The Energon Pub

I have to admit, I kinda like the look here. Yeah, it's blocky and G1 .... which is kinda exactly why I like it. But I like the look of the FP Stunticons I already have better. Plus I plan on grabbing Hasbro's Menasor set just to have and that set has the Stunticons in the proper size (voyager core with deluxe limbs). I don't think this Motormaster is actually bigger than FP's in vehicle mode. And the limb's size is still out there.

Also, how big will this be in comparison to FP's in combined mode? Because if it's the same size that's another reason not to really care.

I'm liking what I see here.

It is no secret I'm not a huge fan of the FP Menasor, and I hate the new Motormaster Hasbro showed us also, so I am very interested in how this project turns out.

Holy hell, the scale.

If these were in proper scale, Optimus would only be the size of his feet (given that Optimus transforms into a truck, and Motormaster's feet appear to consist of that same kind of truck). So either A: Prime needs to be smaller, B: Motormaster needs to be bigger, or C: Motormaster needs to change his vehicle mode...

No, Delta, don't start thinking about scale in Transformers, you'll only hurt your head...

Delta Magnus wrote:If these were in proper scale, Optimus would only be the size of his feet (given that Optimus transforms into a truck, and Motormaster's feet appear to consist of that same kind of truck). So either A: Prime needs to be smaller, B: Motormaster needs to be bigger, or C: Motormaster needs to change his vehicle mode...

Well, it isn't as if this hasn't always been a problem, for as far back as G1. So I don't really worry about such things.

I suppose that was one nice thing about how Fansproject did theirs. By having half of the trailer break off (and be the combiner kibble storage) they could have a Motormaster who, while not perfectly in scale with Classics Optimus in vehicle mode, wasn't miniscule in comparison. And then they were both about Voyager sized in robot mode.

And then Hasbro completely solved the issue with their new upcoming Motormaster, by just having him and Optimus be repaints of each other! Alas, Motormaster without a trailer for his vehicle never seems quite right to me... So maybe this option isn't best...

So yeah. When you have one figure who is a robot made from a truck's cab, and another robot made from an entire truck with trailer, who are supposed to scale with each other in both modes... It is just never going to work in toy form, so you have to settle for them to just not work right in one of their two modes.

Yeah. Personally I'd just ditch the whole "robot body is made of trailer, feet are made from the WHOLE GODDAMN TRACTOR" thing entirely. I don't care if G1 did it, it's dumb and it needs to stop. Same with Blast Off being a space shuttle and Broadside existing at all.

Delta Magnus wrote:Yeah. Personally I'd just ditch the whole "robot body is made of trailer, feet are made from the WHOLE GODDAMN TRACTOR" thing entirely. I don't care if G1 did it, it's dumb and it needs to stop. Same with Blast Off being a space shuttle and Broadside existing at all.

Well, while the rest of us enjoy our wildly out of scale toys, you can enjoy your much more limited "perfectly in scale" collection.

So does that mean you reject G1 completely? Or just deny the existence of the Decepticons? (That'd make for a rather boring show.) Without even getting past season one -- no, strike that, without even getting past the first story arc! -- the lack of proper scale must have driven you nuts!

After all, on one end of scale not making sense, robots made from jets should in no way be the same size as robots made from cars. The Seekers should be huge! And on the other end, Megatron and Soundwave should be really, really tiny, and Soundwave's minions and the Reflector bots be even tinier!

Well, i enjoy G1 for what it is; a really, really silly cartoon with some good voice acting and hilariously iffy animation.

In seriousness, whilst generally I tend to accept scsle in Transformers for what it is (horrendously broken) the scale has always bothered me. For example, I have a sort of "code" regarding size classes I'll buy figures in:

Cars and such: deluxe.
Jets/aircraft/helicopters: voyager.

