The Energon Pub

[Cyber Bishop]

I was buying Kup anyways for the Targetmaster but even if those are the final colors this figure really looks good.

Same here.

[Jelze Bunnycat]

Do we know anything more about them? Like, are they TakaraTomy designs, or will Hasbro release those Targetmasters at a later date? Pretty odd they don't resemble Recoil and Firebolt in design.

[Wolfman Jake]

Do we know anything more about them? Like, are they TakaraTomy designs, or will Hasbro release those Targetmasters at a later date? Pretty odd they don't resemble Recoil and Firebolt in design.

That's part of why I think my suspicions from earlier are right on the mark. These aren't new molds that Takara designed JUST for this purpose. They're a "preview" of sorts of the new $5.00 price point figures that will replace the individual Titan Masters plus vehicles for the "Power of the Primes" subline in 2018. I expect to see these molds released by Hasbro in the not too distant future, possibly with different names and or decos.

[Kurona]

Hasbro really wouldn't let them. It's the same reason schematics of toys being leaked months in advance of the toys' actual reveals (like we got for TR Megatron, Optimus, Triggerhappy etc. last year) is harmful - their competitors immediately know what their plans are and they lose marketing value in terms of it being a big reveal. If Hasbro are releasing these guys, I'm sure it'll have similar fanfare to their release of UW Groove instead of a mainline gimmick.

Reason they don't look like Firebolt and Recoil (that was their names right? I think that was their names) is because they're likely sculpted to look like the Targetmasters of the characters that actually were released as Targetmasters in 1987 in Japan and were featured in Media and such, rather than giving exclusive tooling over to a reference to one 2004 re-issue. They just figured they could redeco the Targetmaster of Sureshot or Misfire or whatever into those of Hot Rod and Kup, so they did.

[Gauntlet101010]

Colours look right to me. Glad this mistake was corrected. It had to be bad photography; there's no way Takara could have gotten the colours as wrong as they did originally.

Or maybe Takara is a big and evolving company and has new and young designers who arent in tune with the brand and the source, and make mistakes.

Well, it's still a mistake either way. A mistake in photography and a mistake in PR letting the image through. so Takara still made a mistake, if that's what you want to get at.

But I'm inclined to blame the photographers / digital retouchers for releasing an image that did not represent what they were photographing. Every other toy I can think of had correct colours, even if they can be considered off (I'm thinking of UW Blast off and Galvatron here). Their entire Classics line has been about trying to be more screen accurate while Hasbro has given us "wrong" colour schemes. Why would that change for this one figure?

The other option is that they decided to change the toy's colour scheme after some higher up saw the pictures somewhere. And I'm less likely to believe this scenario. At this point the toy has been remoulded to be more G1 true along with several others in the same vein and ... what? The designer looked at some extremely obscure poor quality screencaps from a poorly rendered episode of G1 and decided that was the colour scheme to go with? The same company that made very consistent choices for almost literally every other character in the line? The same company that chose G1 true colours for the Hot Rod and Sharkticon in the same wave?

Sure, I can't say definitively that your scenario isn't true. But it certainly wouldn't be consistent.

[fenrir72]

You know, I find it a little sad, especially here at Seibertron. We got some great news that Takara Tomy isn't going to completely botch Legends Kup, yet the response has had so much negativity, even more so than when we initially thought they had lost their minds and were really going to release Kup in "grayscale." Isn't this a "win?" Who cares who was being a Takara apologist before or what exactly was going on with the initial reveals? Things are a lot better now (not perfect, but better), and we don't seem to be happy about that. Why?

You noticed this too eh? Don't be sad though. Much better to laugh it off. There be a lot of podi ingestion once them figs get released

Btw, this is my Shout factory DL Copy 720pi image of Teaspoon on a PC monitor snapshot via VLC. Gray or Teal?

All this bruhaha might be a digi-cam's inability to properly convert a portion of the light spectrum into gray/green teal whatever. Old school camera seem to do a better job than the former though with G1 UM (him again), I know, same issue, in the catalogs he look blue while on hand, royal greenish blue something

[Targetmaster Kup]

So can anyone do one of those comparison pictures of the 2 versions now?

[william-james88]

The same company that chose G1 true colours for the Hot Rod and Sharkticon in the same wave?

