Flashwave wrote:Wolfman Jake wrote:TF-fan kev777 wrote:Nemesis Primal wrote:o.supreme wrote:Nemesis Primal wrote:Part of me kinda wants this to be the UW Ratchet released by Hasbro as an exclusive just for the people I know still want one, even though I don't really feel I want or need a combining Ratchet myself, but I feel like it's more likely going to be from Siege Ironhide instead.
It will be something new, no doubt. Trust me, you wouldn't want the UW ratchet to be released in Siege. Hasbro would just make it bumpy and remove the combiner component.
Oh, I agree. I didn't bring up UW Ratchet because I wanted it, I just mentioned him because I know other people on this site have been lamenting Hasbro's use of the CW/UW Ratchet tooling/mold and were hoping it would get a proper release in PotP as an exclusive like this. Hence, it would be cool for those individuals if this WAS that Ratchet, but I highly doubt it is and would personally prefer that it isn't.
Unfortunately that mold being used as Ratchet for the Botcon class pretty much prevented it also getting released any other way by Hasbro. They would have really pissed off those fortunate enough to have gotten a Botcon Ratchet if they were to suddenly make him available for $25.
Hasbro has done it before, though, and there was not so much wailing and gnashing of teeth. A few years after the 2007 BotCon set that gave us Classics Thundercracker, Dirge, and Thrust, we got all three at regular retail as part of the Generations line.
...Years later, and to a significant amount of wailimg and gnashing of Teeth. Dirge was unique enough because Hasbro remolded the wings, and Hasbro made diffedent wings for Thrust than what Botcon designed, and even then Thrust was still a sticking point. Thundercracker got a lot of flack though.
Minor corrections:
First, CW Ratchet wasn't "prevented from getting released any other way by Hasbro" due to its being a BotCon release. The whole reason it was released via BotCon was so that it could see some kind of release by Hasbro
at all. Along with the tooling for Counterpunch, Reflector, and Nemesis Prime (which saw release as Toxitron due to e-HOBBY's Grand Scourge releasing making the intended Nemesis Prime redundant. Hasbro was done with CW and had all these leftover toolings that they hadn't used and so gave them to Fun Pub and told them to use them so that people could at least get their hands on them in some way since Hasbro
wasn't going to release them anywhere else.
For all we know, maybe Hasbro did shop around and offer the Ratchet tooling as a store exclusive for any retailer to scoop up if they wanted it, and maybe no retailer was simply willing to take the figure and all turned down Hasbro's offer. We may never know, but we at least do know that the Fun Pub release of Ratchet (and the others) was done as a sort of last resort to get them out into Hasbro's market in some way.
Meanwhile, the Classics line was originally meant to be just a filler line that had no intention of going anywhere beyond its offerings in 2006-2007. The BotCon 2007 exclusives happened because that was the original stance behind Hasbro's expectations of the Classics line. Hasbro wasn't going to complete the two Seeker trios at retail since they wanted to focus all their main attention on the new 2007 Movie line. So Fun Pub offered to fill in the blanks left (ironically) unfilled by the short-lived filler line. It wasn't until after Hasbro saw the immense success and positive reaction that the Classics line had garnered that they would make its continuation in the form of the Universe line in 2008, with the brand's 25th anniversary in 2009 very probably also playing a factor in the decision to create the Universe line as well.
In spite of Hasbro's continuing the spirit of the Classics line via Universe, they still didn't put out retail versions of Thundercracker, Dirge, or Thrust in Universe (instead putting out obscure Seeker Acid Storm and even a second Starscream, no less). In fact, the
lack of those three Seekers (and any of the BotCon 2007 toy exclusive characters) in Universe along with the
inclusion of the Universe Darkwind toy (which fans were able to successfully finagle a way to combine with BotCon 2007 Dreadwind into a rather cool-looking Dreadwing super-jet mode) seems to strongly imply that Hasbro at the time still viewed the BotCon 2007 exclusives as being
the Hasbro Classics releases of those characters.
It would not be until the new Generations line of 2010 that Hasbro finally put out retail versions of Thundercracker, Dirge, and Thrust, but not before something
else happened that enabled to them to release at least the latter two. It was
Takara who first took matters into their own hands for the Henkei! Henkei! releases of these three jets. Up until then, Hasbro had only put out tooling for the standard Seeker type and Ramjet-specific tooling for the Conehead type. While Thundercracker would be a simple redeco, Takara stepped up to make the newly-tooled Dirge and Thrust wings themselves, without Hasbro's help.
As such, it was this new Takara-original tooling that enabled Hasbro to put out their own releases of Dirge and Thrust, without stepping on the toes of the already-released BotCon 2007 versions of these characters since their wings were each different from the Takara-made ones. And since Hasbro was gonna be putting out retail versions two of the three Seekers who got BotCon releases in 2007, they probably figured that they might as well round out the trio by releasing a Thundercracker for retail as well, probably figuring that enough time had passed between 2007 and 2010-2011 to release the three at retail, especially after each had already gotten two other releases prior from first Fun Pub and then from Takara. No sense in Hasbro holding back anymore by that point.
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