I prefer to use that "guide" to dictate what toys I buy (although if a toy looks cool enough I'll ignore my scale guide and get it anyway). Unfortunately, due to scale somehow getting worse in recent years (especially with the abolition of the Ultra scale and the scarceness of good Voyagers) I've had to largely abandon my scale guide and just resign myself to the fact that HasTak are too lazy to try and make the scale work, and Third Parties are beholden to the whims of fans who care more about accuracy to a kinda crappy 80s cartoon than any sense of realism).

Personally I think the movies handled scale the best, almost completely avoiding any issues with it- Starscream being quite wide and avian to avoid being too tall and Prime being a huge oongnose truck for example were particularly clever ways of maintaining "cartoon" scale without having to completely sacrifice sensible scale.

Myself, I think G1 is hugely overrated, and holding ourselves to its unbelievably retarded sense of scale when we have the ability to make the toys scale a lot better just because "GEEWUN did it!" is just stupid. Just because G1 did it doesn't mean we should keep doing it.


TL,DR: G1 isn't as good as everybody makes out, and the fiction/toys should be made according to modern common sense/scale/design rather than doing it blatantly wrong because G1 did it that way.

With new characters, sure. Fine. I agree that it is nice when scale makes sense. But the figures you specifically complained about were ones that were established in G1, hence why the scale (or crazy lack thereof) from G1 still has relevance with those specific characters.

Motormaster is a truck. To me, he is a truck with a trailer who transforms all (or mostly) as one. Obviously, based on the Motormaster Hasbro is producing next year, you win this round. But at least he's still a truck.

Blast Off should not be a space shuttle anymore? Why not? Just because he has to scale with his fellow limb-bots? If this is the case, then I dare say most combiners with members who form realistic vehicles have issues. I think probably the Stunticons and the Arielbots are about the only ones who make internal sense scale wise. (In the Protectobots, for example, how is a motorcycle the same size as an ambulance?)

And what is wrong with Broadside? Okay, I suppose it is a little weird that theoretically one of his alt modes should be able to land on his other alt mode... But why should that mean he must forfeit his right to exist at all?

Mind you, I've gotten over the occasional change in alt mode. I've come to accept Perceptor as a scientific exploration vehicle. (At least he is still sciency!) But when a character does get a new figure that uses his original alt mode, I think usually the majority of the fandom sees that as a good thing.

As for your wanting cars to be Deluxe Class and jets to be Voyager class, when has Hasbro in general ever followed such a thing? Or are you talking about third parties giving you the size you want? Because when I look at my collection, the majority of my figures, be they cars, jets, tanks, space shuttles, etc., are all Deluxe Class.

Size class has never been based on, "What size would make sense for this vehicle?" It is based on, "What slots do we have to fill in the toy line, and what characters do we feel will sell well?" And as for who gets to be what class, it is usually, "What characters do we think we can get away with selling for a bit more money?" closely followed by, "What repaints can we get out of the figures we've already done?"

The only times there has been any attempt to make any sense out of vehicle mode scale have been the Binaltech / Alternaters toy lines, or with more recent Autobot Masterpiece figures. Outside of those, scale is entirely up to the whims of the toy designers.

Eh, I dunno. With things like Blast Off...seriously, scale aside, WTF is a space shuttle doing on a team of military vehicles?

Anyway, the thing with the G1 stuff is that I personally got more attached to some of the concepts more than how they were actually executed in the cartoon. Case in point, the idea of the Constructicons (whose scale actually kinda works if you cherrypick certain models of vehicle or make models up with proper "detail scaling"- wheels, cockpits etc) is awesome. In the cartoon, though, even as a kid I thought Devastator was a blocky mess. That's why I like Hercules- he stays faithful to the original concept and overall look without inheriting any of the crap bits (like the fact that the cartoon model appeared to be made from paper and contains almost no recognizable parts of his components). Likewise, Megatron and Soundwave were awesome...but I always thought the idea of them turning from a huge robot into a tiny pistol/tape player was really, really stupid. With all these characters, I want to see them and their designs updated, staying true to their characters/concepts but redoing the designs to work better, including by changing alt modes. Now I will admit that I am a "Transformer Progressive" in that regard- I love seeing things done differently and old characters and names having entirely new spins put on them.

