The Energon Pub

these guys are looking pretty damn awesome right now, i gotta ask; which on do you guys/gals like better, tfc's or maketoys version?

right now im going for tfc toys

this thing keeps looking better and better. I cant wait to see it combined on my shelf. I got a shipping email from Robot Kingdom yesterday and the only thing I had on preorder was Heavy Labor. Part 2 of Hercules is on his way

TheTigerKing84 wrote:Its Looking sweeter all time. A bit pricy but awesome. Want to see the combined mode articulation. Got a feel for the arms. Guessing legs can rotate and bend at knee.

I've looked at this carefully since i first saw the legs combined and there isn't one shot of the kness bent at all, also there appears to be no point for kne articulation. The knees are part of the 2 connected and they make up the feet right up to part of the thighsd, not longhaul makes the top of the thighs and connects with pegs if I remember. I also looked at the 2 legs and they do have a knee section but all released pics don't show any indication of any built in knee joints. This doesn't mean they aren't there, but since they haven't posed it in any shots with any knee articulation it either doesn't exist or is very unstable. This also seems the case with the other 3rd party devastator. Although I can't imagine Devastator in poses with knees playing a big part in his positioning, it's nice to know it's there if needed an at that price and with todays standards it's expected.

Trikeboy wrote:this thing keeps looking better and better. I cant wait to see it combined on my shelf. I got a shipping email from Robot Kingdom yesterday and the only thing I had on preorder was Heavy Labor. Part 2 of Hercules is on his way

you lucky dog! hopefully bbts gets theirs soon so i can start counting the days when its on transit to my house!

--B-- wrote:I couldn't figure out why I didn't like this for the longest time, but I think it just looks too cartoony for me, plus I am not a fan of the head.

A toy of a cartoon figure looks too cartoony for you?

DTR69 wrote:Although I can't imagine Devastator in poses with knees playing a big part in his positioning, it's nice to know it's there if needed an at that price and with todays standards it's expected.

Knees always play a part in good posing, but thanks for the insight. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

This thing is huge

Mkall wrote:

Dr. Heavy B wrote:WHY CAN'T HASBRO DO THIS. there combiners are five guys, made from three molds, and they don't even have elbows

It's not really fair to compare something like this to something Hasbro made almost 5 years ago with a much more limited budget than they do now.

I think if Hasbro were to get back in on the proper gestalt train, we'd all be impressed.

I really can't give Hasbro a pass on this anymore. I have a hard time believing that they have a more limited budget than these guys, it just doesn't make sense. I remember sitting at Botcon 2007 when they told us that the gestalts were just too complicated for their designers to do in their time frame. I'm gonna have to call bull on them. The transformations for Hercules are not all that complicated, but they are very effective. So Hasbro is telling me that they're paid designers can't do what a couple of guys in China who are basically doing what amounts to guerilla warfare with toys are doing.

Time to step it up boys.

Mykltron wrote:

--B-- wrote:I couldn't figure out why I didn't like this for the longest time, but I think it just looks too cartoony for me, plus I am not a fan of the head.

A toy of a cartoon figure looks too cartoony for you?

It's called aesthetics & makes sense. That's why the MT one will make my classics shelf and this version will be alone. I agree that he just doesn't quite fit for me.

Geekee1 wrote:

Mkall wrote:

Dr. Heavy B wrote:WHY CAN'T HASBRO DO THIS. there combiners are five guys, made from three molds, and they don't even have elbows

It's not really fair to compare something like this to something Hasbro made almost 5 years ago with a much more limited budget than they do now.

I think if Hasbro were to get back in on the proper gestalt train, we'd all be impressed.

I really can't give Hasbro a pass on this anymore. I have a hard time believing that they have a more limited budget than these guys, it just doesn't make sense. I remember sitting at Botcon 2007 when they told us that the gestalts were just too complicated for their designers to do in their time frame. I'm gonna have to call bull on them. The transformations for Hercules are not all that complicated, but they are very effective. So Hasbro is telling me that they're paid designers can't do what a couple of guys in China who are basically doing what amounts to guerilla warfare with toys are doing.

