The Energon Pub

I agree with Scotty. Takara beat KFC to the ground so hard, I can't imagine any future versions of Citizen Stack are going to sell well.

Hasbro, are you listening? Here's a third opportunity to give us MP10 here in the states, just don't mess up and not include the trailer/armor.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Mindmaster wrote:Blazemaster is so trying to be Armada Jolt.

Not sure who the others are trying to mimmick.

Funny you should ask, I can barely make out one of the names: Buzz Saw, out of Waspinator.

If it's Buzz Saw, then he needs purple, not blue.

Cyberpath wrote:

Seibertron wrote:What is the precedence for this alternate head?

It's the sculpting underneath the proper Magnus face. Apparently an homage to this:
http://www.seibertron.com/transformers- ... s/25/2/30/

Looks like an "Easter egg" type of thing.

Isn't that just a picture of Encore UM without it's Magnus head? I don't get it. Homaging people losing UM's head as a kid?

anyway this thing looks awesome! can't wait for pre-orders from Japan so I can finally drop the ridiculous pre-order prices of US retailers.

Mindmaster wrote:

Jelze Bunnycat wrote:Funny you should ask, I can barely make out one of the names: Buzz Saw, out of Waspinator.

If it's Buzz Saw, then he needs purple, not blue.

Another thing I've been wondering. Even though the colors are off, wouldn't it be plausible that they're made with clear plastic?

welcometothedarksyde wrote:You know the movie generations toys being marketed to collectors seems suspicious so far. The stuff that Takara is doing is homaging differing elements of the franchise from the past e.g. Dispensor, G1 Grimlock, stuff that younger fans might not know about. Meanwhile Hasbro's toys are no different than what we've been having for a long time. Does anyone think that Hasbro is just saying that the toys are marketed to collectors, meanwhile knowing that most kids are just going to buy them anyway. I mean is we hadn't been told that it was marketed towards collectors that wouldn't have been anywhere close to my first reaction. Really makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

I think Hasbro's doing 'movie accurate' decos and the part about catering to the adult collectors on Hasbro's part has more to do with the fact that they don't use the same over-simplified transformations as the other movie lines (the flip changers and 2~3 step changers etc.).

I agree that Takara is doing a better job of catering to collectors by homaging past generations of toys/characters, but in my opinion, Takara has pretty much always catered more to collectors than Hasbro, but I think that has more to do with the market in which they compete where many, many adults buy toys and the competition is a lot more fierce, particularly when it comes to transforming robot toys (how many lines of transforming robot toys does Bandai currently have active in Japan right now?).

To be honest, I kinda like the wild colors on some of Hasbro's AoE Dinobot offerings so I'll probably end up getting both versions or just Hasbro's (gotta see more of Takara's to decide whether I'm getting theirs at all or not).

Now, as for the main meat, good ol' Ultra Magnus. It looks like Takara has surpassed my expectations in most respects, though I agree with one comment about the legs. I wish there were a panel to cover up the inner legs of the MP-10 base figure, however if they color it so that it matches the rest of the leg/panel, then it probably won't stand out too much (hopefully), and I'm guessing that's what they did/will do.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't bite on what KFC was selling (not that I really liked the look of it anyway, as there's a lot more wrong with the look of that thing's bot mode than just the head) because Takara appears to have yet again created a true 'masterpiece' and I believe that once the color shots of him start to show up, I won't be staring at another version of Ultra Magnus or another Ultra Magnus toy. It will BE Ultra Magnus .

Oh dude, Ultra Magnus looks sweet. My only concerns are that $190 in the middle of December is going to suck, and his legs look a little plain. But I'm sure once he's in color he'll look amazing.

Not sure why we don't have seperate threads for the discussion, but that Grimlock looks pretty great in those colors. IF it ends up being relatively affordable I might be interested.

mooncake623 wrote:

Cyberpath wrote:

Seibertron wrote:What is the precedence for this alternate head?

It's the sculpting underneath the proper Magnus face. Apparently an homage to this:
http://www.seibertron.com/transformers- ... s/25/2/30/

Looks like an "Easter egg" type of thing.

