The Energon Pub

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:02 pm

SW's SilverHammer wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:Why is this year's theme so hard to understand? It is what it was said to be back when it was first announced. Five misfit criminals from different walks of life (and worlds) brought together by common purpose.

Emphasis on the "misfit" part.

It's the toys themselves that don't follow a single pattern, there's nothing that really binds them together when it comes to deco and characters, or origins thereof.
That's what makes them misfits.

The problem is there's no direction.

"Five unrelated individuals who would typically have no connection to each other being brought together" pretty clearly seems to be the intended direction they were going for.

by **gothsaurus** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:06 pm

They don't match... so you make the THEME that they don't match. Problem solved!

But still, I AM loving a lot of these toys this year. Not knocking the theme or toys, just wondering if they could be grouped differently.

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:08 pm

gothsaurus wrote:They don't match... so you make the THEME that they don't match. Problem solved!

News Credits: 119 · by **megatronus** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:36 pm

Sabr, just because the Club Fiction somehow finds a way to shoehorn these guys together, doesn't mean it's intuitive or makes sense beyond that.

You have a tendency to blindly defend the Club's choices. Which is fine, I guess... but don't treat questions as if they're coming out of nowhere or are in no way reasonable based on the reality on the ground.

gothsaurus wrote:They don't match... so you make the THEME that they don't match. Problem solved!

Exactly this. Exactly this.

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:39 pm

It's just, they told us that the theme was going to be "Misfit Criminals" from the get-go, so what's baffling to me is that people still don't get it when the answer was already given a long time ago.

by **gothsaurus** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:55 pm

It's not that I don't GET IT... it's just that a lot can be done to ensure the toys DISPLAY well together... and logically sit-well in your mind as a set. Having a beast, shattered glass, movie character, Pretender and Duocon mixed comes across weird to many people — when we know some could be in the bagged sets.

Again, it's the GROUPING that is weird... not including the characters in the 2015 story or selection. I'm loving them this year, especially if we get Skids and SureShot Prime in the batch.

SO I get that they are in a story together and that's good-enough-for-you... but I am an artist, so visuals have a lot more clout to me than some other people (like the programmers I work with.) I do think the color schemes will look nice together this year. All that blue and gray with a touch of orange is a good color palette.

After we see the rest of the figures, it may turn out to be the best choice to put these five in a box. We will see.

News Credits: 4 · by **King Kuuga** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:55 pm

The entire point of the set is that they have nothing in common. It's not complicated.

News Credits: 119 · by **megatronus** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:57 pm

Sabrblade wrote:It's just, they told us that the theme was going to be "Misfit Criminals" from the get-go, so what's baffling to me is that people still don't get it when the answer was already given a long time ago.

Misfit criminals is one thing. You can have a cohesive group of misfits.

Mis-matching misfit criminals is another thing entirely. Do we need 5 misfits from 5 separate universes? Even from a character's given universe, their representation can be jarring (a la SG Stepper) or confusing (a la DOTM Megatron). Together as a group it's even harder to wrap your head around. Sure, the comic will explain it, but that fiction will be necessarily contrived. So it just doesn't sit right.

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Thu May 14, 2015 3:03 pm

Ever since Fun Pub started doing themes for BotCon sets, the themes have virtually always been rooted in whatever the story was to be in the convention comic.

Can anyone honestly tell what the 2005 "Descent Into Evil" theme was by looking at that year's toys without looking at that year's comic?

It's been like this since the beginning.

by **gothsaurus** » Thu May 14, 2015 3:16 pm

Seriously. I'm just talking about choosing a different five toys out of the 20 that will be at the con to put in the box... because they would look better together.

Same story, different mix.

Look better.

How the toys look.

Things matching.

When you put that monkey, car, rat, truck and helicopter on a shelf and try to tell your girlfriend that they ALLLLL "go together", you'll see what I'm talking about.

Website · by **MartianSpyGirl1996** » Thu May 14, 2015 5:59 pm

It's a mess. Just because they acknowledge it's a mess doesn't mean it's clean... it's still a **** mess.

gothsaurus wrote:(Of course, I'm guessing some of these weird box sets may be dictated by which five toys they can actually FIT in the box. (???)) I'll try to cut them a little slack.

They build the box around the figures. You can see a difference between the '05 and '09 boxsets.