Time to step it up boys.

i totally agree with you geekee. it seems like hasbro is more concerned with dishing out quantity crap over quality(and innovative) toys. never mind that they are skimping out on the paint job(or lack there of).

i dont know if anybody has the ROTF devastator.....but that toy sucks! it seems like they rushed it. the individual forms dont have a robot mode. it has BAD qc all over. the guy cant even stand because his joints are so loose!

man....i cant wait to get hercules so he can put rotf devy out of its misery....im telling you now...its gonna be a lopsided fight

Regarding the knee articulation issue: I've seen two pictures of Structor/Scrapper that could provide evidence for such articulation. A Google image search for "TFC Toys Structor" turns up an image of a mostly green prototype connected to a Heavylabor, showing what appears to be a slight knee bend. I've also seen a grey prototype rear shot of the vehicle mode where the connector port looks to be designed similar to Munitioner's. If a rear shot of the combined form ever shows up, that'll probably go far in dispelling the mystery.

I'm hoping he does have knee articulation. I can easily believe that Hercules won't be very stable in bent-knee poses, but I'd still like the articulation to exist.

EDIT: Also, close-up shots of Mad Blender's head appear to show a hinged combiner port behind it.

Oh, and on another topic, I'll put a rough estimate at the combined figure's height at 15 in. based on the vehicle mode Exgraver in front of Hercules. I was actually hoping it'd be a bit shorter, like 12-13in., but I still like the look of this one over the Maketoys version.

Hopefully, Heavy Labor will ship out next week.

009* wrote:Hopefully, Heavy Labor will ship out next week.

Hope so I want my not Longhaul

Just got my shipping notice from Robotkingdom, I'm a week away from some Heavy Labor goodness!

This looks **** awesome pardon my French.

The only concern i have is stability, i.e. will everything stay together.

The only thing they can improve is to replace the damn purple and red with black guns which would look more realistic IMO.

DMSL wrote:This looks **** awesome pardon my French.

The only concern i have is stability, i.e. will everything stay together.

The only thing they can improve is to replace the damn purple and red with black guns which would look more realistic IMO.

don't worry they have tight ratchet joints so it should stay together

Geekee1 wrote:

Mkall wrote:

Dr. Heavy B wrote:WHY CAN'T HASBRO DO THIS. there combiners are five guys, made from three molds, and they don't even have elbows

It's not really fair to compare something like this to something Hasbro made almost 5 years ago with a much more limited budget than they do now.

I think if Hasbro were to get back in on the proper gestalt train, we'd all be impressed.

I really can't give Hasbro a pass on this anymore. I have a hard time believing that they have a more limited budget than these guys, it just doesn't make sense. I remember sitting at Botcon 2007 when they told us that the gestalts were just too complicated for their designers to do in their time frame. I'm gonna have to call bull on them. The transformations for Hercules are not all that complicated, but they are very effective. So Hasbro is telling me that they're paid designers can't do what a couple of guys in China who are basically doing what amounts to guerilla warfare with toys are doing.

Time to step it up boys.

I can't agree with that for several reasons:
1) Figure Size - Energon had scout-sized limbs and a deluxe core. These guys are making a combiner out of deluxe (in the case of Maketoys) and pseudo-voyager (in the case of TFC) figures. That's a lot of extra mass to play with
2) Workload and Deadlines - The wonderful thing about 3rd party figs is that we don't hold them to much of a release schedule, and for the most part they do a project at a time. I can't say for certain how it's done at Hasbro, but I suspect there's multiple projects going on at once with some fairly concrete deadlines that must be met. They are, afterall a business.
3) Budget - I have no concrete figures to back me up, but Hasbro said back at '07 that they could either make 2 combiners with 10 molds, or 3 combiners out of 9 molds. With all the revenue pouring in from the movies, I can only suspect and theorize that if the same concept were presented today, there'd be more money to throw at things like combiners.
4) Kibble (not the member) - I can understand why Hasbro wanted to keep accessories to a minimum, and make them large. For one, it fit the theme of Energon to have large colourful weapons. The other reason is that it would be less easy for kids to lose them. TFC's Herc seems to be doing a good job in this department, but FansProject is not, and only time will tell on Maketoys. I remember losing a fist and a footplate from my G2 bruticus when I was younger; it made me not want to use the combiner mode anymore.
5) Cost to purchase - Parents are far more likely to get one big toy and 4 smaller toys than 5 big toys. Hasbro is smart enough to realise this.