Isn't that just a picture of Encore UM without it's Magnus head? I don't get it. Homaging people losing UM's head as a kid?

anyway this thing looks awesome! can't wait for pre-orders from Japan so I can finally drop the ridiculous pre-order prices of US retailers.

Homage to the fact that the G1 toy had an "Optimus Prime" head underneath the Ultra Magnus "helmet" piece.

It appears that the MP-22 cab has a built-in Ultra Magnus head instead of the MP-10 one, and that you can take off part of the face revealing this G1 toy homage.



Something like this, but with a piece of the face plate missing.

it's really hard to tell though from the LQ photos.

MP-22:

Looking good! Can't wait to see color test shots. Hopefully that $190 price means US retailers drop their preorder prices a bit. If not, I'm canceling in favor of importing from elsewhere.

I never understood, especially since the Yen has weakened, why the price differential is so high between US and foreign retailers. Since the US retailers have a bulk shipment of these things, shouldn't it be somewhat cheaper than the foreign retailers who have to pay expensive shipping on each individual figure? I'm a bit befuddled, but oh well.

Also, the G1 recolors of the TF4 Dinobots look awesome. Definitely on my wish list.

megatronus wrote:MP-22:

Looking good! Can't wait to see color test shots. Hopefully that $190 price means US retailers drop their preorder prices a bit. If not, I'm canceling in favor of importing from elsewhere.

I never understood, especially since the Yen has weakened, why the price differential is so high between US and foreign retailers. Since the US retailers have a bulk shipment of these things, shouldn't it be somewhat cheaper than the foreign retailers who have to pay expensive shipping on each individual figure? I'm a bit befuddled, but oh well.

Also, the G1 recolors of the TF4 Dinobots look awesome. Definitely on my wish list.

It's called Greed. I suggest importing from Japan. Or even eBay basing out of China/Japan is cheaper.

So is it too early to ask if Hasbro will do a TRU release? Does anyone know at this time? Oh yeah it does look amazing BTW.

Nemesis Destron wrote:So is it too early to ask if Hasbro will do a TRU release? Does anyone know at this time? Oh yeah it does look amazing BTW.

Way too early to know. I doubt we'll know anything solid about their potential domestic MP releases until Botcon at the earliest.

I stopped waiting on Hasbro to do things at MP-12, and I've been very very happy with that decision. It is exponentially easier to order from importers than to track down Hasbro MPs at TRU.

xyl360 wrote:

welcometothedarksyde wrote:You know the movie generations toys being marketed to collectors seems suspicious so far. The stuff that Takara is doing is homaging differing elements of the franchise from the past e.g. Dispensor, G1 Grimlock, stuff that younger fans might not know about. Meanwhile Hasbro's toys are no different than what we've been having for a long time. Does anyone think that Hasbro is just saying that the toys are marketed to collectors, meanwhile knowing that most kids are just going to buy them anyway. I mean is we hadn't been told that it was marketed towards collectors that wouldn't have been anywhere close to my first reaction. Really makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

I think Hasbro's doing 'movie accurate' decos and the part about catering to the adult collectors on Hasbro's part has more to do with the fact that they don't use the same over-simplified transformations as the other movie lines (the flip changers and 2~3 step changers etc.).

I agree that Takara is doing a better job of catering to collectors by homaging past generations of toys/characters, but in my opinion, Takara has pretty much always catered more to collectors than Hasbro, but I think that has more to do with the market in which they compete where many, many adults buy toys and the competition is a lot more fierce, particularly when it comes to transforming robot toys (how many lines of transforming robot toys does Bandai currently have active in Japan right now?).

To be honest, I kinda like the wild colors on some of Hasbro's AoE Dinobot offerings so I'll probably end up getting both versions or just Hasbro's (gotta see more of Takara's to decide whether I'm getting theirs at all or not).

