The Energon Pub

I have only one thing to say to Hun-Gurr, the only dissapointment for Hascon this year.

Bombilation wrote:I have only one thing to say to Hun-Gurr, the only dissapointment for Hascon this year.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /image.jpg

Except he's no retool in the traditional sense. He may move similarly to CW Silverbolt, but every part is brand new.

If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

Bombilation wrote:If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

From what I understand, engineering and tooling costs are two rather different things. If they can re-use previous engineering for a new toy in a satisfactory way (though "satisfactory" in this case is debatable ) instead of sinking cost into engineering a whole new skeleton/transformation scheme, why spend the extra? Not that I'm saying it turned out well in this case, but from a cost perspective it does make good sense to use Silverbolt's basic engineering even if every piece is technically new.

Bombilation wrote:If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

It's to save time and money, really. Besides, reusing (parts of) transformations or general design elements happens more than you think, with the classic example being:


Transformers Energon Starscream (Night Scream) Gallery

G2 Smokescreen vs. Energon Starscream, figures that were 8 to 9 years apart, and that transformation was largely reused another 6 years later for 2010 Terradive:


Transformers Hunt For The Decepticons Terradive Gallery

That's not to say Hasbro is lazy with designing, o no, they can get quite creative. But sometimes those "shortcuts" do come in handy for speeding things up, and getting more time for refining the details. The total process does take 1 to 2 years, mind you.

Bombilation wrote:If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

Recycling transformation is far more optimal for toy designers, hence why they keep doing it:

And for Combiner Wars and especially Titans Return, reusing minor parts is added to that. Power of the Prime isn't safe from that, in fact we already have a semi-confirmed case in the form of the Dinobots Sludge and SlugSlag, who share lower legs, and upper arms including the elbow at the very least.

2 days late to the party, since I had to work on a last minute pitch for a new client account the last 2 days... Hopefully that means money to buy TFs.

But here are my thoughts.

Definitely getting Prime and Rodimus. Prime looks very MP-ey in his evolved form. And I kind of like Orion Pax.


Slightly disappointed in Optimus Primal's Space skateboard mode instead of being a monkey, but damn does Optimal Optimus look cool. Gonna have to get him just for the "evolved" mode. Primal Prime repaint incoming for later waves?

The dinobots: was thinking of just getting Grimlock and Sludge, big fan of Brontos since I was a kid. Then saw Swoopy baby and dang he's looking good. That's 3 I want to get right off the bat, I guess I'll get the other 2 just to complete the combiner. Totally can skip Slash unless she has an important function in the combined mode.

Loving these reveals so far.

Anything said of an Evolution Megs (how do you evolve a gun into a space cannon)? Or maybe Star Saber (he fits the theme)?

Still very cool reveals. Gonna be expensive.

Reveals are fun and reveals at conventions are even better. My favourite part though is when it settles down and we can take a longer look at what we see and extract all the juicy info. While the reveals were few at Hascon, we now have a very good idea at what is in stores with Power of the Primes with our first look at particular new play patterns that were not on display before and are now confirmed.


Combiner Hands, Feet and Enigma of Combination

Power of the Primes is basically Combiner Wars 2.0, at least when it comes to Deluxes and Voyagers. People were wondering about the combiner feet and hands since they seemed absent from previous reveals. Well we finally got them this time. The voyagers come with a pair of feet.

You can see one of the feet here.




Combiner Hands and Enigma of Combination

Each deluxe comes with a combiner hand with 2 thumbs on opposite ends and an example can be seen in the image below. There is a hole in the middle that is titan/prime master and it is currently holding the clear plastic Enigma of Combination. You can actually see the titan/prime master compatible Enigma near the hand, it is a convex circle with a red cross and comes with Grimlock.



Here is Starscream's Enigma.



The hands will also be able to tab onto the chest (there is a peg hole on each dinobot deluxe chest to accommodate this) of deluxes to give them some sort of power armour and the combiner feet become gauntlets for the voyagers, as seen below.





With the 5 combining Dinobots, you end up with 2 feet and 4 hands and while that may seem redundant, it isn't since the extra hands combine with the combiner torso to beef it up, as you can see in the image below. It seems the distribution of these hands and feet among deluxes and voyagers is to ensure that buying any combination of limbs with a voyager will give a fan all they needs to have different pieces for the feet and the hands without resorting to boxsets, like the later combiners wars toys which did have different hands and feet pieces.



Also, it has been confirmed throughout the week that, as in Combiner Wars, every deluxe in Power of the Primes can be an arm or a leg.


Starscream's Combiner Mode

To be honest, it took a while for me to make sense of this because all I could see on the side of Starscream's box was ... Starscream again. But then I saw the crown and looked at his limbs and realize this was indeed the combined mode. Voyager Starscream's combined mode is King Starscream. The big nosecone in the robot mode's back finally comes into play since it hides the combiner head and makes up the chest with real kibble this time. The wings end up being what we see on the back of the solo robot mode, so we get all the alt mode detail they have here.

