The Energon Pub

I'll repeat myself: it's because TLK flopped and Star Wars toys didn't sell.

Skritz wrote:Star Wars toys didn't sell.

ok so I'm confused...I'm being told other TF toylines don't effect PotP, but a completely unrelated Toyline form the same toy manufacturer does?

o.supreme wrote:

Skritz wrote:Star Wars toys didn't sell.

ok so I'm confused...I'm being told other TF toylines don't effect PotP, but a completely unrelated Toyline form the same toy manufacturer does?

It doesnt. And TLK didnt flop, Hasbro showed us their growth numbers. Transformers is what got them the highest growth last year out of all their products while Star Wars is what gave them the biggest loss.

https://www.seibertron.com/transformers ... all/40625/

I think we are looking at this from a two different perspectives. William-James, I think you are looking at what's officially releasing as part of the POTP line. ie. This is what's on paper — and that's the facts.

I'm looking at this from the behind-the-scenes perspective. What was the design team thinking? Were they PLANNING a full set of femmebot limbs? Did they have a name for combined Starscream? Are they going to try to eventually release some leftover limbs as exclusives or in the next line? ie. What was the PLAN — regardless of what actually got released under the moniker POTP.

I want that insight... whether or not the ever even finish the sets. If they don't finish the job, I can at least do some customs and finish it myself.

But the notion that Hasbro got to the point of actually manufacturing toys without putting any thought to limbs or names is outlandish. Somebody there had to have a plan for Starscream and Elita-1 at least, if not Inferno. My gestalts are each missing an arm AND a leg, and I know that can't have been the plan.

All of this makes me deeply miss Botcon and subscription service (for figures, comics, prose). We had an avenue to remedy issues like this.

I hope we all stand up at conventions to tell Hasbro we want the rest of these figures until we get them. Just like Don did for a decade until they put out a Headmaster Arcee.

gothsaurus wrote:All of this makes me deeply miss Botcon and subscription service (for figures, comics, prose). We had an avenue to remedy issues like this.

It makes me wish had stuck to their previous patterns of releasing unique figures. They would have provided proper teams for all the Voyagers, even if Hasbro didn't.

Okay so, if it's not the fault of the TLK toyline nor Star Wars then why did PotP get so 'gutted'? Why are we missing some of the Thirteen Primes on whom this whole line's identity was based on? Why did they release some CW-using new molds but not 'finish' these combiners? If the idea was just to randomly release combiner version of characters then why go out of their way to release full Dinobots and Terrorcons? Or was the plan to release only some complete teams? If so what's the damn point, how does it make sense?

Power of the Primes make no sense.

Skritz wrote:Okay so, if it's not the fault of the TLK toyline nor Star Wars then why did PotP get so 'gutted'? Why are we missing some of the Thirteen Primes on whom this whole line's identity was based on? Why did they release some CW-using new molds but not 'finish' these combiners? If the idea was just to randomly release combiner version of characters then why go out of their way to release full Dinobots and Terrorcons? Or was the plan to release only some complete teams? If so what's the damn point, how does it make sense?

Power of the Primes make no sense.

The only toyline that could conceivably have any influence on how Power of the Primes has ultimately turned out isn't one from the past few years, it's one that hasn't released yet. "War for Cybertron" Part 1 is gearing up for release in half a year or so. If PotP got cut short, it was to usher in a new direction for the Generations line that much faster. Why would a toy company look at a loss like reported for Star Wars toys and say to themselves "let's offset that loss by downscaling our plans for a different toyline that is the most profitable for us?" That's what doesn't make any sense.

gothsaurus wrote:But the notion that Hasbro got to the point of actually manufacturing toys without putting any thought to limbs or names is outlandish.

While these torsos had names, there were no defined teams for CW Optimus, Betatron and Galvatronus. Granted there were no ophan limbs there, but I see this as Hasbro just going the extra step in randomness this time around.

As a fan outside the US, I dont miss Botcon or TFSS in the least as it meant I was sure to never get something (unless I paid outlandish prices).

Right. They named the heads and had a plan for those guys... namely, to have a torso to attach mismatched extra limbs that had been accumulating.

(Mind you, I still prefer and love the way Takara handled all the sets. It was clear who was a team. And wow, Grand Galvatron was a pretty quirky and glorious way to handle some odd, unused molds. Since those have stopped, I know I'll have to take the time to paint a custom Abominus with purple head. Pouring one out for my homie Unite Warriors box sets.)

