Hi. Please don't ever try speaking for me again. Kthx.

 

Classics Prime looked smaller in the box than Megatron because he compressed in his alt mode, while megatron basically laid himself out differently. His figure had less compression. Yes, Obvious.

Perhaps Bulkhead compresses more? no one complained when Lockdown was as tall as a voyager, but when Bulkhead's no taller than a deluxe... he's also huge all around, just not so tall.

I can't wait, that face mold is perfect, and it looks like a really fun toy.

as for folks that hated the movie designs yet loved these - that DOES makes sense...the two lines have COMPLETELY different asthetics. I understand if some people feel that way.

I for one love em both but you know me...

But - I don't care who likes what. I like what i like, don't what i don't, and don't get mad when people don't agree with me...

 

I would go as far as to say "This is the toy I'm most looking forward to" but he is cool. I want Starscream and Prowl......and Cybertron Optimus, Bumblebee..Hell everyone else

 

oh my.. heheh i agree. BEST QUOTE EVER. also, the bio is great. i am noticing, i think, that these bios and quotes and abilities (galactic powers indeed!) have been given great care, and while i had been finding transformers bios a little stale in recent years, these really do sum it up in a nice tidbit, and leave you satisfied.
for me, it always was the way i developed the character. i'd use the bios as a sort of.. cheat-sheet. a look into "who is this 'bot or 'con?" tech-specs the same way. it's really refreshing to see these and teh care taken to help kids who play and adults who collect, get an idea of who this wonderful character is they have in their hands. granted, imagination rules, but this is a good template for play and posing. well done again hasbro, with my new secret love "Transformers: Animated".
-A.S.

p.s. don't you dare tell anyone about me and TF:A. don't you dare. i see you. over there... just.... daring.

 

LOL.. a buddy of mine used to describe his girlfriend the same way. heheh.

 

if you scour the images of bulkhead alt mode and 'link' them to images of theother alt modes you will see that his alt mode is rather large. Its not just a matter of how tall the bot is (and he could have been a bit taller for sure) but its about the mass of the toy. we can all try a little experiment, when the toys arrive we can find the weight of the toys and see if bulkhead is really less massive than the other voyagers. I predict that he will have a similar mass to the other voyagers and thus justifies his voyager price point.

 

well, there's the detail, the transformations, the overall faithfulness to the source material. while Movie toys were fun, there were lots of things not to like.

Ironhide, for example: two giant gun arms sticking out from underneath the toy. now... i don't remember things too well, but i'm pretty sure that the GMC topkick in the movie did NOT have huge blue guns underneath it's body when driving around.

with these toys, the lines are clean. the kibble is almost nonexistant, and the features and gimmicks are choice. i KNOW you think they're fisher Price toys, yet i challenge you to find a fisher-price transformer with the level of detail, complexity of transformation, and overall articulation that these toys have. if youhaven't seen Prowl on the home page yet you HAVE to check out that whole thread. he looks absolutely amazing, and NO ARCEE-STYLE KIBBLE. while you may not appreciate the aesthetic, Noisemaze, i hope you can at least see why some people are impressed if not shocked and awed by this new line. there really is a lot to like.

-A.S.

 

But Classics Megatron and Classics Ops were already small for voyagers... TFA Bulkhead next to any other Voyager looks wayyyyy undersized.

When has it every been about the mass of the toy??? I never found myself buying toys based on actual weight (though I'll confess a weighty toy is a bonus). I could care less if he has a lead ingot in his gut. If he doesn't look good standing next to the other toys in the line, if he's shrimpy next to all the other TFs in his class... then that is not a justified price point.

