The Energon Pub

-Kanrabat- wrote:What is not cool is this whole line is a Walmart exclusive. I fear I'll miss out on everything because my Walmart suck ass at having any Transformers on the shelves.

Yeah unfortunately this means I'll likely miss out the same way I did on Bee and Soundwave, What's worse is we have to wait till July and try to remember. I'd have rather they just did it like they do for Star Wars and out up preorders next day at 1PMso we can just get it out of the way and not worry about it.

Cosmos is a definite purchase for me with Clampdown being a maybe, the rest are a pass even though I like the looks of new Blurr. The only aspect that bother me about Cosmos is that overly large looking part above the saucer area, it just looks a tad out of scale with the rest of it to me, particularly in alt mode it really stands out. Still he looks great and I'm glad I waited and not bough the TR version because the detail is very nice!

And yeah the hollow arms on a deluxe figure makes me think they could have spend the fifty cents to cover them versus a Core Class bot. I also hope he looks alright next to Cliffjumper and the other smaller bots because he does appear a tad large.

We had big reveals lately but there's one part I forgot was coming and that is all the listings for the next year which we get at the half year mark. Thanks to fellow Seibertronian JTprime17 and TF fan HyperShauta, we have listings of the second wave of the Velocitron line. As with the previous line, it has characters from all sorts of Transformers or Trasformers ajacent worlds together, like Crasher from GoBots, Shadow Striker from Cyberverse and voyager Hot Rod from some aspect of G1 (maybe a movie inspired redeco, purely speculation). These listings come from Walmart, which is the exclusive outlet for these toys.

Velocitron listings

Tra Gen legacy Velocitron deluxe Crasher
Product number: F8050
EAN: 5010994186609

Tra Gen Legacy Velocitron Deluxe Shadows
Product Number: F8049
EAN: 5010994186586

Tra Gen Legacy Velocitron Voyager Hot Rod
Product Number: F8054
EAN: 5010994186593

Tra Gen Legacy Velocitron LDR 2
Product Number: F8052
EAN: 5010994186616

The Leader is not known and it is unknown if this is the extent of the listings, it probably is not.

At least the 2nd lot of velocitron sounds a bit more interesting for me. Might be nice if hotrod is truck mode and would be awful (but money saving) if LDR2 is a leader 1 repaint of the top gun collab :p

At another site someone joked that hot rod could be a retool of override

Let's see, Shadow Striker will be a commentator and Crasher will be in the pit crew because apparently our race themed line needs a bunch of non racers. Kidding aside it's nice to have some Decepticons joint the race.

Wild speculation:

Crasher will be a retooled Wheeljack (closest thing we've had to her original Gobots alt mode, but watch it be Mirage again). Shadow Striker as a heavy Siege Chromia retool (their bot modes have very similar back and arm kibble).



Hot Rod needs to be the cartoon colors, bonus points if he comes with Daniel on a hoverboard.

The Leader slot is a mystery, wouldn't surprise me if it were Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime in the black and red colors of the original repaint. That would actually make me happy and it would make sense for a firetruck to be here, to say nothing of the Velocitron theme.


Some things I'd like to see in this line, be it wave 2 or a possible third wave if this goes the way of the Netflix line.
-Transmetal Tigatron (from the recent Ravage figure, not sure what price point that would fit)
-Sunstreaker (with proper matching yellow and red shoulders)
-Glyph or Tap-out (kinda crazy they haven't done these obvious and long requested repaints yet, but we got Roadranger and Puffer somehow)
-Nightracer (it's in her name and this line loves its female racers, maybe a repaint of Knock Out?)

Emerje

Im surprised that Velocitron is lasting for longer than one wave, I would've thought they would switch up the theme every year. Either way, I'm down for Shadow Striker at the very least, and it would be nice if Voyager Hot Rod was a retool based on his IDW design like Blurr.

WHY THE MOST INTERESTING TRANSFORMERS TO COME OUT THIS YEAR ARE FREAKING WALMART EXCLUSIVES?



I can accept 2 or 4 exclusives. But there's a WHOLE LINE of 30 something transformers with many characters that are 100% original that will be absolutely impossible to get anywhere. My Walmart never have transformers and Walmart.ca suck so much ass, I just have to stick my butt on my screen to get a thorough enema.

ZeroWolf wrote:At another site someone joked that hot rod could be a retool of override

That might not be a joke. The original rumors said that Override was a retool of Hot Rod, and there was precedent in the 3P scene where I think MMC used a shared design for those two. If it's an IDW Hot Rod, as with Legacy IDW Blurr, that would arguably be a better base.

I certainly don't think it's likely, but it's at least plausible.

