His contributions helped tons!
Love the design stories like these, where little things were noticed that ended up evolving the brand and design as a whole.

 

Very cool! I think the news post should be updated to reflect that he in fact designed Classics Bumblebee, not Generation 1 Bumblebee. ;P

 

Amazing article and interview, and it reaffirms why he's easily one of my favorite designers when it comes to toy design period.

I think the biggest reveal here is that he also did some of the Occular Max figures for Mastermind Creations. (Former) Takara and Hasbro employees working for 3rd party companies is something that's been speculated a lot on, but I think this is the first time we have a confirmation of it.

 

Alexander designed my all-time favorite figure, the 2008 Concept Camaro Bumblebee. This was an excellent read

 

Yeah, he'd be a bit young for the 80s transformers. That part might want to be updated too.
His story is an amazing one though. And he did do many updates of 80s toys, but he didn't design any from the 80s.

There's another older interview where he talks about also being the one that added the smirk to animated bumblebee.

Though he's leaving some details out about some of his design "realizations". But ah well.
Signature Transformation is something that came out of around Animated. Still love his design story history though. His full work story is pretty amazing from where he started, the dreams he had, and how he got to working at Takara, and how he moved on to other design stuff. He's one of those designers with a story that'd make a pretty interesting movie/short special about dreams and goals. Takara has a bunch of employees and former employees honestly that'd make some great "pursuing your dreams" biopics. Toei too for that matter in their animation departments.

Yup. It's more common than really talked about since they are unofficial. But there's a lot of 3P stuff that gets unofficial help from various areas because they are awesome people and great engineers/designers.

 

Crazy to think that one simple Bumblebee deluxe toy had paved the way for 50 other Bee toy designs. Some of the engineering from Movie 1 Bee is still being used today.

 

Very interesting! Further reading on Kubalsky:

Alex Kubalsky - Transformers Wiki
PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » Transformers’ Toy Design
alexanderkubalsky on DeviantArt


It's pretty strange/brazen to come out as a designer of 3P products, but then I guess if Hasbro or Takara aren't actually going after them for IP infringement, maybe it's a non-issue.

 

Wow, he has very interesting comments about design. That\'s amazing about how he really changed the transformers design paradigm at TakaraTomy. His work is an interesting combination of design and engineering.

 

Transformer toy engineers God\'s among men can\'t even comprehend how they designed our happiness

 

I think the bit where he mentions that “We are not engineers, we are dance choreographers” was what really stuck out to me. Transformation is just as important as aesthetics to me, and it's nice to hear that it's something he likes to focus on.

 

Interesting

 

It’s very cool seeing some of the process behind Transformers engineering. It’s such an interesting job, much different than designing other toys I’d imagine. Are there any Transformers books focused on the design process? Because there should be.

 

Sorry, but where the hell are those (awesome!) cassettes from?

 

MMC's Ocular Max series.

 

MMC/Ocular Max Jaguar / Ravage
Square One: Ocular Max Remix RMX-03/04 Volture and Buzzard
Ocular Max ReMIX RMX-06 Furor and RMX-07 Tremor

 

Ahhh that's right - I have seen these. Just didn't associate them because of the unofficial 3rd party-ness of them while reading an interview with an official designer.

So... this guy worked/works for HasTak since Animated or earlier but still went and designed unofficial IP infringing figures for a 3rd party? Not a judgment - a legitimate question. I'd think that would be, you know, frowned up...?

Great interview. This guy essentially followed through with what I thought I would do one day when I was a kid. Transformers made me want to design Transformers and learn everything about how they went from paper idea to reality. I never followed that route, but their influence still remained through the career paths I did take. Still to this day in fact... 35 years later  

 

There's a possibility that these figures could've been concepts shot down by HasTak and maybe MMC is giving him that avenue to see his work realized. There's no way to tell unless we hear it directly from Kubalsky himself.

 

Great insight. Kinda funny that he mentions working on 3P projects and that profile pic on the front page looks like a mug shot. LOL