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Sabrblade wrote:At the end of the day, Blitzwing is just that guy who randomly turned against the Decepticons in "Five Faces of Darkness" because Hasbro wanted it to be someone whose toy was still for sale in 1986, when the one originally intended for that role was Shockwave.

Interesting. . I always thought it was meant to be Blitzwing, and then somehow his defection to the Autobots was grafted onto Octane in error. I mean Galvatron gave similar denouncement tob both of them, in that they would no longer be welcomed among the Deception ranks.

o.supreme wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:At the end of the day, Blitzwing is just that guy who randomly turned against the Decepticons in "Five Faces of Darkness" because Hasbro wanted it to be someone whose toy was still for sale in 1986, when the one originally intended for that role was Shockwave.

Interesting. . I always thought it was meant to be Blitzwing, and then somehow his defection to the Autobots was grafted onto Octane in error. I mean Galvatron gave similar denouncement tob both of them, in that they would no longer be welcomed among the Deception ranks.

It's a recent discovery. Flint Dille's full outline and scripts for all of FFOD have been brought to light. Shockwave was gonna be the one who was suspicious of the Quints because of his being much older than all the other Decepticons and remembering the Quints more, and was gonna full-on defect to the Autobots by the end. But Hasbro was like "No. His toy isn't in stores anymore. Use someone whose has a toy in stores."

The Octane thing was likely supposed to be a follow-up to this with Blitzwing, but Octane had the newer toy on shelves and we know Hasbro likes it when new toys get the spotlight.

Sabrblade wrote:The Octane thing was likely supposed to be a follow-up to this with Blitzwing, but Octane had the newer toy on shelves and we know Hasbro likes it when new toys get the spotlight.

Octane was a direct result of stealing Trypticon in "Thief in the Night" except they aired them out of order. Now, that I guess could be a kludge but they wrote a whole episode and mentioned it in "Starscream's Ghost." Also, he didn't really 'join the Autobots.'

sol magnus wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:The Octane thing was likely supposed to be a follow-up to this with Blitzwing, but Octane had the newer toy on shelves and we know Hasbro likes it when new toys get the spotlight.

Octane was a direct result of stealing Trypticon in "Thief in the Night" except they aired them out of order. Now, that I guess could be a kludge but they wrote a whole episode and mentioned it in "Starscream's Ghost." Also, he didn't really 'join the Autobots.'

"Thief in the Night" was also produced after "Starscream's Ghost". See here for more on the Blitzwing/Octane switch.

Sabrblade wrote:At the end of the day, Blitzwing is just that guy who randomly turned against the Decepticons in "Five Faces of Darkness" because Hasbro wanted it to be someone whose toy was still for sale in 1986, when the one originally intended for that role was Shockwave.

I had never heard that before. Where can I find out more info?

Seibertron wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:At the end of the day, Blitzwing is just that guy who randomly turned against the Decepticons in "Five Faces of Darkness" because Hasbro wanted it to be someone whose toy was still for sale in 1986, when the one originally intended for that role was Shockwave.

I had never heard that before. Where can I find out more info?

It's a very recent discovery. Flint Dille's full outline and scripts for all of FFOD have finally been brought to light.

o.supreme wrote:Honestly, I was never going to get Legacy Blitzwing because as a character, he really doesn't fit in my wheelhouse of collecting, despite somehow having the original. (Honestly I don't remember how I got Blitzwing I know I had it, but nobody I recall ever bought it for me)

The toy to me dosen't look that bad. Opinions will always vary. It seems the majority are negative on this toy, and that's fine, so be it. I just hope those that feel as such remember the next time I express my dissenting opinions on a toy, or show, and then go to great lengths tell me I'm wrong, or to stop being so negative, or that I'm expecting too much.

Yeah, funny how skewed peoples' reactions can be based on what they like or dislike...
I don't think this figures looks bad at all. I'm excited to add him to my collection.

SpaceEagle wrote:I guess I am one of the minority that really doesn't mind how Legacy Blitzwing looks and I genuinely prefer how he looks over the Titans Return version...
and I guess I'm the minority over not caring about the "Mindwipe legs" at all? I WILL agree that I do like the TR version's backpack but for me it's really neither-nor. Maybe I'll have to actually handle the figure in person to get a more solid opinion - I have the TR version and I wanna make a comparison, but to me I really do love how the 'bot mode of the Legacy version looks over the TR version (the arms look less of a mess and he has a proper Blitzy tum rather than a recoloured Megs one), and I enjoy the big shoulder armour stacks. The vehicle modes look fine to me but I can understand people preferring the TR version's modes, albeit I guess we're trading wings draped over the sides with front thrusters to a cockpit hull with butt thrusters for the tank mode - and trading tread flaps underneath instead of a whole turret for the jet.
But hey, ankle tilts and wrist swivels!