AcademyofDrX wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:At another site someone joked that hot rod could be a retool of override

That might not be a joke. The original rumors said that Override was a retool of Hot Rod, and there was precedent in the 3P scene where I think MMC used a shared design for those two. If it's an IDW Hot Rod, as with Legacy IDW Blurr, that would arguably be a better base.

I certainly don't think it's likely, but it's at least plausible.

You never know anymore. As of this minute, I wouldn't want a different Hot Rod, but I'll reserve judgement until I see it. I'm all in on the deluxes, though.

Considering that Hasbro outright said Road Ranger is a GoBot in the two-pack description with Puffer, it's gonna be cool seeing the name "GoBots Universe Crasher" on the box. Always nice getting callbacks to GoBots AS GoBots.
Unless they pull a quick one on us.

A big question from fans recently has been why the new Scourge toy has a Nemesis Prime deco (i.e. black body with red windows) rather than an RID Scourge deco (i.e. grey body with black and white windows). Well, the designer assigned to the deco, Sam, answered fans on Instagram. The answers are below but we will run through what went on.
The character this was supposed to be was not specified when he got the task. The only specification regarding the deco was that the trailer should be silver. As you can read below, the designer was guided by the material of the mold. So, with Laser Prime (who is the main use of this mold), both the alt mode windows and robot mode chest windows are made of clear plastic which is a departure from the original toy. Since the clear plastic for "Scourge" is pink, that means the entire robot mode torso would also be pink clear plastic. This mold was designed so that the torso clear plastic would match the alt mode clear plastic. So, when it came time to decide the colour of the torso, black was chosen for the torso to match the alt mode accordingly.

So there you go, it seems to all come back from a lack of unified direction for the deco and character at the beginning as well as limitations from the way the Legacy Laser Prime mold is constructed.

The designer does conclude that despite all that (limitations and lack of clarity) he went with the best looking deco he could think of. On that point, it is hard to fault him. While the deco doesn't look like Scourge, it is still striking and well done, as many fans have already said on message boards and social media across the web.

Let us knw what you think of both the reasoning and the toy.

While a straight redeco of Car Robots 2000 Black Convoy would have been preferable to me, I don't hate what we got. Getting an explanation makes it much easier to accept (in my case, not speaking for others).

I'm kind of using a different more head-canon-esque explanation for the character in my collection, anyway.

It's cool that this subline is going to continue, but so far the only one from wave two I might be interested in is Hot Rod, and only if it's a MTMTE version. Blurr and Tarn give me hope.

AcademyofDrX wrote:

ZeroWolf wrote:At another site someone joked that hot rod could be a retool of override

That might not be a joke. The original rumors said that Override was a retool of Hot Rod, and there was precedent in the 3P scene where I think MMC used a shared design for those two. If it's an IDW Hot Rod, as with Legacy IDW Blurr, that would arguably be a better base.

I certainly don't think it's likely, but it's at least plausible.

It would be easier IMO to retool 86 Rod into IDW Rod than Override. With the 86 mold, the chest and shins could be swapped out very easily, and the tall shoulders could also be done if they don't mind sacrificing articulation. I'm not even sure how IDW Rod's shoulders could even work with Override's transformation scheme, and the chest would be more complicated to retool. Not that Override couldn't work, it would just take more extensive retooling.

Not to mention, IIRC it was clarified that the wave 2 voyager assortment was going to be 2 Hot Rods and 1 Override, so it would be a bit odd having the whole wave be the same mold.

I can forgive him if the bad communication was true, but I'm still passing on this in hopes for a proper Scourge repaint.

Emerje wrote:Hot Rod needs to be the cartoon colors, bonus points if he comes with Daniel on a hoverboard.

Some things I'd like to see in this line, be it wave 2 or a possible third wave if this goes the way of the Netflix line.

-Sunstreaker (with proper matching yellow and red shoulders)


Emerje

I'd definitely buy another Hot Rod if it came with Danial and Hoverbaord!


Also want a Sunstreaker do over!

honestly the different deco is kinda making me want to get this one now. I have the original black battle convoy, and I don't see the legacy mold as an upgrade, but rather something of a downgrade. But I have always loved the nemesis prime color theme more then the scourge one. decisions, decisions...

Emerje wrote:Wild speculation:

Crasher will be a retooled Wheeljack (closest thing we've had to her original Gobots alt mode, but watch it be Mirage again). Shadow Striker as a heavy Siege Chromia retool (their bot modes have very similar back and arm kibble).

Additional options:
-Crasher from Drag Strip, if they're actually going for accuracy to the original design (assuming they can cuz rights weirdness)? The new head would fill in the seat area of the alt mode, she'd just have some extra wheels (and would get to be a secret extra Stunticon cuz why not)
-I've seen a digibash floating around of Shadow Striker from that Elita/Minerva mold, since the shoulder pylon kibble can be folded back into the backpack I think that could work also Siege Chromia mold sucks please don't bring it back

Emerje wrote:The Leader slot is a mystery, wouldn't surprise me if it were Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime in the black and red colors of the original repaint. That would actually make me happy and it would make sense for a firetruck to be here, to say nothing of the Velocitron theme.

