The Energon Pub

I got the original Hasbro Skullgrin and Bugly. But even as a kid, I always hated the giant human autobot pretenders. How are they hiding ???

By the way, nice galleries Ryan !!!

In Japan, they do a "Soundwave". Mass shift to the size of a human.

Pretenders... the bane of the Transformers. What a terrible idea in my opinion. For all the love i have for the Transformers Movies why they put "Alice" in still boggles my mind to this day.

xtsaur wrote:Pretenders... the bane of the Transformers. What a terrible idea in my opinion. For all the love i have for the Transformers Movies why they put "Alice" in still boggles my mind to this day.

Agree. When I got Pretenders as a kid, I was like, "What? These aren't Transformers!" I saw the Transformers logo on the box. But I couldn't believe it.

amtm wrote:

xtsaur wrote:Pretenders... the bane of the Transformers. What a terrible idea in my opinion. For all the love i have for the Transformers Movies why they put "Alice" in still boggles my mind to this day.

Agree. When I got Pretenders as a kid, I was like, "What? These aren't Transformers!" I saw the Transformers logo on the box. But I couldn't believe it.

Hey, look at the bright side, at least it gave us Bludgeon!

You've got Waverider listed as Wildrider. : X. Just a friendly heads up.

NemesisScourge wrote:You've got Waverider listed as Wildrider. : X. Just a friendly heads up.

Here's a little bit of trivia, Waverider was the only Pretender to have a minor difference when released in Japan. US Waverider has blonde hair, while JP Diver has brown hair. The rest are all completely the same.

Woah, flashback...

I just realized that had Lander as a kid but I completely forgot about it. It feels really eerie deja vu when new galleries pop up and then a bunch of memories of that figure just come flashing back to me. But then again, I suppose Lander was a rather forgettable figure.

Hey, it's these guys. And Skullgrin.

And with Bludgeon, Thunderwing, and Alice, we've been getting a lot of Pretender references lately.
...Just without the Pretender concept (except for Alice, but she didn't get a toy).
Here's hoping for more.

hey! The Pretenders aren't all that bad. Just bad marketing in the USA. The Masterforce version had a more plausible presentation.

NemesisScourge wrote:You've got Waverider listed as Wildrider. : X. Just a friendly heads up.

Fixed. Thanks!

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

NemesisScourge wrote:You've got Waverider listed as Wildrider. : X. Just a friendly heads up.

Here's a little bit of trivia, Waverider was the only Pretender to have a minor difference when released in Japan. US Waverider has blonde hair, while JP Diver has brown hair. The rest are all completely the same.

That's what I always thought until I had my American Landmine alongside my Japanese Lander. There's definitely something different going on with the paint applications for his eyes, unless I just have an odd variation. In that case, I'd like to know which one is the variant. My Japanese version uses less paint application for the eyes and eyebrows than the American version.



Any other variations that you see in this photo is just me playing around with my new camera. The image on the left is with the correct settings, the image on the right has a bluish tint to it.

The original Pretenders are 6 of my all-time favorite Transformers toys, even to this day. I don't know why I have such affection for those guys, but I do. Maybe it's because my Mom wouldn't let me buy Fortress Maximus at the time because she thought it was too much money for one toy so instead I ended up buying the wave 1 1988 Pretenders. They were featured pretty heavily in the American comics. There was just something about them that I loved.

It also didn't help that before I discovered the Internet, I had found a dealer at the Motor City Comic-Con in Novi, MI that was selling bootleg tapes. He had a Masterforce tape playing on the small TV he had on display. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Japanese cartoons of Pretenders and Powermasters. Unbelievable! The cartoons didn't end, just in America! I bought a couple of the bootleg tapes and quickly became obsessed with finding out as much information as I could about the Japanese cartoons and their exclusive toys. The video tapes I bought were a collection of early Masterforce episodes and some Victory episodes spliced in between. I was quite simply in awe watching animated cartoons of the Pretenders. It was very fascinating to me!

Without having the Internet at the time to read about this stuff, the next year was a pretty wild year of discovery for me about the Transformers. I think that year might have been one of my favorites of the 26/27 years I've been a fan. You couldn't duplicate that year in today's world because of sites like Seibertron.com, YouTube.com, Wikipedia, and events like BotCon. It was a rather priceless and dated moment in my life that eventually lead to the Transformers fanzine (Trans-Forum) that I did from 1996 to 2000 and to Seibertron.com which launched in 2000.

