The Energon Pub

Did I miss this a couple of months ago?

The Golden Disk Podcast posted this image on Xitter, seeming to show a Hearts of Steel Optimus & Bumblebee 2-pack for PulseCon 2025 (note the PCon description and product number G1095 in the lower left). A reply to the tweet says that @gen_tf84 previously posted this image on Instagram in late September, but I couldn't find it on their reel.
EDIT: Found it, in an album of 2025 capsule line products. Seems to have been picked up again and reposted by a couple of people tonight.

There has been some talk about a HoS set before, but this would appear to be a confirmation - except I'm a little skeptical because of the question mark in the set description. Take this with a pinch of salt until a more official confirmation comes along, I guess!

Megacon had some beautiful reveals today for Transformers fans. Not only did we get the Haslab announcement but that LioKaiser is available to back now. The order only goes through after the backing period is over so placing an order now is no different than placing an order in two weeks.
But back to the reveals, we got a look at the 4 Hearts of Steel toys. They come in two packs of Optimus/Starscream and Bumblebee/Megatron. We also got a good look at Age of the Primes Skybyte (new mold) and Heatwave (based on Legacy Bulkhead). We have images of those below along with more images of Liokaiser, who will be the same size as Legacy Devastator.

We thank Vander who took images at the show and posted them on Facebook.

These 2 packs are cool
Not interested in Optimus/Starscream but if they do a Thundercracker repaint I'd probably bite

And hearts of steel Shockwave would be an instant buy for me, love that design

Hearts of steel has stolen our heart, so cute.

Is HOS the first time Hasbro has used Timelines outside of BotCon?

Emerje

Bring in HoS! ALL of them. Yeah, Shockwave's the GOAT in that series. The comics were just OK, but I love the designs.

Video of the Hasbro Pulse panel at MegaCon:



Sounds like the video missed the Liokaiser reveal part of the panel as the beginning of the video sees them talking about Liokaiser like they've already shown it off. They also keep mispronouncing his name as "Leokaiser" instead of "Liokaiser".

Sky-Byte is very articulated in shark mode, they wanted to replicate his cartoony "Muppet" qualities from the cartoon.

Heatwave is a "partial" of Legacy Bulkhead. The fact that the mold looks like it was intended for Heatwave all along was not intentional and was a happy accident. Comes with his axe and fire hose blaster.

Timelines: Hearts of Steel - 2-pack of Optimus Prime and Starscream

Second 2-pack consisting of Megatron and Bumblebee

"Transformers: Timelines" will be a new Pulse-exclusive line in which the same four characters will be released every year, but with a different theme centered around different time periods with different altmodes. So next year we'll get another different set of Optimus, Megatron, Starscream, and Bumblebee, and next year's theme for 2026 has already been picked, but they won't tell us what it is yet. This year the theme is the "Hearts of Steel" comic mini-series from 2006.

They hope to eventually get a fan vote going for what the theme for 2027 will be, so fan could pick what time period the same four characters will be in.

The goal is at least two releases each year, but it will always be the same four characters of Optimus, Megs, Screamer, and Bee each year. "But, if it does well, there's no reason that you couldn't see the rest of the Seekers in Legacy or anything like that." All Deluxe scale, too.

Space Bridge teases - all preexisting art, no actual toy pics all will be on display in physical reveals next month at New York Toy Fair:

• Target-exclusive Studio Series 86 3-pack of Perceptor, Ramhorn, and Ratbat - Ramhorn is all new, Ratbat will have boosters, Perceptor will have some extra tooling to bulk him up to better match his animation design.
• Devastation Troop-Builder pack - Elite Decepticon Ground Unit and Seeker, "partials" of Earthrise Runabout/Runamuck and the Earthrise Seeker mold, com with new weapons and heads.
• Carnivac VS "Fistiron" - Got around the "Ironfist" trademark issues by just inverting his name, "we know what his name is supposed to be", no talk of what molds they use.
• Sandstorm VS Slugslinger - "Handsome Face Sandstorm" is what they call him internally, it's the cartoon face with no mouthplate, did not talk about if Slugslinger is still a Headmaster or not
• Cybertron Sideways - Got a big reaction from the audience, no real details given.
• Cybertron Excellion - redeco of Cybertron Hot Shot.

Q&A session:

Liokaiser does have ankle hinges for enhanced posing.

When Polar Claw?!! "Eventually". He comes up every once in a while. It's always hard when they're not a mainstay character who showed up in a show. But Polar Claw is a definite possibility.