QFT.
zmog

 

it makes perfect sense. the movie designs to me (someone who hated them and loves the animated designs - toywise not so much for the toon - i'll explain later) were needlessly busy, complicated and messy. it was a chore to really see what was goiong on onscreen and the decepts especially just looked so generic (in terms of not really standing apart from one another) these toys on the other hand are clean well defined and the ooze personality (another thing the looks of most of the movie bots lacked)

now the reason i like the toy designs more than the toon counterparts is becuase as functional transformers they have to have better lines, on the toon they look a bit like Genndy Tartofsky drew them, the toys fix the flaws of that (lines and proportions look a bit rushed) and make them a lot of fun. something that for ME the movie designs lacked. esp toywise.

this toy is fantastic though, I do wish he were taller (I think Bumblebee is the same height? not cool) but the look is fantastic, I just hope he'll come out in a bigger version, but I dont' want to NOT get this one while i hold out for a size that may not happen

 

These toys may be the best I've seen in quite some time for a number of reasons...

1. Show accuracy
2. They look frigging cooler than Jazz on a block of ice
3. Unlike previous lines (Classics, Movie) that are too complicated to transform or are rigid, delacate, or whathaveyou...from the looks of it I can see myself having some actual playtime with these despite the fact that I am going on 22 and 12 months (...I have decided I'm not turning 23 since 22 was such a good year for me, hense the 12 months lol) I can see it now

*breaks out his lincoln logs and legos to build a city for them to trash as well as warming up his very own mouthed sound effects* ^^ June can't get here soon enough

 

The Animated designs have really grown on me. Bulkhead looks amazing.

 

smog, the point im making is that from a marketing/materials use point of view if bulkhead is more massive than a delux (ie he has more content) then he has to be more expensive even if hes a shorty. although i suspect that its not that more expensive to make a voyager toy than a delux size
(maybe the voyager moulds are way bigger and so add to the expense rather than the raw plastic amount).

 

Weight isn't mass, mass is the amount of material used overall.

I.e. Bulkhead has something like 3 times the amount of plastic used in Bumblee or Lockdown and that is probably one of the major factors that determines the cost, the amount of raw plastic that needs to be fed into the machine to actually make a Bulkhead toy.

 

Let me get this out of the way: Bulkhead? A-MAY-ZING! Can't wait to get him

Now, let's continue with several rants:

And here I thought that *AFTER* pics of boxed Bulkhead surfaced, people would finally realize he's not a deluxe, but a voyager.

It's not the size of a Deluxe. It's bigger. How can you look at the comparisson pics with Bulkhead and movie Bumblebee, where the Bee looks all thin, and say they are the same size? Same height? Sure. Same size? Never.

But heft is probably the way they measure what size class a figure ends on.

The amount of plastic - and plastic pieces - used in making a figure factor into its weight. More plastic (more pieces) means a figure needs more material. More material, means it cost more to make (albeit probably a little). And that factors in what size class the figure is designed to fit.

Oh boy.  

Keyword: seem.

When you get this figure, do one of these:

1) Weight it. Weight a Cybertron Voyager, an Armada Max-Con and an Armada Super-Con.

2) Take it apart. Do the same with a Cybertron Voyager, and Armada Max-Con and an Armada Super-Con.

Then try to figure out which size class Bulkhead is closer to. I'm betting it'll be to a Max-Con or Voyager.

Do the same with Lockdown as well, since he seems like a large deluxe.

Bulkhead could indeed be smaller (size-wise, not height-wise) than previous lines Voyagers, but also keep in mind that some class sizes have varied during the years.

BINGO!

But Tidal Wave wasn't a Voyager. He was an Ultra.

Not if a bigger Bulkhead, which would requiere more plastic, would've sent the figure into the Ultra Size Class, which as far as we know won't be used in TFA.

That speaks volumes, not only of TFA designs, but also of movie designs.

  @ the Barricade/Prowl thing ... I remember some fans speculating that on the movie Barricade was Prowl infiltrating the Decepticons because up until then we haven't had an evil cop car.

I agree.

Ever since there's class sizes. This was posted by Doug Dlin I believe in ATT a while back. It's part of an interview he did to Hirofumi Ichikawa and his involvement in the developing of Energon Wing Saber:

Sadly, I don't have the link anymore (I saved the interview as a TXT file); but I guess you can Google it (the whole interview is very informative) or perhaps Nevermore will help us and post the link (I'm pretty sure he knows what I'm talking about). The interview was posted in November of 2004 IIRC.

