The Energon Pub

xyl360 wrote:That's my point, the bots aren't the characters at all, the heads are ! It's like Power Rangers and such where the main focus is on the actual human characters who "drive" the Zords/giant robots, not the giant robot bodies they inhabit/use. That's what the Japanese Transector concept was all about (as you rightly pointed out) and that's what I'd like to see for Headmasters because it makes the most sense to me (a headless body with a personality always seemed kinda weird to me unless you're in Sleepy Hollow ).

So basically you'd have armies of "head" bots who are the good guys and the bad guys and they use these transforming vehicles/whatever as their weapons to fight their war and it just so happens that these vehicles they use (and steal from one another, hence the head-swapping) transform into robots who they control by transforming into their heads.

Think Diaclone, it's a lot like that.

But it's the big toys (Deluxes/Voyagers/Leaders/etc.) that are what Hasbro markets the most. The big toys are what they want to sell. If the heads are the main characters, then that would turn Hasbro's marketing strategy upside-down and inside-out on itself since that's essentially saying for them to market Cyberverse toys over the more bigger, more-expense-to-make main line toys, and where's the profit to be made in doing that?

Sabrblade wrote:

xyl360 wrote:That's my point, the bots aren't the characters at all, the heads are ! It's like Power Rangers and such where the main focus is on the actual human characters who "drive" the Zords/giant robots, not the giant robot bodies they inhabit/use. That's what the Japanese Transector concept was all about (as you rightly pointed out) and that's what I'd like to see for Headmasters because it makes the most sense to me (a headless body with a personality always seemed kinda weird to me unless you're in Sleepy Hollow ).

So basically you'd have armies of "head" bots who are the good guys and the bad guys and they use these transforming vehicles/whatever as their weapons to fight their war and it just so happens that these vehicles they use (and steal from one another, hence the head-swapping) transform into robots who they control by transforming into their heads.

Think Diaclone, it's a lot like that.

But it's the big toys (Deluxes/Voyagers/Leaders/etc.) that are what Hasbro markets the most. The big toys are what they want to sell. If the heads are the main characters, then that would turn Hasbro's marketing strategy upside-down and inside-out on itself since that's essentially saying for them to market Cyberverse toys over the more bigger, more-expense-to-make main line toys, and where's the profit to be made in doing that?

You think so? You don't think that the kids will go all Exosquad on them and want a "bot body"/vehicle for every single head they own ? I know they would. I know I would. I also know that I'd even want to use duplicates of the same body with different heads on both sides (something that can't happen with current lines since Autobots is Autobots and Decepticons is Decepticons ).

Kids love stuff like this. It's like Pokémon etc. where you "gotta catch em' all", and while I LOATHE Pokémon, I understand and respect the concept from a marketing point of view. It's centered around collecting, and that's exactly what this sort of line and flexibility would encourage.

They could even go full on Diaclone style by making some transforming vehicles that do not turn into robots (i.e. Dia Train, Cosmo Roller etc. or similar to the Actionmasters vehicles) that the little head dudes can use strictly as vehicles and battle platforms. It's a way of unifying the entire minicon/master concept in a way that drastically increases the playability of all the components involved. Instead of a single robot/vehicle with a single head that can be popped off and transformed into a robot, you have little head bots with tons of playsets and vehicle/robot bodies in a multitude of sizes (they can do the bots in different scales assuming they can still do them so that the heads don't look too out of scale with them when combined).

I think it would work personally, but I guess there's no way of knowing unless it actually happens.

Must we be reminded that the current Hasbro TF team is aiming for "simplicity" above all else with the brand now? The new toys coming out (oversized BH Cyberverse toys, AOE puny Leader Optimus, etc.) are meant to take things in a far less complex direction with most gimmicks delegated to only basic things rather than the levels of "creativity" and "customization" being called for in this thread. "Keep it simple" is the current marketing strategy.

Sabrblade wrote:Must we be reminded that the current Hasbro TF team is aiming for "simplicity" above all else with the brand now? The new toys coming out (oversized BH Cyberverse toys, AOE puny Leader Optimus, etc.) are meant to take things in a far less complex direction with most gimmicks delegated to only basic things rather than the levels of "creativity" and "customization" being called for in this thread. "Keep it simple" is the current marketing strategy.

Sure, and who said I (or anyone else here) was even talking about what Hasbro would do? This thread is all about what we would like to see them do (hence the word "want" in the title).

