The Energon Pub

Sabrblade wrote:G1 Arcee is just as curvy as the Prime characters. If they can make her over and over again without any need for any "boxy streamlining", then there is no excuse for how they chose to make the Prime characters the way they did.

Even more disappointing is if they had gone more "curvy" then we could have gotten an interesting take on Energon Arcee out of this figure as well. They have similar design ques so it wouldn't be a stretch.

Emerje

Till-all-R1 wrote:I couldn't care either way on this topic because I wouldn't have purchased regardless, but I will say that it might simply be due to them wanting to reuse those molds for other bots in the future that aren't from Prime. So if they were to maintain that style if would limit their use for future releases, and it's simple choice of being fiscally conscious rather than being either pro G1 or anti prime.

If Knockout etc. had been Prime accurate how often could they truly utilize the molds outside of Prime being that their design is very stylistic? I genuinely ask because I don't know as I've not watched that show.

Many Prime molds have their own redecos/retools since they themselves were redeco'd and retooled into different things. Knockout, for instance, has a Beast Hunters retool which also has a Silverstreak type redeco.

Multiple replies incoming...

Nemesis Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Prime Skyquake's already leaked as coming in the Velocitron line, but as a Leader rather than a Voyager, so he'll probably get his own mold.

Skyquake's listing is for the mainline, not Velocitron. The Velocitron Leader listing just said "LDR 2".

Thanks. I misremembered which line it was and, at the time, didn't have time to double-check.

william-james88 wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:

First-Aid wrote:

-Kanrabat- wrote:

Cyber Bishop wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Though I do wonder who they are going to retool him into exactly?

I can see Thunderwing in that mold.

Hmmmmm..... Maybe. And there's even enough space under that cockpit to add a core class "inner bot". Add two big guns, a small gun for the little bot, and maybe some blast effects and you get "Leader" Thunderwing!

You think Hasbro can get Prime Skyquake out of this mold?

Possibly yes, but the question is, should they.

No, they should not. They don't need to anyways since Skyquake is literally a Seeker mold. He already has a redeco built in of an even more popular character. The only thing I am dreading though is his G1-ification. We saw the reasoning behind Arcee's G1-ification, and Knockout comes from a G1 mold (Bulkhead has Optimus Rumours) but Skyquake's reuse is another Prime character. I really hope he looks closer to his Prime counterpart than any of the other Prime characters.

What's even scarier is that Prime Skyquake already has a G1 analogue to begin with, so for all we know, it could just end up being a hybrid design that merges elements rom both G1 Skyquake and Prime Skyquake, pleasing neither camp who wants a proper update of either.

Sabrblade wrote:G1 Arcee is just as curvy as the Prime characters. If they can make her over and over again without any need for any "boxy streamlining", then there is no excuse for how they chose to make the Prime characters the way they did.

On top of this, several Beast Wars characters are also just as curvy as the Prime characters, yet look how faithful those recent updates have been.

Tarantulas is especially notable since he's actually in the Legacy line with all of his curviness completely intact!

Sabrblade wrote:Also,

Jelze Bunnycat wrote:"G1-ification" isn't really a good name for what's happening to the Prime characters in Legacy IMO.

No, it pretty much is. In the Pulse video from late last year, Mark Maher said the following about the design aesthetic of the Legacy line:

"I mean, Transformers, we have such rich history. It's like forty years of just characters from all different, like, universes. I mean, the style and design aesthetics of each universe has its own feel and look. So, you know, early on, John Warden put the seeds in the ground for this and, uh, our design director, Michelino, actually really took the team together and was was like, 'We need something fresh and new for Generations.' So we're taking all of these characters from all of these different continuities, and we're trying to, like, almost like, place them into a universe of their own, which is basically Legacy. And, of course, having, like, a heavy G1 influence because, you know, I love G1, so."

And on top of this, the following is what Mark Maher also stated when he first made a post on Instagram (now deleted) about his designer notes for "Prime Universe Bulkhead":

I felt honored to finally be able to make Bulkhead look like he belongs in our G1 universe!

That pretty much says it all.

william-james88 wrote:

Till-all-R1 wrote:I couldn't care either way on this topic because I wouldn't have purchased regardless, but I will say that it might simply be due to them wanting to reuse those molds for other bots in the future that aren't from Prime. So if they were to maintain that style if would limit their use for future releases, and it's simple choice of being fiscally conscious rather than being either pro G1 or anti prime.