I think that's my problem now. 1. we don't have names for'heads' 2. We haven't been accumulating mismatched limbs lately. (ie. We have no Rooks or Alpha Bravos for this line.) Getting Inferno at the end of the line with nothing to attach feels weird. I'd love to see some Red Alert, Ratchet, Sideswipe (because he's red) plus upcoming (orange) Wreck Gar. I think those would look pretty great together.

Sorry you never made it out to Botcon William-James. It was really heart-warming being around fellow fans. Also sad you never had some online friend from Seibertron batting for ya. I've picked up figures or box sets for friends almost every year I went. (And I often have friends help with SDCC.)

We all have to look out for each other as a community.

I don't know why you bring up alpha bravo and rook as orphan limbs as I put them with the teams they were assigned, it was quite easy to do though I do acknowledge that my collecting habits and ideas are different as I'm not trying to rebuild g1...I'm just in it for awesome toys hence why elita and inferno having no set teams doesn't bother me as I'll sort out my own fiction.

Though I will say I think something happened with this line bit I also think that no designs are wasted and those toys that were cut from this line, will appear again...plus I'm hoping for the last scramble city combiner to reappear...piranhacon

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Skritz wrote:Okay so, if it's not the fault of the TLK toyline nor Star Wars then why did PotP get so 'gutted'? Why are we missing some of the Thirteen Primes on whom this whole line's identity was based on? Why did they release some CW-using new molds but not 'finish' these combiners? If the idea was just to randomly release combiner version of characters then why go out of their way to release full Dinobots and Terrorcons? Or was the plan to release only some complete teams? If so what's the damn point, how does it make sense?

Power of the Primes make no sense.

The only toyline that could conceivably have any influence on how Power of the Primes has ultimately turned out isn't one from the past few years, it's one that hasn't released yet. "War for Cybertron" Part 1 is gearing up for release in half a year or so. If PotP got cut short, it was to usher in a new direction for the Generations line that much faster. Why would a toy company look at a loss like reported for Star Wars toys and say to themselves "let's offset that loss by downscaling our plans for a different toyline that is the most profitable for us?" That's what doesn't make any sense.

Pretty much this. If they kept things with PotP the way they did the previous Prime Wars lines they would have been starting WfC mid-year which isn't how they wanted to launch a new line, they wanted to start just before the holidays. To make that happen PotP would either have to end after one year or run for two years, they chose the former. Remember when they said they had the Generations line planned out until 2021? That takes them all the way through to the end of WfC so they've had this whole thing worked out, including PotP waves, for a while now, long before Star Wars or even TLK sales numbers were a thing.

Emerje

I do find it confusing why Hasbro just doesn't do something as simple as re-release figures such as Hook or Alpha Bravo to help with the new combiner teams we have. Maybe as a store exclusive 2-pack with slight alternate decos? That way we'd have 2 more limbs to finish off one of the new Autobot combiners. And why stop there? There is a portion of bots that Takara Tomy made for their Unite Warriors line, so why not release other figures alongside the supposed Blast Off exclusive we're getting? Ratchet? Zombie Breakdown? It just seems... unusual you would make a whole line where one of the main parts of the line is combiners (again), yet you don't make enough limbs to actually complete the combiners. And yes, we all know we're supposed to use the Scramble City gimmick to our advantage to complete the combiner, but still, we need enough limbs to do so.

Honestly? There's a lot about this line that just doesn't make sense. For starters, I think we can all agree that SOMETHING happened at the production level. Second, the distribution issues that everyone seems to be having. For whatever reason, we're not finding Wave 2 in a lot of places, but SS was able to launch just fine. There's also the fact that the line seems to have been cut short, with it ending with one new figure in Wave 4.

With these types of problems occurring across the board, I wonder if there was some kind of shakeup at the corporate level. Some kind of sudden, but massive, decision to change the direction of the franchise would be the most logical thing in my opinion. Especially since the upcoming toylines seem to have a very G1 heavy focus. I wonder if the TLK backlash has made Hasbro decide to change things across the board, leading to a lot of plans for the franchise being changed. Those changes including whatever plans they may have had for POTP. Hence, why we have a lot of incomplete combiners, missing four of the remaining Primes, distribution issues, etc. I'm coming to this conclusion with the recent IDW comics reboot and film franchise reboot also in mind. All of these things happening at once gives me the impression that we're witnessing the consequences of a massive shakeup at Hasbro's corporate level.

Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

EDIT: Nevermind. I guess I cannot keep these shells straight

Flashwave wrote:Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

We got Cloudburst in Potpie Wave 1. He's Micronus.

