Hasbro's Latest Announcement Might Make you buy Galvatron Again

william-james88 wrote:How many version of the Kingdom Galvatron mold do you have so far? One? Two? Three? Well Hasbro is coming out with a 4th one. They have just confirmed, as part of Transformers Tuesday, that the Legacy rerelease of Galvatron will have the battle damage removed.
This news helps us with something else. It confirms that PR label next to a figure does not mean the figure will be an identical release. Some said that the "Soundwave PR" listing we saw couldn't be a rerelease of the Netflix Soundwave because that would make it different from the original release which was a three pack. Well, this proves it doesn't matter. PR simply means they are rereleasing a previously released mold and character in a new line.

Her is the announcement from Hasbro:

Here comes another TransformersTuesday reveal! Galvatron is back, and this time he’s facing off with Laser Optimus Prime! And we’re happy to announce that we listened to your feedback and removed the battle damage deco! Both Transformers: Legacy Leader Galvatron and Laser Optimus Prime are launching this Spring.

cruizerdave wrote:I thought this was figured out a long time ago.

Overcracker wrote:Hopefully this means PR Soundwave we saw listed is a new release of Netflix Soundwave.

o.supreme wrote:

cruizerdave wrote:I thought this was figured out a long time ago.

Yes it was known via leaked photos, but today Hasbro Confirmed.

Sowndwave76 wrote:I'm not sure how much of a deal it is (or costs) to slightly alter the color of plastic...

Emerje wrote:

Sowndwave76 wrote:I'm not sure how much of a deal it is (or costs) to slightly alter the color of plastic...

If it's just a 1:1 change without mold changes and the exact same plastic type then it's pretty straight forward and doesn't cost any more. Question is why would they bother?

Emerje

Till-all-R1 wrote:

Overcracker wrote:Hopefully this means PR Soundwave we saw listed is a new release of Netflix Soundwave.

Hm, maybe I should sell mine now considering secondary prices.

MCutter wrote:FFS.
No.

I just hope they don't take everyone not wanting to buy a fourth copy of the same mold as a sign that actually we do prefer battle damage.

Sowndwave76 wrote:However, like I said, I look at this Buzzworthy Kup as a very, very recent reference.

cruizerdave wrote:I thought this was figured out a long time ago.

o.supreme wrote:

cruizerdave wrote:I thought this was figured out a long time ago.

Yes it was known via leaked photos, but today Hasbro Confirmed.

Big Grim wrote:As much as I love this mould, I have the original and the toy coloured Galvatron 2. I can remove the battle damage myself and repair the shoulders if it bothered me that much. I'd have thought it make more sense to release this version in the more lilac colour we see from Japan. Even though I hate that (especially on Cyclonus gimme him in toy colours!) I know some people prefer it. Cater to them!

~ Grim

Cheetron wrote:I already have 3 versions of this mold. Do I want another? Not really. Is it unique enough to make me want it? Nope. Does it have the shoulder fix? I can't tell.

And he would win that fight. Vs Laser Prime. Mr I can only move my arms to the side lol.

primalxconvoy wrote:

Cheetron wrote:I already have 3 versions of this mold. Do I want another? Not really. Is it unique enough to make me want it? Nope. Does it have the shoulder fix? I can't tell.

And he would win that fight. Vs Laser Prime. Mr I can only move my arms to the side lol.

I suspect the shoulder is fixed. I noticed the shoulders are fixed on the regular version that was released in Japan.

Cheetron wrote:And he would win that fight. Vs Laser Prime. Mr I can only move my arms to the side lol.

Hellscream9999 wrote:

Cheetron wrote:And he would win that fight. Vs Laser Prime. Mr I can only move my arms to the side lol.

What are you on about, laser prime has normal arm movement

primalxconvoy wrote:

o.supreme wrote:

cruizerdave wrote:I thought this was figured out a long time ago.

Yes it was known via leaked photos, but today Hasbro Confirmed.

I'm pretty sure I saw a picture of it ages ago too, plus it's been widely assumed/known it was this version.

Emerje wrote:

Sowndwave76 wrote:However, like I said, I look at this Buzzworthy Kup as a very, very recent reference.

That Kup is technically still a SS86 figure so it makes sense for them to want to find a way to fix all the complaints of the first release and make him even more screen accurate. But Galvatron doesn't have any reason to be more or less accurate to anything and I'm surprised they even bothered removing the damage considering how much people complained about it throughout all of WFC.

I still wouldn't be surprised if we got a Studio Series Galvatron repaint at some point, maybe in Buzzworthy Bumblebee.

Emerje

Sowndwave76 wrote:The main complaint about Kup was his head/face sculpt. There was very little talked about that I can remember about the colors they used for him.

