I don't know why the Hasbro Transformers team is so adverse to moulding or painting figures in the actual colours they are on screen, it seems to be managed quite easily for other toy lines. I mean they've nicely matched the two robot modes with Steelbane's colour scheme, but really they should all be silver. Then again, so should Megatron and he's ended up being a mix of different greys, as great as the moulds are.

I do like the weathering effect though. Shame it wasn't used on the Dinobots

 

Im wondering if they really are combiner limbs. Since I dont see a hfg. It would be a shame if they are and don't get one. Since you cant use them with existing sets unless you swap out.

 

Like you say they could do Piranacon and maybe even Monstructor as a boxset.
The man thing is aftet potp, generations may be doing something completely new and we may never see the CW system again. So i hope we get the remaining scramble city-ish combiners in the last prime wars subline.

 

Takara is probably going to do Dinoking instead of Monstructor and God Neptune instead of Piranacon.
They feature heavily in Japanes fiction, so i expect Takara wanting to produce them, making it likelier Hasbro will produce their western counterparts somehow.

 

Look at the pics from the panel. When they show the "toy ecosystem" and how the 'prime masters' attach to the various classes the piece Jazz has on his chest clearly has a CW style thumb on Jazz's left side. And Starscream has 2 large black shoulder pieces to hold the prime masters on his shoulders (seen better in the official pics) that are clearly WAAAAY overdesigned to just hold 'masters.

SO my thought is that the deluxes may not have "hand/foot/guns" but "prime master chest armor/ combiner hands" and the voyagers have "prime master bandoleers (Hasbro's term they used in the panel)/ combiner feet".

 

I'm going to assume Delxues still have HFGs (or something like it) so they're backwards compatible with CW torsos.

Voyagers will have upgraded feet going forward, so the gestalt is more stable.

Also means whoever forms the legs will have spare chest armor to plug onto the Combiner and hold extra Primal Masters.

 

Oh dear God, what happened? Titans Return was the best TF line in a decade, and now... this? The designs just fell of a cliff. Was the budget cut? Why does Jazz have tacky ball joint elbows? Stickers everywhere. And whatever the gimmick is, it better be amazing for the generally awful proportions.

 

Did anybody notice those two pins on each upper side of Rodimus Prime's backpack? I wonder what those are for. Even if the sides of the backpack folded up on those pins, it would stick up way over his head and look even worse. Especially from the front. But it doesn't appear that they should fold up for alt mode either so I wonder why they're there.

 

Might indeed be a piece that is a h/f/chest armor. Bit tacky but o well. It seems they don't want to give away too much info.
Also the Hotrod-Rodimus trick will be redone for ultra magnus as well as Orion pax-Optimus prime.
I wonder which cons would have that.

 

Thanks for the clarification... that he IS small.   I guess it's par for the course, but these things are getting tiny! Well, I haven't seen him up close, so it's all speculation on my part.

But I'm not disappointed to skip this - the TR line has been decimating my wallet!  

 

Sounds good... I guess?   Are you excited???  

I'm too confused to be excited. These slides invite more questions than answers... and I really wish we could have seen something more cohesive or intelligible. But this might be as intelligible as Hasbro gets: the TR line did a poor job of conveying the HM system and its compatibility across all the different scales. I think they should have paid for some display cases to show kids you could swap Megatron and Optimus's heads. And show them some of the fun fan modes where Skullcruncher could turn into a base or combine into a gestalt walker of some sort.

This new series looks to be even more confusing, imo. No doubt, we will grasp the ins and outs soon enough, but I worry the majority of kids/parents will not understand how all these things work. Too complex = lost audience = diminished sales. Which is a shame, because the TR toys were a lot more fun (and easier) to transform than some of the previous releases (so they're very kid accessible, imo). Is there any way to suggest to Hasbro that they take more care in presenting the new line?

 

Very excited now that I have that inkling of an idea! They outright said that they had "easter eggs" they weren't revelling now, so much like CW Optimus's surprise reveal, i'm guesing they are saving this full reveal for their own con...

I also hope the deluxe guys extra parts CAN be either a hand OR foot for a combiner...

ALSO... second chance for "shuttle" Blast Off anyone???? Make it happen hasbro! You have the mold so it costs you nothing!!!

 

I hope they do keep the combining gimmick, because it does open up the chance for releasing toys like Blast Off!   Nice call!  

But what I'm really wondering about is combiners like Predaking and Abominus. They missed the beast combiners entirely... I wonder why they didn't want to do them? I guess because they could spam the jets and cars into a number of characters... but that kind of economic thinking ruins a line. They should have made less repaints and spent that money on at least ONE of those combiners.Then they could release special color editions of Predaking or Abominus, and recoup some of the money that way. Ehhhh... one day.  

 

The reason they didn't make Beast combiners is there was only 6 waves of Combiner Wars planned. They budget the figures based on how many times the mold is reused/retooled, if you used beasts half the characters wouldn't have been made (no Autobot cars means no Stunticons/Streetwise/First Aid therefore no Defensor either, & so on)

Either way you have some combiners missing, & at least this way you get the first 4 scramble city combiners & Devastator done straight away. Computron was pretty much an afterthought over here, & even then lots complained he was half-@$$ed.

Now special colour editions of Abominus/Predaking are great, but how many people will really buy them? You'll always get more money from new characters, & you saw how heavily discounted the G2 sets were (they never even released Defensor they did so poorly!) Even now I see the special edition Computron & Liokaiser on discount, so box sets don't seem to sell the greatest here.

I'd have loved Predaking/Abominus etc back then, but there was no way we could get that much new tooling in a line unfortunately. If we're lucky most of them will get done this time though!  

 

Right now we only know Rodimus and Primal will be in the leader class and all leaders will have the power armor gimmick. As for Decepticons that could utilize the gimmick, Thunderwing comes to mind.

 

I could see Armada Overload or Optimus instead of those two.

I'd guess Energon Megatron (deluxe tank bonds w/jet to form Leader Megs - tank could even homage Armada), Thunderwing
Sort of weird guesses - Blue Bacchus/Crossblades (or another Mega Pretender)
As a total dark horse off-the-wall guess, I'd say G2 Dreadwing + Smokejumper

 

How about Super/Ultra Megatron from Battlestars/Return of Convoy?

You get a jet & tank mode (no gun, bonus for being released over here!) & could easily call one form Megatronus or something then Megatron rather than stick to these names.

He's Optimus's counterpart when Japan reintroduced him as Star Convoy (who's been suggested for this line too), he's still G1 & never had a toy before. You know there'll be an Optimus & Megatron released at some point in this line, why not make it one they've never done before?

If you're creative you can even do it as a remold of Thunderwing (jet/tank), it doesn't need to look exactly like the pictures.

 

That's a good idea too.

 

I'm sadly not sold on Rodimus (so clunky looking), but OH MAN if they did Don's Stormbringer Thunderwing design....

 

Only one problem, when was the last time we got a Deluxe Megatron, it's like there's a rule against it. Also the first Megatron is likely to be Beastwars Meg's. Yep I'd rather have classic style one too but, I think it's more likely classics Megatron would be a voyager. I hope I'm wrong.