The Energon Pub

Kurona wrote:The only new molds we saw were Seaspray, Ramhorn and Windblade

And of those, only Seaspray is truly new since Windblade shares the engineering of Highbrow and Scourge and Ramhorn seems to be a retool of Shuffler. Then again, technically this was our first on hands look at Trypticon which is a totally new mold. I would count him as a Toyfair reveal (Seibertron definitely counted it as such).

there just wasn't much mindblowing in the TR department

Agreed but for the record, Hasbro releasing Takara's Leader Prime with better paint blew my mind big time. While you have to buy the boxset, it is technically just taking the place of a normal leader toy, like Quickswitch in the other set. And yet we all know that toy was sold under a higher price point than leader class in Japan. I found that pretty nuts. We were all expecting a blue redeco fo PM Prime and got this instead, woah!

Cobotron wrote:I kinda felt like the Toy Fair reveals were lack luster due to the rumor mill grinding so hard lately. Still had fun though.

Thats because you arent the biggest fan of the movie toys, which was easily the highlight of the show, they had a ton of new toys to show and it totally contrasted everything we knew of the line so far since the only leaks involved a lot of redecos, which we all found lame.

william-james88 wrote:

Cobotron wrote:I kinda felt like the Toy Fair reveals were lack luster due to the rumor mill grinding so hard lately. Still had fun though.

Thats because you arent the biggest fan of the movie toys, which was easily the highlight of the show, they had a ton of new toys to show and it totally contrasted everything we knew of the line so far since the only leaks involved a lot of redecos, which we all found lame.

Ah! But I do believe Leader Megs was the star of the show.

Still, all of the TR stuff got me excited for the future, I just wish the leaks would get plugged a bit. Christmas morning is way more fun when you don't find everything in Mom and Dad's closet a month before.

Cobotron wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Cobotron wrote:I kinda felt like the Toy Fair reveals were lack luster due to the rumor mill grinding so hard lately. Still had fun though.

Thats because you arent the biggest fan of the movie toys, which was easily the highlight of the show, they had a ton of new toys to show and it totally contrasted everything we knew of the line so far since the only leaks involved a lot of redecos, which we all found lame.

Ah! But I do believe Leader Megs was the star of the show.

Still, all of the TR stuff got me excited for the future, I just wish the leaks would get plugged a bit. Christmas morning is way more fun when you don't find everything in Mom and Dad's closet a month before.

As cool as that Leader Megz from the new movie looks....Imma save my gil for MP36. :p

Whilst I wouldn't get my hopes up for that shiny paint making it onto the final piece (poor, poor Galvatron...) I do think the release of Ginrai by Hasbro is pretty neat...though I will say I feel bad for anyone that bought PMOP or Takara Ginrai (at least in the US- it'll probably be just as expensive to import the boxset with Magnus Prime in it over here as Super Ginrai). I do kind of wish the mold had been done in different colours though- with a new head/helmet he'd have made a good Powered Convoy/Delta Magnus.

I will say, if I ever get Ginrai/Magnus Prime I have the perfect headcanon for him to fit him in with my demented collection:

Black Hat Publishing wrote:Ginrai is a human with a massive fixation on Optimus Prime after being saved by him, and is the only non-Transformer to ever be diagnosed with Primus Apothesis. A trucker by trade, he modified his truck, a Hi-Q Motors "Powermaster" freighter lorry into a Transtector for himself using bits of wrecked Transformers, made in the image of Optimus Prime. He goes into battle by the name of "Ginrai Prime". Nobody is quite sure how he manages to fold his body into the shape of a head though. He is extremely powerful and a hugely competent fighter, but his incessant fanboying over Optimus Prime tests even the Autobot leader's endless patience.

Later, he built an add-on component known as the Godbomber, a Transtector that can be controlled by any Headmaster (nominally Ginrai's buddy Jan), provides transport for 2 more Headmasters and can also combine with Ginrai Prime as the Apex Armour, providing Ginrai with additional power, defence and weaponry. Unfortunately, the Godbomber's "robot mode" is really an afterthought, and whilst it makes a decent artillery platform, it really sucks in a fight.

Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

How much of a difference does that make though? Its as much of a redeco as Hasbro's platinum grimlock compared to battle grimlock but everyone prety much just saw it as a way to own the previously takara exclusive retool. I think the feasibility in obtaining it is the major selling point here, the deco doesnt really matter much, does it?

Also, interesting how these two examples have the takara toy be in a boxset so that it ends up being the same price (or more) than just importing the Takara toy.

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

I really don't see why they released Powermaster Prime first. Why didn't they just go the Ginrai route the whole time. Unless they really wanted to repeat history and give the US the poorer version like they did with the original Powermaster Prime.

I commented earlier about the Price Advantage of getting the Hasbro Box set vs TT Legends Super Ginrai, however...since the set does not include a God Bomber (Apex Bomber...whatever), I'm not inclined to get it unless Hasbro confirms it might be released later.

Also does anyone know if the Leaders that come with the Box Sets (Magnus Prime and Quickswitch) come with the tabs to connect them to other leader base modes?

Ya. I'm a tad frustrated by this PMOP/Ginrai situation.
My PMOP was QC mess. Missing pins in the trailer panels and a shoulder with 0 tension, so I guess the bright side is he can be replaced by this Magnus Prime. The other justification is I can have PMESS in permanent base mode.
I would have loved to have a Powered Convoy deco of UW Magnus though.

Is anyone holding out hope for a God Bomber US release? Any speculation how that might work? Leader in one of the other box sets, maybe?

o.supreme wrote:I commented earlier about the Price Advantage of getting the Hasbro Box set vs TT Legends Super Ginrai, however...since the set does not include a God Bomber (Apex Bomber...whatever), I'm not inclined to get it unless Hasbro confirms it might be released later.

Also does anyone know if the Leaders that come with the Box Sets (Magnus Prime and Quickswitch) come with the tabs to connect them to other leader base modes?

I checked they are still there on both.

So yes as Quickswitch is little more than a repaint (the tabs are on his wings and accessed in battlestation mode) on the Optimus they are on the tabs on his legs clearly visible in robot mode.

--------

As I have said before I was hoping for an Ultra magnus mild remould that had the Titan Master feature but was otherwise similar to the Generations Magnus. Powered Convoy colours would have been nice too though.

o.supreme wrote:Also does anyone know if the Leaders that come with the Box Sets (Magnus Prime and Quickswitch) come with the tabs to connect them to other leader base modes?

Yup, they both do. You can see it on the sides of quickswith in the pic below and on the shins of Magnus Prime

Cobotron wrote:Is anyone holding out hope for a God Bomber US release? Any speculation how that might work? Leader in one of the other box sets, maybe?

Mine was a mess too, one of the wheel plugs was shorter than the others and thus the wheel wasnt snapped in and thus wouldnt roll and would just fall off the toy. I told Hasbro and had to send him to them so they could give me a replacement leader. And due to the mega shortage, they have yet to fullfill that request. It has been 5 months!!!!!!

Anyways, I am holding out for god bomber. he is a leader class toy and we know they are doing 2 more boxsets for the rest of the clones and to cover the 2 other themes (which are meaningless in essence). So it makes perfect sense that this is how they would release him. I hope we know soon though, at least before the Takara version sells out once released.

Wolfman Jake wrote:especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product.

Oh man I really hope so. It **** sucks how we cant tell in their 3d renders.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

How much of a difference does that make though? Its as much of a redeco as Hasbro's platinum grimlock compared to battle grimlock but everyone prety much just saw it as a way to own the previously takara exclusive retool. I think the feasibility in obtaining it is the major selling point here, the deco doesnt really matter much, does it?