I've wanted to do these galleries for the past 7 years. The fact that it took me 7 years to do galleries of 6 of my personal favorite Transformers demonstrates that I don't take pictures of toys that are only of interest to me. Reflector and the Technobots are another example of more Transformers that I can't wait to do galleries for.

This proves you can slap a faction symbol on anything and it will be called "Transformers".

omega666 wrote:This proves you can slap a faction symbol on anything and it will be called "Transformers".

That's more a comment for Actionmasters. The inner robots of these guys still transform.

FYI ... it's going to be all out Pretenders for a little bit. I'm working on finishing up the galleries for Finback, Groundbreaker, Splashdown, Iguanus, Bugly, and Sky High right now. I also finished taking the photos for Thunderwing, Crossblades, and Vroom over the weekend.

Seibertron wrote:FYI ... it's going to be all out Pretenders for a little bit. I'm working on finishing up the galleries for Finback, Groundbreaker, Splashdown, Iguanus, Bugly, and Sky High right now. I also finished taking the photos for Thunderwing, Crossblades, and Vroom over the weekend.

That's great! Speaking of Pretenders, have you managed to get your hands on their Crossformers cousins, Black Shadow and Blue Bacchus?

JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:

Seibertron wrote:FYI ... it's going to be all out Pretenders for a little bit. I'm working on finishing up the galleries for Finback, Groundbreaker, Splashdown, Iguanus, Bugly, and Sky High right now. I also finished taking the photos for Thunderwing, Crossblades, and Vroom over the weekend.

That's great! Speaking of Pretenders, have you managed to get your hands on their Crossformers cousins, Black Shadow and Blue Bacchus?

Unfortunately I have not yet. Been watching for a good deal on eBay for a few years now but haven't had the right ones in the right condition show up for the right price yet. One day.

Seibertron wrote:FYI ... it's going to be all out Pretenders for a little bit. I'm working on finishing up the galleries for Finback, Groundbreaker, Splashdown, Iguanus, Bugly, and Sky High right now. I also finished taking the photos for Thunderwing, Crossblades, and Vroom over the weekend.

Glad to hear it. With all the Pretender hate out there I'm sure people will have plenty of negative comments for each gallery as they pop up.

It's giving me a chuckle at how pumped you are for Pretenders. A TF line i've never heard anyone ever say a good thing about (me being one of em) and your going all out with the galleries. Just now finally giving the figures you love the attention they deserve.

Good on ya.

monstergrotusque wrote:Glad to hear it. With all the Pretender hate out there I'm sure people will have plenty of negative comments for each gallery as they pop up.

I'm sure there will be. As a Transformers collector that buys just about everything out there, I don't discriminate. The Pretenders will get just as much love as the upcoming DOTM Sentinel Prime and Leader class Ironhide.

monstergrotusque wrote:It's giving me a chuckle at how pumped you are for Pretenders. A TF line i've never heard anyone ever say a good thing about (me being one of em) and your going all out with the galleries. Just now finally giving the figures you love the attention they deserve.

Good on ya.

Hopefully their moment in the spotlight here on Seibertron.com will give me an opportunity to take a second look at these unique Transformers toys. The concept must not be too out there since we got Alice in ROTF. I think, done right, that the Pretenders is one of those concepts that we'll get at some point again. The appeal of having two action figures in one is too tempting in my opinion.

I used to hate Pretenders until I got my hands on a G1 Crossblades.

Yeah, I still think they're God-awful, lol, but I really like 'em for some reason. Partly because of nostalgia and partly because they're just so friggin' over-the-top.

NIce galleries, Ryan!

Energon Is My Drug wrote:I used to hate Pretenders until I got my hands on a G1 Crossblades.

Yeah, I still think they're God-awful, lol, but I really like 'em for some reason. Partly because of nostalgia and partly because they're just so friggin' over-the-top.

NIce galleries, Ryan!

Crossblades is my new current favorite, especially after fixing his yellowing with some hydrogen peroxide bath over the course of a week.

I remember having Landmine. i think he was the last Transformer I got before Generation 2. Man, the memories.....