I'm with you... And we may be in the minority on this forum, but in the grand scheme, that doesn't mean that much.

I still don't really understand why there's so much hate with recent figures leaning towards screen-accuracy.
Figures usually have issues no matter how they look.
The vast majority of figures from the start haven't been cartoon accurate... At best they take elements from the character models, but in mainline figures, there is always something off.
Whether it's because of compromises due to engineering, or just a designer's own preferences coming to the forefront.
Hell, even when Hastak's goal is to make a figure as screen/movie accurate as possible, there are going to be issues...
Look at the SS86 line... I love it. This line has produced some of my favorite figures ever.
And yet,
Kup's face sculpt is off. Blurr's face sculpt is off.
Gnaw's head in the Skarticon's mouth. The Sharkticon's mouth being completely open at the bottom. In alt mode the feet and leg colors make up the sides of the torso...
Scourge/Sweep's wings don't look animation accurate... The Dinobot molds have a crap-ton of greebling...
Slag's tail was sacrificed to store his blaster...
Then you could go into how certain colors of joints are often times off... Hot Rod's yellow knee joints.
The gray hinge on ER Ironhide's lower torso...
This could keep going on and on and on...
I get it, there are reasons for how these things are what they are.
And this isn't me saying I want, need, or expect every figure to embody screen-accurate perfection. Even relative to three-dimensional converting toys.
But I do appreciate it. A lot. Partly because like I said, it's never really happened... Ever (with mainline toys).
My mindset is, yeah, I want Hastak to push for 100% screen accuracy knowing that the result, the actual final product, is going to get 70%-80% right and/or done well.
And that's fine. In fact, all things considered, that's probably great.

But I think people that are so against screen-accuracy and how those visual elements may affect a figure's parts count, transformation, etc., need to remember that with mainline releases, screen accuracy has never been the top priority until within a couple years of right now.
Everything from the Classics line, to Universe, to Alternators, to Animated, to FoC, to even Siege...
Almost none of these produced figures that were extremely closely aligned with G1 character models.
So those who hate screen accuracy and feel it ruins figures... Well, in that regard, spanning over decades, they've had multiple lines worth of figures that always steered clear of cartoon accuracy.
And if all of that somehow hasn't been enough... Well don't worry.
I'm sure once we get the rest of the Insecticons and Dinobots, this phase will end, and there will be some stupid play gimmick or just a design overhaul that steers the mainline away from screen accuracy once more.
Again, I'm not saying that the goal of every figure or line should be to clone character models...
But the bitching and complaining about figures that are finally mirroring character models is really pretty myopic.

Digging deeper into the links Greebtron provided on the matter, here's the direct links to all of the FFOD material from the Sunbow Marvel Archive:

Five Faces of Darkness

Flint Dille's outline of Parts 3-5

Memo re: changes/requests from Hasbro

Model sheets

Part 1 dialogue script
Part 1 full script

Part 2 dialogue script
Part 2 full script

Part 3 dialogue script
Part 3 full script

Part 4 dialogue script
Part 4 full script

Part 5 call sheet and dialogue script
Part 5 full script

That memo, though.

What a thoroughly stupid design decision. As a fan of the original cartoon, I STILL wouldn't want any cockpit kibble if I could help it (although a small purple bump in its place wouldn't be too bad as a small homage).

However, thanks to this super-early review from Tealeaf, I can now not bother to preorder this badly designed and overpriced turd.

I might get this mold if it was, say, repainted as a Quint merc-bot or something else, but I'll stick with my TR Blitzwing, just like I did with Astrotrain (due to the similar bloated accessories, high price and badly designed space shuttle mode on the Siege version).

Hasbro definitely misread the fandom room on this one...

I would think that with the prices they're charging, especially him being a Leader versus Voyager that more would go into creating a bot that can turn into alt modes just as the OG's did without kibble/fake parts to worry about. I mean it's 2022 for crying out loud surely the technology is there to simply improve on the 80's toys?

And in some ways they have with giving them better detailing but I have to agree with others on how they're approaching the design of these figures, even though I too only display them in bot mode it would be nice not to have as many fake parts deal with/risk losing. Overall I'm okay because they do spend 99% of their time displayed in bot mode and very rarely ever get transformed. And I feel that if improvements were made to eliminate those fake parts and rely totally on even more complicated engineering it would just raise the price even more and at that point people might as well just collect masterpiece. Because then they're no longer considered toys and especially not for younger kids.