It is also very important to note that like he Optimus Prime voyager we got in the first wave of Combiner Wars, this toy isn't meant to team up with anyone specifically. He is just an extra torso to use as you wish since we see him with some abominus limbs.




Optimus Primal's Alt Mode

There was lots of confusion over this part and it is very understandable because the slide does indeed show a lot of contradicting artwork. However, as has been stated for the previously seen Predaking mock up, this means Hasbro thinks we fans are ready to see more into their process and are intelligent enough to understand what is a finished toy, what is a mock u and what is simply a character design. Below is the now infamous Optimus Primal slide from his reveal which shows the toy's process. On the left is the very first phase, the character design. At that point in time it is just an artist's rendition (in this case Emiliano Santalucia's) of what the toy could look like. The artist drew both a robot and beast mode for the smaller Optimus Primal and larger Optimal Optimus figures. You will then realize that none of what is seen on the left is what the final toy looks like.



On the right of that same image is the interpretation of that design into toy form by famed Takara designer Hasui (the guy responsible for your favourite Masterpiece toys, Combiner Wars Devastator and most Starscream toys). As you can see, this is where the actual toy starts becoming concrete. This is where we see that Hasui has taken the initial designs from the artist and made them work into the Power of the Primes leader gimmick where the smaller "deluxe" toy combines with the larger toy for the leader class robot mode. It is at that early stage that the toy desgner, Hasui in this case, chooses to remove the smaller gorilla mode.

For those wondering, the deluxe sized Optimus Primal turns into a long ship which becomes a surfboard for the Optimal Optimus gorilla mode. And then, the Optimal Optimus robot mode is only achieved when you combine both together since the surfboard (deluxe Primal) becomes the chest and the backpack for Optimal Optimus.



Hopefully this cleared up any questions fans may have had. If you have others, please reach out to us and the community on the boards. We look forward to hearing from you!

Fantastic roundup Will! Helped me catch up on a few things I must have missed from the galleries. I like the look of the new combiner feets, though I think they might still be a tiny bit on the small side for my liking - I'll have to see more in-hand stuff to be sure though. (Also, is it just me or do Vole-canicus' feet bear a bit of a resemblance to those of Movie Optimus? Just me? Thought so.) It also looks like maaaybe the fingers on these new combiner hands will be able to open out all the way this time, instead of just to an awkward claw-hand position. It doesn't seem to be shown in any of the prototype images we've seen so far, but judging from that show-floor picture it looks like the clearances might be right for it this time around.

I'm gonna have to wait and see for Starscream's torso mode. Admittedly the figure itself is looking significantly less godawful to me now than it was back at first reveal, but the coolness of the torso mode in-hand is going to be the make-or-break decision for me on this one, and though the box-side art looks really nice it doesn't give me too much to go off of yet.

But perhaps most importantly to me, Grimlock's Enigma looks delicious (DON'T EAT THE PIECES) and I cannot wait to use it as a head for absolutely everyone. I adore that they're keeping TR-compatibility on all these things (even though there isn't a neck-joint) so that we can give TR figures Matrix heads and put faces on the tummies of PoTP Deluxes.

Well, I was kinda hoping that they would've fixed the wings on Darkwing so they would angle properly. If this was a case of either heavy retool or nothing at all, I'd have taken nothing at all and been happy with my Kabaya kits.

How cool would it have been if Hot Rod and Rodimus had removable heads so you could use the respective Titan Masters? Also, those saying Star Saber would be perfect in this line need to remember that Star Saber isn't an "Evolution" of Saber, but armor that saber wears. While cool wouldn't work with the theme of the line.

At first glance, Optimus looked nice. Then I realized Orion Pax needs a trailer to look like a standard Optimus Prime figure (usually without a trailer). Then I realized his chest kibble is a cheat.... AGAIN!! Is it that hard to engineer Optimus to have real chest windows? At least Powermaster Prime got it.

The Titan/Prime Master driver/riding gimmick is only on the Legends Class figures?

Rysquad wrote:The Titan/Prime Master driver/riding gimmick is only on the Legends Class figures?

Seems like it, yeah. I would've been astonished if they'd been able to work both that and combining into Deluxe and Voyager figures so I'm not surprised there. But on the other hand, if that Primal prototype is indicative of the rest of the line, just maybe it'll be possible for TMs/PMs to pilot Leader figures if the Matrix-areas act as cockpits? Hard to say really, but it might be possible, so I wouldn't give up hope just yet (for Leader figures, at least).

Starscream isn't too surprising in retrospect -- after all, we saw he has a redeco in Elita-1 and we saw we have Deluxe Female Autobots coming. I think I may have just latched onto the idea of him getting a dedicated team because of Darkwing and Dreadwind... but at the same time, does this mean we're now getting extra limbs as well as extra torsos?