Sharkticon is very far from having true G1 colours, they replaced a ton of blue with grey. And Hot Rod has that weird stained glass window chest thing that doesnt come from any source.

None of these when first released looked true to their G1 selves (neither are their targetmasters), but Kup was of course far worse.

[fenrir72]

So can anyone do one of those comparison pictures of the 2 versions now?

The question, will an image comparison really do justice for the figure? Maybe a side by side actual figure comparison from Takara's tweeter feed would settle this.

[Gauntlet101010]

The same company that chose G1 true colours for the Hot Rod and Sharkticon in the same wave?

Sharkticon is very far from having true G1 colours, they replaced a ton of blue with grey. And Hot Rod has that weird stained glass window chest thing that doesnt come from any source.

None of these when first released looked true to their G1 selves (neither are their targetmasters), but Kup was of course far worse.

Exactly. Kup was far worse.

Okay, so the words "G1 true" isn't quite right, but I think you get my meaning. Hot Rod is consistent with Hot Rod's colour scheme. The Sharkticon has minor variations (blue to grey isn't a big deal, overall it looks pretty consistent to me). Kup was far worse. So bad people had to find the grainiest, poorest quality photos to try and come up for reasons for it to exist.

So either you believe that Takara made such a large deviation intentionally and actually responded to fan criticisms ... or that the photographer made a mistake and an incorrectly colour balanced photo was sent out and is now replaced by one that more accurately reflects the product they had always intended. Given that the other two TFs in this wave are consistent (if you have a problem with the word "accurate" or "true") to their characters and given that the colour intensity seems entirely consistent between the two Kups I think it's the photographer.

[william-james88]

So either you believe that Takara made such a large deviation intentionally and actually responded to fan criticisms ... or that the photographer made a mistake and an incorrectly colour balanced photo was sent out and is now replaced by one that more accurately reflects the product they had always intended. Given that the other two TFs in this wave are consistent (if you have a problem with the word "accurate" or "true") to their characters and given that the colour intensity seems entirely consistent between the two Kups I think it's the photographer.

You know what now that you mention it, I think it is the other way around. If If hot rod and sharkticon look like you think they should then that means they were photographed properly. Why would a photographer not capture the accuracy in Kup that was captured in the others? If his efforts are consistent then it would be the subject which is at fault, that being the toy. And since the green we now see is not a result of photography but instead photoshop, that tells me that the green was never there to be photographed and Takara did make a mistake which they are now correcting.

[SureShot18]

Takara has a history of making extremely odd deco choices in their efforts for cartoon accuracy. Most of the time they only end up accurate to one scene in one episode. Despite rather liking Lilacwave it is weird and their Galvatrons are always lilac, which is looks pretty bad. UW Onslaught and Blastoff fall in that category. Their rerelease of Generations Springer was odd.

Given those cases I am almost certain this Kup was grey in person just like the original pictures.

[Gauntlet101010]

So either you believe that Takara made such a large deviation intentionally and actually responded to fan criticisms ... or that the photographer made a mistake and an incorrectly colour balanced photo was sent out and is now replaced by one that more accurately reflects the product they had always intended. Given that the other two TFs in this wave are consistent (if you have a problem with the word "accurate" or "true") to their characters and given that the colour intensity seems entirely consistent between the two Kups I think it's the photographer.

You know what now that you mention it, I think it is the other way around. If If hot rod and sharkticon look like you think they should then that means they were photographed properly. Why would a photographer not capture the accuracy in Kup that was captured in the others? If his efforts are consistent then it would be the subject which is at fault, that being the toy. And since the green we now see is not a result of photography but instead photoshop, that tells me that the green was never there to be photographed and Takara did make a mistake which they are now correcting.

I'm probably not using my terms very accurately. I suppose I'm not doing a very good job in articulating my point.

I think ALL the photos we've ever seen have been Photoshopped. Both Kups, the Sharkticon, Hot Rod - all of them. I think the problem we're looking at here is with colour balancing. I guess I'm lumping that in with "photography" the same way airbrushing is.