Evan confirmed that Carnivac will not have his Pretender shell, is a "partial" of TR Wolfwire, and will retain the Headmaster gimmick instead of the shell gimmick. He also "100% confirmed" that they fixed the major breakage issue the Wolfwire mold had.

General question about the design process for figures. A complex but interesting answer is given (watch the video at around 14:50). It's a case-by-case thing, but the whole process takes about 18 months.

Marauder Megatron is definitely possible. They did Wasp, after all. They did look at Marauder Megatron for inspiration when designing the Studio Series Bumblebee Movie Concept Megatron. They're always looking at that stuff that never made it to market and it's definitely possible.

No Centurion version of Hearts of Steel Bumblebee, but... "folks out on the internet will probably have you covered."

Steamboat Shockwave has a chance because it's something Mark wanted to make "really badly". At one point, he was trying to get it into mainline, but it didn't make sense with everything he had going on. What Timelines is right now is almost like a test, and if any of these segments do well enough, you can definitely see them dipping a toe back into those universes and timelines, and maybe then they'll start showing up more in mainline. There was a Prowl, there was a Ratchet, there were many great designs in Hearts of Steel that could show up again.

Question about Gamer Edition pulling from other games besides Devastation and the WFC/FOC games. Evan says it's possible and has been asked before about a Titan-sized Thunderwing from the Prime game, to which he both laughs but also thinks is a possibility. He also brings up the games based on the live-action movies and the unique characters those games had, like the movie games' version of Shockwave and Warpath. He even jokes about the old Commodore 64 game or the giant floating Decepticon shield boss from the Mystery of Convoy game.

Question about having to cut anything out of lines when creating them. Evan says he can't think of any specifics off the top of his head but does state that that has definitely happened. He does cite an instance where a character had to be cut once or twice because they couldn't get it to fit into the scale that they had thought was appropriate. Like something that was meant to be a Deluxe and couldn't fit as a Deluxe and so had to be a Voyager instead, but still had to wait until later because all the Voyager slots were filled up at the time. It happens pretty constantly. But there's usually a rough idea going into it, and it's when you think it can fit only for it to later be proven wrong that it ends up not fitting at all. But most things do usually see the light of day a little bit later.

Question asked about a rumor that Hasbro will be doing a Leader-scaled version of IDW Fort Max, possibly from the Armada Megatron mold. Evan confirms that that's just a rumor and doesn't know where it came from, but he thinks the idea would be great. They'd also have to do a Rung, though, since "everybody needs their therapist". But he'd like to dig into more of those IDW designs, "they're definitely on the table".

Joked about the DJD: "It's a little hard to sell into marketing about a character that turns into an electric chair, OKAY?! Just a little difficult!" Nickel's probably as close as they can get to doing another DJD character besides Tarn.

Question about a Studio Series Dispensor. "The Mountain Dew robot?! Ah, that's a licensing nightmare." LOL Definitely possible, definitely on the table. There's also some anniversaries coming up, and some earlier Studio Series movie characters might get redos since "they weren't done as well back then when they should have been."

Question about the Timelines fan vote, if it might add one more Autobot and one more Decepticon to the lineup. Evan thinks at some point in the future that's definitely the plan. He stans Ironhide.

Jokes made by audience and Evan about a Broadside that turns into a U.S.S. Flagg. "Oh, sure, it fit in a garage." Totally non-serious.

Question about making figures more customizable. Selects Antagony with the Scavenger head mentioned as an example, but they asked if figures could be more largely disassemble-able, like with less pins and more screws, to allow fans to color-swap parts between redecoed figures of the same mold. Evan says they don't really think too much about the customization market but takes it into consideration as something maybe can think about going forward. But he's pretty sure they wouldn't release something that is just "matte gray, primered, ready to go", but maybe that's something they'll look into. He's pretty intrigued by this question.

"More Mini-Cons, please?" Yes. "As we keep diving deeper into Armada, I think we owe you all more Mini-Cons." He thinks that's something they'll definitely get out to us. "Gotta get the Combiner Mini-Cons out there, at least."

If there was to be another new release of Cybertron Optimus Prime, it would probably be a new one instead of a rerelease of Siege Galaxy Upgrade. That's something that both Hasbro and Takara are pushing for, as they want to recreate the combining limb gimmick and the backpack gimmick. But it's not something to expect this year, but maybe some point in the future.