Sentinel_Primal wrote:Honestly, I'd hope that removing the battle damage would have added paint to the cannon to make it the solid color. As is, feels like they ran out of paint budget and are just covering for it by saying it's them listening to fans

Sabrblade wrote:

Sowndwave76 wrote:The main complaint about Kup was his head/face sculpt. There was very little talked about that I can remember about the colors they used for him.

Maybe not around here on this board, but elsewhere people were talking about how Hasbro used an inaccurate fan colored character model as a reference for the deco of SS Kup's altmode, which they corrected for the Buzzworthy Bumblebee version.

Sowndwave76 wrote:But in either case for either figure, it's really difficult to believe that these changes were made due to "listening to the fans/collectors".
Sure, that may be the truth. But as I've said before, just because Hastak says something, doesn't mean it's legit.

Sowndwave76 wrote:But Hastak making a product based on colors from a fan-made character model???????
That just screams false rumor...

Emerje wrote:

Sentinel_Primal wrote:Honestly, I'd hope that removing the battle damage would have added paint to the cannon to make it the solid color. As is, feels like they ran out of paint budget and are just covering for it by saying it's them listening to fans

I think you might be in the minority, people tend to prefer the clear canon. Though you do bring up a good point, they're going to presumably save a lot of money on this release by removing paint apps. It'd be nice if they put the paint into something else like the missing paint from his belt buckle.

Emerje

Sentinel_Primal wrote:Honestly I don't care one way or the other about the cannon (I actually really like the current version), I just care about being charged the same price for less paint (ignoring the added cost from the rumored/revealed change in shipping to help with supply). Honestly it's a very minor gripe though

Sabrblade wrote:

Sowndwave76 wrote:But Hastak making a product based on colors from a fan-made character model???????
That just screams false rumor...

It's happened several times before. Those Ukranian fansite character models are all over Pinterest, Instagram, and various Fandom wikis.

For example, RED Soundwave's color layout was based on this Ukranian character model with blue shins. His shins were light gray in the cartoon, as shown in the circled excerpt of his legs seen in the center of the image, taken from the official cartoon coloring:



Here's what Soundwave's cartoon colors are supposed to be:

Nemesis Primal wrote:It's not limited to the non-mainline stuff like RED either, Kingdom Pipes is an even more recent example.

Sabrblade wrote:

Sowndwave76 wrote:But Hastak making a product based on colors from a fan-made character model???????
That just screams false rumor...

It's happened several times before. Those Ukranian fansite character models are all over Pinterest, Instagram, and various Fandom wikis.

For example, RED Soundwave's color layout was based on this Ukranian character model with blue shins. His shins were light gray in the cartoon, as shown in the circled excerpt of his legs seen in the center of the image, taken from the official cartoon coloring:



Here's what Soundwave's cartoon colors are supposed to be:

Moonshot wrote:Is there a site that has all or a lot of those Sunbow character model sheets u just showed?

o.supreme wrote:I may be mistaken, but most of the models seem to come from "The Ark" character design books published by IDW ( Jim Sorenson and Bill Foster). Those were all just B&W sketches however, not sure who went to all the trouble to digitally color them

In the years since The Ark series books were published, multiple model sheet collections and production bibles have surfaced through auction sites, social media and fan archive blogs, revealing that the majority of the models from the original cartoon that Bob Budiansky and Jim Sorenson had in their collective possession at the time of publishing, were not final. The bulk of the season 2 character models (as well as a few others) published in the books were older models that had received several revisions before making it into the cartoon, meaning that some of the details that can be found on these models had either been removed or redesigned afterwards, hence why some of them don't match up with what can be seen on-screen.

Several of the season 3 model sheets that appear in the books—such as the ones for the Predacons, Pipes, Swerve and Sky Lynx—all received entirely new models by Toei, different from what was originally drawn up, with Sky Lynx and the Predacons drawn from angles that are much more stylistic when compared to the standard ¾ angles used in past seasons, and feature large black shadows underneath their rear-view models, which also hadn't been used until this point. Also among the drastic changes in the art style are the "boxier" hand designs used on the Predacons, which would be utilized more frequently in the subsequent Japanese cartoons like The Headmasters, instead of the rounded hands that were more common in Floro Dery's work for seasons 1 and 2.

Also discovered years after the book series was published, were models for The Transformers: The Movie that were either not known about or fully understood at the time of publishing, such as the unique head design that appears alongside Rodimus Prime's models in the books. For years, the fandom assumed the boxy Rodimus model used in the books was the model used in the film and season 3, but it was actually scrapped in favor of the sleeker design used for Hot Rod's final model. Rather than designing an entirely new model sheet for Rodimus that fit the slender aesthetic they wanted, all that was designed was a new head with the animators simply instructed to draw a larger version of Hot Rod's body with Rodimus's head slapped on top. Because of this, no official robot mode model exists for Rodimus, just a head design.