It does if someone wants the version that has the most correctly-colored look for the character, which is why I skipped on the Platinum set that had Hasbro's incorrectly-colored redeco of Battle Grimlock.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

RodimusConvoy13 wrote:I really don't see why they released Powermaster Prime first. Why didn't they just go the Ginrai route the whole time.

Because the Super Ginrai tooling didn't yet exist at time that Hasbro released their Powermaster Optimus Prime. Takara made the extra tooling for Super Ginrai because they weren't satisfied with releasing the Powermaster Optimus Prime tooling as is for Super Ginrai. And because we see now that they wanted to make a new Godbomber to combiner with Super Ginrai into God Ginrai, which Takara probably felt couldn't be done the way they wanted it to be done by just using the unaltered Powermaster Optimus Prime tooling.

As recent history has shown, if Takara feels that the tooling of a Hasbro release is inadequate for their own needs/plans, Takara will take it upon themselves to make additional changes or do something completely different from Hasbro's offerings, as were the cases with UW versions of Groove, Blast Off, and Computron vs. their CW counterparts.

Sabrblade wrote:FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

Anyone into robot crotches would know that.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

Anyone into robot crotches would know that.

Something else too.

Sabrblade wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

How much of a difference does that make though? Its as much of a redeco as Hasbro's platinum grimlock compared to battle grimlock but everyone prety much just saw it as a way to own the previously takara exclusive retool. I think the feasibility in obtaining it is the major selling point here, the deco doesnt really matter much, does it?

It does if someone wants the version that has the most correctly-colored look for the character, which is why I skipped on the Platinum set that had Hasbro's incorrectly-colored redeco of Battle Grimlock.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

RodimusConvoy13 wrote:I really don't see why they released Powermaster Prime first. Why didn't they just go the Ginrai route the whole time.

Because the Super Ginrai tooling didn't yet exist at time that Hasbro released their Powermaster Optimus Prime. Takara made the extra tooling for Super Ginrai because they weren't satisfied with releasing the Powermaster Optimus Prime tooling as is for Super Ginrai. And because we see now that they wanted to make a new Godbomber to combiner with Super Ginrai into God Ginrai, which Takara probably felt couldn't be done the way they wanted it to be done by just using the unaltered Powermaster Optimus Prime tooling.

As recent history has shown, if Takara feels that the tooling of a Hasbro release is inadequate for their own needs/plans, Takara will take it upon themselves to make additional changes or do something completely different from Hasbro's offerings, as were the cases with UW versions of Groove, Blast Off, and Computron vs. their CW counterparts.

See, I'm getting a little more cynical about that since the two companies do work together. Considering there's under a year at best between the two companies releasing the same figure, surely each company would know the other's plans in advance? It's not like Hasbro released PMOP and didn't get to hear about Takara's Ginrai when the rest of us did; they surely would have known about Ginrai probably before Titans Return was even announced. I really think money's the big motivator here - much like how Sentinel Prime is much more guaranteed to sell than if the use of the mold people are more excited for, Astrotrain, was released first; I think it's a similar case of releasing PMOP first so he gets more sales compared to what seems to be the more popular version that they're only announcing release of months after PMOP actually hit the shelves.
Do remember that these are toy companies, and while I'm sure many a designer, engineer and otherwise work out of passion - hell, I'm certain most of them do considering how awesome and imaginative some of this stuff is - ultimately it comes down to rather soulless money-grabbing mandates from up high.

And yet, we often see in magazine scans new Takara-original tooling still in its gray prototype stages at points when the unchanged Hasbro versions are either already finalized or even already out on the market in the West.

william-james88 wrote:Mine was a mess too, one of the wheel plugs was shorter than the others and thus the wheel wasnt snapped in and thus wouldnt roll and would just fall off the toy. I told Hasbro and had to send him to them so they could give me a replacement leader. And due to the mega shortage, they have yet to fullfill that request. It has been 5 months!!!!!!

.

Why didn't you just return it to the store? I take it you've not heard the horror stories of returning items directly to hasbro? If you get anything, you'll be lucky to get a RiD Grimlock for your troubles.

