Botcon 2008 Transformers Animated Product Preview, Q&A, and special episode screening

Aye, I was so glad Blitzwing wasn't a deluxe, that would have put a massive dent in my enthusiasm for the line in general.

Thinking positively though, both Ratchet and Sentinel are going to be around in future seasons so it's posisble they could get new figures like Leader Bulkhead or Prowl and his samurai armour sidecar.

Heh, exactly what just happened with my enthusiasm thanks to the Lugnut news. Seriously, it's pretty pathetic how depressed I actually am about this. I didn't just want a bigger toy - I wanted a bigger toy loaded to the tits with a back full of missles, a proper kill-punch... and everything else that comes with that great character. Still keeping various body parts crossed for a possible future upgrade. And yeah, I concur, I'd be going through the same thing if Blitzwing ended up being a deluxe.

Well considering they're already planning another release of Lockdown too, I won't be surprised to see Ratchet get another one. But I don't expect a size increase, sadly. Sentinel, maybe - HOPEFULLY! Guess it could be determined on how much more screen time he gets in S2 and S3.

God Sentinel's toy is so awesome, from his "B," face to the fact he hides the second wheels behind his snow-plow.

Look through the pictures. From the back view, Sentinel's legs aren't folded out properly. He's got at least another inch in him.

that news rox about arcee i hope a toy come out of it

I saw, but he's still just a deluxe and until we can see him side by side with Voyager Prime then I'm going to assume the worst, i.e. that he'll be noticeably shorter.

Sadly I think even if they did come up with a Leader Lugnut the back missiles might still be out. Leader Bulkhead has just as much kibble as the Voyager one!

As for Sentinel, I think he could have been made a deluxe due to the fact that he isn't a terribly likeable character, kids especially may not want him at all for the way he treats Opimus and the rest of the core cast.

Yeah I'm not going to make an Opinion about Sentinel's toy for awhile.
For two reason's

1) He's is posed horribly, like Ironhide
2) that defiantly is not the paint they will be using on the final figure.

Wow, just wow. Nice news.

I'm lovin' Animated.

True, but he *does* have a lot more detail & extra perks as a Leader. I'm sure the same would apply to a Leader Lugnut. Maybe not missles you can actually remove, but at least some pop-up panels showing a plethora of missle tips.

Either that, or Hasbro simply decided that a smaller, cheaper deluxe is a safer bet than trying to sell multiple voyagers in a line so stacked full of figures. I wont be surprised if that's why they only confirmed 3 Leaders so far too since each one is like $80.

Who knows...

with Jetfire and Jetstorm. im still confused-what class size are they?

awesome stuff coming or us! Shockwave FTW!

I think they're deluxe sized, packaged together and sold at the voyager pricepoint.

My guess is that they are Deluxes that are in a Voyager priced 2-pack. Kinda like the Optimus Prime vs. Megatron 2-pack. The set does intrigue me, but depending on wether they are Autobots or Decepticons (it's unclear as to which side they are on), I might or might not get them.

The rumor seems to be that they'll both be Voyagers:

"The presentation rounded out with Jetfire and Jetstorm, a Voyager class two pack of jets. Similar robot designs, different head sculpts, one is orange and the other is blue. They were described as a "fire and ice combiner" although it may be that the jets combine not the robots."

Eh? Leaders are 40 bucks, same as they've been since Armada. There's 3 leaders same as the moive line and cybertron.
There's 8 or 9 voyagers in the first year of animated which is more unique moulds then the movie line but not by too much.
There's 15 deluxes which is about the same as the movie line and probably Cybertron if you went back and counted them all.

On that note, I put all my movie figures on one shelf yesterday and I was shocked by how many I had and how much space they took up. Furthermore my collection has no repaints and I didn't buy any Megatron's, Starscream or FAB's etc. all in all they took up 2 - 3 feet of shelf space with them being two figures deep. I expect animated to eat as much if not more shelf space.

I hope they're autobots.
The only fliers they have are Prowl and Swoop.
And Prowl can't really fly and Swoop isn't really an Autobot.

While the decepticons have four land based members.(including Blitzwing)

Although I'm only counting the guys that've been introduced into the show so far.

see, the wording is still confusing. a 2 pack containing voyagers sounds like it would be too expensive to sell, but the wording doesnt say they are deluxe, but voyagers, thus my confusion

I expect that they're two deluxes sold as a Voyager price point toy on account of them combining in some manner.

Okay...so there will or won't be a clone army? Which is it?

Also the Jetfire and Jetstorm thing sound cool. Wonder if they'll have a name for their combined form? Firestorm?

My bad, I actually meant $60, not $80. And that's Canadian pricing. If we ever could get Leaders for $40, I'd have a lot more doubles of certain figures

As it stands, TRU Canada has Animated listed for the following:

TF Animated Battle Pack- $29.99
TF Animated Deluxe class- $14.99
TF Animated Voyager class- $29.99
TF Animated Leader class- $59.99
TF Animated Supreme class- $79.99
TF Animated Arm Blaster- $39.99
TF Animated Activators- $9.99
TF Animated 12" feature figure- $34.99

Apparently our stronger dollar still isn't helping when it comes to price matching with the States. Damnit.

Agreed. There does seem to be a bit of double-talk in that statement. A 2-pack of deluxes makes more sense, though it would be cool to keep getting all these voyager & ultra sized jets that they keep announcing. Gonna make for a nice lil' air force.

You should see the UK (and further afield) prices, oy.

Yep, that's why there's going to be a whole lot of importing going on.

