Wrapping up the 2016 Toyfair Australia coverage, from the Preview event, comes the photos from the Transformers display in the Toyfair, plus our Q&A with Hasbro (mostly about product we will or wont see here).

On Saturday March 19th, at the 2016 Australian Toyfair in Melbourne, the Ozformers fansite was lucky enough to attend for the ninth year, to visit the Hasbro exhibit. Once again we were allowed to take photos of their display and ask some questions about upcoming products.
Plus, this year we had a lunchtime fan preview event, with several local fans invited to personally meet up with one of the Australian Reps, and a Hasbro employee from America who works with modelling and engineering at the Rhode Island office of various games and toys.
Hasbro America had authorised us to officially reveal the Titans Return Astrotrain and Ravage toys at the preview event, while the Hasbro Australian rep brought with him for us to play with, the Voyager Galvatron toy and Crashbash Titanmaster, along with the Combiner Wars Gen2 Bruticus.


Following the lunch preview event, we headed into the Melbourne Convention Centre and straight into the Hasbro exhibit.
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Inside the main entrance to the Hasbro exhibit, this Transformers advertising was the first thing you see. It has the three release dates along the bottom of the wall.


The Transformers display. Combiner Wars on the left, RID at the back and Titan Wars on the right and on the middle table. Rescue Bots were on the other side of the Hasbro exhibit, with the other Playskool toys.


Now that Titans Returns has been made official, it looks like Hasbro are now able to use this "blueprint" wallpaper now. (which showed up at BotCon last year, and probably wasn't meant to be)


On the Combiner Wars side, there was nothing new as we know that the main retail line doesn't have any more figures to release, and we just have some boxsets to release here.








On the Titans Return side, a small selection of items... and no army of Titanmasters like at the New York Toyfair.


Legends & Titan Masters.


Leader class - Powermaster Optimus & Blaster.

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Deluxe and Voyager - (out of packaging) Hardhead, Blurr, Galvatron.

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Back of Scourge's card (most cards and boxes were pinned to the wall, so couldn't get photos of the packaging backs).

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Titan class - Fortress Maximus. I was surprised to see two of them on display.

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Later in the day, the robot-mode Fort Max was moved to the middle table, to get two of the modes next to each other (for the benefit of the retailers).


Leader Blaster was plugged into Fortress Maximus, by connecting ramps, while Astrotrain was on the table in all three modes.

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(continued in next post)

 

Next up is the Robots In Disguise section, which was oddly half filled with licensed items, rather than Hasbro toys. Of the three shelves for RID, the top shelf only has licensed items, and the other two shelves had a number of licensed items on the right-hand end.

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The small number of Minicons, showing us a couple of the new Weapon Minicons.


The back of Doomitron's card.


The smaller powersurge toys - Bumblebee and Sideswipe.


And Powersurge Optimus, with electronic features when you plug the Minicon into his chest.

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More licensed items on display.


Finally, Rescue Bots.

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The Trailer sets, the large fiehouse, and the new Optimus and Trailer toy (which comes with a blue redeco of Mirage).


Cartoon team 4-pack.


Megabots Optimus and Hightide on the right, and on the left, the two race cars that have pull-back motors.


Back of the box for the firehouse playset.


And it's contents.


Then the Q&A with Hasbro Australia. (note, we are not able to ask anything that Hasbro America haven't officially revealed, so we can't ask to confirm or deny any rumoured toys)

Q - What upcoming store exclusives for Australia that are allowed to be made public?
A -Note, Retailer details are subject to changes from now until they are released.

Platinum Edition Planet of Junk Clash (Wreck-Gar, Autobot Hot Rod, Scrapheap) - NO
Platinum Edition One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall (Optimus Prime, Megatron) - Myer
Platinum Edition Armada of Cyclonus (Cyclonus, Scourge, Sweep) - NO
Platinum Edition RID Bumblebee & Grimlock - NO
Chinese New Year - Year of the Goat Optimus Primal - NO
Superion (Gen2 deco) boxset - ToysRUs & Target
Menasor (Gen2 deco) boxset - ToysRUs & Target
Bruticus (Gen2 deco) boxset - Target (only)
Victorion boxset - BigW, ToysRUs & BigW
Japanese Masterpiece imports - on hold for a while. Tracks should be the last one for a while.

Q – Any more Hasbro Masterpiece toys this year?
A - There is one coming, but it hasn't been officially revealed yet.