Also, when I was a kid, the toys that were in the stores were the tail ene of the RID line and the Unicron Trilogy. Hence I grew up with an Optimus Prime who turned into a fire engine and a Megatron who turned into...well, everything (I did watch the G1 cartoon on video though, which left me totally confused at the characters on the show being unrelated to the characters on shelves).

Using this particular example (the Notormaster)...I never liked his design. The limbbots all look cool, but Motormaster just looks silly. His head is a box, and his feet being halves of a truck is just weird (doesn't help that as an Aspergers sufferer I'm prone to obsessing over pointless details, like "hey, shouldn't that guy's feet be as big as Prime's whole body?"). I do like the FP design, with the splitting trailer and improved truck-foot-to-leg ratio, and l think the upcoming HasTak design makes more sense. I just don't dig the G1 design. I like the idea, but not the execution.

As for the "Cars should be deluxes, aircraft should be voyagers" thing, that's the result of my collection. Almost all the car formers I own are deluxes, and my first ever jet former- Armada Starscream- is (roughly) a voyager. I got it into my head that as such, all the other jets should be voyagers too, and thanks to OCD...well...It helps that at the time, most of the jets available were voyagers, and also that a voyager aircraft looks relatively to scale next to a deluxe car. I would prefer it if HasTak and 3P companies follower that ethos, as it's perfectly feasible, makes sense, looks good and the size difference isn't so great that toy interaction becomes a problem. But then, that is my inner autist/vehicle nerd speaking.

(Also, my sanity is questionable- I enjoy transforming RID Side Burn after all).

Here's where I am in regards to scale:

I care that all the cars are roughly the same size. I dislike Bumblebee and the rest being so tiny in vehicle mode. Ditto the Stunticons. Really, all the cars should be deluxes. It follows that all trucks be voyagers. That seems about right to me. So this is why Motormaster being a tiny truck bugs me.

It bugs me because I see cars and trucks around all the time. If I were a big plane nut plane sizes would probably bug me too, but I'm not so they don't. Ditto space shuttles and anything else you got. I just can't suspend my disbelief enough to really make it work.

Autobot Genocide wrote:

Think BF Motormaster looks like what Clonedroid teased they were stealing and saying they were going to recreate it better.

Tsutsukakushi wrote:

Autobot Genocide wrote:

Think BF Motormaster looks like what Clonedroid teased they were stealing and saying the were going to recreate better.

Such a shame it's going to be MP scale. I love how they got the feet very cartoon accurate. But that's just money saved for that G2 Menasor.

I'm gonna wait till they slap some colour on this .

Boldforms - Wildfire .

...ew.

think these pics make this look like a cheap low quality undersculpted shapeways-3rd party hybrid set of combiner team members.

That Breakdown really needs to grow on me some. But I do like how Motormaster is shaping up.

Meh.. Just about as impressed with Wildfire as i was with hasbro CW Breakdown

I'm actually liking their not-Breakdown more than their Notormaster. The greebles look good on him, and I like the overall shape.

I'll probably go with FP or HasTak for my Menasor (if I get one) though.

Delta Magnus wrote:I'm actually liking their not-Breakdown more than their Notormaster. The greebles look good on him, and I like the overall shape.

I'll probably go with FP or HasTak for my Menasor (if I get one) though.

I'm patiently waiting for Warbotron Menasor myself . I sold my FP Menasor and Hasbro's isn't even touching the sides on what i need these days .

Oy - not liking the robot modes of these at all. FP's M3/Intimidator totally outclasses Bold Form's attempt, IMO.

Boldforms Breakdown .

that gun looks like it rescaled directly from the G1 figure.

overall, unimpressed and uninterested. to show up in the middle of the game with an inferior product, is just poor business.

I'm not that impressed either, but it could be an early prototype or test shot.

So far, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt.

Still think these look terrible. Guessing they might be some type of Shape ways low sculpting, cheap thin plastic ordeal.