Where did these come from? Leaders I can kind of make out where the roots may originate, but anyone got a clue about the others? Scouts...ultras...
He's asking where did the terms "scouts", "deluxe", "voyager", and "ultra" come from. The title of the thread is a tad confusing.
Deluxes have their roots back in BW, where they were literally the "deluxe" to the basics, well, "basic." After that you had Mega, which was more than deluxe, than Ultra, which was where the leader characters liek Optimus and Megatron wound up. After them it really just became the slot for "the big guys." Optimal Optimus brought in Supreme a little later on, and that style remained relatively unchanged until Armada with it's super-cons, max-cons and other "cons", but returned for Energon. It was Cybertron that invented Leaders, a one-up from Ultras, but still smaller than Supreme, and replaced Mega with Voyager, possibly to tie into the theme of the series that they would voyage through space to find the Cyber planet keys. Likewise scouts could mean the characters were actual scouts. (though that rarely proved true)
Deluxe came from Beast Wars, originally. The small, $5, flip changing figures had no title, whereas the larger, $10 toys were "Deluxe". "Voyagers" came from TF: Cybertron, since they were "voyaging" through the Galaxy.
Also in Cybertron, "leader" class really did contain only leaders like Optimus, Megatron and Metroplex, leader of the giant planet. Also I was wrong, Energon had their own size class names. They're not worth noting except that's where leader actually came from, not Cybertron as I said.
The class names (along with the whole idea of size classes) started in Beast Wars in 1996, and as a whole made a lot more sense. The progression was Basic, Deluxe, Mega, and Ultra. Super class was created for Optimal Optimus in 1998. Supreme was created for Cheetor in 2000. The same naming structure was used in RiD. In Armada all the class size names were changed. Mini-cons, Super-cons, Max-cons, Giga-cons, Super base. In Energon it was Energon Class, Combat Class, Mega Class, Command Class, Leaders Class, Supreme Class. The size classes as they are today come from Cybertron. When basics and mega were replaced with scout and voyager. Leaders was shortened to leader.
I think the names are there to differentiate the pricepoints, just so the retailers know when ordering/stocking them
You also know people are relatively new to the hobby when they start complaining about "why did they change the classic size classes to revealers and powerizers!" (even though the are still called deluxes and voyagers)
