Mark Maher gives us a detailed post about the line wide gimmick that was greenlit for the Legacy line BEFORE the character selection. The way this specific toyline was designed, was that all characters would come with Energon fuelled weapons and kids (and fans) could make their own weapon. We have weapon designs from Emiliano Santalucia, showing how this line wide gimmick was first proposed and then greenlit. You can see the individual weapons along with the combinations. You'll notice a uniform colour scheme and extra painted detail, which does work for a line wide gimmick.
However, this was not set up to go with specific characters. So the mandate for designers was to incorporate this gimmick and those specific weapon designs. Mark Maher did a good job integrating what he could. For instance him pairing what would become Kickback's weapons was genius since they also designed the weapon to integrate with the beast mode to create and abdomen that would work for Ransack.
However, not all pairings were ideal. You'll see those hands and gauntlets in the design sheet, those had to go with a release. And the design team chose to pair that one with Blitzwing. They did find ways to integrate it into the tank mode for extra fire power. So that's the explanation, it was a mandate and they tried their best to integrate the weapons and design them in a way that worked best for particular characters. And Blitzwing got the gauntlets. Also, one would assume a large accessory like that also helped further give an idea of value for a leader class toy that is the size of a traditional voyager class toy, even though Hasbro did confirm that the classes are no longer about size.
Below are the original designs along with the full written post found on Instagram.
Energon consumption time!!! I really hope everyone is enjoying the portal ride of our Legacy toyline.Here is a lil insight on how some of these energon weapons came to be.
First image is just a showcase of the first 2 waves of Legacy weaponry you’ll collect if you grab core class, deluxe class, voyager class, and even leader class!
Then you will actually see the concept art Emiliano Santalucia drew up even before we had the rollout of characters planned for the year. I think this will provide great insight for all yall as alot of the planning for weapon combinations was to obviously utilize our 5mm peg across all scales but this was all sold in before character selects were figured out.
As I worked with Takara on some of the characters I ended up redesigning alot of the weapons in order to maintain their design aesthetic of their own iconic weaponry. I wanted to concentrate heavily on the character and let that guidance provide an opportunity for the style and color of the energon weaponry
Please be sure to share your rad energon weapon combinations, would love to get some more time to talk about some of the new energon featured in some of characters arsenals. Especially that smoked out death soul energon featured in Jhiaxus’s handheld blaster !
More soon, stay tuned, if we reach higher followers maybe I can start doing giveaways!!!!
