Age of the Primes

These are both collectively under the "Generations" umbrella, but colloquially, if someone says "Generations" they aren't referring to Studio Series. Fun, right? This is helped even further by the overall style of the packaging now being nigh-identical, save for some AotP specific art on the sides of those.

Before this year, Studio Series was comprised of three separate sub-lines:

• Studio Series - contained characters from the seven live-action movies and Transformers One
• Studio Series 86 - contained characters from the 1986 Transformers Movie
• Studio Series Gamer Edition - contained characters from TF videogames, though so far this only means War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron and Devastation

Starting this year they eliminated the separate branding and started pushing it all as just "Studio Series". I still keep them separated over on the Sightings page, because I think it makes more sense that way.

It would not surprise me to see it all eventually coalesce back into one unified "Generations" line at some point in the future, but who knows. The one constant is that as soon as you think you have this all figured out, Hasbro will change up their branding and marketing strategy to be totally different

Thanks Scotty, it's not doing the 'collection' part of my brain any good haha I always want to compartmentalise things into collections and try to get the whole set. But that doesn't seem to work with Transformers.

But I think that all makes sense, thank you for explaining.