The Energon Pub

Deadput wrote:If you don't like retools don't buy em and let the others who don't mind such as my self get them.

There will always be retools and repaints for cost reasons and to make sure HasTak gets full millage out of the molds.

While I agree on the general way, I have nothing against retools and repaints, I think we can safely say hotspot has been retooled too much. This one needs to do a pause and not to be seen for the 10 incoming years.
I even lost count. 10th ? 12th repaints/retools ?

ExciKaiser wrote:While I agree on the general way, I have nothing against retools and repaints, I think we can safely say hotspot has been retooled too much. This one needs to do a pause and not to be seen for the 10 incoming years.
I even lost count. 10th ? 12th repaints/retools ?

Yet people love the Seekers, Datsun brothers and characters who are repaints.

I do agree that it's a little boring but it's a choice you either buy the toy or you don't since no one ever made you choose to buy it.

ExciKaiser wrote:

Deadput wrote:If you don't like retools don't buy em and let the others who don't mind such as my self get them.

There will always be retools and repaints for cost reasons and to make sure HasTak gets full millage out of the molds.

While I agree on the general way, I have nothing against retools and repaints, I think we can safely say hotspot has been retooled too much. This one needs to do a pause and not to be seen for the 10 incoming years.
I even lost count. 10th ? 12th repaints/retools ?

Hotspot has only been retooled minorly once (pyra magna) and majorly once (onslaught). That's it. It hasn't been repaired at all in his base mold and not including Takara onslaught has only been repainted twice.

Deadput wrote:

ExciKaiser wrote:While I agree on the general way, I have nothing against retools and repaints, I think we can safely say hotspot has been retooled too much. This one needs to do a pause and not to be seen for the 10 incoming years.
I even lost count. 10th ? 12th repaints/retools ?

Yet people love the Seekers, Datsun brothers and characters who are repaints.

I do agree that it's a little boring but it's a choice you either buy the toy or you don't since no one ever made you choose to buy it.

I'm not complaining as most of the time it allows me to fill in characters at a size class. Then as my collection grows, I'm allowed to pick and choose which character fits the mold better and replace the old repaint.

steals_your_goats wrote:Hotspot has only been retooled minorly once (pyra magna) and majorly once (onslaught). That's it. It hasn't been repaired at all in his base mold and not including Takara onslaught has only been repainted twice.

Hotspot
Pyra Magma
Onslaught
G2 Onslaught
Bludgeon
Mega Empress
Mega-Octane

Ok, not 10 as I thought, but already 7. In only 2 years. Enough to become boring.

The dinobots are combiners? No way!!!!

WHOA. EVERYONE. SLOW DOWN.

I think everyone is putting WAAAAAY too much stock in the box art for these characters. Combiner Wars Box Arts would sometimes feature a hodgepodge of random limbs, on occasion. Hell, the Hot Spot box art featured the GDO mold. If there is anything I've learned, it's that these drawings mean next to nothing.

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that we are still going to get a few more of the Ark Autobots as limbs in PotP as well as more of the Femmebots. Hopefully all of them (maybe Lancer can be the Legends size teammate?).

While I think they actually ARE trying to give us a pseudo-G2 Defensor under another name, I am hoping for a LEGIT G2 Defensor set. I HATE G2. A lot. But I hate more that Defensor was the only one left out.

I am very eager to see more of Elita-1's toy, now that we've seen the art. I know there was that "leaked" photo, but I need more.

I liked her previous incarnation....But the MMC one probably looks the best (if you prefer her G1 look). I'm hoping Hasbro can do her right!

Omegatron. wrote:

ExciKaiser wrote:

steals_your_goats wrote:Hotspot has only been retooled minorly once (pyra magna) and majorly once (onslaught). That's it. It hasn't been repaired at all in his base mold and not including Takara onslaught has only been repainted twice.

Hotspot
Pyra Magma
Onslaught
G2 Onslaught
Bludgeon
Mega Empress
Mega-Octane

Ok, not 10 as I thought, but already 7. In only 2 years. Enough to become boring.

It's unfair to count Mega Empress, G2 Onslaught, Bludgeon, and, arguably, Mega-Octane.

Mega Empress is the Takara counterpart of Pyra Magna, they weren't released in the same market. If you're going to count both of those you should count the Hasbro and Takara versions of Hot Spot separately.