Then again maybe kids no longer buy them IDK, it's a fine line to walk on what to charge and how complicated to make it, and perhaps is why they created RED and the Core line.

Just remember, they've told us that all these rising prices are "only transitory"! (if by that they mean, 'transitioning to even HIGHER prices')

Just want to clarify my thoughts for everyone here. I do like Legacy Blitzwing. Overall, he looks like a great reprentation of the character and he's better than previous versions. I just don't get some of the choices. It's so close to what I want in a Blitzwing figure that it can be a bummer when some perplexing choices take away from that.

In a nutshell, I'm definitely a "form follows function" guy when it comes to my Transformers.

primalxconvoy wrote:What a thoroughly stupid design decision. As a fan of the original cartoon, I STILL wouldn't want any cockpit kibble if I could help it (although a small purple bump in its place wouldn't be too bad as a small homage).

However, thanks to this super-early review from Tealeaf, I can now not bother to preorder this badly designed and overpriced turd.

I might get this mold if it was, say, repainted as a Quint merc-bot or something else, but I'll stick with my TR Blitzwing, just like I did with Astrotrain (due to the similar bloated accessories, high price and badly designed space shuttle mode on the Siege version).

Hasbro definitely misread the fandom room on this one...

Well said and I agree 100%. I too will be sticking with my TR Blitzwing over this one. TR figure is still solid in my opinion and looks great in all modes, compacting better without looking ridiculous. The tank mode on legacy is ruined by that purple part sticking out front, like what the heck is up with that? And calling him "leader class" simply by adding those outrageous whatever those are, energon hand gauntlet things that don't even store nice on the vehicle mode, yuck!
On the whole I feel like Legacy is a lazy line. I do plan to get the beast wars characters and maybe the Stunticons, but nothing else. Will have to see how Metroplex turns out.

Reminder that the BB Legacy Multipack is rumored to contain Goldbug, Ransack, Paralyzer, and Toy Colors Scorponok.

sol magnus wrote:Question: While Blitzwing is coming in Legacy, at some point wasn't he rumored at least for Studio Series 86 (not that it makes that much of a difference to me)?

Nope.

Sowndwave76 wrote:I still don't really understand why there's so much hate with recent figures leaning towards screen-accuracy.
Figures usually have issues no matter how they look.
The vast majority of figures from the start haven't been cartoon accurate... At best they take elements from the character models, but in mainline figures, there is always something off.
Whether it's because of compromises due to engineering, or just a designer's own preferences coming to the forefront.
Hell, even when Hastak's goal is to make a figure as screen/movie accurate as possible, there are going to be issues...
Look at the SS86 line... I love it. This line has produced some of my favorite figures ever.
And yet,
Kup's face sculpt is off. Blurr's face sculpt is off.
Gnaw's head in the Skarticon's mouth. The Sharkticon's mouth being completely open at the bottom. In alt mode the feet and leg colors make up the sides of the torso...
Scourge/Sweep's wings don't look animation accurate... The Dinobot molds have a crap-ton of greebling...
Slag's tail was sacrificed to store his blaster...
Then you could go into how certain colors of joints are often times off... Hot Rod's yellow knee joints.
The gray hinge on ER Ironhide's lower torso...
This could keep going on and on and on...
I get it, there are reasons for how these things are what they are.
And this isn't me saying I want, need, or expect every figure to embody screen-accurate perfection. Even relative to three-dimensional converting toys.
But I do appreciate it. A lot. Partly because like I said, it's never really happened... Ever (with mainline toys).
My mindset is, yeah, I want Hastak to push for 100% screen accuracy knowing that the result, the actual final product, is going to get 70%-80% right and/or done well.
And that's fine. In fact, all things considered, that's probably great.

But I think people that are so against screen-accuracy and how those visual elements may affect a figure's parts count, transformation, etc., need to remember that with mainline releases, screen accuracy has never been the top priority until within a couple years of right now.
Everything from the Classics line, to Universe, to Alternators, to Animated, to FoC, to even Siege...
Almost none of these produced figures that were extremely closely aligned with G1 character models.
So those who hate screen accuracy and feel it ruins figures... Well, in that regard, spanning over decades, they've had multiple lines worth of figures that always steered clear of cartoon accuracy.
And if all of that somehow hasn't been enough... Well don't worry.
I'm sure once we get the rest of the Insecticons and Dinobots, this phase will end, and there will be some stupid play gimmick or just a design overhaul that steers the mainline away from screen accuracy once more.
Again, I'm not saying that the goal of every figure or line should be to clone character models...
But the bitching and complaining about figures that are finally mirroring character models is really pretty myopic.

