That's easy. It'll use faux combiner parts just like Zeta.

 

If everything is going in the MM trailer and is shells for cars etc, then will we even need to buy the full set for combined mode? The leg bots are on the back of the legs anyway, and if the arms are shells...hmm

 

Yes, it does seem a little like they built menasor out of mm and the others after optional add ons! Can't be that though, I'm sure it'll be clearer in the future. One thing though, have we seen any pictures of the prototype in leg mode? I may we'll have missed them but if not it seems like there is something interesting going on. This set may be (sorry) more than meets the eye!

 

Wouldn't mind XTB surprising us with dropping all 5 at once; Simba like.

 

I don't think he meant shells for cars. The OP was confused how small cars could create a 19" combiner. TigerBlade was referring to the combiner body that is not part of the figures. The actual figures attach to the combiner.

 

It's not too far off. They need to get the limbs out there but I suspect Motormaster will lag somewhat. They obviously have a prototype for the combiner but have only used if for fit with the other figures on the arms and legs. I could see the actual Motormaster figure significantly behind in development even if the trailers and other pieces are virtually complete. I may be wrong but that makes the most sense to me.

 

I still think the "arm bots" have some kind of faux car shells to make them look bigger.

 

We really need to see something new already! We've been waiting ages for Crackup...

I'm still concerned about how Menasor is going to turn out though, but Crackup is looking really sharp so I'm trying to follow this closely. I wish DX9 would hurry up and show their Stunticons off beyond Breakdown, though for almost three times the price, that's going to be a hard pill to swallow.

 

I bet they're on the back burner with them trying to get Gabriel out the door. The longer they wait, the more likely people will pick up a TG so I suspect that's where all their focus is at the moment.

 

@ibot: When?

 

I believe cny is pretty much over now so I reckon we'll see movement soon.

 

Well over, yes. Here's hoping. It usually takes them a whole month to pick back up, especially since the factories are catching up with the actually important stuff (i.e. not what we think is important).

 

But XTB has their own factory, so their products are the number 1 priority.

 

Not true. Keith owns the factory, yes, but they make other products (what, we don't know). Third-party Transformers are just a side project for them. Their factory isn't dedicated to this. If it was, they'd be pumping out way more figures way more often.

 

If you listen to Keith in the video he confirms that the cars split in half and attach to the combiner arms. He mentioned that they had to do that to enable the arm to bend.

 

"Making good elbow joints is tough. Let's just make the entire figure split in half!" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 

I know that, but there are still faux car parts that are covering / hiding them.

 

I think that is an assumption we can't make at this point. I really don't think that is the way it works and we will know soon enough. The main point here is that many people thought the combiner didn't use the figures and that is clearly not the case. I believe the body core has to compact A LOT to fit neatly in the trailer so I don't believe this concept of faux car parts really holds up. Also I don't think they want to design the combiner that way because of the criticism you mention. No one is going to pay them for a posable statue.

I think the renders really mess us up at times. I can show you a perfect render of a Ferrari or a Lamborgini because that actually exists but when I show you a static robot render there is always some slight detail change between a render and reality and its not just painting or surface context. Even more so for a hypothetical robot split apart in a dynamic pose as part of something else that does not yet exist. A render is simply a more educated guess of how something might look.

For all of XTB/KFC's flaws they take great pride in taking great risks to have the most innovative design. The want to show you they have the ability to pull this off. They may make a mess of it along the way but they will damn well try. For its flaws I thought Transformission had an engineering marvel with their Motormaster that every piece be a triple changer of some sort. It is clear that this Menasor was designed to be different than all others.

 

Well, whether you can assume it or not, I think it's pretty obvious that the arm bots are partially covered by faux car shells. There was a post someone did a few months ago where he showed that certain parts were smaller and out of scale in combined mode. For example, the windshield was sized too small for the rest of the car on his left arm. The poster extrapolated the size of the car based on the windshield and found that it fit neatly inside the oversized car shell we were seeing. Likewise with dragstrip's engine (or whatever that silver rectangle thing is supposed to be). So whether you accept it as fact or not, and you're free not to until we get final confirmation from xtb, I consider it a solved mystery.

I for one welcome this approach. There's no way to make Menasor accurately without some serious cheating. Either he'll be too small to go toe to toe with the other combiners or his individual bots will be hugely oversized. Faux cars for the arms and pantsforming (or whatever they do for the torso) are a good solution and I'm happy with the approach they appear to be taking. Sure, you could basically form Menasor without any of the limb bots but there are places for them to go and he'd be incomplete without them.

And yes, I know he goes beyond pantsforming. His entire legs look to be combiner-only parts with the carbots slapped on the back but that's what it takes to make him look like the cartoon/comic character.

 

Saying the arm bots split in half is totally compatible with the observation there are faux car shells over them.

The only way faux larger scale car shells are not what we are seeing on the arms is if the arm bots are much bigger scale than the leg bots. That’s even crazier than faux shells!! Doesn’t really hold up either, since there are clearly two different scales of car bits visible on the arms - the larger scale of the faux shells and the smaller scale of the actual arm bots split in half and nestled inside.