G2 Onslaught is supposed to be a redeco of Onslaught, you're not going to get a version of him that isn't and you're not missing something by getting him. Mega-Octane is the same, and is arguably the Takara counterpart to G2 Onslaught as well.

Bludgeon is a TFSS toy.

Yeah, we really should stay away from grouping them all together like that when discussing whether or not this mold is overused because it will lead to nonsensical discussion. Its totally fair to say that this mold was used for several characters, but they are not all from the same company (there are 3 different companies there and 2 isolated markets that are not allowed to compete with eachother contractually while the other can ONLY do repaints by contract). So right there, it cant really be used as an argument to say 1 company is lazy. If we want to talk about a mold being overused, or basically Hasbro being lazy, lets just stick to Hasbro releases.

Basically, this mold was used for HotSpot and retooled to quite an extent for Onslought. And the redecos of Onslought HAD to be a straight redecos as per the homages at play. Thats like complaining that a starscream mold is overused because its also used for Thundercracker and Slywarp. Like what else would one want/expect?

Victorion was always going to be a retool and its one the fans picked. One could call that lazy, but the fan poll is a microcosm of Combiner Wars as a whole and its basically calling the entire line lazy, not just the particular use of that particular mold.

This inferno is really the very first use of the mold, to me, which does start to make it look overused. Its the only use of the mold so far which feels like filler material and there only to have something else on the shelves with not much merrit or reason behind it. I will skip it and will instead get the classics inferno one day, so that my GHUG HotSpot and Inferno will be different molds.
So I do agree with D-Max. But, I will reiterate, I only find this use of the mold to be unnecessary.

The past couple days have been rich with leaks from the upcoming Transformers Power of the Primes line, all surprisingly from different sources. We have yet another batch of leaked assets today, this time featuring art work of Elita One, Moonracer, and Inferno's robot mode. We also get a look at what seems to be a scan of the instructions for Volcanicus, the Dinobot combiner, as well as Elita One's collector card.

Take a look at the images below and stay tuned to Seibertron.com for more Power of the Primes news!








These come to us from Weibo.

Elita looks bloody incredible! Lean and imposing with a lot of bulk behind her. If there was any direct Transformers counterpart for 'toned' this would be it. ... I just hope it translates as well to the toy.

I thought Inferno was to be a retool of Hot Spot, not Onslaught. Look at the shoulders.

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:I thought Inferno was to be a retool of Hot Spot, not Onslaught. Look at the shoulders.

Yeah, but look at the back. Looks like a bit of both. Possibly some added parts for the Enigma of Combination and Prime Masters.

Kurona wrote:Elita looks bloody incredible! Lean and imposing with a lot of bulk behind her. If there was any direct Transformers counterpart for 'toned' this would be it. ... I just hope it translates as well to the toy.

Totally agreed. If the toy ends up looking like her depiction in the art it'll be an instabuy from me. Admittedly, my expectations are tempered by the knowledge that she's being retooled (or even redecoed if worst comes to worst) from the Puffmaster himself, but hopefully they'll find a way to shave off that extra ballooniness from the mold for this iteration. Put me down as tentatively hopeful

Aw, was kind of hoping it would be Beast Wars Inferno before I saw the pictures. No glory for the colony today.

Qwan wrote:

Kurona wrote:Elita looks bloody incredible! Lean and imposing with a lot of bulk behind her. If there was any direct Transformers counterpart for 'toned' this would be it. ... I just hope it translates as well to the toy.

Totally agreed. If the toy ends up looking like her depiction in the art it'll be an instabuy from me. Admittedly, my expectations are tempered by the knowledge that she's being retooled (or even redecoed if worst comes to worst) from the Puffmaster himself, but hopefully they'll find a way to shave off that extra ballooniness from the mold for this iteration. Put me down as tentatively hopeful

her arms look way different than statscreams so stay hopeful

Qwan wrote:

Kurona wrote:Elita looks bloody incredible! Lean and imposing with a lot of bulk behind her. If there was any direct Transformers counterpart for 'toned' this would be it. ... I just hope it translates as well to the toy.

