The Energon Pub

BotCon has tweeted a concept sketch for the BotCon 2012 convention exclusive Metalhawk. We got a teaser earlier this evening when BotCon 2012 registration went live and all six figures where more or less revealed. Metalhawk is a repaint of Generations Thunderwing with a new head sculpt. As you can see they are going for his Pretender shell look in robot mode. We will have to wait until next week for Metalhawk's full figure reveal, but for now this sketch gives us a good idea of what the new head sculpt will look like.

OK


Now how long until the 3rd parties make a robotic head for him.

well. If their going to make it look EXACTLY like that, I hope never....

I like it. Metalhawk is one of the few figures I actually want out of this set and to see that they're doing him as a full Pretender is a welcome sight. I just hope it turns out well. They normally just do robots.

Not too sure how I feel about this, I suppose I'll know for sure upon seeing the full figure.

I'd like it if it was a removable helmet/face. I dunno. Every other Pretender homage has integrated the face/shell in a robotic way, this just looks like a Centurion. Bonus points for the '80s kids who remember those.

I'd rather have the Cyclonus mold, and the Silverbolt mold for Overlord. I still want the set, but that's my opinion right now.

Emperor Galvatron wrote:Bonus points for the '80s kids who remember those.

POWER X-TREME!

zodconvoy wrote:

Emperor Galvatron wrote:Bonus points for the '80s kids who remember those.

POWER X-TREME!

Bravo sir. Bravo.

Sucks.

It is not a shell so it should not have the shells human face. This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

Rated X wrote: This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

Truer Words have never been spoken!

BeastProwl wrote:

Rated X wrote: This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

Truer Words have never been spoken!

Every other Pretender that has had an update favored the shell. Every single one. Bludgeon, Skullgrin, Thunderwing, Black Shadow. The only reason why none of them have had human faces is because they were all Decepticons/Destrons. I for one welcome our new human overlords.

I'll get it because I like the character, but this toy should NOT be called "Metalhawk", as this is the Pretender shell, whose name in this form was simply "Hawk". The inner robot went by the name "Metalhawk".

Emperor Galvatron wrote:I'd rather have the Cyclonus mold, and the Silverbolt mold for Overlord.

This!

Rated X wrote:Sucks.

It is not a shell so it should not have the shells human face. This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

zodconvoy wrote:

BeastProwl wrote:

Rated X wrote: This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

Truer Words have never been spoken!

Every other Pretender that has had an update favored the shell. Every single one. Bludgeon, Skullgrin, Thunderwing, Black Shadow. The only reason why none of them have had human faces is because they were all Decepticons/Destrons.

This as well.

Maybe they'll release his inner robot from Cyclonus as a bagged figure either at BotCon 2012 or 2013. Or even make it a Club-Exclusive in 2013. Who knows? I just want to see the thing before I decide how I feel about it.

I love the idea behind this one and really like the effort.

On your mark! Get SET ! Terrible. Haha. Well, maybe not terrible , just not as good as I was counting on. I was hoping this was the savior of the box set.

pssssst hey third parties.....

why doesn't someone make a replacement for that little drone piece that transforms into the inner robot...and they could do repaints for the normal hasbro products too.

who would buy that? (raises hands).

I think it is a good effort. They are giving us the robot mode as the shell and the alt mode for the inner robot mode. Gonna be real tough to make it exact with only on piece to work with when Pretenders are comprised of two pieces.

Pretenders never were the favored gimmick of Transformers, but after reading the comics use of them I was sold on them, they are a pretty neat idea, just they haven't perfected the idea in toy form.

I just wish they had incorporated the gold chrome somewhere on the toy, maybe on the drone.

I like it, we can always use more classics pretenders... too bad I'm not going to Botcon

A part of me thinks it's kinda neat since it's such an oddball way to do a TF. I do like my TFs to be transformable ROBOTS; I wouldn't want a whole lineup of "humanformers", but it makes a kind of sense with Metal Hawk. I guess the fiction will pretend he has some sort of inner robot that goes with the toy we're seeing.

The effort might have gone over better if the "drone" turned into a tiny robot you could put into the mold. Dotto on the original Thunderwing. But it's such a small thing ... I don't know if it could be turned into any kind of passable robot.

Sabrblade wrote:I'll get it because I like the character, but this toy should NOT be called "Metalhawk", as this is the Pretender shell, whose name in this form was simply "Hawk". The inner robot went by the name "Metalhawk".

Emperor Galvatron wrote:I'd rather have the Cyclonus mold, and the Silverbolt mold for Overlord.

This!

Rated X wrote:Sucks.

It is not a shell so it should not have the shells human face. This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

zodconvoy wrote:

BeastProwl wrote:

Rated X wrote: This is supposed to be Botcon, not Dollcon.

Truer Words have never been spoken!

Every other Pretender that has had an update favored the shell. Every single one. Bludgeon, Skullgrin, Thunderwing, Black Shadow. The only reason why none of them have had human faces is because they were all Decepticons/Destrons.

This as well.

My point is the concept just won’t receive the same love as the Decepticon pretenders. I am an 80’s child so I can vouch for this. I had Skullgrin and Bugly as a kid. The Decepticon pretenders sold while the Autobot pretenders were shelf warmers. No kid wanted to own an oversized human doll.

Now back to 2012. Thanks to Michael Bay, a robot can have any type of weird alien, bug, skull, or monster face and still pass as a robot. But a human face? It’s as stupid a concept now as it was 25 years ago. Scale wise, the robot inside the shell would have to be as small as a child, while the Decepticon pretenders could be any size since there is no scale for monsters. Unless you would be “fooled” by a 20 foot tall human walking down the block. I never saw the 80's japanese cartoon, so I dont know if the humans played a different role than as the actual figures which portrayed them as huge shells. But judging from these photos posted, even a deluxe is way out of scale with other classics figures. Maybe if he were legends size.