Sabrblade wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

Indeed. Hasbro seems to have rolled back a lot of the "Ginrai" paint apps, like the white pelvis with red highlights, going for a more "Optimus" blue pelvis instead. Also, the hands are completely blue, instead of featuring red on the backs of the hands (another Ginrai detail lost). The windows on the chest are bright blue instead of light blue/gray. The Autobot sigils appear to just be white outlines against the red plastic on Magnus Prime, as opposed to Takara's full tampographs on Grinai. The silver paint on the show floor model for Magnus Prime is about the only other obvious difference, at least in robot mode. Anything else I'm missing?

Also, I had a small QC issue with my Legends Super Ginrai. Nothing is wrong structurally, but some of the silver paint on the front of the robot mode chest piece was obviously scratched in production. It looks like they tried to touch it up with some more paint, but left it a bit of a gloppy mess. I'm temped to try and sand it down a bit and repaint the spot myself, but I'm worried about ruining the surface of the plastic underneath.

Kurona wrote:See, I'm getting a little more cynical about that since the two companies do work together. Considering there's under a year at best between the two companies releasing the same figure, surely each company would know the other's plans in advance? It's not like Hasbro released PMOP and didn't get to hear about Takara's Ginrai when the rest of us did; they surely would have known about Ginrai probably before Titans Return was even announced. I really think money's the big motivator here

It is. Hasbro was never gonna invest into that much for a retool of Magnus into Prime. Takara made their own plans just as they did with devastator and Hasbro chose the cheaper option. Takara financed their own development for the new parts. And now to recoup some costs, Hasbro is paying them a licensing fee to release their toy. So its their cheapest option. They finance the making of the cheaper version and then licence out the more expensive one and make their money on the arbitrage of comsumers paying for a lincensed toy distributed by hasbro.

Sabrblade wrote:And yet, we often see in magazine scans new Takara-original tooling still in its gray prototype stages at points when the unchanged Hasbro versions are either already finalized or even already out on the market in the West.

Just because they're in the prototype stages when revealed doesn't mean they were just made yesterday. Those photos were likely made some time before the actual release of the newspaper, and designs and plans laid out far, far before that. Pretty sure each stage of toy production takes a lot longer than the amount of time suggested to imply Hasbro just goes "oh, Takara's doing that, we'll nick that I guess", at the same time we first see it.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:Hopefully everyone here is aware that Magnus Prime isn't merely a straight import of Super Ginrai, but a minor redeco.

A redeco that some may find superior to Takara's offering, especially if that shiny silver paint is in the final product. I already have Takara's Legends Super Ginrai, but I'm planning to double dip for this "Magnus Prime." He looks fantastic.

FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

Indeed. Hasbro seems to have rolled back a lot of the "Ginrai" paint apps, like the white pelvis with red highlights, going for a more "Optimus" blue pelvis instead. Also, the hands are completely blue, instead of featuring red on the backs of the hands (another Ginrai detail lost). The windows on the chest are bright blue instead of light blue/gray. Anything else I'm missing?

The Autobot symbols on the shoulders are solid gray/silver instead of red w/ white outlines, the Autobot symbols on the truck are now huge, there's a red square on the truck trailer near the rear, a tiny red Autobot symbol now adorn the truck grill a la most Movie Optimuses, and the black guns have lost their blue paint apps.

william-james88 wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:FWIW, the silver (should it end up on the final product) isn't the only deco difference.

Anyone into robot crotches would know that.

Where's Agamemnon when you need him?

Sabrblade wrote:The Autobot symbols on the shoulders are solid gray/silver instead of red w/ white outlines, the Autobot symbols on the truck are now huge, there's a red square on the truck trailer near the rear, a tiny red Autobot symbol now adorn the truck grill a la most Movie Optimuses, and the black guns have lost their blue paint apps.

Ginrai's guns are actually cast in blue plastic. You can see the metallic swirling in them in hand. The gunmetal gray color is the actual paint detailing.