I don't think the people complaining are generally against screen-accurate toys. The biggest accuracy complaints in recent memory were about how Legacy toys like Bulkhead and Arcee aren't accurate to the Prime cartoon. With Blitzwing, people's complaints are that he was made accurate in ways that nobody really wanted/don't really matter and that just serve to make one of the modes worse (like the jet cockpit in tank mode). People like accuracy, but the cost of accuracy isn't always worth it.

As for toylines before the last couple years not producing accurate figures, that's really not accurate (pun intended). Classics and Universe did their own thing, true. But the goal of Alternators was to have alt modes that were extremely accurate to real-life cars, even being in model scale. The Animated line was always meant to be accurate to the Animated cartoon, and to this day it's still one of the most screen-accurate TF lines ever made. The FoC line was meant to accurate to the FoC game, which it was. I could go on and on about other toylines. Even Siege was still trying to be G1 screen-accurate, but with a few tweaks and some greebling to make them look "cybertronian" (which was probably just done to make them "imperfect" so people would buy the Earthrise versions). The point is all these lines were striving for accuracy, it just wasn't always accuracy to the G1 cartoon. If I were someone who hated accuracy, those lines would have been ruined for me too.

I'm happy to see I'm not the only one who feels this way. The over-reliance on fake parts to chase accuracy to a rush job of 80s animation is killing the creativity of the brand. It's becoming more the rule than the exception as of late. It's why I can't stand what they're doing to Menasor. They're willing to throw away an amazing playstyle and compatibility with the other combiners because "that's how it was in the cartoon". I know I'll get hate for this, but it's fine. The G1 cartoon is vital to establishing the lore and fan base of Transformers. That's why it's still around nearly 40 years later. That being said, it usually looked like ass. Go back and watch it through adult eyes and explain to me why we should be trying to emulate it rather than improve upon it.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Blitz is just a mess in both alt modes. Astro is a mess in both alt modes. In bot mode both look great to me. In either case I just can't say it's justified.

Staying on the topic of Blitz, I never got the Titans Returns version. Just not better enough. Looking at it now the tank mode loses badly there too. How can the G1 toy strike the best balance of all three modes?

Astrotrain was never gonna satisfy me in shuttle mode since I knew they'd replicate the rectangular nature of the shuttle body behind the front end. That too was an animation design copying a flaw in a toy from the 80s. But I guess that one was more obvious than the purple bit extending from Blitzwing. I wanted a rounder shuttle, but not sure if everyone else wanted a rounder one too. So that mode was compromised from the start for the cartoon model (which granted, it didn't really ace either, so we are all left unhappy). I didn't have much issue with the train mode though. It had a semblance to what I was hoping for.

As for your keen question, the thing is the g1 toy does not balance out all three modes. As with all G1 toys, it prioritized the alt mode. In this case, there are 2, so you get 2 out of 3 modes that look fine. And we in turn accept the robot mode as also looking fine since it isn't better or worse than all the other compromised bot modes of the time.

Sowndwave76 wrote:I still don't really understand why there's so much hate with recent figures leaning towards screen-accuracy.

Were you hoping this toy's tank mode was as faithful to the cartoon model as it turned out to be.

It all boils down to you can't please everyone (people that scream GEEWON fans are terrible or BAYFORMERS are crap, etc.. etc..), same thing in Star Wars as their fans (and costumers) are some of the worst.
I for one am just happy to be able to by Transformers all these years later that actually resemble something I hold fondly in my heart from when I was a teen.

Again YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE.

If I have offended anyone with this post good I look forward to keyboard warriors attacking me, calling names and such to prove my point.

Cyber Bishop wrote:It all boils down to you can't please everyone (people that scream GEEWON fans are terrible or BAYFORMERS are crap, etc.. etc..), same thing in Star Wars as their fans (and costumers) are some of the worst.
I for one am just happy to be able to by Transformers all these years later that actually resemble something I hold fondly in my heart from when I was a teen.

Again YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE.

If I have offended anyone with this post good I look forward to keyboard warriors attacking me, calling names and such to prove my point.

This is the thing I never quite understood, the vileness towards another's viewpoint/preference, how does what someone else prefers affect you in any way? I don't like Bay's designs at all so I don't buy them, but I see no point in reiterating it in every other post nor attacking a person because they do like the design.

