Having further asked about this elsewhere, it seems that they wanted to get the anime-colored one out this year in time for the Beast Wars Neo 20th anniversary, and that its release was done in lieu of an actual MP because A) any plans for an actual MP would have taken too long for it to see release in time for the anniversary year, and B) the original toy was basically already close enough to matching the animation model almost perfectly in sculpt and detail (it just needed the cartoon colors to be completely spot on).D-Maximal_Primal wrote:Sabrblade wrote:It also says that the anime-colored Encore was released to align with the Beast Wars Masterpieces, which to me makes it sound like a substitute for an actual MP Big Convoy, as though it was released because of there being no plans for a MP Big Convoy.
That's a bummer, though if they had wanted to, they could have held off on the Anime one to coincide with the Lio Convoy
It's also fortunate that both the MP versions of Primal and Lio Convoy are scaled to be of equal height to the original Big Convoy mold in robot mode.