Aside from being white and a SHADE from the same primary color, AB looks nothing like Slingshot. Hasbro lost the rights to use the Slingshot name, they took the easy route and made a new character from the upcoming planned Vortex mold.

Ugh. I was wondering about that when I saw the two different ones. It looks horrible, I hope Reprolabels makes new shoulder badges for him.

 

I though Hasbro's reasoning for AB and Offroad was to break up the "monotony" of having a whole pile of jets in wave 1, and a whole pile of cars in wave 2, because "kids and adults who aren't G1 fans won't be able to tell the difference between them". So we got a helicopter and a truck. And 1 team member was swapped between waves to further separate similar-mode toys.

 

yes. they didn't want 4 jets. same reason we got skittles dinobots.

 

However, the resulting Slingshot was simply a Fireflight with a new head and different colors, without any further distinguishing traits to make him his own character. That to me is nearly as bad as the whole Alpha Bravo thing.

 

A Hun-Grrr with a Titan Master feature would have been darn cool. Was there ever a combiner with at least one member being a Headmaster?

 

They only did that with the first two wave since people got all angry over it, thankfully. As a whole line, I perfered each wave being it's own combiner instead of potentially short packing one member of a team in a separate wave and becoming harder to get, which happened in earlier lines.

That would have made me more angry, honestly, then Hasbro trying to shoe horn a new character into a G1 combiner, then again I was totally fine making me own Slingshot using the same method (since it was the best route for a custom and I don't have the resources that Hasbro does) and love Alpha Bravo.

 

Alpha Bravo wasn't bad by himself, I think people disliked him because he had Slingshot's colors and seemingly came out of nowhere. Heck, when he was first revealed, some people (including the TFWiki) even thought that he was a reformatted Slingshot who took on a new name and alternate mode (think of it like Megatron becoming Galvatron). When it turned out that Alpha Bravo was not Slingshot but a whole new character, I feel that was the point where people really heaped hate on him. If Alpha Bravo was Slingshot with a new alternate mode (maybe he reformatted himself due to injury or something), I feel that would have been pretty cool storyline-wise and perhaps it might have been easier to accept. Whether people would have liked Alpha Bravo if Hasbro and IDW took such an approach of him an Slingshot being one and the same though, I don't know.

But to learn that Hasbro later released Slingshot himself, as little more than a Fireflight with a new head probably made people feel cheated twice over, once when they bought Alpha Bravo, and twice when the Slingshot they got looked just like Fireflight. But it is telling that people bought Slingshot anyway just to have the "actual proper character", which makes me wonder how they would have reacted had the initial theory of Alpha Bravo being a reformatted Slingshot been true.

 

I think that would have gone over worsT. You'd have the same people angry that he's now a much slower jet shoe horned into a team of fast jets (which is a valid criticism, IMO) and then you'd have people, like me, who are just so tired from the constant use of the same old G1 characters yet again instead of introducing more and more new characters. We are talking about a muliti hundred years old civilisation that can live almost as long as they have been birth and yet we're STILL using the same tiny amount of characters to tell this story? It's getting more and more boring with each telling, to me.

lol Sorry for getting more and more off topic, though.

 

I don't think it's really that bad. I mean most of the IDW females like Windblade weren't that much hard a$$es and most of the Aligned females like TFP Arcee and RID15 Strongarm showed other traits besides being tough. They still showed some femininity in them design and personality wise. I think we're mostly looking at extremes here which is pretty much common in every other fandoms and series and not enough on the ones in the middle. The fact that Hasbro and Takara are actually bothering to push female characters into more major roles at least shows me that they're making the effort to change how most of their female characters are treated and written.

 

Man, I can't wait for PE to make a chest shield like they did for Computron to place over Abominus' back (making it his front). He looks too thin and not even close to G1 like (and that's usually something I don't care about but it just doesn't suit him with this mold transformation).

Strongarm was one of the very few reasons I watched as much RID15 as I did, the show was kind of dumb but her character gave it a lift up. I wish they would bring her into Generations, a few tweaks to the Offroad mold would give her a great Gen toy.

 

Hmmm... Yes, that is a valid reasoning and a good way to look at it. However, I still think keeping the same characters and maintaining some continuity of said character is very important to fans in general, especially if the character is part of a group like a combiner team. We've all seen the uproar over characters like Alpha Bravo, Offroad, and Rook replacing limbs on their respective combiners, so I do think having the same characters as in G1 was very important to fans. At the same time, I do agree that Slingshot taking on a new body might have been a tad odd as well, and it would break up the theme of the team somewhat. Still, imagine the storyline potential if Slingshot was forced to have his body reformatted due to injury or some other factor and any possible character changes and development that could have come about in IDW if that were the case, such as having to use a functionally different body than his old one and maybe feeling like he was even more of a drag on the team now. In hindsight, considering the plots we could have gotten from it, it seemed like such a waste to me for IDW not to have gone that route, and instead they simply opt to kill off Slingshot and introduce Alpha Bravo seemingly out of nowhere.

 

I laughed when I noticed that too. Goes to show the lead time on these toys and how big of a gaffe that was.

 

He couldn't keep up with the toothpick legs of his

 

Its not as if Alpha Bravo, Offroad and Rook actually did anything in the IDW comics. They're only in there to promote the Combiner Wars toyline, and even then they were dropped as soon as IDW didn't have to promote the toyline. Rook's dead now anyway.

 

Exactly, and that's why I thought that the whole thing was wasted potential compared to as mentioned, if Alpha Bravo and Offroad were a reformatted Slingshot and Wildrider respectively.

 

I wish they'd gone with their original plan and had Ruckus instead of Offroad.

 

In any case, I like AB, OR, and Rook. Gives me the option to switch from G1-style to IDW-style. And once shuttle Blast Off arrives, I'll be able to make a custom Galvatronus with jet BO & the other 3 'misfits'!

 

We got Ruckus anyway, so no big deal.

 

  I'm using both Blast Offs to create Combiner Wars Spay-C and Leader-1, to go with Combiner Wars Smallfoot

If you had that subscription service.

 

I get what you're saying here and I agree that the idea that all female characters must be asexual hard asses in order to be taken seriously and respected is no different from making every female be a damsel in distress. I just don't think IDW has done that bad a job at handling female characters when it comes to personalities and roles. Despite having a large role and power,Windblade doesn't have the war mongering personality IDW Elita 1 has and prefers to win people over,Nautica and Velocity are both oddball femmes,and Airrazor's no different from her original BW character. Those are examples of not every IDW femme being an asexual cold stuck up warrior. Their writing hasn't been perfect true but to say that they're treated horribly feels like an exaggeration.

Besides it's not like IDW decided to pull a Furman and have all of the IDW be forced transgendered psychopaths like IDW Arcee. Believe me if Furman was still in charge he'd do that so let's be thankful that never happened.