Now, as for the main meat, good ol' Ultra Magnus. It looks like Takara has surpassed my expectations in most respects, though I agree with one comment about the legs. I wish there were a panel to cover up the inner legs of the MP-10 base figure, however if they color it so that it matches the rest of the leg/panel, then it probably won't stand out too much (hopefully), and I'm guessing that's what they did/will do.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't bite on what KFC was selling (not that I really liked the look of it anyway, as there's a lot more wrong with the look of that thing's bot mode than just the head) because Takara appears to have yet again created a true 'masterpiece' and I believe that once the color shots of him start to show up, I won't be staring at another version of Ultra Magnus or another Ultra Magnus toy. It will BE Ultra Magnus .

I understand that much, all I'm saying is that the supposedly "collector oriented" toyline upon inspection doesn't at all resemble such a thing, it resembles a main line. Which makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes of the marketing department. As you say maybe they're trying to present a dichotomy between the toys for very young kids, and the ones for collectors. I personally think that the collector toys look like they were designed with an 8-12 audience in mind. Not commenting on their quality, and with full understanding of the fact that they're trying to cut cost, but they look like they were designed for kids. My only real guess is that they're trying to 'oversell' kids by presenting the product as if it's for an older audience than would realistically buy it. By saying "collector" older kids might think the toys are cooler, when in reality they're essentially the same product.

What a frigging beauty.

ScottyP wrote:I stopped waiting on Hasbro to do things at MP-12, and I've been very very happy with that decision. It is exponentially easier to order from importers than to track down Hasbro MPs at TRU.

absolutely. the only takara MP i passed on so far was grimlock. i dont even remember why, probably just apathy, but i was lucky enough to find the TRU one when was released.

does anyone know what the pricepoint for the MP cars (for example) will be at TRU? i wonder how it stacks up against importing. personally i got all my cars (w/coins and extras) for around 60-65, 15 shipping. pending on extras, hunting time, and gas it probably equals out. plus i dont have to wait to see IF hasbro releases them at all.

welcometothedarksyde wrote:I understand that much, all I'm saying is that the supposedly "collector oriented" toyline upon inspection doesn't at all resemble such a thing, it resembles a main line. Which makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes of the marketing department. As you say maybe they're trying to present a dichotomy between the toys for very young kids, and the ones for collectors. I personally think that the collector toys look like they were designed with an 8-12 audience in mind. Not commenting on their quality, and with full understanding of the fact that they're trying to cut cost, but they look like they were designed for kids. My only real guess is that they're trying to 'oversell' kids by presenting the product as if it's for an older audience than would realistically buy it. By saying "collector" older kids might think the toys are cooler, when in reality they're essentially the same product.

People who bemoan that toys are for kids amuse me.

shajaki wrote:

ScottyP wrote:I stopped waiting on Hasbro to do things at MP-12, and I've been very very happy with that decision. It is exponentially easier to order from importers than to track down Hasbro MPs at TRU.

absolutely. the only takara MP i passed on so far was grimlock. i dont even remember why, probably just apathy, but i was lucky enough to find the TRU one when was released.

does anyone know what the pricepoint for the MP cars (for example) will be at TRU? i wonder how it stacks up against importing. personally i got all my cars (w/coins and extras) for around 60-65, 15 shipping. pending on extras, hunting time, and gas it probably equals out. plus i dont have to wait to see IF hasbro releases them at all.

Someone posted that the price of one of the MP cars was showing up as 59.99 in TRU's system.

I love it!

Will it be available in the US?

Zeek99g wrote:I love it!

Will it be available in the US?

Possibly. Not until like a year from now though, I'm guesstimating. Still, better wait on the US one before jumping on TakaraTomy's bandwagon.

*goes back to fruitlessly deciphering the names of those Targetmaster repaints* We already have Jolt and Buzz Saw, but who are the other two?

Alternative translations from tfw2005: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transform ... st10922097

They're saying that the cab doesn't transform into a white Convoy. This makes more sense to me than the translation on Facebook.

