New Updated #Hascon 2017 Gallery for Transformers: Power of the Primes

I just clicked through the gallery and I must say my opinion of Rodimus Prime is improving. I'm still not impressed, but I don't hate it as much as I did at first.

However, my opinion is sinking on Optimus Prime. All that gray on the combined mode is distracting. The truck mode is just hideous. Pax is passable.

The Dreadwing combiner just makes me want to reacquire the original G1 figures. Slash is alright.

ArmadaPrime wrote:

Qwan wrote:(Not to mention it gives him a huuuge friggin' backpack in robot mode. Like, you couldn't even get him to turn into a plank without relying on a chunk of kibble 2/3 the size of the rest of the robot? Come on now.)

Qwan wrote:

Kurona wrote:I am curious how they'd get around the colour discrepancies between Thunderwing's inner robot and outer robot.

Presumably the same way they'll get around the colour discrepancies between Primal's regular and Optimal forms - however that ends up being done. Bit of a non-answer isn't it, I don't even know why I chimed in now.

I think you might've just answered your own question there
My guess is that the cockpit part will be where most of the orange/blue for the transmetal chest is, hence hiding it on the back of the standard robot mode. Similarly, most of the black and white colours in the regular Primal that wouldn't fit with the Big Boy's colours heme will probably end up as a backpack part.

That makes a lot of sense, clever thinking! The only issue being, of course, that plank-mode will look pretty confused color-wise - but I think at this point, we can safely say that mode's secondary to everything else on the toy anyway.

I have only one thing to say to Hun-Gurr, the only dissapointment for Hascon this year.

If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

Bombilation wrote:If every part is brand new, I fail to see why they transferred the engineering from a spaceship to a dragon. If they're able to produce a new mold, wouldn't new engineering for it be optimal and logical?

It's to save time and money, really. Besides, reusing (parts of) transformations or general design elements happens more than you think, with the classic example being:


Transformers Energon Starscream (Night Scream) Gallery

G2 Smokescreen vs. Energon Starscream, figures that were 8 to 9 years apart, and that transformation was largely reused another 6 years later for 2010 Terradive:


Transformers Hunt For The Decepticons Terradive Gallery

That's not to say Hasbro is lazy with designing, o no, they can get quite creative. But sometimes those "shortcuts" do come in handy for speeding things up, and getting more time for refining the details. The total process does take 1 to 2 years, mind you.

And for Combiner Wars and especially Titans Return, reusing minor parts is added to that. Power of the Prime isn't safe from that, in fact we already have a semi-confirmed case in the form of the Dinobots Sludge and SlugSlag, who share lower legs, and upper arms including the elbow at the very least.

Reveals are fun and reveals at conventions are even better. My favourite part though is when it settles down and we can take a longer look at what we see and extract all the juicy info. While the reveals were few at Hascon, we now have a very good idea at what is in stores with Power of the Primes with our first look at particular new play patterns that were not on display before and are now confirmed.


Combiner Hands, Feet and Enigma of Combination

Power of the Primes is basically Combiner Wars 2.0, at least when it comes to Deluxes and Voyagers. People were wondering about the combiner feet and hands since they seemed absent from previous reveals. Well we finally got them this time. The voyagers come with a pair of feet.

You can see one of the feet here.




Combiner Hands and Enigma of Combination

Each deluxe comes with a combiner hand with 2 thumbs on opposite ends and an example can be seen in the image below. There is a hole in the middle that is titan/prime master and it is currently holding the clear plastic Enigma of Combination. You can actually see the titan/prime master compatible Enigma near the hand, it is a convex circle with a red cross and comes with Grimlock.



Here is Starscream's Enigma.



The hands will also be able to tab onto the chest (there is a peg hole on each dinobot deluxe chest to accommodate this) of deluxes to give them some sort of power armour and the combiner feet become gauntlets for the voyagers, as seen below.