If Knockout etc. had been Prime accurate how often could they truly utilize the molds outside of Prime being that their design is very stylistic? I genuinely ask because I don't know as I've not watched that show.

Many Prime molds have their own redecos/retools since they themselves were redeco'd and retooled into different things. Knockout, for instance, has a Beast Hunters retool which also has a Silverstreak type redeco.

And there were even some redecos in the cartoon that never received proper toys of them in the first place.

Sabrblade wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Prime Skyquake's already leaked as coming in the Velocitron line, but as a Leader rather than a Voyager, so he'll probably get his own mold.

Skyquake's listing is for the mainline, not Velocitron. The Velocitron Leader listing just said "LDR 2".

Thanks. I misremembered which line it was and, at the time, didn't have time to double-check.

Sabrblade wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Till-all-R1 wrote:I couldn't care either way on this topic because I wouldn't have purchased regardless, but I will say that it might simply be due to them wanting to reuse those molds for other bots in the future that aren't from Prime. So if they were to maintain that style if would limit their use for future releases, and it's simple choice of being fiscally conscious rather than being either pro G1 or anti prime.

If Knockout etc. had been Prime accurate how often could they truly utilize the molds outside of Prime being that their design is very stylistic? I genuinely ask because I don't know as I've not watched that show.

Many Prime molds have their own redecos/retools since they themselves were redeco'd and retooled into different things. Knockout, for instance, has a Beast Hunters retool which also has a Silverstreak type redeco.

And there were even some redecos in the cartoon that never received proper toys of them in the first place.

Redecos/retools that were present in the show are as follows:
-Skyquake & Dreadwing (different guns, otherwise just repaints)
-Bee & Bee's S3 inverted color scheme
-Smokescreen & Smokescreen's S3 color scheme
-Optimus & Nemesis
--Optimus could also be retooled into Magnus, and could presumably at the very least share parts with his S3 design
-Cliffjumper & Tailgate
-Vehicons
-Insecticons
-Breakdown & Cylas
Everything else was toyline/BotCon only.

Nemesis Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Nemesis Primal wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Prime Skyquake's already leaked as coming in the Velocitron line, but as a Leader rather than a Voyager, so he'll probably get his own mold.

Skyquake's listing is for the mainline, not Velocitron. The Velocitron Leader listing just said "LDR 2".

Thanks. I misremembered which line it was and, at the time, didn't have time to double-check.

Sabrblade wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Till-all-R1 wrote:I couldn't care either way on this topic because I wouldn't have purchased regardless, but I will say that it might simply be due to them wanting to reuse those molds for other bots in the future that aren't from Prime. So if they were to maintain that style if would limit their use for future releases, and it's simple choice of being fiscally conscious rather than being either pro G1 or anti prime.

If Knockout etc. had been Prime accurate how often could they truly utilize the molds outside of Prime being that their design is very stylistic? I genuinely ask because I don't know as I've not watched that show.

Many Prime molds have their own redecos/retools since they themselves were redeco'd and retooled into different things. Knockout, for instance, has a Beast Hunters retool which also has a Silverstreak type redeco.

And there were even some redecos in the cartoon that never received proper toys of them in the first place.

Redecos/retools that were present in the show are as follows:
-Skyquake & Dreadwing (different guns, otherwise just repaints)
-Bee & Bee's S3 inverted color scheme
-Smokescreen & Smokescreen's S3 color scheme
-Optimus & Nemesis
--Optimus could also be retooled into Magnus, and could presumably at the very least share parts with his S3 design
-Cliffjumper & Tailgate
-Vehicons
-Insecticons
-Breakdown & Cylas
Everything else was toyline/BotCon only.

There is also Megatron & unicron/megatron, and zombie Cliffjumper

Sabrblade wrote:On top of this, several Beast Wars characters are also just as curvy as the Prime characters, yet look how faithful those recent updates have been.

Tarantulas is especially notable since he's actually in the Legacy line with all of his curviness completely intact!