I actually prefer it this way. When I think of Magnus I think of the big guy from the cartoon, never the white Prime.

welcometothedarksyde wrote:

xyl360 wrote:

welcometothedarksyde wrote:You know the movie generations toys being marketed to collectors seems suspicious so far. The stuff that Takara is doing is homaging differing elements of the franchise from the past e.g. Dispensor, G1 Grimlock, stuff that younger fans might not know about. Meanwhile Hasbro's toys are no different than what we've been having for a long time. Does anyone think that Hasbro is just saying that the toys are marketed to collectors, meanwhile knowing that most kids are just going to buy them anyway. I mean is we hadn't been told that it was marketed towards collectors that wouldn't have been anywhere close to my first reaction. Really makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes.

I think Hasbro's doing 'movie accurate' decos and the part about catering to the adult collectors on Hasbro's part has more to do with the fact that they don't use the same over-simplified transformations as the other movie lines (the flip changers and 2~3 step changers etc.).

I agree that Takara is doing a better job of catering to collectors by homaging past generations of toys/characters, but in my opinion, Takara has pretty much always catered more to collectors than Hasbro, but I think that has more to do with the market in which they compete where many, many adults buy toys and the competition is a lot more fierce, particularly when it comes to transforming robot toys (how many lines of transforming robot toys does Bandai currently have active in Japan right now?).

To be honest, I kinda like the wild colors on some of Hasbro's AoE Dinobot offerings so I'll probably end up getting both versions or just Hasbro's (gotta see more of Takara's to decide whether I'm getting theirs at all or not).

Now, as for the main meat, good ol' Ultra Magnus. It looks like Takara has surpassed my expectations in most respects, though I agree with one comment about the legs. I wish there were a panel to cover up the inner legs of the MP-10 base figure, however if they color it so that it matches the rest of the leg/panel, then it probably won't stand out too much (hopefully), and I'm guessing that's what they did/will do.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't bite on what KFC was selling (not that I really liked the look of it anyway, as there's a lot more wrong with the look of that thing's bot mode than just the head) because Takara appears to have yet again created a true 'masterpiece' and I believe that once the color shots of him start to show up, I won't be staring at another version of Ultra Magnus or another Ultra Magnus toy. It will BE Ultra Magnus .

I understand that much, all I'm saying is that the supposedly "collector oriented" toyline upon inspection doesn't at all resemble such a thing, it resembles a main line. Which makes me wonder what's going on behind the scenes of the marketing department. As you say maybe they're trying to present a dichotomy between the toys for very young kids, and the ones for collectors. I personally think that the collector toys look like they were designed with an 8-12 audience in mind. Not commenting on their quality, and with full understanding of the fact that they're trying to cut cost, but they look like they were designed for kids. My only real guess is that they're trying to 'oversell' kids by presenting the product as if it's for an older audience than would realistically buy it. By saying "collector" older kids might think the toys are cooler, when in reality they're essentially the same product.

Well, as far as I can tell, based on what Hasbro said themselves when justifying the simpler TFs they've started to release in the TF:Prime and now Movie lines, is that they felt the 'standard' (i.e. current) lines, even those aimed at children, were too complex for those same children to be able to transform and that simplifying things to the extent that they have now in the main lines was done in order to fix that, but that the figures released in the Generations line which retain the more complex transformations would not be messed with because that line is aimed at adult collectors. So basically, according to what they've been saying at least, it's the engineering that determines the market/demographic the toys are now targeted at (they did not mention anything about color/paint etc. that I can recall).

Also, aside from continuing to call the line 'Generations', I don't know of any public marketing they've done to imply that Generations is anything special or 'collectors' oriented, so I'm not sure what you're getting at in that regard (saying that Hasbro is perhaps trying to get the kids to buy them because they're 'cooler' or whatever). This info came from a panel at Botcon as I recall; not a place where Hasbro speaks to or markets to children, so the info was not used for the purpose of persuading any kids to purchase Generations figures as far as I can see. Instead, it seems it was just to assure the adult collectors (you know, the types of folks that actually attend such conventions) that their precious complex transformers weren't getting messed with and would retain their more complex engineering and transformations and that the simpler stuff was being done in the main lines for the sakes of kids and their parents in response to the complaints they'd been getting about them.

megatronus wrote:

shajaki wrote:does anyone know what the pricepoint for the MP cars (for example) will be at TRU? i wonder how it stacks up against importing. personally i got all my cars (w/coins and extras) for around 60-65, 15 shipping. pending on extras, hunting time, and gas it probably equals out. plus i dont have to wait to see IF hasbro releases them at all.