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

We got Cloudburst in Potpie Wave 1. He's Micronus.

Oh, okay. Nevermind then. I thought the Grand pretender was a new retool. Forget me...

Flashwave wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

We got Cloudburst in Potpie Wave 1. He's Micronus.

Oh, okay. Nevermind then. I thought the Grand pretender was a new retool. Forget me...

It was a retool. It looked like Waverider's shell colored in the deco of Grand's shell.

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

We got Cloudburst in Potpie Wave 1. He's Micronus.

Oh, okay. Nevermind then. I thought the Grand pretender was a new retool. Forget me...

It was a retool. It looked like Waverider's shell colored in the deco of Grand's shell.

So I'm mot completely crazy. And correct me if I am wrong, but so far we have no wprd on Waverider being an actusl thing, right?

Flashwave wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Flashwave wrote:Can I just toss this out there? Maybe it has no meaning,

But Takara offered the Pretender shell for Grand only as a Stretch Goal for Preorders. Now, at the time it sorta looked like he was just an incentive we didnt win, but we havent actually seen that Pretender have we? He's a retool of someone, but have we seen Cloudburst in a rumored Wave3 or 4? Or is Cloubburst evidence of stuffleft on the cuttingroom floor and Takara was trying to lump his production costs in with Grand's profit margin?

We got Cloudburst in Potpie Wave 1. He's Micronus.

Oh, okay. Nevermind then. I thought the Grand pretender was a new retool. Forget me...

It was a retool. It looked like Waverider's shell colored in the deco of Grand's shell.

So I'm mot completely crazy. And correct me if I am wrong, but so far we have no wprd on Waverider being an actusl thing, right?

Negatory. The Grand shell proves that the Waverider tooling exists, but isn't coming out in Potpie.

BombshellDaBug wrote:Honestly? There's a lot about this line that just doesn't make sense. For starters, I think we can all agree that SOMETHING happened at the production level. Second, the distribution issues that everyone seems to be having. For whatever reason, we're not finding Wave 2 in a lot of places, but SS was able to launch just fine. There's also the fact that the line seems to have been cut short, with it ending with one new figure in Wave 4.

With these types of problems occurring across the board, I wonder if there was some kind of shakeup at the corporate level. Some kind of sudden, but massive, decision to change the direction of the franchise would be the most logical thing in my opinion. Especially since the upcoming toylines seem to have a very G1 heavy focus. I wonder if the TLK backlash has made Hasbro decide to change things across the board, leading to a lot of plans for the franchise being changed. Those changes including whatever plans they may have had for POTP. Hence, why we have a lot of incomplete combiners, missing four of the remaining Primes, distribution issues, etc. I'm coming to this conclusion with the recent IDW comics reboot and film franchise reboot also in mind. All of these things happening at once gives me the impression that we're witnessing the consequences of a massive shakeup at Hasbro's corporate level.

We got all the teams complete though, inferno, elita 1, starscream aren't a part of any special team so they don't need team members as they can use anyone. Also I think the prime trilogy has been g1 focused as well, I mean we just got a figure of orion pax! Like wolfman pointed out the new toyline would have started development before TLK toyline released and as seen in profit releases, transformers was the biggest moneymaker for hasbro last year.

We've received another sighting piece of news for the Transformers Power of the Primes line, this time for Wave 3 and its Prime Masters, and coming from the Philippines! The sighting comes from fellow Transformers fan Xavier Basa over on Twitter, who reports that the Toys R Us store in the Ayala Center, Makati, has stocked the three Prime Masters and decoy suits for Solus Prime, Quintus, and Megatronus, each priced at 399.75 Piso each (around 7.50 USD at the time of writing).

You can check out the images from the store mirrored below, and join the discussion in the Energon Pub boards - and remember to use our regional sightings section to coordinate with other fans, and our sightings database for a comprehensive look at stores worldwide!

Alright then. Wave three is being spotted over seas with wave 2 two still nowhere to be found in US. Guess it’s off to getting them online.

It sucks that we’re only halfway with POTP and it feels like the end of titans return run where nothing was being sighted

I definitely agree with that Randomhero. :/

I want dem wave3 Prime Masters.

I hope the Wave 3 PMs come out over here. For that matter I haven't seen Micronus anywhere, though he should be easy to find.

I feel like these waves need to drawn out longer... I hate having four to six waves of something in one year and then that line is done. I guess I'm just over the oversaturation...

KVO PRIME