The only possible explanation I could offer for the BW characters remaining mostly unchanged (aside from "more realistic" Beast Modes") is basically...There's no real way to make the BW characters look as if they were part of the original Transformers series without altering them to a degree so drastic, that they become completely off model. I mean I didn't mind Botcon and club exclusives that did this in the past since prose stories offered explanation.

I understand some fans may argue that UT, and Prime characters have been altered drastically, but they are at least somewhat recognizable. I mean if Dinobot were a car, or Tarantulas a motorcycle, then I think people would really not be on board with all of that.

Also based on BW animated continuity basically being in the same universe as Marvel/Sunbow animated continuity, they may consider that as well. .

With that being said, I have a feeling that Tarantulas was planned for Kingdom early on, but got bumped a year due to budget. Honestly I feel the same about Voyager Predacon Inferno as well (as this would complete the BW Season 1 cast). I'm really curious to see what the Leader TM2 Dragon Megatron looks like. Will it be an exact faithful representation of the BW animated series, or altered somehow?

Now you could go G1ified Transmetals, which I would love, but that's a completely different set of products.

I definitely feel like contemporary Generations lines have a more unified build style and sense of aesthetics that wouldn't be consistent with the native character designs of Prime and Animated in particular. For better and for worse, they made a design choice and have mostly stuck with it, Beast Wars exempted. Maybe I'll feel differently when I have Override in hand, but even that figure seems like they made changes to fit contemporary styles.

Follow up question, do people realistically believe it's possibly for Hasbro to make every single character iteration form every show? I commend the Marvel Legends team for doing some of their deep dives but they do have quite the fan base for it and those figures are likely not as expensive to make as a Transformer.

Which is why I feel they tend to stick to the well known bots most of the time.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Follow up question, do people realistically believe it's possibly for Hasbro to make every single character iteration form every show? I commend the Marvel Legends team for doing some of their deep dives but they do have quite the fan base for it and those figures are likely not as expensive to make as a Transformer.

Which is why I feel they tend to stick to the well known bots most of the time.

Because they do because they sell. It's pretty much a given that certain characters are always going to be done ad nauseum...specifically G1 characters, for the most part (though this seems more due to laziness from Hasbro or Gee-whiners more than anything). Can they make every character? Honestly, I think they already HAD made them since Transformers is a toy commercial first and foremost. If you are asking if they can make show-accurate figures for all those featured, then I doubt it. There just isn't enough demand for certain characters to make it financially worth while.

Found Blitzwing in Baltimore, MD yesterday. Have not opened him yet.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Follow up question, do people realistically believe it's possibly for Hasbro to make every single character iteration form every show? I commend the Marvel Legends team for doing some of their deep dives but they do have quite the fan base for it and those figures are likely not as expensive to make as a Transformer.

Which is why I feel they tend to stick to the well known bots most of the time.

I feel like, if they stray away from redoing designs that were already done in WFC (and/or shifting those redos into being SS86 releases), then at some point they should be able to do around 90% of all the main/non-country-exclusive show casts via Legacy as an ongoing line, yes, with that 10% not getting done being the things like obscure generics, one-off characters, or alternate forms that weren't distinct. Like, I don't necessarily expect to see Master Yoketron in any way if we got new Animated stuff, and I would expect to see the Autobot car bros from RiD happen but not both of their color schemes guaranteed. I know we do occasionally get some releases of things like that for G1 stuff these days, but considering it's G1 and also most of them are exclusive repaints/retools, I don't feel confident expecting that to be the case for every continuity.

Do I think all of those updates are going to be 100% screen-accurate to their source material and will be beloved by all? Of course not, and that's why there's going to be people who still cry out for character redos, but I think I'm personally okay with that (there's some designs I honestly don't want to be screen accurate, like the new Cosmos figure).

Big part of why I feel this confident about it? The following facts:
A. a lot of the big Evergreen character names got new iterations in most if not all of the shows,
B. repaints and retools have been baked into the franchise since day 1, and
C. most of the shows had significantly smaller casts than G1.
You can have a year of Legacy that includes new mainline figures of Optimus from Energon, Bumblebee from Prime, Grimlock from (either) RiD, Megatron from Beast Machines, Starscream from Animated, and Soundwave from Cybertron, and you would not only be keeping the big names on the shelves to keep the casual audience and the Hasbro higher-ups happy and keep the guaranteed name recognition revenue coming in, but then you're also making dents in the casts of 6 different shows at once with just those figures, you're giving yourself repaints to do further in the mainline or as exclusives (the named Armada Seekers and S3 inverted colors Bee, and that's without taking into account shared molds across continuities like we're seeing with Arcee/Road Rocket), and with those characters locked in there's still plenty of mainline spots open for your more obscure/unorthodox updates (Tarn, Needlenose, Shadow Panther, Quintessons) more G1 show cast (Minibots, Insecticons, Triple Changers), and your gimmick-focused figures (Modulators/Weaponizers).