I must admit, I wish they found some way for the extra hands to combine with the feet to make bigger Combiner feet instead of torso-filling. That way it could have gotten around the silly proportion problems.

CobraKai wrote:At first glance, Optimus looked nice. Then I realized Orion Pax needs a trailer to look like a standard Optimus Prime figure (usually without a trailer). Then I realized his chest kibble is a cheat.... AGAIN!! Is it that hard to engineer Optimus to have real chest windows? At least Powermaster Prime got it.

It would be hard to give him animation accurate chest windows and robot mode while having him transform into an Earth-based tractor trailer rather than a Cybertronian vehicle. Similar issues would exist with a Starscream who was meant to have a War for Cybertron robot mode while transforming into an Earth jet.

You know, part of me wishes Slash was a Deluxe optional fifth deluxe that left Swoop free to form wings on Volcanicus' back.

The more I look at Leader Optimus Prime the more I see the potential in future uses. Orion Pax and the trailer can be retooled into a better Powermaster OP without too many big changes. Then use the new Deluxe PM OP in white with a further modified trailer to make Ultra Magnus. The way Prime's arms go across the top of the trailer is very much like how UM's do. I doubt it'll happen in PotP, but the engineering is there for future use.

I saw the debate about how Hound and Arcee would have been done for the evolving Leader class gimmick. I'm thinking they would simply create a new evolved form for the either of them in the same vein as Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime. Leader class figures do come with a Matrix after all.

I kinda want an A3 that evolves into a Leader Alpha Trion.

I'm looking forward to forming King Starscream with Headmaster Starscream in his chest and Ghost Starscream as an arm.

Emerje

Also, it has been confirmed throughout the week that, as in Combiner Wars, every deluxe in Power of the Primes can be an arm or a leg.

Wait, so since Optimus Primal, Hot Rod and Orion Pax are all Deluxes, albeit paired with the Leader gimmick, does that mean they also function as combiner limbs, and thus there could be a "Primes" combiner?

Deathsanras wrote:

Also, it has been confirmed throughout the week that, as in Combiner Wars, every deluxe in Power of the Primes can be an arm or a leg.

Wait, so since Optimus Primal, Hot Rod and Orion Pax are all Deluxes, albeit paired with the Leader gimmick, does that mean they also function as combiner limbs, and thus there could be a "Primes" combiner?

They're Deluxe(-ish)-sized figures, but not actually Deluxes. So unfortunately no, as cool as that would have been.

Deathsanras wrote:

Also, it has been confirmed throughout the week that, as in Combiner Wars, every deluxe in Power of the Primes can be an arm or a leg.

Wait, so since Optimus Primal, Hot Rod and Orion Pax are all Deluxes, albeit paired with the Leader gimmick, does that mean they also function as combiner limbs, and thus there could be a "Primes" combiner?

Do you mean like the Deluxe figure from Rodimus could be used with Optimus or Primal? That would be pretty neat, and there's a chance that the larger bodies might be engineered similarly enough to make it possible. Possibly.

We knew Starsream was going to be a torso from the SDCC images. That may have been the worst kept secret of this convention. But, what if since the combined mode is going to be crowned Starscream, what if they just reuse the Galvatronus head from CW Cyclonus? It's kind of crownish already.... and that would be unfortunate.

He just meant the single-release figures actually marked as Deluxes I'm afraid, not figures that happen to be around that size. In the same vein, one would say every Voyager in CW forms a torso; but of course that's not the case for the 'Voyager' Constructicons that form Titan Devastator.

Either way though, from this presentation it seems clear that the smaller figures that form part of the Leaders are not actually Deluxe; but somewhere in between that and Voyager. Compare Hot Rod and Dreadwind in these pictures, for instance.





edit: Additionally, look how big Orion Pax is compared to the Leader he's a part of; that's no Deluxe.

Kurona wrote: Compare Hot Rod and Dreadwind in these pictures, for instance.[/img]

Not sure. Dreadwing is doing a... pose...

I-Is that Thunderwing... and Megatronus?!

shajaki wrote:Hello all. Big fan. Fist time caller, long time listener.

Been lookin at the combiners... it's hard to find the actual combiner ports. Ripper looks like he has a one in his chest. Hungy's hind legs look reminiscent of a combiner torso dude. But Mister Dinobiner? I don't see anything like the other combiners on him....

the ports on grimlock are pretty obvious when you look at him. they're on his legs and tail/arms and legs for beast and robot respectively. I'm actually a little annoyed that they put the port openings on his tail on the outside rather than inside so they'd be on the inner side of the legs in robot mode and invisible in dino mode

Does the matrix use the headmaster ports from TR? Does that mean we can give a TR figure a matrix head?