Hasbtro has come up with some pretty good combiners in the past. Look even further past Energon and you'll get the RiD series with two of the best combiners ever released: Landfill and Rail Racer. They still stand on my shelf today. I'm sure Hasbro can come up with some wonderful combiner ideas and designs. I'm sure that if they were not concerned with production costs, delivery dates, manpower and profit, we would see something on the scale of Hercules, maybe even better. But because Hasbro is a company and not a group of guys doing this because they want to, we are stuck with what we get.

Mkall wrote:I can't agree with that for several reasons:
1) Figure Size - Energon had scout-sized limbs and a deluxe core. These guys are making a combiner out of deluxe (in the case of Maketoys) and pseudo-voyager (in the case of TFC) figures. That's a lot of extra mass to play with
2) Workload and Deadlines - The wonderful thing about 3rd party figs is that we don't hold them to much of a release schedule, and for the most part they do a project at a time. I can't say for certain how it's done at Hasbro, but I suspect there's multiple projects going on at once with some fairly concrete deadlines that must be met. They are, afterall a business.
3) Budget - I have no concrete figures to back me up, but Hasbro said back at '07 that they could either make 2 combiners with 10 molds, or 3 combiners out of 9 molds. With all the revenue pouring in from the movies, I can only suspect and theorize that if the same concept were presented today, there'd be more money to throw at things like combiners.
4) Kibble (not the member) - I can understand why Hasbro wanted to keep accessories to a minimum, and make them large. For one, it fit the theme of Energon to have large colourful weapons. The other reason is that it would be less easy for kids to lose them. TFC's Herc seems to be doing a good job in this department, but FansProject is not, and only time will tell on Maketoys. I remember losing a fist and a footplate from my G2 bruticus when I was younger; it made me not want to use the combiner mode anymore.
5) Cost to purchase - Parents are far more likely to get one big toy and 4 smaller toys than 5 big toys. Hasbro is smart enough to realise this.

Hasbtro has come up with some pretty good combiners in the past. Look even further past Energon and you'll get the RiD series with two of the best combiners ever released: Landfill and Rail Racer. They still stand on my shelf today. I'm sure Hasbro can come up with some wonderful combiner ideas and designs. I'm sure that if they were not concerned with production costs, delivery dates, manpower and profit, we would see something on the scale of Hercules, maybe even better. But because Hasbro is a company and not a group of guys doing this because they want to, we are stuck with what we get.

I get what you're saying, and I've heard those arguments from Hasbro before, but I just can't buy it anymore. I used to believe them, I really did, but over time they have done 180's on what they said before. But number one I just have a really really hard time believing that a couple of dudes can do better than an international corporation.

It's not Hasbro's lack of action to do something like this, but in my opinion, it's more like they'd rather not risk it?

ROTF Devastator was made with little to no... well yeah, it's lacking. So you might say, why can't Hasbro dish out G1 Devastator? I know the semantics make sense for G1 Dev to be pushed out but I just wouldn't want Hasbro to do it. The quality of plastic being dished out by Hasbro just hasn't been the same since the Cybertron days, and I just wouldn't want their plastic on a figure like this.

Quality control would be a big problem. TFC is taking their sweet sweet time to make sure there are zero, absolutely zero flaws in every Hercules mold produced out of their factory. If they didn't, imagine what would happen once one fan starts crying foul about the figure.. then they'd lose everything. Knowing Hasbro's QC.. or more like lack of, a toy of this size just wouldn't work with them.