The green was likely always there. If you convert the two photographs to greyscale they look consistent. This tells me the uncorrected paintjob was, likely, consistant. I think the guy probably didn't have Kup right in front of him when colour balancing and just got the colours of the toy wrong. Who knows why he got Kup wrong and not Hot Rod or the Sharkticon? I can only speculate that whatever colour balancing portion of the photo he used to measure out grey tones also caught Kup's teal. It happens. You can get some pretty odd colours when trying to correct.

I also think it's unlikely that Takara would choose to divert from the source so drastically for Kup. It's just inconsistent (with both prior releases of Kup and the whole theme of their release so far).

If this was truly a new colour scheme they would have at least some different in their darks and lights. Because they are so similar I think the grey Kup was colour balanced incorrectly.

tldr: I don't think the problem lies in the initial photography per say. I think the colour balancing that came along later messed things up. I, perhaps incorrectly, have also labelled this "photography."

Erm ... clearer?

[Sabrblade]

This isn't the first time a "Kup is teal vs. Kup is gray" debate has occurred. How many remember this debate:

2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1250.php#p1818433
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1250.php#p1818435
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1250.php#p1818463
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1250.php#p1818464

Every post on this entire page: 2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1275.php

2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818568
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818571
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818572
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818580
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818591
2016-generations-platinum-sets-t105955s1300.php#p1818667

[Gauntlet101010]

Takara has a history of making extremely odd deco choices in their efforts for cartoon accuracy. Most of the time they only end up accurate to one scene in one episode. Despite rather liking Lilacwave it is weird and their Galvatrons are always lilac, which is looks pretty bad. UW Onslaught and Blastoff fall in that category. Their rerelease of Generations Springer was odd.

Given those cases I am almost certain this Kup was grey in person just like the original pictures.

Their Galvatron have been consistent with each other, though. I don't know why they think Galvy should be lilac, but he is consistently in that range. Blast Off is odd ... but Blast Off has been a lighter shade of brown in Fall of Cybertron, so maybe they were looking for consistency there.

But you can't argue that Kup didn't stand out. So either Kup has changed since initial photography or initial photography was wrong. And it's pretty quick turnaround for a drastic change in colour for the toy itself, or so it seems to me.

[william-james88]

Erm ... clearer?

YES

[Sabrblade]

From Chris McFeely's Tumblr (click to enlarge):

[Wolfman Jake]

Sabr, that reference is AWESOME! Have any more like that? It would be fascinating to read about the evolution of other character models and the inconsistencies that arose among the different production companies.

[Sabrblade]

Sabr, that reference is AWESOME! Have any more like that? It would be fascinating to read about the evolution of other character models and the inconsistencies that arose among the different production companies.

More #G1Facts from Chris McFeely - https://www.tumblr.com/search/g1facts

[Wolfman Jake]

Sabr, that reference is AWESOME! Have any more like that? It would be fascinating to read about the evolution of other character models and the inconsistencies that arose among the different production companies.

More #G1Facts from Chris McFeely - https://www.tumblr.com/search/g1facts

Thanks, Sabr! You are a gentleman and a scholar...and whatever else you demand. Seriously, you're the man, man!

[Emerje]

Colours look right to me. Glad this mistake was corrected. It had to be bad photography; there's no way Takara could have gotten the colours as wrong as they did originally.

I've read your other posts, but I'm really not sure how you can be so convinced that the figure was that shade of green all along.

There's any number of things that are wrong with the new photos, from the lack of desaturation in other colors compared to the original photos to uncanny shadows that aren't acting the way light is supposed to to the shades of gray that would become green in the original photos being exactly the same shades of gray as what remained gray in the new photos.

But the part I find the most damning:

oops.jpg

Yep, them colors ain't natural. Definitely photoshopped green.

Emerje

[Wolfman Jake]

But the part I find the most damning:

oops.jpg

Yep, them colors ain't natural. Definitely photoshopped green.

Emerje

Kup obviously uses teal dye to cover up his gray. He's a vain old bot, to be sure.

[Kurona]

Gotta say though, that headmaster's paint does look lovely.

[Qwan]

Gotta say though, that headmaster's paint does look lovely.

I know right? So amazingly crisp. I can only hope that carries over to the final mass-production copies!

[EmirateXaaron]

Curses! I was completely content with skipping this Kup due to the grey paintjob, saving me a bit of money, but now Takara's gone and made him look good. Now I just gotta cough up $40 before they sell out everywhere.