OOH, that is an interesting possibility, I hadn't even considered that. It'd definitely make more sense than anything else I had thought of.

Emerje wrote:-Glyph or Tap-out (kinda crazy they haven't done these obvious and long requested repaints yet, but we got Roadranger and Puffer somehow)

I'm starting to wonder if the only reason this hasn't happened yet is because they are actually trying to get the VW Bug tooling for Glyph, considering we're only just now seeing it get a second use.

...is it wrong that I'm still waiting for a Toxitron redeco? This whole "that's not MY Scourge deco!" kerfuffle is flying right over my head
(I can definitely understand the disappointment, though!)

Overcracker wrote:But Shadow Striker is more interesting. Might mean we get a R.I.D SideBurn repaint out of that, which is one step closer to updating the R.I.D Car Robots.

It's more likely this Shadow Striker, the one who's been in recent mainstream media:

Nemesis Primal wrote:

chuckdawg1999 wrote:Haven't we seen Clampdown with Red Alert's rifle? Aren't we passed the nickel and diming over this mold?

Clampdown comes with both the rifle and the shoulder rocket, both were shown on the stream (not to mention the leaked in-hand copy earlier).

Thank you my friend, I don't watch the streams and those early leaks sometimes come with accessories the main releases don't.

I still don't understand how they could be confused by what colors the G2 long nose tanker truck with big shoulders should have when painted black. He's been done half a dozen times before, every previous design team on both sides of the Pacific understood his colors, how did the current design team have no idea what they were supposed to do with him? It's just frustrating, they had no clear plan for this figure and it ended up being a mess of ideas mashed together. It also means they aren't going to do it "right" later like many of us hoped. Or at least not for a few years since they clearly have nothing planned.

Nemesis Primal wrote:Additional options:
-Crasher from Drag Strip, if they're actually going for accuracy to the original design (assuming they can cuz rights weirdness)? The new head would fill in the seat area of the alt mode, she'd just have some extra wheels (and would get to be a secret extra Stunticon cuz why not)

I could be wrong, but I think Hasbro will fix one of the mistakes they made during Combiner Wars and not make "limbs" that don't have dedicated combiners. A G2 repaint, sure, even an entire retool for a new team, but I think they'll stay away from just doing repaints for the sake of repaints. I hope so anyway.

Emerje

I couldn't give a toss what the designer stated; until it comes out in the "correct" Scourge colours, I'm not buying it.

Either this figure will get the correct colours soon, or a better version still come out later. Until then, I'll stick with the Takara Tomy Legends version for the time being.

I've been mulling it over about the new deco for this version of Scourge, and feel that, despite my (and many others') initial misgivings about it, I'm slowly warming up to it on the notion of it not being a new version of Scourge in his original body, but a new version of Scourge in an upgraded body.

There is precedent in how both of his Takara Legends toys have been depicted as new, upgraded bodies for him instead just reinterpretations of his original body:






His Deluxe toy even has red/pink chest windows like this new one does. Granted, in that Deluxe toy's case, it was because those chest windows were also his actual truck windows, but it's still a case of his robot mode having red/pink windows.

But while that gives precedent for the color of his chest windows, it admittedly doesn't do the same for his torso being black instead of gray. Well, there just so happens to be another toy of his that, in fact, does. Scourge's very first upgraded-body toy had a black torso instead of a gray one. And that was Destructicon Scourge:



Sure, that one also had the gray-and-black chest windows and shoulders, but I do feel that it could be the missing link between the original Scourge and this new one.

In fact, one could even call the Velocitron Scourge the missing link between all of the others Scourges. If one wanted to consider the Destructicon the actual second body upgrade, then the Velocitron one could come next, followed by the existing evolution of Scourge's bodies, giving us the following pattern:

Body 1: Gray torso, gray-and-black windows



Then he undergoes a significant body-change in which his torso changes from gray to black (and his overall shape changes), but his robot mode windows stay the same.

Body 2: Black torso, gray-and-black windows



Then he goes back to his original shape, but keeps his black torso, and his robot windows change to red/pink.

Body 3: Black torso, red/pink windows



Then he changes again, his torso goes back to gray, but his windows stay red/pink.

Body 4: Gray torso, red/pink windows



The TFSS version is similar enough to just be considered the "Hasbro version" of this form.



And finally, he upgrades one more time, keeping his gray torso but returing his windows to gray-and-black, restoring his original deco to come full circle.

Body 5: Gray torso, gray-and-black windows