Money is also a matter in this. This toy's likely being sold at 4x the price Hasbro would be charging, but TFC/MakeToys can do that simply because of the standard set by previous third party products.

I don't even know what we're arguing about anymore, I've eaten way too many sea salt/vinegar chips that my brain hurts.. but hey, I'm sure Hasbro has the ability to make a combiner like this, they're just never going to do it. If it's taken them 6+ months to dish out Soundwave/Wheeljack and even more for Mirage in their beloved movie-verse, then there's no way in hell they'd invest the engineering and time into a combiner that's based off media that was relevant 20 years ago.

Geekee1 wrote:I get what you're saying, and I've heard those arguments from Hasbro before, but I just can't buy it anymore. I used to believe them, I really did, but over time they have done 180's on what they said before. But number one I just have a really really hard time believing that a couple of dudes can do better than an international corporation.

Let's both just agree that 1) Hasbro hasn't put any real effort into combiners since Energon, and even that was debatable, 2) Hercules is awesome and 3) Ice Cream is a delicious treat. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on the rest until more solid proof is available?

TFC is unhindered by a sane release schedual, safety laws, size classes, tying into a TV show currently on the air, and sane prices. Hasbro has made some pretty remarkable TFs too.

Anyhow, I love what I'm seeing. It's just too bad there's no visor option. I wonder if it's too much to hope that they'll see the desire for a visor and make it as a seperate attachment. If there an e-mail we can contact? Maybe if enough of us request a visor they'll toss it in ...

Mkall wrote:

Geekee1 wrote:I get what you're saying, and I've heard those arguments from Hasbro before, but I just can't buy it anymore. I used to believe them, I really did, but over time they have done 180's on what they said before. But number one I just have a really really hard time believing that a couple of dudes can do better than an international corporation.

Let's both just agree that 1) Hasbro hasn't put any real effort into combiners since Energon, and even that was debatable, 2) Hercules is awesome and 3) Ice Cream is a delicious treat. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on the rest until more solid proof is available?

High five!







Their combiners still blow

Gauntlet101010 wrote:TFC is unhindered by a sane release schedual, safety laws, size classes, tying into a TV show currently on the air, and sane prices. Hasbro has made some pretty remarkable TFs too.

Anyhow, I love what I'm seeing. It's just too bad there's no visor option. I wonder if it's too much to hope that they'll see the desire for a visor and make it as a seperate attachment. If there an e-mail we can contact? Maybe if enough of us request a visor they'll toss it in ...

They have a facebook page where you could comment.

Good to know. I've added my drop to the ocean.

I'm not sure Hasbro obeys a "sane" release schedule. Both Prime and Animated toys appearing AFTER the shows initial run? And there's always at least one toy late in a line that's impossible to find. And they can't blame the retailers because even online vendors only had enough to open preorders for one day and then never again.

Mykltron wrote:

--B-- wrote:I couldn't figure out why I didn't like this for the longest time, but I think it just looks too cartoony for me, plus I am not a fan of the head.

A toy of a cartoon figure looks too cartoony for you?

DTR69 wrote:Although I can't imagine Devastator in poses with knees playing a big part in his positioning, it's nice to know it's there if needed an at that price and with todays standards it's expected.

Knees always play a part in good posing, but thanks for the insight. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

yeah, it's just a little too bright and colorful, and a little too smooth, almost too cohesive. I know it's strange, but that's just how it looks to me. Compare it to FB Bruticus, which looks like 5 seperate things put together.

Geekee1 wrote:

--B-- wrote:I couldn't figure out why I didn't like this for the longest time, but I think it just looks too cartoony for me, plus I am not a fan of the head.

I can't afford it no matter what, and I am really glad that a lot of people are getting they're classicsverse Devy, but this just isn't for me.

What are your thoughts on the Make Toy version --B--?

It looks a little more down and dirty, with less clean lines, like it really is a jumble of 6 living beings. It will really depend on the coloring.