Question about the Thirteen toys, their designs and altmodes. Evan says Mark's handling the Thirteen and always starts with the Covenant of Primus book as it's his favorite lore book, but he also digs deep into the other versions of the Thirteen out there. There is a cohesive vision behind them. We'll get some this year and the rest next year. There's a lot of deep cuts for them.

Sky-Byte's gun only stores inside his mouth in shark mode. When not in his mouth, there's nowhere else to store it.

End of panel.

Here is a video of the Liokaiser part of the panel that was missing from the other video:



Unfortunately, the person recording kept the camera only on the panelists and ignored the slideshow images.

For areas that don't have Hasbro Pulse, select retailers will be listing Liokaiser on Monday. For the first time, even Brazil is listing this.

They consistently mispronounce Liokaiser's name as "Leokaiser".

Each individual bot is roughly 5.5 inches tall.

The terms they're using are "Chest Animal" and "Chestforce". For obvious reasons. "That's how we got away with that."

The decos in the renders are not final. They want to be animation accurate and there might be a deco update later.

The original Liokaiser had very little combiner kibble, so they wanted to recreate that as closely as possible. The only thing they had to add to make the combiner was the pelivs piece, everything else is completely built in and integrated into the individual figures, including the combiner head, which was a kibble piece on the original toy but is now completely stored inside Leozack. The hands are all stored inside Guyhawk, "Ellbat", and Deathcobra.

They HAD to call him "Ellbat". So, everybody just play it cool. If you say it real fast, it sounds like how it's supposed to sound. "It's in canon, now, he's British." The pose in the render is a reference to his hypnosis ability from the animation.

"Jaruga". This one was a bit contentious on how to spell the name, just because of the fun translations of L to R in Japanese. They shifted things around here and there, but they settled on "Jaruga" because Evan is from the Kre-O team and that's what they did back when he was on the Kre-O team. (NOTE: The Kreon's name was actually spelled "Jarugar".)

He turns into a dune buggy, but they didn't think that sounded cool enough, so they instead called it an "off-road race car".

Evan snuck in the "meme pose" for Killbison's render and no one called him out on it. He means this:





One of the combiner feet is built into him. One of the things they learned from Combiner Wars Predaking was about how the combiner thighs were built into them and that made the bots really chunky, so that's kind of the reason they made the separate pelvis piece.

They're really confident about hitting the 10,000 backers for this set since the previous HasLab hit a whopping 27,000 backers (seemingly ignoring the facts that the last HasLab was both an Optimus Prime toy and based on one that actually appeared on American television).

They were insistent about doing Deathcobra. In addition to making him a spare arm for the combiner, they considered going the Seacon route by making him a blaster for the combiner, but because he's so heavy they decided to make him a shoulder cannon instead. In arm mode, the helicopter blades can act as a shield, taking inspiration from other Japanese anime shows that Evan is a fan of (he doesn't specify which but acts like if you know, you know).

The electromagnetic nunchaku were very difficult to turn into a toy since they can take any shape they want in the animation. They're actually using the Masterpiece Megatron chain piece to make it a combining element, so all the pieces can go together to form the long version. Six pieces included and can all combine together so you can make it as long as you want. They all store underneath the vehicle modes.

Thanks for the writeup Sabrblade! Appreciated.

And here is a video of the Liokaiser part of the panel that was missing from the other video:



Unfortunately, the person recording kept the camera only on the panelists and ignored the slideshow images.

For areas that don't have Hasbro Pulse, select retailers will be listing Liokaiser on Monday. For the first time, even Brazil is listing this.

They consistently mispronounce Liokaiser's name as "Leokaiser".

Each individual bot is roughly 5.5 inches tall.

The terms they're using are "Chest Animal" and "Chestforce". For obvious reasons. "That's how we got away with that."

The decos in the renders are not final. They want to be animation accurate and there might be a deco update later.

The original Liokaiser had very little combiner kibble, so they wanted to recreate that as closely as possible. The only thing they had to add to make the combiner was the pelivs piece, everything else is completely built in and integrated into the individual figures, including the combiner head, which was a kibble piece on the original toy but is now completely stored inside Leozack. The hands are all stored inside Guyhawk, "Ellbat", and Deathcobra.

They HAD to call him "Ellbat". So, everybody just play it cool. If you say it real fast, it sounds like how it's supposed to sound. "It's in canon, now, he's British." The pose in the render is a reference to his hypnosis ability from the animation.