News Credits: 2 · by **Hero Alpha** » Fri May 15, 2015 12:17 pm

As mismatched/matched badly as some people are claiming this set to be, I still love that DoTM Megatron. Again if anyone wants to sell theirs for a decent price I'm down.

by **gothsaurus** » Fri May 15, 2015 12:53 pm

Yeah, Moonshot, I agree. I'm loving just about everything revealed so far. The Megatron grew on me pretty quickly.

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Sun May 17, 2015 7:30 pm

The following idea was just proposed elsewhere.

Remember the redeco of Chop Shop we were shown before that was confirmed to be a BotCon 2015 non-boxed set figure?

Though we guessed Vice Grip, with the appearance of the black Diaclone based Skids redeco, what if the Chop Shop redeco is instead meant to be a Diaclone driver figure? Specifically one of the Waruder Insecter Robo drivers?

News Credits: 293 · by **shajaki** » Sun May 17, 2015 7:40 pm

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Tue May 19, 2015 3:40 pm

Another batch of potential BotCon exclusives - http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.74.r9RYCh&id=45477430507

The leftmost one is based on Fox Kids Transmetal Waspinator (thus making him a dead ringer for Shattered Glass Waspinator).

The second-left one is based on the unreleased Universe (2003) "Halloween Horrorcon Value Pack" Waspinator.

The two on the right, however, have decos that aren't as obvious.

News Credits: 3 · by **prjkt** » Tue May 19, 2015 3:48 pm

purple one looks cool, others a little too much for me imo... sure these aren't KOs? Though the timing does suggest otherwise.

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Tue May 19, 2015 3:58 pm

prjkt wrote:purple one looks cool, others a little too much for me imo... sure these aren't KOs? Though the timing does suggest otherwise.

No one's sure of anything, as there's no confirmation either way.

MyFigureCollection.net collection · by **Emerje** » Tue May 19, 2015 3:59 pm

The one on the right almost reminds me of Beast Wars dragonfly Jetstorm, but the colors are only a partial match. The white one shares its palette with BC99's Windrazor, but that's got to be a weird coincidence.

Emerje

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Tue May 19, 2015 4:37 pm

Remember the theory I brought up on here about the blue Chop Shop being a Diaclone Waruder pilot? Well, the same people who came up with that theory have further theorized that these Waspinators might all be Waruder mechs for the pilots, with the black paint on each of their backs supposedly representing cockpits.

The only counter I can see to this suggestion is that the Diaclone line didn't have any Waruder mech toys in any of these decos, but it's still possible that these could be a new kind of Waruder mech.

EDIT: Now the theory includes the suggestion of the red Waspy being based on this - http://www.robot-japan.com/gallery/item/warudaros-3.html

News Credits: 456 · by **Sabrblade** » Tue May 19, 2015 5:25 pm

Also, a closer look at the four reveals that they're missing their robot mode heads (see the empty cavity behind each's beast mode head).

News Credits: 25 · by **SW's SilverHammer** » Tue May 19, 2015 5:32 pm

News Credits: 4838 · by **william-james88** » Tue May 19, 2015 5:47 pm

Fellow Seibertronian superstar Sabreblade has found this very odd listing on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping site. The listing is said to be for "IDW Transformers Classics Bumblebee Warriors Botcon2015 4 color" and features four different redecos of Generations Waspinator. The title does hint that these may be planned in conjunction to Botcon 2015, possibly as troop building toys. After all, we know a Waspinator mold (albeit not this one) is appearing in the latest Botcon comic page.

Sabrblade had the following to say about these possible releases:

The leftmost one is based on Fox Kids Transmetal Waspinator (thus making him a dead ringer for Shattered Glass Waspinator).

The second-left one is based on the unreleased Universe (2003) "Halloween Horrorcon Value Pack" Waspinator.

The two on the right, however, have decos that aren't as obvious.

these Waspinators might all be Waruder mechs for the pilots, with the black paint on each of their backs supposedly representing cockpits.

The only counter I can see to this suggestion is that the Diaclone line didn't have any Waruder mech toys in any of these decos, but it's still possible that these could be a new kind of Waruder mech.

EDIT: Now the theory includes the suggestion of the red Waspy being based on this - http://www.robot-japan.com/gallery/item/warudaros-3.html