I'm a G1 fan so that's what I buy and I also can recognize that some bots aren't as well designed/thought out as others, yet I see no reason to go on a hate tirade because nothing I say will change it or what Hasbro does.

Tuned Agent wrote:As for toylines before the last couple years not producing accurate figures, that's really not accurate (pun intended).

I had thought about addressing this in my previous post, but figured it was obvious.
Clearly there were various source materials that those other lines were going to align with.
But that's actually still part of my point.
None of those lines ever prioritized the G1 cartoon appearance nearly as much as what we've seen recently. So many, many people will agree with the statement of, "It's about time".
Whether one likes this old-school G1 animated look or not, we've had almost 40 years worth of figures, that haven't delivered this look, until again, within the last couple years.
So sure, people can absolutely be sick and tired of G1 stuff. But for anyone to try and claim something like, "Another line like SS86 AGAIN??!?", is impossible. And just for clarity, I'm still referring to mainline figures... Not MP's, and not 3P.

william-james88 wrote:Were you hoping this toy's tank mode was as faithful to the cartoon model as it turned out to be.

I really have no issue with Blitzwing's tank mode... No, the purple bits don't make it better for me...
But I do think it's kind of cool that they went with that. Whether someone likes it or not, that front part does make some sense.
And for the boosters in the back, I'll take that look over the dumpy feet on the back of ER Ironhide.

Sure, I would've hoped for a cleaner jet mode... But overall, I'm totally looking forward to this guy.
The TR version looks good as well (I don't have it).
But this Legacy Blitzwing has a bot mode that is very, very on point. The proportions, the head/face sculpt... Even if I had the TR version, I'd still want this new one as well.

This is the thing I never quite understood, the vileness towards another's viewpoint/preference, how does what someone else prefers affect you in any way? I don't like Bay's designs at all so I don't buy them, but I see no point in reiterating it in every other post nor attacking a person because they do like the design....

In ye olde days, it was easier to let bygones be, because there was no internet and no forums where everybody could post their opinions, and where everybody could also hide safely at home and insult other people for their opinions.

I remember well when local newspapers were pretty much the ONLY place where people could post their opinions (on the opinion PAGE) in a manner that lots of other people could see and know about it. Opinion pages were pretty snarky then as well, but only a few people were lucky enough to get their opinions printed, and even fewer were able to respond beyond sending angry letters to the editors - which the editors were free to wad up and throw in the trash.

So most 'flame wars' never really got a chance to start back then. But now opinions are instantaneous. And people who are ticked off can respond angrily at once, rather than having to wait a few days to cool off. So yeah, we can blame teh interwebz for most people's reactionary snark. As Ego said in that Pixar movie, "We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and fun to read."

I'll probably wind up getting Legacy Blitzwing, for all its flaws. It has some merit. Whereas other versions, like Thrilling 30, were the real lousy ones (IMO).

Cyber Bishop wrote:It all boils down to you can't please everyone (people that scream GEEWON fans are terrible or BAYFORMERS are crap, etc.. etc..), same thing in Star Wars as their fans (and costumers) are some of the worst.
I for one am just happy to be able to by Transformers all these years later that actually resemble something I hold fondly in my heart from when I was a teen.

Again YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE.

If I have offended anyone with this post good I look forward to keyboard warriors attacking me, calling names and such to prove my point.

Except in this case, they didn't please anyone.

I'm just glad the only leader I've picked up in a long while wasnt smaller than the titans return voyagers (SS Grindor). It's not looking good to me for Legacy Dragon Megatron at this point but at least like most other releases, there is a good version out there if not.

Sabrblade wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

Sabrblade wrote:At the end of the day, Blitzwing is just that guy who randomly turned against the Decepticons in "Five Faces of Darkness" because Hasbro wanted it to be someone whose toy was still for sale in 1986, when the one originally intended for that role was Shockwave.

Interesting. . I always thought it was meant to be Blitzwing, and then somehow his defection to the Autobots was grafted onto Octane in error. I mean Galvatron gave similar denouncement tob both of them, in that they would no longer be welcomed among the Deception ranks.

It's a recent discovery. Flint Dille's full outline and scripts for all of FFOD have been brought to light. Shockwave was gonna be the one who was suspicious of the Quints because of his being much older than all the other Decepticons and remembering the Quints more, and was gonna full-on defect to the Autobots by the end. But Hasbro was like "No. His toy isn't in stores anymore. Use someone whose has a toy in stores."

Wow that's pretty cool. Shockwave is my favorite Decepticon so it would have been cool to see him in that role. Would he have appeared as an Autobot in future episodes or would he have disappeared afterwards like Blitzwing did?