Besides, it's not like Hasbro is exactly known for sticking to their guns when it comes to the direction of their franchises. They change direction mid-stream all the time. Now that's not to say that I think these ideas have any chance of actually happening in the foreseeable future, but a bot can dream can he not?

agreed they will do what ever they think makes them the most money -even doing things that don't make a lot of sense like trying to combine the cybertron video games with the prime cartoon -it doesn't make a lot of sense as both have different styles and many of the events clash with each other -also several characters are very different between each.

Besides i think that making the toys omi factional is a good idea -infact make one of the gimicks that the head changes the faction symbol like sideswipes did

also i don't see how this would turn the marketing around as its never the big toys that sell the most the smaller ones usually do because A-cheaper and B easier to produce and ship -while i will admit the larger ones are money makers the smaller ones they usually sell more of-though the cyberverse stuff doesn't sell well here i don't know about other regions.

also i think the minicons and the target masters or head masters are basicly the same thing now -its something i had been hoping during armada that we only barely got with things like the police care mold and sideswipes gimick. i felt they could have done better -also they need to make these things more soildly built than the minicons were those things some were really flimsy i would like it if they made them a bit bigger and better made.

As others have mentioned Blind pack headmasters isn't a great idea, the targetmasters on the other hand it works well for.

The whole generic headmaster transtector body sounds good, even the customization part, and while It would be a great line to own, I have to agree I don't see Hasbro going for it.

ScottyP wrote:Grab some minicons/microns that augment the base mold, could be gimmick activation or even for real augmentation, for instance, the "Super Armor Minicon Team" can transform into a set of shoulder pads and a chest plate that increases your Transformers armor.

Mincon Armor? You sir have piqued my interest.

ThunderThruster wrote:As others have mentioned Blind pack headmasters isn't a great idea, the targetmasters on the other hand it works well for.

The whole generic headmaster transtector body sounds good, even the customization part, and while It would be a great line to own, I have to agree I don't see Hasbro going for it.

ScottyP wrote:Grab some minicons/microns that augment the base mold, could be gimmick activation or even for real augmentation, for instance, the "Super Armor Minicon Team" can transform into a set of shoulder pads and a chest plate that increases your Transformers armor.

Mincon Armor? You sir have piqued my interest.

Yeah, that would be cool. It would also be awesome if they had Targetmasters that transformed into things other than handguns, such as shoulder mounted rocket launchers, bazookas, arm cannons, jetpacks and other things. All you'd need is lots of ports to attach the posts from the weapons/accessories to and it could work really well.

PCC already got started on the "Mini-Cons as armor" thing with the the chestplate modes of those Mini-Cons.

xyl360 wrote:It would also be awesome if they had Targetmasters that transformed into things other than handguns, such as shoulder mounted rocket launchers, bazookas, arm cannons, jetpacks and other things. All you'd need is lots of ports to attach the posts from the weapons/accessories to and it could work really well.

Some of the Armada Mini-Cons, like the Air Military and Emergency teams, did just that.

I always thought the Armada game handled the idea of minicons the best, each minicon gave you a certain power, eg flight, speed, healing, new weapons, shields etc. I like the idea of being able the "power up transformers" plus doing combos like flight and shields, or using them for certain missions, like stealth minicons or fire proofing etc.

Sabrblade wrote:PCC already got started on the "Mini-Cons as armor" thing with the the chestplate modes of those Mini-Cons.

xyl360 wrote:It would also be awesome if they had Targetmasters that transformed into things other than handguns, such as shoulder mounted rocket launchers, bazookas, arm cannons, jetpacks and other things. All you'd need is lots of ports to attach the posts from the weapons/accessories to and it could work really well.

Some of the Armada Mini-Cons, like the Air Military and Emergency teams, did just that.

Yeah, but they typically didn't integrate well at all. They usually looked like a vehicle hanging off of the larger robot. I'm talking about minicons/Targetmasters with only 2 modes: robot and weapon (or robot and armor) that way they don't look like odd junk hanging off of the robots. It's like the difference between the crappy Mechtech weapons and normal guns. Normal guns usually looked better because they didn't have to compensate for some other gimmick occupying tons of space.

Sabrblade wrote:PCC already got started on the "Mini-Cons as armor" thing with the the chestplate modes of those Mini-Cons.

Yes PCC started this, but we've not seen it go beyond the chest plate armor.