The Energon Pub

It looks like Mini-Bots are to the year 2011 what City-Commander add-ons where in the year 2009 for 3rd Party companies. Why do we say that? Well it's because a member over at ACToys has posted what looks like an advertising poster by a 3rd Party company named X Transbots announcing their products. And the products are Mini-Bots. Wheelie and Powerglide to be exact. We have taken the liberty to mirror the image below, for the original, just click here or the image.


For those of you who've been around longer may recognise the blacked out figures as JizaiToys' Perfect Transform Wheelie and Powerglide. However, we do not know if these will be KO's of the famous licensed Garage Kits, or if the poster simply uses JizaiToys' stock photography.

WANT WANT WANT!!!!

Ok really guys? Perhaps the 3rd party companies should get on the same page and decide who gets to make what. OOOOOR, perhaps this will start a price war and someones going to have to drop the price of their figure to stay competitive...hmm

Hrmph...

With all these third party companies vying for a piece of the market, I really doubt all of these companies will succeed. Not only that, but they are gonna pretty much wipe each other out producing the same character's. So if that is what's going to start to happen, then I am going to have to narrow what I buy and from which maker. So for I trust FansProject, Perfect Effect, and Headrobots...that's it really.

Make Toys: will keep an eye on, especially since they have a lil connection with FansProj. +1

iGear: 1 good kup head, but I need to see how their non KO full figures are. Looking forward to puchasing their Wreckers line. Cmon Impactor!!

TFClub: For some reason, I'm just not feeling their Hercules.

Everyone else, you are at the lower rung of the latter and will have to do some amazing stuff for me to start dipping into "the bottom end" of your pool.

A third company making the minibots!? Geez. This is ridiculous. A bunch of TFs don't even have classicsesque toys, why doesn't someone tackle them??

But, yeah, hopefully this will lead to competitive pricing.

Now I'm just getting p!ssed off. Two 3rd party Optimus Prime trailers, two 3rd party Arcees, two 3rd party Reflectors, two 3rd party Seasprays, two 3rd party Powerglides, and two 3rd party Devastators. I thought the whole point of 3rd party companies was to fill the gaps that HasTak had no interest in going anywhere near. There's an entire universe of Transformers out there and yet this lot have all decided to do the same things.

Let's not forget two nontransforming Nightbirds and two Autoscouts.

Do the 3rd party guys operate using a hive mind?

Knew I'd have missed something.

If these are the Jizai Toys or KOs of such, I really liked the pictures I'd seen previously. Jizai also did a really neat looking Cyclonus. Since we hadn't heard about a mass release previously and now get a 7/1/11 date, I'm really curious as to what's going on. Checked Jizai's site and there's no mention of mass production. They usually show up at Wonder Fest and have the rights to sell their kits at the event for that one day only.

I really don't have a clue as to what's going on, but with 3 companies tackling the same subset of figures... this is getting to be overkill.

I don't know why this keeps happening, and it's really getting weird.

But there is one thing I don't mind. Since every company has to (or certainly should) produce their own designs each minibot will be different. Not only do you get to pick which would really be your G1 characters, it opens up having a varied army of bots you can ascribe your own fanon identities with.

Doubledealer25 wrote:WANT WANT WANT!!!!

Agreed

Requiem Prime wrote:But there is one thing I don't mind. Since every company has to (or certainly should) produce their own designs each minibot will be different. Not only do you get to pick which would really be your G1 characters, it opens up having a varied army of bots you can ascribe your own fanon identities with.

You are of course right, but I personally find it hard enough to decide between Hasbro and Takara's differing colour schemes, let alone potentially 2+ different molds.

Hrm. Too many choices, but I suppose since they're all being announced around the same time, and not all are likely to succeed, it should be fairly easy to decide.

Didn't Perfect Effect also announce a Wheelie a while back? When they announced the Lazer/Buzzer mold?

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Didn't Perfect Effect also announce a Wheelie a while back? When they announced the Lazer/Buzzer mold?

Yep http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/ ... lie/18751/

With three different choices on each Minibot, possibly 4 with Wheelie, I guess I better sharpen my decision making skills.