Totally agreed. If the toy ends up looking like her depiction in the art it'll be an instabuy from me. Admittedly, my expectations are tempered by the knowledge that she's being retooled (or even redecoed if worst comes to worst) from the Puffmaster himself, but hopefully they'll find a way to shave off that extra ballooniness from the mold for this iteration. Put me down as tentatively hopeful

She's got to be able to combine and support limbs so don't put your expectations to the point of being improbable also don't be relying on art work. Abominus isn't going to look like that art. He won't have the monster heads on the legs, his chest is not one solid piece and the tail on the back is incorrect. It's art mimicking the original toy and model.

Same as volcanicus, his art proportions do not look like th toy.

The truth is the artist who drew them was given pictures and designs and they drew it, with Elita they were told "it's a Starscream retool as elite one" and I guarantee the artist made it by looking up pictures of elita from the cartoon and given pictures of Starscreams toy

I mean honestly, look at moonracer. That’s the cartoon model. She doesn’t look like her toy at all.

Randomhero wrote:

Qwan wrote:

Kurona wrote:Elita looks bloody incredible! Lean and imposing with a lot of bulk behind her. If there was any direct Transformers counterpart for 'toned' this would be it. ... I just hope it translates as well to the toy.

Totally agreed. If the toy ends up looking like her depiction in the art it'll be an instabuy from me. Admittedly, my expectations are tempered by the knowledge that she's being retooled (or even redecoed if worst comes to worst) from the Puffmaster himself, but hopefully they'll find a way to shave off that extra ballooniness from the mold for this iteration. Put me down as tentatively hopeful

She's got to be able to combine and support limbs so don't put your expectations to the point of being improbable also don't be relying on art work. Abominus isn't going to look like that art. He won't have the monster heads on the legs, his chest is not one solid piece and the tail on the back is incorrect. It's art mimicking the original toy and model.

Same as volcanicus, his art proportions do not look like th toy.

The truth is the artist who drew them was given pictures and designs and they drew it, with Elita they were told "it's a Starscream retool as elite one" and I guarantee the artist made it by looking up pictures of elita from the cartoon and given pictures of Starscreams toy

I mean honestly, look at moonracer. That’s the cartoon model. She doesn’t look like her toy at all.

Also true, but given that Pyra Magna (using probably the second- or third-best torso mold in CW) looked perfectly feminine enough to me I wouldn't put it out of the question. Artistic liberties aside, all I really need is for them to retool those forearms - they're looking better on Starscream as time goes by but I still wouldn't call them "good", so if they can drop those down to adequate litheness that's all I'd really need to consider buying her.

Totally agreed with the point about artistic liberties in this line as a whole, though. The art has, so far, been a pretty bad indicator of what the toys are gonna look like. Still, one can only hope that the as-yet unseen toys will end up closer to their super-nice-looking art than the ones that we've seen both for so far.

Randomhero wrote:
The truth is the artist who drew them was given pictures and designs and they drew it, with Elita they were told "it's a Starscream retool as elite one" and I guarantee the artist made it by looking up pictures of elita from the cartoon and given pictures of Starscreams toy

I mean honestly, look at moonracer. That’s the cartoon model. She doesn’t look like her toy at all.

Doesn't even read as Elita to me. More like puffy Starscream trying to disguise as Elita like some bad cosplay. Moonracer art looks ok but she always had a pretty bland design to begin with.

I don’t think you’ll be getting much of retooling in the arms. The way people found out Starscream was a combiner was because he has combiner ports in the arms so Elita will probably have the same arms but different hands.

I think the extent of retooling will be like Pyra Magna. New head, chest, hands with new feet and thighs maybe. Those lower legs and arms needs to be the same to support limbs.

Like I said let’s not get too crazy with the art. Titans return Chromedome Nautuca and Kup are great examples of their art not reflecting the final product.

They might get lazy and do a fire convoy out of Inferno, I'm still hoping for the autobot rescue force out of liokaiser though it's not likely to happen or be some uber exclusive that I'll never get.

I wouldn't mind one

The artwork probably has taken a few creative liberties with the designs, that Elita art is nice of course, but I'm not expecting the final product to look exactly like it. I'm guessing she'll keep Starscream's Popeye arms for the Combiner ports.
I do wonder if Starscream, Elita and Inferno will get their own dedicated Combiner limbs as the line goes on, or if Volcanicus and Abominus will be the only proper teams. Also, it won't happen, but part of me wishes a Nexus Prime Combiner would happen in wave 5 or 6. It would be easy enough to do with existing moulds.

I think inferno is a missed opportunity to include heatwave and the other rescue bots in chug. It'd be cool to get those characters.