"Jaruga". This one was a bit contentious on how to spell the name, just because of the fun translations of L to R in Japanese. They shifted things around here and there, but they settled on "Jaruga" because Evan is from the Kre-O team and that's what they did back when he was on the Kre-O team. (NOTE: The Kreon's name was actually spelled "Jarugar".)

He turns into a dune buggy, but they didn't think that sounded cool enough, so they instead called it an "off-road race car".

Evan snuck in the "meme pose" for Killbison's render and no one called him out on it. He means this:





One of the combiner feet is built into him. One of the things they learned from Combiner Wars Predaking was about how the combiner thighs were built into them and that made the bots really chunky, so that's kind of the reason they made the separate pelvis piece.

They're really confident about hitting the 10,000 backers for this set since the previous HasLab hit a whopping 27,000 backers (seemingly ignoring the facts that the last HasLab was both an Optimus Prime toy and based on one that actually appeared on American television).

They were insistent about doing Deathcobra. In addition to making him a spare arm for the combiner, they considered going the Seacon route by making him a blaster for the combiner, but because he's so heavy they decided to make him a shoulder cannon instead. In arm mode, the helicopter blades can act as a shield, taking inspiration from other Japanese anime shows that Evan is a fan of (he doesn't specify which but acts like if you know, you know).

The electromagnetic nunchaku were very difficult to turn into a toy since they can take any shape they want in the animation. They're actually using the Masterpiece Megatron chain piece to make it a combining element, so all the pieces can go together to form the long version. Six pieces included and can all combine together so you can make it as long as you want. They all store underneath the vehicle modes.

Thanks Sabrblade!

Sabrblade wrote:Question about making figures more customizable. Selects Antagony with the Scavenger head mentioned as an example, but they asked if figures could be more largely disassemble-able, like with less pins and more screws, to allow fans to color-swap parts between redecoed figures of the same mold. Evan says they don't really think too much about the customization market but takes it into consideration as something maybe can think about going forward. But he's pretty sure they wouldn't release something that is just "matte gray, primered, ready to go", but maybe that's something they'll look into. He's pretty intrigued by this question.

Now that's interesting to see - that the idea wasn't just laughed off or dismissed out of hand. Would be nice to have some 'mod-friendly' engineering, though I imagine manufacturing concerns would mostly rule against it - there's a reason they use pins and glue rather than screws, after all. I could see 'primer' versions working as a small-run Pulse-exclusive repaint thing, potentially - McFarlane's recent 40K line have been releasing 'unpainted' versions of many of their figures for customisation too, although those also made it to retail since it's more directly tied to that line's main market.

Sabrblade wrote:"More Mini-Cons, please?" Yes. "As we keep diving deeper into Armada, I think we owe you all more Mini-Cons." He thinks that's something they'll definitely get out to us. "Gotta get the Combiner Mini-Cons out there, at least."

See, the thing about mini-cons is that - assuming they don't make them stupidly hard to get - I can just pick them up 'cos they're cool when I see them, and don't have to budget a mortgage payment 4-6 months in advance...!

Sabrblade wrote:The terms they're using are "Chest Animal" and "Chestforce". For obvious reasons. "That's how we got away with that."

I'd long thought they could do something with "shield" given how all the Breastars look when combined, but M Sipher pointed out on BSky that "Beastforce" was right there - it works for every Breastforce character, and doesn't sound half so silly as "Chest-force".

cloudballoon wrote:Thanks for the writeup Sabrblade! Appreciated.

indeed

Sabrblade wrote:The terms they're using are "Chest Animal" and "Chestforce". For obvious reasons. "That's how we got away with that."

Glyph wrote:I'd long thought they could do something with "shield" given how all the Breastars look when combined, but M Sipher pointed out on BSky that "Beastforce" was right there - it works for every Breastforce character, and doesn't sound half so silly as "Chest-force".

I don't know M Sipher, but he read my mind. I've been thinking exactly that since they unveiled deathsaurus and used "Chest Force"

I think if I were in charge of marketing for the western audience, specifically a fanbase that already knows what these are supposed to be called, I would have opted for a more similar sounding name that would still work with the theme. I think "Beast Force" would be a more fitting, less goofy sounding name, as they all have the animal theme no just in their partners, but also in their base robot design.

Thanks for the Write up on this Sabrblade, really helpful for those of us who weren't there.

Immortal Starscream wrote:Thanks for the Write up on this Sabrblade, really helpful for those of us who weren't there.

I wasn't there either. I just wrote down what was said in the videos.

