I think they could still make the more alien designs work if they don't set the entire series on Earth. If they spend the series traveling to different planets and having to blend in among different alien races then they could base the populations of other alien planets on the Decepticons Pretender shells. Maybe when they return to Cybertron they could take on their favorite forms from the different planets they've visited which would allow for the Decepticons to more permnanetly take on their iconic monster forms and give the Autobots a better reason to wear that weird armor they had which make no sense in fiction or as toys.

 

I liked how RoTF did it and I would have been extremely interested in the BotCon/Titans Return take on them. The idea of a full sized Transformer becoming a human, no way. But one that could turn into the head of one is a bit more believable.

 

And the sad thing is, in the comics, Decepticons thought that these Pretender shells would give them disguise among humans. You would think that they would have understood by now that humans don't have that much of a size difference amongst themselves. Decepticons must have had zero observational skills. I'm pretty sure the writer could have given a much better reason for the necessity of these shells.

 

You know something else I don't understand about movie fans is how it's like Maggie never existed. Whether bullet lists like this, or going on about the eye candy. I still can't understand it.

 

About the whole idea of also being a Headmaster so they don't need to mass shift into giant robots and can still have vehicle modes...

It would be kind of interesting if Headmasters worked that way. I never really understood how the body and head being separate characters works. Like how do they talk from the vehicle mode when their mouth is on some other dude.

The one problem I have with that is how Headmasters normally transform with a giant upside down face on their back. How are they suppose to be convincing humans with an obvious robot face on their back? If they could figure out a better way to do Headmasters other than simply folding them in half then sure but Headmasters have worked the same way sense they were first introduced.

Also based on the design, I haven't seen the movie yet, but it kind of appears that Cog man works the way I would prefer since he seems to transform into a larger version of his own head and then the larger robot is still Cog man.

 

Since I forgot her last time, make TF1 Maggie a pretender

 

I'm guessing that you are referring to my post. I far prefer the idea that Headmasters are simply a smaller vessel for the Transformer. Simply put, your head controls you, so it's an unorthodox concept that your head is not you.

There are certainly complications with Headmaster-Pretenders and I can't really see a way for a toy to replicate it in proper (a common problem amongst Pretenders.) However, there are other ideas I had toyed with involving things like psuedo-Powermasters amongst others. The basic premise is that there is a smaller guy who is a Pretender and the mind of the bot, who interacts in some way with a larger robot body to have a vehicle mode and skirt around mass shifting.

 

Pretenders took us from "robots in disguise" to "robots in these guys"

 

I think it's a rather horrible idea. After powermasters, the Hasbro G1 toyline took a nosedive.

 

I liked the monster designs of the shells especially. Those were great ideas and very creative.

 

I think having them as Power masters would be a better idea as it negates the issue of the human mode having a giant obvious robot face on their back.

Also totally agree with your view about Headmasters. That's why I like Cog man so much, because he's not a headmaster in the traditional sense. Funny thing is Brains was originally planned to be a more traditional headmaster and would of transformed into Que's head. You can still kinda see that in their designs as they're the only characters with that, I don't know what it's suppose to be in robot terms but it's meant to replicate the look of white hair. Que's head design is based on Einstein so he's basically just a robot Albert, but that "hair" can also be seen on Brains. Plus the name Brains fits with the typical way Headmasters are named. But in the case of Cog man there is no partner character, just a headmaster who can transform into a larger version of himself.

I actually designed my version of Colossus Rhodes that way. Yeah I loosely based him on the Animated human villain of the same name but my version is a small Decepticon based on the Armada Rollout mold. Armada Overload isn't a sentient character in my universe. That mold only exists as a power up armor for the smaller character. Though Rollout isn't strickly a Headmaster, technically he's also a Target master and has his own vehicle mode.

Though I do also have another character based on Armada Sideways and also inadvertantly similar to Animated Blitz wing only in that he has multiple personalities based on which head he has on. This also works in vehicle mode sense the Mini-cons are designed to be able to ride the bike either in their individual or combined robot mode. The combined Mini-cons have the same head sculpt, at least on my version, as the vehicle's robot mode without a Mini-con head. I should also mention that his faction insignia still changes depending on the head, the one I just mentioned is a Decepticon. One of the Mini-cons, at this point I don't remember exactly which one but I want to say Crosswise, when he's driving the vehicle mode or is the head of the robot mode he's a Predacon. And I'm fairly sure Rook being in controll makes him a Vehicon. I haven't said exactly who he is but that's because he's a rather major character in the Sword of Primus and it's a major plot spoiler if I told you why he has these three different personalities. Though I can say that for the sake of simplicity rather than calling him by these three different names he has Meltdown decides to just call all three of them Headmaster.

 

I'm happy with this. However, I would like Takara to remold the back of the Prime Master to be a Headmaster head, instead of being a spark.

 

Works good enough. These days a barely articulated shell really could not be anything more than a cool accessory for bigger bots.

 

Battle armor for power/headmasters is ok enough. I mean, they're tiny, you can't expect too much. I'm not so sure about the... weapon?... mode but as long as they're cute and have decent enough paintjobs I'm not going to complain too much.

 

I'm happy with it too, I hope they do all 7 master force pretenders however I would not want a remold to turn it into a headmaster but a remold for it to be turned into more of a tank , like a tank turret or tracks to resemble the original inner robot more . Seems like an easy remold to do

 

My fan idea for a human-like Pretender was to have a small robot who can scan different people and "steal" human identity in a similar way RoTF Pretender did, and also comes with its personal lifeless transtector to plug into and walk around as a bigger bot. Not even as a headmaster, just by compacting its human-sized body and going under the large robot chestplate. For obvious reason this version also did not use holographic drivers in the transtector's vehicle mode.

 

I still have hopes for something along the lines of a large MOTU type figure for a shell.

 

Yes. I'd like a range of toys accurately resembling the old Pretender shells with modern articulation that don't transform nor contain a robot within them. And not a remake, reboot or re-imagining of their original designs either. Something along the lines of the quality of these.

 

I had this idea going along with the whole Power master concept.

What if these human transformers have the ability rather than scanning a vehicle to instead make Earth vehicles into copies of themselves.

Like the robot would transform from human to robot and could interact with any vehicle to turn into power up armor. This way the robot isn't mass shifting but it's more like they're piloting the larger robot.

Maybe even mix in some beastformers like season one beast wars but they're actually in scale to whatever organic form they take and all have this ability to interact with vehicles to turn into larger robots. Like wise the vehicles robot modes would be in scale to whatever the vehicle was.

It could be like when the AllSpark has been shown to bring Earth electronics to life except they wouldn't actually be alive, just extensions of these smaller half organic robots.

Though I'm afraid mixing Pretenders with Power masters would end up making them too much like Power Rangers due to the whole piloting giant robots thing.

 

FYI... Merged both Pretender Discussion threads as they appear to discuss liking the idea of them and/or the return of them....

.... continue.  

Me, didn't like them at all.