With the 5 combining Dinobots, you end up with 2 feet and 4 hands and while that may seem redundant, it isn't since the extra hands combine with the combiner torso to beef it up, as you can see in the image below. It seems the distribution of these hands and feet among deluxes and voyagers is to ensure that buying any combination of limbs with a voyager will give a fan all they needs to have different pieces for the feet and the hands without resorting to boxsets, like the later combiners wars toys which did have different hands and feet pieces.



Also, it has been confirmed throughout the week that, as in Combiner Wars, every deluxe in Power of the Primes can be an arm or a leg.


Starscream's Combiner Mode

To be honest, it took a while for me to make sense of this because all I could see on the side of Starscream's box was ... Starscream again. But then I saw the crown and looked at his limbs and realize this was indeed the combined mode. Voyager Starscream's combined mode is King Starscream. The big nosecone in the robot mode's back finally comes into play since it hides the combiner head and makes up the chest with real kibble this time. The wings end up being what we see on the back of the solo robot mode, so we get all the alt mode detail they have here.

It is also very important to note that like he Optimus Prime voyager we got in the first wave of Combiner Wars, this toy isn't meant to team up with anyone specifically. He is just an extra torso to use as you wish since we see him with some abominus limbs.




Optimus Primal's Alt Mode

There was lots of confusion over this part and it is very understandable because the slide does indeed show a lot of contradicting artwork. However, as has been stated for the previously seen Predaking mock up, this means Hasbro thinks we fans are ready to see more into their process and are intelligent enough to understand what is a finished toy, what is a mock u and what is simply a character design. Below is the now infamous Optimus Primal slide from his reveal which shows the toy's process. On the left is the very first phase, the character design. At that point in time it is just an artist's rendition (in this case Emiliano Santalucia's) of what the toy could look like. The artist drew both a robot and beast mode for the smaller Optimus Primal and larger Optimal Optimus figures. You will then realize that none of what is seen on the left is what the final toy looks like.



On the right of that same image is the interpretation of that design into toy form by famed Takara designer Hasui (the guy responsible for your favourite Masterpiece toys, Combiner Wars Devastator and most Starscream toys). As you can see, this is where the actual toy starts becoming concrete. This is where we see that Hasui has taken the initial designs from the artist and made them work into the Power of the Primes leader gimmick where the smaller "deluxe" toy combines with the larger toy for the leader class robot mode. It is at that early stage that the toy desgner, Hasui in this case, chooses to remove the smaller gorilla mode.

For those wondering, the deluxe sized Optimus Primal turns into a long ship which becomes a surfboard for the Optimal Optimus gorilla mode. And then, the Optimal Optimus robot mode is only achieved when you combine both together since the surfboard (deluxe Primal) becomes the chest and the backpack for Optimal Optimus.



Hopefully this cleared up any questions fans may have had. If you have others, please reach out to us and the community on the boards. We look forward to hearing from you!

Well, I was kinda hoping that they would've fixed the wings on Darkwing so they would angle properly. If this was a case of either heavy retool or nothing at all, I'd have taken nothing at all and been happy with my Kabaya kits.

How cool would it have been if Hot Rod and Rodimus had removable heads so you could use the respective Titan Masters? Also, those saying Star Saber would be perfect in this line need to remember that Star Saber isn't an "Evolution" of Saber, but armor that saber wears. While cool wouldn't work with the theme of the line.

The Titan/Prime Master driver/riding gimmick is only on the Legends Class figures?

Starscream isn't too surprising in retrospect -- after all, we saw he has a redeco in Elita-1 and we saw we have Deluxe Female Autobots coming. I think I may have just latched onto the idea of him getting a dedicated team because of Darkwing and Dreadwind... but at the same time, does this mean we're now getting extra limbs as well as extra torsos?

I must admit, I wish they found some way for the extra hands to combine with the feet to make bigger Combiner feet instead of torso-filling. That way it could have gotten around the silly proportion problems.