Thanks. I had not seen that one.

 

Well done Griffin, you make Australia proud!  

I know other people have mentioned this, but what was the deal with Metroplex? Why were they not showing him off as much as they were at the American toy fair?

 

This thread needs more SCAMPER.

 

I want to see the third face!

Which is kind of hilarious given that you can still see the cut-outs of the toy right next to it.

 

Apex armor with bulkhead?

 

My guess on Metroplex is that it is blured until we get a proper unit of measurement on the box. We use metric so to say "more than two feet" means nothing to most of the target audience for that toy.

 

Breakdown.
Also very old news, I saw that one in stores twice already. I find it odd how many people are unaware of the Apex Armor set.

 

Oh yeah. I meant breakdown lol.

Picked that up last month at TARGET.

 

If they still had quotes on the boxes Springer's would have to be "I've got better things to do tonight than die!"

 

Oh. Your. God. *drools*

 

Can't wait for the 2 Voyager Triplechangers to be release.

 

Blitzwing with three faces: YES

Ha, I KNEW Animated Blitzwing was too great a character not to influence other Blitzwings. Now RTS Lugnut is waiting for him! (Powerdive can complete the trio I guess)

 

The top half of Scamper reminds me of the TF2 Legion DeadEnd/Nightbeat mould, with the head popping out of the hood, the hood itself appears curved inwards like a low-set sports car, and it folded down to be the entire chest/abdomen (like the original). The legs appeared to be folding out at the knee, but the "kneecap" (hinge) looked like it was on the outside of the legs. The forearms are a bit too fat, and have wheels on the outside of each forearm, while the head appears to have the flat panel on top from where it sits in the hood... but the rest of it looks really nice though. If they colour it accurately to Gen1 (completely black), the greyscale picture wasn't that difficult to visualise what the finished toy will look like.
There are fist holes, so is likely to come with a gun like the original, but it wasn't holding one in the image they had on display. The size of the toy looked Legion sized, as it was standing in front of the open ramp. The doorway looked to be from the head to kneecaps of Scamper.
Either at BotCon or before, we will see the finished version anyway, but until then, I'm sure there are some people here who will just take all this with a large grain of salt.  

In the link quoted in the first post of this topic, scroll up three posts. It mentions that there is apparently only one finished painted prototype of Metroplex in Robot Mode so far, which made it too risky to ship it to Australia for the Toyfair, or too expensive to produce a second one (suggesting that it would have cost them about $5000 to build a second one).

Photos of the colour cut-outs of Metroplex were allowed, but I wasn't allowed to show any greyscale images or prototypes.
The non-American branches of Hasbro are either not allowed, or don't like, having images made public of early packaging mockups or greyscale prototypes. Unless it is being done by Hasbro America, the images could be misinterpreted by media sites or general consumers, potentially putting off customers from its lack of colours, or even have them complaining later that the product they bought didn't look like what they once saw online. It might sound bizarre, and us fans (the majority of people who see Toyfair pics) KNOW that they aren't finished products... some of us even prefer to see early samples to see more of the process behind certain figures. It's also worth noting that in previous years, it was actually Hasbro AMERICA that would tell Hasbro Australia not to allow photos to be taken, even though they actively encourage media coverage at their own American Toyfair. (an image released in any country is going to go global, so Hasbro America just wants to be in control of their Brand and its publicity, no matter where it is in the world, to be sure it is done fairly and accurately)

Yep, we rarely get anything on display here that hasn't been seen online or at US Toyfair already... which was why I was labeling the display as "nothing new" this year.

 

I personally hadn't seen Springer's modes yet... wow, I'm impressed. Probably going to get him, and (in a fit of insanity) pass on Blitzwing in pathetic hopes of a Slamdance repaint (... seriously Hasbro, do it. Even the three faces things work out well. The traditional head is identical to Slamdance's, and the other two can represent Grand Slam and Raindance).

 

So what was it we in AU ended up missing out in terms of Prime toys out of interest?

I stopped paying attention when Hasbro decided they weren't releasing a Breakdown and Jet Vehicon at all and went with the Kup deco for a mould that was clearly intended as Ironhide so haven't even bothered looking in local stores.

 

That Springer bio doesn't seem very Springer-y to me, although my freshest memory of him is from LSOTW.

 

Starscream is the Squidward of the Kreoverse. 

 

My belief is that the Springer bio (and the Kreon Springer one) seems to have been based on the TFwiki.net entry (as several recent bios have explicitly been).

Until recently, said bio featured a line about him preferring to fight "solo" as part of a joke about him being the Han Solo character in TF:TM. Unfortunately later editing of the profile obscured the joke till it was unclear that it had been a joke. I think Hasbro may have used the wiki as a reference for the bios and missed the "joke" and not realized Springer has never really been a "lone wolf" in fiction.  

The line in question has since been removed just to be safe.


-ZacWilliam, not definitive that this is what happened but it's my guess.

 

Gen. Blitzwing just cemented his spot at the top of my Want list of the upcoming toys we currently know about. He just looks like one of the best "Classics" redesigns we have seen IMO.

+-MWG-+