I understand the homage factor, but the cool factor just isn’t there.

phase wrote:Maybe they'll release his inner robot from Cyclonus as a bagged figure either at BotCon 2012 or 2013. Or even make it a Club-Exclusive in 2013. Who knows? I just want to see the thing before I decide how I feel about it.

It's not among the rumored line up for Botcon 2012 (which has all come true thus far).

Speaking of which, I can't find that rumored line up anymore. Where did it go?! I need it for something!

Rated X wrote:My point is the concept just won’t receive the same love as the Decepticon pretenders. I am an 80’s child so I can vouch for this. I had Skullgrin and Bugly as a kid. The Decepticon pretenders sold while the Autobot pretenders were shelf warmers.

What about Stranglehold? How well did he sell?

Rated X wrote:Now back to 2012. Thanks to Michael Bay, a robot can have any type of weird alien, bug, skull, or monster face and still pass as a robot. But a human face? It’s as stupid a concept now as it was 25 years ago. Scale wise, the robot inside the shell would have to be as small as a child, while the Decepticon pretenders could be any size since there is no scale for monsters.

[/quote]Why a child? In both the American and Japanese fiction, the Autobot Pretenders (and Stranglehold) all resembled adult males.

Rated X wrote:Unless you would be “fooled” by a 20 foot tall human walking down the block.

In Marvel G1, the giant sized human shells were used to fool the Decepticon Pretenders (rather than Earth humans) into think that they were giant humans so as to weird them out. They were also used to fool other giant alien lifeforms into thinking they were humans, and even visited a planet that was ruled by human female warriors of the same size as the Autobot Pretenders.

Though, Stranglehold, being a Decepticon, was an exception to this. He just used his Pretender shell for its added power, rather than for any disguising purposes (like any Decepticon Pretender did).

I don't know of what the other U.S. fiction did of with the Pretenders, though.

Rated X wrote:I never saw the 80's japanese cartoon, so I dont know if the humans played a different role than as the actual figures that portrayed them as huge shells. But judging from these photos posted, even a deluxe is way out of scale with other classics figures. Maybe if he were legends size.

In the Japanese cartoon, the human Pretender shells worked on a different level. Instead of a robot hiding with an organic casing, the robot actually shrunk down and physically changed on a molecular level into a human form. This was done as more than a mere disguise but as a means to actually integrate into human society (since these four Autobots were so fascinated by humanity when they first arrived on Earth during the Neolithic era). so, in this series, the Pretender shell was smaller than the actual robot form (though, one issue of the Japanese comic related to this series showed that the Pretender shell could grow in size to be at the height of robot mode, but this didn't happen on screen in the cartoon itself).

Though, the Decepticon Pretenders, being monsters, didn't shrink down completely to human size, but rather, just a little above human size. They were still smaller than their robot modes, but not as small as a human.

Rated X wrote:My point is the concept just won’t receive the same love as the Decepticon pretenders. I am an 80’s child so I can vouch for this. I had Skullgrin and Bugly as a kid. The Decepticon pretenders sold while the Autobot pretenders were shelf warmers. No kid wanted to own an oversized human doll.

Now back to 2012. Thanks to Michael Bay, a robot can have any type of weird alien, bug, skull, or monster face and still pass as a robot. But a human face? It’s as stupid a concept now as it was 25 years ago. Scale wise, the robot inside the shell would have to be as small as a child, while the Decepticon pretenders could be any size since there is no scale for monsters. Unless you would be “fooled” by a 20 foot tall human walking down the block. I never saw the 80's japanese cartoon, so I dont know if the humans played a different role than as the actual figures which portrayed them as huge shells. But judging from these photos posted, even a deluxe is way out of scale with other classics figures. Maybe if he were legends size.

I understand the homage factor, but the cool factor just isn’t there.

You're forgetting one key thing that has been a major part of Transformers since day one: mass shifting. The Pretender robots and shells both could grow and shrink from Cybertronian size to human size. I am an "80's child" myself (as are the vast majority of posters on this board I find) and Pretenders did quite well in Philadelphia when I was a kid. Hell, more kids I knew wanted to Autobot Pretenders because you could pretend it was you as an Autobot. I had a friend named Bernard who took a permanent marker to his Classics Pretender Jazz's shell making it in black face so it would look like him. I played as Landmine when an Autobot but I liked Skullgrin better because of the comic "Monstercon from Mars!" from the Marvel run. Even the Pretender Monsters sold well here. So well that I couldn't finish my Monstructor as a kid because they were all sold out before I could get the last 3 of them with my allowance.

And every other line before the Bay movies had "weird alien, bug, skull, or monster" faces or heads. Unless you know someone with no mouth whose ears glow blue every time they talk ala Wheeljack for a quick example.

Interesting how the Japanese cartoon made the concept work. I was never a comic reader but I do have an issue with Skulgrin fighting against some female super hero called “circuit breaker”. In this comic, Skullgrin appears to be large the size of most other Transformers. How were the autobot pretenders portrayed by marvel comics compared to non pretenders ?

I cant speak for Philly, but in Miami when Pretenders came out this was the scenario:

By 1988, Transformers sales had decreased in Miami. The American cartoon had ended, young fans were growing up, Nintendo was the toy of choice, and concepts that were considered “cool” to Japanese kids were considered lame by American kids. These concepts included powermasters, micromasters, and of course, pretenders.

I just looked at the G1 Metalhawk head again - YUCK ! SO glad they went with the Pretender shell head.