Best part of this? Judging by the Legacy listings/releases so far, this is exactly how Hasbro is planning on going about it.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Follow up question, do people realistically believe it's possibly for Hasbro to make every single character iteration form every show?

It's possible, but not realistic.

Truth be told, I am pretty sure that no one is seriously asking that Hasbro make new toys of every single Transformers character ever made. Just that the ones they do choose to make have their toys look the way the character is meant to look in a faithful-enough manner.

sol magnus wrote:Found Blitzwing in Baltimore, MD yesterday. Have not opened him yet.

Blitzwing is a horrible, horrible mess of parts cancer.

But considering my style and interests in making custom Frankensformers, I just know that I won't resist buying him when I'll see him in store.

-Kanrabat- wrote:

sol magnus wrote:Found Blitzwing in Baltimore, MD yesterday. Have not opened him yet.

Blitzwing is a horrible, horrible mess of parts cancer.

But considering my style and interests in making custom Frankensformers, I just know that I won't resist buying him when I'll see him in store.

By the looks of him, you won't need to customize much.

o.supreme wrote:I mean if Dinobot were a car, or Tarantulas a motorcycle, then I think people would really not be on board with all of that.

I'm not so sure. Botcon / Fun Pub had two major story lines that they kept going back to. One was Shattered Glass which they've had some success with and will probably keep making every now and then even if they decide to discontinue the actual line. The other is Dawn of Future's Past series of reworking BW characters into existing vehicle modes they maybe have had on Cybertron (I'm sure you're aware of all this, I'm just recapping). I could easily see Hasbro either doing a different Pulse exclusive line from DoFP or offer it to a store like Amazon.

And yes, I would buy Tarantulas as a motorcycle, but he sure is expensive!



I think Hasbro can get people to buy almost anything with the right justification.

Emerje

Rodimus Prime wrote:By the looks of him, you won't need to customize much.

Lol, I know!

BTW, I'm currently working on a pair of "G1" customs. One is done, only the other is left. When my sig will change, it will mean that I'm done.

Emerje wrote:And yes, I would buy Tarantulas as a motorcycle, but he sure is expensive!

Emerje

Oh dear... That mold is fragile as hell. I once had the Junkion. I bought it in bike mode. Transforming him in bot mode went well. But then I tried putting him back in bike mode. He ASSPLODED in little pieces. Then I threw it into the Frankensformers mass grave.

Emerje wrote:And yes, I would buy Tarantulas as a motorcycle, but he sure is expensive!



I think Hasbro can get people to buy almost anything with the right justification.

Emerje

That's pretty much what I said in my original post. Botcon or club exclusives are ok. But if that was a mainline Tarantulas, the fans would have went off the chain.

Disclaimer: The following replies are not meant to be either antagonizing or confrontational. They are simply responses is a conversational sense.

o.supreme wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:On top of this, several Beast Wars characters are also just as curvy as the Prime characters, yet look how faithful those recent updates have been.

Tarantulas is especially notable since he's actually in the Legacy line with all of his curviness completely intact!

The only possible explanation I could offer for the BW characters remaining mostly unchanged (aside from "more realistic" Beast Modes") is basically...There's no real way to make the BW characters look as if they were part of the original Transformers series without altering them to a degree so drastic, that they become completely off model.

Sure there is, but it's a way no Beast Wars fan would want to see done: Keep their same basic silhouettes, but reshape all of their limbs to be blocky and angular rather than round, and change their beast mode skins to instead look like metal paneling instead of fur, feathers, or scales. Mechanical beasts instead of organic ones, but with the same color schemes as their organic beast bodies.

o.supreme wrote:I mean I didn't mind Botcon and club exclusives that did this in the past since prose stories offered explanation.

