The Energon Pub

An article was recently posted on limitlessiq, in chinese, Spotlighting Takara Designer Daxi Yu Mi. He is one of the younger Takara designers, born in 84, which makes him working in Takara's Transformers brand quite poetic.

The article is more about his past, where we learn that he comes from Osaka and went to school to study mechanical designs for cars. However, he ended up designing toys since he felt there was more personal creativity with toy designs.

The article reiterates Takara's involvement in the Transformers toy development. It claims that the designer is shown the final form of both the robot and the vehicle and they must then come up with the conversion steps, parts design, material, and modeling. It is also within this stage that Takara comes up with the cost of a product which is related to all the previously mentioned factors.

The article ends on a touching note that what draws Daxi Yu Mi to this brand is how it affects people. He knows his designs will become someone's memory of a toy they picked up with whatever means they had, and thus he wants all these memories to be happy ones.

I actually wrote/gave a TED Talk on the educational value of Transformers toys, so hearing one of the lead designers say stuff like that is amazing!

His name probably is Kuramochi Onishi, if translated directly from Japanese to English.

Crystiallic wrote:His name probably is Kuramochi Onishi, if translated directly from Japanese to English.

Yeah I had trouble figuring that part out, since it was an english translation of a chinese translation of a japanese name.

Grimlocktimus wrote:I actually wrote/gave a TED Talk on the educational value of Transformers toys, so hearing one of the lead designers say stuff like that is amazing!

Thats awesome! I truly believe in the bottom of my heart that Transformers toys are the verybest action figures a kid could play with in terms of what they can get out of it (3D mapping, space orientation, along with the fact that you get at least 2 toys for the price of one).

I am pretty sure the name used for the designer is NOT correct. I have never seen a Japanese name like that before. Seibertron might want to update the news page.

Also, what's withb the red arms on that Optimus Prime toy? I thought the toy had grey arms?

primalxconvoy wrote:I am pretty sure the name used for the designer is NOT correct. I have never seen a Japanese name like that before. Seibertron might want to update the news page.

Also, what's withb the red arms on that Optimus Prime toy? I thought the toy had grey arms?

There are 2 versions of that Optimus. It took a while to find his real name and I was at the hospital for the past few days so I couldnt do the research and update it. He's not even in TF wiki's page on the TF brand team at takara http://tfwiki.net/wiki/TakaraTomy
But I did further digging when I finally could and his name is Yuya Onishi so I will update now. And technically his name is correct... if this article was written in pinyin

Thanks for the update! Hasbro should have saved money on the red paint and given his legs working knees...

primalxconvoy wrote:Thanks for the update! Hasbro should have saved money on the red paint and given his legs working knees...

I am pretty sure one is more expensive than the other Also, the toy with red arms came out first, the grey arms came out mroe recently.