The Energon Pub

What's the deal with going to the trouble of re-painting a character, putting an adjective infront of the name, and re-releasing it as the same character but with a new paint job?

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate re-paints. But if Hasbro is going to go to the trouble of re-painting a character, at least create a new character all together or bring back a pre-exisiting character from G1.

Example: Movie Leader Optimus Prime is now being re-painted dark blue and being called Nightwatch Optimus Prime. So I'm to believe that just before Optimus Prime goes out at night, he gets a new paint job. Then when he returns he gets a new paint job back to his original colors for his daytime patrols. Then the cycle starts all over again at dusk. I was really hoping that when this new dark blue Optimus Prime was being created that Hasbro would have logically called this new character Nemesis Prime and made him a Decepticon. But I guess that would have made sense.

This trend of just placing an adjective infront of a character's name after the character has been re-painted continues on through the Movie line of characters. Barricade repainted silver and blue becomes Recon Barricade and not Roadblock or even made into an Autobot to become Prowl or Streetwise. Ironhide re-painted dark blue with streaks of mud becomes Offroad Ironhide. Wasn't he already capable of going "offroad" to begin with, considering he was already a 4x4 truck? Hasbro could have at least called this new dark blue version Trailbreaker or Brawn. Rachet re-painted white to become Rescue Rachet. Rachet is a "rescue" vehicle, obviously already capable of carrying out his "rescue" duties even in his yellow/green color. The white re-paint version should have been called First Aid or Red Alert. That way both "rescue" vehicles could roll into battle and triage Autobots, side by side. Leader Brawl re-painted beige to become Deep Desert Brawl. Come on! Call it Quake, Treads, or go the Autobot route and call him Warpath.

Hasbro got it right with Bumblebee's re-paint and called the red version a pre-exisiting Autobot, Cliffjumper. They didn't screw it up and call him Hot Streets Bumblebee. They got it right with the re-paint of Blackout, making it an Autobot and calling it EVAC. Also with Starscream re-painted blue to become the pre-existing character, Thundercracker, and not call it Midnight Attack Starscream. Hopefully they will eventually re-paint this mold black and call it Skywarp.

The point I'm trying to make is that in the good old days of Generation 1, characters were re-painted all the time. But completely new characters spawned from these new re-paints so the Autobot and the Decepticon numbers continued to grow. Huffer wasn't removed from the battle, re-painted, tweaked a bit, and replaced by a dark blue version to become Nightpatrol Huffer. No. The dark blue, tweaked a bit version of Huffer was made into Pipes so both could fight side by side in battle, not one replaced by the other.

So Hasbro, if you're going to go through the trouble of re-painting characters, at least create a new character or bring back a pre-existing character.

I hear you friend. I too prefer a repaint to be a new character instead of an old one with a new atitude. Some of the best Transformers since the begining have simplyy been repaints. I don't think anybody can dispute the coolness of all the seekers standing together. However, even giving new names to repaints gets a little old sometimes. Using your Cliffjumper reference, I would have liked at least a slight head remold. Looks like they did that when they repainted Blackout into Evac though, so thats pretty cool.

i agree they should have renamed them but once you own them, you can name them what ever you want. i had already planned to display nightwatch prime as nemesis prime and desert brawl as warpath. i'll get new faction symbols from reprolabels and just make sure to pose them differently. all the voyager primes are a little annoying though, cant really change there name since there really not that different from each other.

The 3d Battle Cards game for Transformers repainted Brawl into Warpath. I'd like to see that too.

They also repainted Jazz into Smokescreen, Starscream into Skywarp, Ratchet into Trailbreaker, and a host of others. Would be nice to see.