Someone posted that the price of one of the MP cars was showing up as 59.99 in TRU's system.

good lord... really? not worth the wait or guessing at all. just my opinion.

Va'al wrote:Fellow Seibertron.com user Cyberpath has found a useful translation of the text accompanying the images of Takara Transformers MP-22 Ultra Magnus reported earlier, courtesy of poster Li Tian on the TF Upgrader Facebook page. Check it out below, next to the images again!

Main paragraph: Masterpiece #22 is confirmed to be Ultra Magnus. G1 toy was a combination of a Convoy same sized robot and a big body part which transforms into a car carrier. However, Masterpiece toy is going to make its transformation as shown in the cartoon series. The cab truck will still have its own robot mode, but it will be able to transform with the car carrier body as one. Its vehicle mode includes a cab truck in the same size as MP-10, tires and front grill will be the same parts. In addition, shoulder missile launcher will be removable, but it does not have to be removed in order to transform.

Pic 1 with Leader's Metrics: MP-10 Metrics can be stored inside its chest.

Pic 2: Truck mode (in the middle) - Carrier mode gimmick will include movable ramp.

Pic 3: This is the size comparison with MP-10. It is made to be very show accurate.

Continued 2nd Paragraph: MP-22 Ultra Magnus will be released around second half of December, selling price will be 19,440 Japanese yen ($190). (Actual available date and price may be changed.)

For the pic on the right: With respect to the G1 Toy, under the helmet, it will have a smaller head of Magnus (same as Optimus Prime).

*copy and paste*
I was extremely happy when I saw that translation above at work until it got debunked later on. Let see what Sydney has to say whether it's all in one or a white Magnus exist some where.

Despite my armor wishlist doesn't look too good:
1 - Love the cartoon chest plate! I was worry they might go toy version or screw it up.
2 - Love the cartoon missile launcher at the side of the trailer.
3 - Face looks gorgeous! Stack, you looks horrendous, lol.
4 - Matrix cavity looks awesome, just like TFTM
5 - Can store 4 MP Cars, nice.
6 - Lower leg is so cartoon accurate, from expose wheel to the front shin.

All it needs now is the red bumper on the cab for a full cartoon color accurate
This will be super grand slam if TTomy can some how can incorporate the white Magnus robot also just like the above translation. If not, I'm counting on 3P for the white MP10 repaint to stand next to my MP22. Stack of course with be standing next to my MP2.

ScottyP wrote:

Nemesis Destron wrote:So is it too early to ask if Hasbro will do a TRU release? Does anyone know at this time? Oh yeah it does look amazing BTW.

Way too early to know. I doubt we'll know anything solid about their potential domestic MP releases until Botcon at the earliest.

I stopped waiting on Hasbro to do things at MP-12, and I've been very very happy with that decision. It is exponentially easier to order from importers than to track down Hasbro MPs at TRU.

I agree completely. I order almost everything online these days.

I cannot wait to see this guy and Bee in color.

Looking ahead, when do we see the Star Saber proto?

Doctor McGrath wrote:Looking ahead, when do we see the Star Saber proto?

They'll probably be talking up reveals for Jackie, Bee, and Magnus for a while. This past week, Saber's character model sketches were teased, so I imagine it will be some time before we see some in-hand protos.

megatronus wrote:

Doctor McGrath wrote:Looking ahead, when do we see the Star Saber proto?

They'll probably be talking up reveals for Jackie, Bee, and Magnus for a while. This past week, Saber's character model sketches were teased, so I imagine it will be some time before we see some in-hand protos.

I figure so but I am excited. The design decisions used on UM make me even more intrigued to see how they treat Star Saber.

So, no inner white Optimus Prime cab robot for the sake of show-accuracy, eh?

I'm fine with this.