Q - Any chance of getting more of the HK bonus coins and their other freebie items here?
A - Possibly, as the Ultra Magnus coins did well.

Q - RID Happy Meal toys coming here?
A - Should be Early 2017.

Q - Any planned Transformers exhibitions or promotional displays planned for here that you know of (like at Conventions)?
A - Some things are being planned for this year, but nothing has been locked in yet, so nothing can be announced until it is.

Q - Any chance for the Cyber Commander Toys & Cyber Battalion toys here?
A - No

A big thankyou to Hasbro America for approving this, and for the possibility of this being an annual event if this one went well... and a thankyou to Lewis and Philippe from Hasbro for attending the preview event and bringing some future toys for the invited fans to check out.
And finally, thanks to the fans who attended, and the ones who took photos to post up on facebook and at Ozformers for me, as it took me a couple days to get mine processed.
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Thanks !

Hardhead, Blurr, Wheelie and PMOP still look fantastic imo.

 

It all looks so good! Reality hitting me that im gonna have to bow out after i get UW Bruticus   finish up my MP shelf and leaving the scene. Can't justify all the toy buying with a kid on the way  

 

Nice, high quality pictures! See you in Louisville, Griffin!

 

Nice! Good to see the Orange cannon for Galvatron isn't transparent (or at least super transparent).

Can't wait for all these Titan Figures to launch.

 

Galvatron and Astrotrain are at the top of my must get figures.

I'm so happy that we're finally getting a voyager class Galvatron and Astrotrain !

 

Wow, Astrotrain is actually slightly more gray than those official renders let on - I like that. I also like how the alt. modes are "mistransformed" such that they actually look better than the intended configurations. There may actually be hope for that damn train mode yet if those white tail fins can fold away entirely.

Blurr and Galvatron also look decent, surprisingly - whoever was in charge of posing these things deserves a raise for understanding how to get natural looking poses out of them. I might even be sold on Blurr at this point, though for Galvatron I still am reluctant because nobody seems to have mentioned if Galvatron's stupid "helmet" gimmick actually restricts head rotation or not.

Additionally, I remain convinced that TR deluxes aren't going to be significantly bigger - the packaging only reaffirms this by being wider and slightly shorter now that comic books aren't included. The different sized packaging just makes the toys look larger than they really are.

 

Mark my words : 5.8 inches aka 14.7 cm

That's quite a bit bigger than a CW deluxe.
So, this means, TR Mindwipe will be a mere 0.5 cm less tall than his G1 self, who is 15.2 cm.

 

I'm pleased to see that there's more than one way to connect the leader class bases to Fort Max. The incredibly steep angle from the flight deck connecting ramp just looked ridiculous.

 

Q - RID Happy Meal toys coming here?
A - Should be Early 2017.

I found the answer to this question interesting. Perhaps Australia is on a very different show release schedule. If Australia has similar air dates for the RiD show as U.S. then why would they release RiD Happy Meal toys after the show is supposedly done and off the air?

I think I may be looking for hope that the show isn't really over and that it may be moving off of Cartoon Network. Personally I'd like it to move to Netflix and continue the episodes there.

 

Do you mean Hardhead, not Brainstorm?

 

The more I see Titan Wars toys, the more I realize I need them, especially that prime.

Do we have release dates yet? Or can people make some predictions?

 

Very cool stuff on display!

 

I'm so glad to see Sentinel Prime have some color contrast.

Also, these photos are missing closeups of whatever was in the back right corner in the first picture. Looks like an Ultra Magnus repaint in the Generations-style box.

 

I really don't like that soft grey plastic PM Optimus and Blaster are using, I may wait to see if Takara uses anything nicer. Overall I like the line.

 

Wow! These photos really seem to capture the "real" looks of the toys and colors over all the super showy official pics or even new York. Great job. Nothing fancy but everything looks so nice.

I am stunned at how great victorion looks here. Her colors have never taken on these shades in any other shots and they look significantly better than I expected. I was getting her no matter what but didn't love the colors. Here, they look NICE.

And those Titans return. Primus. Other than sentinel prime and maybe some of the head only packs I'm in on the whole line. Not only great looking toys but a character selection that appeals to me in so many particular ways. 86 movie, headmasters...

And between this new scourge, the platinum set coming out and the three chug sweeps I already have, Cyclonus certainly has an armada on my shelf. ^^

 

So Fort Max is going to have blue hands to match his body and not the gray ones? Neato!

 

3p companies: extension ramps and ramps which connect Titans Return bases to Micromaster bases please!