Other than NYTF, I can only imagine a sneak preview at SDCC. It would give us time to have a look at promo pictures and that.

 

Or at the end of Beast Machines when RID and Armada came and saved it. Or at the end of Cybertron when Classics and (much more so) the movie saved it. Let's not forget that by the time Beast Machines ended the beast era had overstayed it's welcome to the point where Transtech got cancelled and the Car Robots line got brought over because they needed something to fill in that year. And after years of nothing but beasts or weird alien vehicles the realistic vehicles sold amazingly.

Every so often you need to freshen things up. Now Hasbro has taken the approach of doing so with multiple lines now. We've got movie, RID and Generations all running at the same time. That said they aren't exactly experimenting in the same way as Beast Wars, but when that started the brand was in desperate waters, and it's not a risk they'd be willing to take today. Hell the action figure industy isn't what it was 20 years ago, how often do you see a actual new action figure property get on shelves these days?

And generations came from the Classics line, where the whole point was updating G1 characters. While they have branched out some with forays into the beast era and armada, it's stuck with G1 largely because those seem to have done the best on the whole. Generations isn't the experimental line, it's the updated versions line. And many of the Beast Era guys still hold up great compared to the Generations stuff, whereas the g1's don't. So it's hard to tell where the line would go from here. Do they update armada? Or what? Or drop the line?

 

Got that interview with the TF team?

 

This "G1 with Articulation" thing that started in Titans Return is cool for some characters, especially the ones that have never resurfaced since the old days, but it's going to kill this brand faster than anything else they've ever tried. People pitch a fit whenever they use the primary fiction (the comics) in Generations, so we need a new fiction desperately. Even if that meant shelving Generations for a while and putting the budgetary focus on RID (we're it not ending). Because as it stands, after "Generations Bisk" the franchise has nowhere else to go, and it shouldn't have a visible finish line no matter how far away it is.

 

What we have now is very different from Classics. At least that line tried to change up a lot of the designs, at least a bit, to try and modernize them. Now they're trying their hardest to replicate the look of the original G1 toys. Generations was never meant to be pure 80s. That's why it's plural. It was supposed to merge Generation One with today's Generation. If they're gonna stick so closely to G1, they should come up with a new name, although between AOE Generations, AOE Robots in Disguise, Aligned Robots in Disguise and now Cyberverse, it seems Hasbro is incapable of coming up with new names. I guess the people working there are all out of creativity and originality on all fronts.

 

I hope that smile is some good news.  

 

Let's think about something, the bee movie as far as i know is scheluded for december and in the movie leaks there are at least two characyers under the TF6 code, wich can means that the movie line won't be announced soon, even at the NYTF.

 

At this point, if we can get something like, "For movie collectors, stay tuned" I'd be fine.

 

Which reminds me of another point I was going to make. BW made sure to give us new looks for even the mainstay characters. Optimus went through original gorilla, transmetal and Optimal for example. But whenever we see a generations Beast it's always the season one version. Except Sky-Byte for obvious reasons. Meanwhile movie optimus and Bee keep nearly identicale looks every year.

But I suspect this is suits being concerned with "branding" and "character recognition" causing this.

 

Right on man.

 

When Barricade is voted as the Fan Favorite Movie Character but there is no sight of MPM-5.

 

Yeah, although at least POTP's giving us an Optimal Optimus and the new movie trilogy gave us at least one new Optimus. Bee too, until they went back to the old one.

 

I have been mostly negative in this thread, what can I say...I was really excited to see more about those leaked movie figures, that was right when I got back into collecting (prior to that I'd only really bought some random figures here and there after getting out of the hobby right around the original RID, I grew up on Beast Wars) and it is both sentimental to me and I just think the movie gave us some of the best designs in the series and seeing them done again properly made my heart tingle. Especially the prospect of stuff like voyager Bonecrusher, leader Blackout, etc. The only thing better to me would be a revival of Transformers Animated.

That out of the way. Seeing the Terrorcons, even though we did technically already see them (thanks leaks!) was just so good. I have loved Abominus ever since I was a kid, and while I never owned the original, he's always been my favorite G1 combiner. The last time Hasbro tried to do him, well..I'm glad I skipped out on that mess. This time he's getting the treatment he deserves and he looks great, cannot wait to see the finished combiner.

Also the dinobots are cool enough, glad they finally are doing the whole team again.

And Primal looks great.

 

What is official word on Swoop? Will he be Red or Blue chest? I'm hoping for Red myself ...

But the fact that they blacked-out the slide and made him blue in the display case, makes me think they changed their mind?

I hope I don't have to jump through major hoops to get the G1 Toy deco Swoop.

 

All of the figure on display where final production prototypes. They were shipped to the convention in finished packaging, so Swoop will have a blue chest.

 

Hopefully not Final Final... Grimlock is missing his Red underoo's in the display case.

 

They also said the Dinobots would see repaint rerelease...

 

They said they would get repainted. Not a running change in a re-packed wave.

The Dinobots will most likely get repainted into the G2 colors for a giftset, or get retooled into Dinoking/Monstructor.