The Junkions Junkyard and Scrapheap were also given entirely new models by Toei for the movie, that had parts matching the other non-Wreck-Gar Junkions, giving them a collective "mix and match"-type design, rather than the two stand-alone designs drawn by Floro Dery. The problem with the Junkion models though, is that the only known trace of the final Toei Junkion models as of 2022, is a small section in the back of the Transformers Generations guidebooks. That being said, Dery's original designs for these two Junkions did still appear in season 3 of the cartoon, due to AKOM animating the two episodes they appeared in.

AcademyofDrX wrote:

primalxconvoy wrote:

Cheetron wrote:I already have 3 versions of this mold. Do I want another? Not really. Is it unique enough to make me want it? Nope. Does it have the shoulder fix? I can't tell.

And he would win that fight. Vs Laser Prime. Mr I can only move my arms to the side lol.

I suspect the shoulder is fixed. I noticed the shoulders are fixed on the regular version that was released in Japan.

The fix was just a running change to correct a QC error, I can't imagine they'll revert to the earlier incorrect configuration.

Re: earlier post about battle damage, since so many Siege figures were rereleased in Earthrise, the battle damage helps further differentiate those. For us suckers who bought both, the deco takes a little of the sting out. My collecting goal was always based on the G1 cartoon, but Siege ended up giving me a whole set of Cybertronians in parallel, just as advertised.

Sabrblade wrote:

Moonshot wrote:Is there a site that has all or a lot of those Sunbow character model sheets u just showed?

Yes. They can be found here. A fan named D.M has gone to great, painstaking lengths of tracking down the correct, finalized character models used by Toei and digitally recreating their official colorings using Toei's color palettes for each model. He has also recreated early, non-final colorings for preliminary models that help to show the evolutionary development of the models and their colorings, from non-final to final.

o.supreme wrote:I may be mistaken, but most of the models seem to come from "The Ark" character design books published by IDW ( Jim Sorenson and Bill Foster). Those were all just B&W sketches however, not sure who went to all the trouble to digitally color them

Many of the models used in the Ark books were early, non-final ones with certain details that differed from the final models. In the years since those books' publishing, many more discoveries have been made:

In the years since The Ark series books were published, multiple model sheet collections and production bibles have surfaced through auction sites, social media and fan archive blogs, revealing that the majority of the models from the original cartoon that Bob Budiansky and Jim Sorenson had in their collective possession at the time of publishing, were not final. The bulk of the season 2 character models (as well as a few others) published in the books were older models that had received several revisions before making it into the cartoon, meaning that some of the details that can be found on these models had either been removed or redesigned afterwards, hence why some of them don't match up with what can be seen on-screen.

Several of the season 3 model sheets that appear in the books—such as the ones for the Predacons, Pipes, Swerve and Sky Lynx—all received entirely new models by Toei, different from what was originally drawn up, with Sky Lynx and the Predacons drawn from angles that are much more stylistic when compared to the standard ¾ angles used in past seasons, and feature large black shadows underneath their rear-view models, which also hadn't been used until this point. Also among the drastic changes in the art style are the "boxier" hand designs used on the Predacons, which would be utilized more frequently in the subsequent Japanese cartoons like The Headmasters, instead of the rounded hands that were more common in Floro Dery's work for seasons 1 and 2.

Also discovered years after the book series was published, were models for The Transformers: The Movie that were either not known about or fully understood at the time of publishing, such as the unique head design that appears alongside Rodimus Prime's models in the books. For years, the fandom assumed the boxy Rodimus model used in the books was the model used in the film and season 3, but it was actually scrapped in favor of the sleeker design used for Hot Rod's final model. Rather than designing an entirely new model sheet for Rodimus that fit the slender aesthetic they wanted, all that was designed was a new head with the animators simply instructed to draw a larger version of Hot Rod's body with Rodimus's head slapped on top. Because of this, no official robot mode model exists for Rodimus, just a head design.

The Junkions Junkyard and Scrapheap were also given entirely new models by Toei for the movie, that had parts matching the other non-Wreck-Gar Junkions, giving them a collective "mix and match"-type design, rather than the two stand-alone designs drawn by Floro Dery. The problem with the Junkion models though, is that the only known trace of the final Toei Junkion models as of 2022, is a small section in the back of the Transformers Generations guidebooks. That being said, Dery's original designs for these two Junkions did still appear in season 3 of the cartoon, due to AKOM animating the two episodes they appeared in.