Except, the BotCon ones you're thinking of were their pre-Earth Cybertronian bodies, so they weren't Beast Wars but "Pre-Beast Wars" (or in the case of Uprising, "Non-Beast Wars" since that was an Elseworlds-style premise).

o.supreme wrote:I understand some fans may argue that UT, and Prime characters have been altered drastically, but they are at least somewhat recognizable.

So far the UT characters in Legacy (being Override and Metroplex) have been updated rather faithfully. It's just the Prime guys who so far have been changed so drastically.

o.supreme wrote:I mean if Dinobot were a car, or Tarantulas a motorcycle, then I think people would really not be on board with all of that.

Even an organic Velociraptor Dinobot can still look wrong. I'm reminded of this hideous-inaccurate deco from Universe 2008/9:



Which Takara graciously corrected in their Henkei! Henkei! release:

o.supreme wrote:Also based on BW animated continuity basically being in the same universe as Marvel/Sunbow animated continuity, they may consider that as well. .

And therein likely lies the real reason that the Beast Wars figures are so faithfully curvy while the Prime figures have been boxified. They apparently just cannot fathom the idea of Transformers that look like this inhabiting the same world as Transformers who look like this, when they evidently have no problem with fathoming the idea of Transformers who look like this inhabiting the same world as those who look like this because of two cartoons that already established it as such a long time ago, despite the fact that these and these have significantly different aesthetics from each other, with these even looking a LOT more like they could be related to these rather than these.

The fact that the Beast Wars characters exist in the same world as the G1 characters despite having so different an aesthetic of their own ought to be enough to reason to let the Prime characters keep their aesthetic intact. After all, comics seem to have no trouble depicting characters from all across the multiverse coexisting in the same universes, wherein their unique design aesthetics are all kept intact, whether it's instances of literal dimension-hopping (like in Fun Pub's TransTech stories) or cases where original characters from one continuity are transplanted wholecloth into another (like in IDW's 2005-2018 comics).

o.supreme wrote:Botcon or club exclusives are ok. But if that was a mainline Tarantulas, the fans would have went off the chain.

They gave us a mainline Optimus Primal like that back in Power of the Primes.

Not sure if this is the right place because this line will likely be renamed if they ever decide to release Powerglide again but I've been in a holding pattern the last two years on whether to purchase Combiner War version or wait it out for a newer one. So my question is should I just buy that version and call it good?
I already bought Seaspray last year and Beachcomber this year and they seem to fit in with the current bots.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Not sure if this is the right place because this line will likely be renamed if they ever decide to release Powerglide again but I've been in a holding pattern the last two years on whether to purchase Combiner War version or wait it out for a newer one. So my question is should I just buy that version and call it good?
I already bought Seaspray last year and Beachcomber this year and they seem to fit in with the current bots.

CW Powerglide is an excellent little figure.

Till-all-R1 wrote:Not sure if this is the right place because this line will likely be renamed if they ever decide to release Powerglide again but I've been in a holding pattern the last two years on whether to purchase Combiner War version or wait it out for a newer one. So my question is should I just buy that version and call it good?
I already bought Seaspray last year and Beachcomber this year and they seem to fit in with the current bots.

If they redo Powerglide it'll be at the deluxe class size point.

CW Powerglide is great. However, he was designed to scale with CW Superion as a weapon as well, so I think eventually he will be revisited as a deluxe figure.

Indemand has photos up of deluxe inferno and armada starscream (deluxe??) which I'm just going to take as my two lots of bad news to complete it coming in threes today. I'll look to see if the figures are any good later but size classes suck for both.

blackeyedprime wrote:Indemand has photos up of deluxe inferno and armada starscream (deluxe??) which I'm just going to take as my two lots of bad news to complete it coming in threes today. I'll look to see if the figures are any good later but size classes suck for both.

They are voyagers

Fans have been waiting a long time to see these figures and now we finally have pictures. In Demand Toys posted official images of Transformers Legacy voyager class Beast Wars Inferno and Armada Starscream on their Facebook page. Starscream comes with the Starsabr and his wing sword but each molded as a single pieced. Inferno has an articulated jaw. His transformation is rather different from the original since his robot limbs are not used for any of the ant limbs. You'll let us know if you think this change in transformation and aesthetic works for you.