Sabrblade wrote:

Immortal Starscream wrote:Thanks for the Write up on this Sabrblade, really helpful for those of us who weren't there.

I wasn't there either. I just wrote down what was said in the videos.

still helpful, I haven't had time to watch yet. I will be watching these tomorrow.

Beastforce would have made more sense, but a quick Google tells me the name likely belongs to Roblox.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:Beastforce would have made more sense, but a quick Google tells me the name likely belongs to Roblox.

Emerje

There's also the insurmountable issue of casual western fans who've never heard of these guys automatically assuming the Beast Force must be part of Beast Wars. Yes, anyone who'd consider backing this knows better, but still, I think that's the sort of annoying brand confusion Hasbro tries to avoid.

I'm backing this ASAP, and now I'm glad that the only 3P Hearts of Steel figures I bought were the Seekers.

All valid counterpoints, as with most "why didn't they JUST..." complaints. Still a silly name even if they didn't have much choice with it!

"If there was to be another new release of Cybertron Optimus Prime, it would probably be a new one instead of a rerelease of Siege Galaxy Upgrade. That's something that both Hasbro and Takara are pushing for, as they want to recreate the combining limb gimmick and the backpack gimmick. But it's not something to expect this year, but maybe some point in the future."
Honestly really glad to hear this, I missed the initial siege release but have Nova Prime, so getting a brand new mold for him would be cool

Mudwire wrote:"If there was to be another new release of Cybertron Optimus Prime, it would probably be a new one instead of a rerelease of Siege Galaxy Upgrade. That's something that both Hasbro and Takara are pushing for, as they want to recreate the combining limb gimmick and the backpack gimmick. But it's not something to expect this year, but maybe some point in the future."
Honestly really glad to hear this, I missed the initial siege release but have Nova Prime, so getting a brand new mold for him would be cool

Just to make it clear, Evan's tone in the video was that while it's something they very want like to make, it's definitely something that's not coming anytime soon in the near future. So if we do get a new one, it won't be for quite a long time from now. A few years, at the minimum.

Either way I'm still happy to hear he could be in the pipeline in the mid-future

Sabrblade wrote:Question about having to cut anything out of lines when creating them. Evan says he can't think of any specifics off the top of his head but does state that that has definitely happened. He does cite an instance where a character had to be cut once or twice because they couldn't get it to fit into the scale that they had thought was appropriate. Like something that was meant to be a Deluxe and couldn't fit as a Deluxe and so had to be a Voyager instead, but still had to wait until later because all the Voyager slots were filled up at the time. It happens pretty constantly. But there's usually a rough idea going into it, and it's when you think it can fit only for it to later be proven wrong that it ends up not fitting at all. But most things do usually see the light of day a little bit later.

For saying he's not being able to come up with a specific example, that sounds like an oddly specific situation. Maybe this is why Sureshot got cancelled twice, they're pushing him to Voyager for budget?

Sabrblade wrote:

Mudwire wrote:"If there was to be another new release of Cybertron Optimus Prime, it would probably be a new one instead of a rerelease of Siege Galaxy Upgrade. That's something that both Hasbro and Takara are pushing for, as they want to recreate the combining limb gimmick and the backpack gimmick. But it's not something to expect this year, but maybe some point in the future."
Honestly really glad to hear this, I missed the initial siege release but have Nova Prime, so getting a brand new mold for him would be cool

Just to make it clear, Evan's tone in the video was that while it's something they very want like to make, it's definitely something that's not coming anytime soon in the near future. So if we do get a new one, it won't be for quite a long time from now. A few years, at the minimum.

Between the Combaticons taking the Commander spot next year and who knows what other combiners the following years, AND them probably wanting to get Energon Prime a chance first... yeah, I can see why it would take a while unless they moved him to Studio Series.

Emerje

I once had Screecher and that 3P screamers was a dangerous bundle of KNIVES. I got rid of it. It looked good, but he was a nightmare to handle.
The official have a horrible vehicle mode but the bot is all right and I'm sure I won't cut myself open when handling him.

I currently have the 3P HoS Bee. He's pretty nice but not perfect. The official seems to blow the 3P out of the water.

I never had the 3P HoS Optimus. But the official one look like a clown-circus train. It is too cute to be an Optimus. Also, is that OP a deluxe?

As for Megs, I don't know if a 3P version was ever made. Looking at the official, he seems PERFECT all over. I hope it will be a voyager. He has to be.

Wait... So that Starscream is a deluxe? Damn... He's quite big!