Oh, and Shockwave? BRING IT.

in all fairness, you really have to think where hasbro is coming from on this one. the line is chalked full of voyagers, which is totally awesome. but it's going to hurt a lot of people's wallets, including mine.
sentinel is not exactly a main character and he's pretty much the biggest dick in the universe, which is going to lessen his likability with the kiddies. and they're not going to bug mommy and daddy as much to buy them "the biggest dick" if he costs twice as much as say bumblebee.
same could be said for a leader class lugnut. sure he has had quite a bit of airtime as of now, but not enough as bulkhead - and bulkhead makes the kiddies laugh. you get a chuckle from lugnut
give it some time and as the show progresses and lugnut and sentinel tends to get more airtime and more laughs, we may be seeing them down the line after all as a leader.

AAAAARGGHHHHH, no Leader Lugnut?!

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-toy-discussion/174759-why-no-leader-lugnut.html <-my thoughts on that

Corey as Shockwave FTW!

Man, TF animated is just getting better and better. I am gonna be mad if I never see any of the toys anywhere (to this day, I've never seen Beast Wars Inferno or Scorponok in person).

And hey, speaking of Starscream clones, is teh Screamer dead from Megatron Rising Pt. II? It seems they just dropped him like a rock.

You'll find out when you watch episode 19

TFW crew, thanks for the panel reports! Very informative, and clear.
Thats so true man.

I am most excited for Jetstorm and Jetfire. I think Jetfire is the red one. Now the big question, will they homage G1 Skyfire, G1 Jetfire, or perhaps homage Dreadwing and the other guy out of nowhere? Either homage is good for me.

Prowl with samurai armor sounds great. Amazes that Blurr's original VA is returning, thats awesome!

Wiil the people who saw this answer two questions I have? Is the side cart sperate if not is prowl the exact colours as before? Lockdown dose he still come with hook and EMP, Is he the same colour just with Flames?

I'd be amazed if we see ANY more Leader molds in the Animated line. Hasbro has been (not surprisingly) stingy with them ever since the price point was invented. It's a safe bet that the only Leaders we'll be seeing for a while are just going to be repaints of the ones we already know about.

Ya they always do that like what they did with cybertron and the movie.

Desert Defense Bulkhead!

or maybe Dessert Defense Bulkhead?

Movie Animated Megatron

With Awful Ice Paint Job

What about "Movie Preview Ultra Magnus" and "Matrix Glow Ultra Magnus"?

UM UM UM UM!!!!!!!!

"Just a Soldier Ultra Magnus"

Hey wait, what do Jetstorm and Jetfire look like?

Interesting fun tthings coming down the pike.

"I can't deal with that now" Ultra Magnus

wow if this all pans out it will be a truly awesome franchise

In vehicle mode, they looked kinda like the chunky jet mode Cybertron Starscream had with a large chunk taken out of the back center, making them roughly "V" shaped. They were similar, fairly generic looking robots (they looked kinda like Animated versions of the G1 clones to me), both almost the same except for color and face. Jetfire was red/white/yellow with a 'normal' face. Jetstorm was several blue tones, with a Jazz-like face with pointed visor.

BTW, it's not "Frank Willard", it's comedian Fred WIllard, who will be voicing Swindle. Surprisingly inspired choice, if you ask me.

Yes, pictures were shown of everything talked about (not including Q&A info, of course). However, some, like Shockwave, Jetfire and Jetstorm, were only shown with Animated show art, and now the actual toys.

BTW, Shockwave seems to be very much an Armada Megatron homage, though he's primarily gray, not green. In addition to looking similar in robot and vehicle modes, he has the same antlers on the side of his head.

Jetfire & Jetstorm both look very young, and have "normal" faces. Jetstorm has some slight nods to his BM form, including color scheme and his jaw design. Jetfire has the same nods with his color scheme.

When asked, they purposefully avoided the question. And given that Jetfire and Jetstorm both had a noticeable lack of allegiance symbols on them, I'd say they have unique origins.

There won't be. This was repeated a few times throughout the panels.

Prowl is in the exact same colors. The side cart is seperate, deluxe-class, and forms incredibly cool-looking add-on Samurai armor for Prowl (the armor is the same colors as Prowl). I can't figure out how at all they get armor THIS cool-looking from a motorcycle side car.

Lockdown still has a lot of black on him, but from my recollection, he's a lot lighter-colored overall. His flames were primarily light tan and red. I know his still has his hook, fairly sure he still has his EMP.

Anyways, I'm back now, and was at every panel at Botcon, so if you guys have any more questions, feel free to post. I'll answer any I can, to the best of my recollection, of course. (Though I will be rather busy tomorrow, catching up with school and work and whatnot, so I won't be able to visit here too often tomorrow.)

Cool prowl will look great like that.

Anyone got more detailed descriptions of Shockwave?

For instance, how much purple?

Or for that matter can anyone provide fanart?

uh....any mention of the Godlike Peter Cullen maaaaaybe doin a guest role?

Very little-- a secondary color on him at best.

Sorry, but "Armada Megatron but skinnier and Animated in style" is really the best description I can give you. He really does look a lot lot LOT like Armada Megatron, and I can't remember the fine details of something they showed us for, like, 10 seconds. Plus, they didn't have a toy image, just the show art.

Nope.

Oooo.

I'm unfamiliar with Armada Megatron, so I just looked him up. Shockwave as that dude with grey instead of green = complete and total WIN.

hmm...any chance someone could do some Fanart of these guys? Swindle, the Constructicons, Prowl's armor, lockdown's new look, the planes-anything? we all want to know wat they look like

I guess my next question is:

Should we just wait for these newer versions of Prowl & Lockdown instead? I'm not someone who buys slight repaints/retweaks of molds and would hate to buy the possibly inferior Wave 1 versions when better (?) ones are around the corner.

An Arcee bot in the future is awesome news. Much love to Hasbro.

well, im getting the second lockdown, but its not a second Prowl, its just armor for him, from what has been posted.