Alright alright despite all the talk of third party activity I wanna focus on this topic! Powerglide is all I hoped when first launched as a new fig and more. Though his feet have a high heel look they are waaaaay better looking than that piece of crap DOTM version and over all. Wheelie does look cool but I'm content with my classics version.

The only thing that is making these mini bots better than my fav classics/henkei is these will be armed and that is awesome. Since they did do Wheelie I would dare them to do Cosmos, Pipes, and Outback...'nuff said!

I would probably go for Wheelie, but I;d have to see how well is quality control is.

Looks cool. Will have to wait for pirce, size and qc before making any real comment on them.

I would also like to add that I am now part of the TF franchise

I am the only Transbot on any boards so I know I inspired that name.

Yeah me woot woot.

I like having choices, and I like that these guys have announced the intention before putting out the products.

With the 3rd party Arcees, we got the orders for the first one without ever seeing the second, which was, IMO, much better.

I ended up buying both, only to then be disappointed with the first one.

With this Minibot situation, we are seeing prototypes and images now, and we will be able to make educated choices before we buy.

Hopefully these guys will send out a few freebies to Seibertron (*hint*hint*) so we can see what these will look like, and get a few comparison pics before we plunk down our hard earned cash.

Too many of the same charactrs being done at the same time.....yes, that will help the market grow and sustain future projects I don't think.....

I love the minibots, I'm more than happy that we are getting what look like some very good quality versions of important gaps in the Generations line up but come on 3rd Parties,,,,no more Powerglide!

And if you are all going Mini is it too much to ask that someone finally gets around to Brawn and Beachcomber?

necr0blivion wrote:If these are the Jizai Toys or KOs of such, I really liked the pictures I'd seen previously.

Same here. If these are those rumored remakes in better materials, I am all over them. Both Jizai figures looked perfect to me in person. Man, Powerglide is getting some love lately. That's pretty exciting to me.

TFW has some pics of prorotypes. Evidently these are oversized KOs of the Jazitoys stuff.

Dunno how I feel about that. Hopefully they got permission from Jazi. On the other hand, it goes for $1000+ from the auctions I've seen. Anyhow, I still like the look of their Wheelie, but now .... he just might be too tall!

necr0blivion wrote:If these are the Jizai Toys or KOs of such, I really liked the pictures I'd seen previously. Jizai also did a really neat looking Cyclonus. Since we hadn't heard about a mass release previously and now get a 7/1/11 date, I'm really curious as to what's going on. Checked Jizai's site and there's no mention of mass production. They usually show up at Wonder Fest and have the rights to sell their kits at the event for that one day only.

I really don't have a clue as to what's going on, but with 3 companies tackling the same subset of figures... this is getting to be overkill.

I have talked with the owner/creator of Jizaitoys over the years and he has felt strongly about playing by the book. Each time he releases a batch of garage kit figures at Wonderfest, he gets approval from Takara prior. He does not sell nor give away his kits at any other time. Because of these reasons, I don't think these figures are coming from him. I think these are KO's of his creations. KO's of both figures already float around eBay and sell for about $300 each.

After seeing the prototypes I'm no longer interested. Looks I'm back down between MakeToys and iGear for my Minibots. Perfect Effect will also have my money for Wheelie.

Stormrider wrote:

necr0blivion wrote:If these are the Jizai Toys or KOs of such, I really liked the pictures I'd seen previously. Jizai also did a really neat looking Cyclonus. Since we hadn't heard about a mass release previously and now get a 7/1/11 date, I'm really curious as to what's going on. Checked Jizai's site and there's no mention of mass production. They usually show up at Wonder Fest and have the rights to sell their kits at the event for that one day only.

I really don't have a clue as to what's going on, but with 3 companies tackling the same subset of figures... this is getting to be overkill.

I have talked with the owner/creator of Jizaitoys over the years and he has felt strongly about playing by the book. Each time he releases a batch of garage kit figures at Wonderfest, he gets approval from Takara prior. He does not sell nor give away his kits at any other time. Because of these reasons, I don't think these figures are coming from him. I think these are KO's of his creations. KO's of both figures already float around eBay and sell for about $300 each.

That's interesting. I'll be scratching "X Transbots" off the list until we get some confirmation that they have approval to use Jizai's moulds.