Plastic used. More plastic = More weight. More plastic = More money.

QFT. And I'm pretty sure weight is one of the ways Hasbro's factories are measuring the mass used to produce the toys.

-airfox

 

Yes, you've said this many different ways... however, it doesn't change a few basic issues...

Bulkhead is disappointingly small to be a Voyager.

Bulkhead is way too small to fit with the other TFA line-up. Considering the wide size inconsistencies in every other TF line, this may seem like a minor issue, but in a line where there are only 5 main characters, you'd think they'd make the effort to have them look good together.

While the final figure is certain to be a great toy, I don't think it's unfair for a great many of us to be disappointed that he wasn't handled differently. To me it indicates that while Hasbro has succeeded in some areas with this figure, they have failed in others, and it hurts the overall appeal of the figure (the sheer number of people lamenting the size in this thread suggests as much).

Exactly... almost always getting smaller in recent years. In general I'm bemoaning the gradual downgrading trend of the TF size categories, but the egregious nature of this particular choice makes it all the more unfortunate.

We've seen fluctuation in the size categories before... Vector Prime for example, was a monstrous Voyager, which also incorporated electronics, gimmicks, articulation and a minicon. Obviously nobody's going to complain about a bargain like that.

But even taking into account his girth, I really doubt that Bulkhead will match mass with previous voyager price points like Energon Mirage, Shockblast, Jetfire or Ironhide, Cybertron Vector Prime, Crumplezone, LeoBreaker, CD Scattorshot, or even Movie Ratchet and Classics Jetfire.

And even so, bearing in mind the nature of the character, there's at least some justification for making Bulkhead lean more towards "large Voyager" than "fat Deluxe".  

I'm sure that Hasbro has a very real financial rationale (though hardly a consistent one) for cutting corners on this figure when it comes to size... but that doesn't mean that we consumers are obligated to be satisfied with the result.

zmog

 

you really think that there'll only be 5 main figures in this storyline? *L* not hardly. G1 started out so small.

 

I agree with SMOG. I could care less about the logistics of weight, amount of plastic used, side by side size comparisons to other TF series, typical defenses put up on poor little "doing the best job they can" Hasbro's behalf, etc. At the end of the day, even if he is technically a Voyager size, Bulkhead is still indeed too small and should not be sold at a Voyager price point when he stands eye to eye or shorter than some of the Deluxes. I'm not expecting perfect size scale here - just something that more or less keeps him in *relative* scale to the other characters, even if just by a head size taller that, say, Voyager Prime. If that means pulling out a one-off Ultra for Animated, so be it.

It's exactly the same problem people had with Classics Deluxe Grimlock, Classics Voyager Jetfire, Movie Deluxe Bonecrusher, Movie Voyager Blackout, Movie Voyager Starscream and even Movie Voyager Ironhide.

 

I believe that the 5 characters we have so far will remain the "core team" of the series, with other hero characters only coming in for guest appearances and such. They seem to be taking the "sentai" theme as a general model.

So, yes.

I think Bulkhead will remain among the core 5 characters. I'm not getting the impression that this will play out like G1, which started with a whopping 18 Autobots, and continued to expand using a large cast of rotating characters (with some common favourites). I sort of doubt we'll see many TFA episodes that don't feature at least one of the central 5.

G1 meanwhile had lots of episodes that hinged totally on second-string guys like Powerglide, Warpath, First Aid, etc...

Though Spike certainly managed to get in on most of the action... just as I'm sure Sari will.  

zmog

 

I expect there to be quite a few more characters added upon as the story moves along.

 

Yeah. Best part though is that since there's no CGI restraints like Mainframe had, we can get new characters easily added without offing old ones.

No need to kill Lugnut and Blitzwing to introduce Shockwave and some other Decepticon.