Artist Ken Christiansen, who has been sharing the packaging art he has done for Hasbro, has unveiled a nice Power Of The Primes Rodimus Unicronus Concept Art.

Power Of The Primes Rodimus Unicronus Concept Art By Ken Christiansen And Emiliano Santalucia - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

A hidden congratulation of the 10th anniversary of the SG by Ken Christiansen? 

 

We actually saw the Rodimus art last year during the Hascon panel when they discussed their approach towards Power of The Primes. The most interesting thing I see about it however, was that Prime Masters were originally intended to sit behind the Matrix instead of replacing it’s core. Thats neat, but I can also see all the reasons why it was changed.

 

Cool!

Are we getting a toy of this?

 

...You actually kidding me?
Rodimus Unicronus is already out

 

I personally wish it wasn't changed. To me all the leaders seem like they would be better as one solid bot with a "pilot" type combination. The released products seem cool but lack cohesion and solidity, more so for rodimus. Just my opinion.

 

I like the newer head they did for the series. Kind of wish smaller Rodimus Cron had the mouth guard, while bigger kept the mustache.

Great art and concepts either way!

IIRC, the fuller version wasn't cost effective was part of the problem, and would have raised the figure price too much.

 

i wish big rod kept the mustache and tiny rod (hehe) had a shitty, half-grown mustache and acne. really represent his growth from angsty teen to angsty adult.

 

What the f ..... that art work looks so different.

 

Its more or less concept art that clearly isn't designed with the Evolution Leader gimmick in mind.

 

I really like the concept art for rodimus. I wish Hasbro could have done a better job keeping the final product tighter to the drawing and not cut corners. The proportion of this drawing look much better than the final product!

 

You realize they HAVE to cut corners to get these toys into retail , right? Besides it's not like a completely different studio draws the concept art , which again means early designs that could not exactly work in a toy. I do not see how this particular version of Rodimus would be better than what we got, since it doesn't look like a Hot Rod combined with his trailer to form Rodimus but instead , there's no visible details of his alternate mode or of Hot Rod.
As for the proportions , have you not seen pictures of the POTP Rodimus mold? It's proportions are fine for what it has to do.

 

you're right, a company of a networth for $7.2 billion NEEDS to cut corners for their toys because there is no way they can afford distributing a quality product that their talented artists and engineers had originally intended.

It's like these staff members should run off and produce their own products instead of relying on Hasbro... oh right, there's already countless third parties that actually care about quality whose net worth as a company is much lower.

Sure, they're figures end up being a bit more expensive, but thats because their company isn't worth $7.2 billion.

And here's a comparison of concept vs final product.

But this is all just my opinion, feel free to disagree. Just don't jam yours down my throat, thanks  

 

God I love how petty and entitled people are in this fandom. There's nothing wrong with wanting better, just expecting it and getting mad bc modern Transformers toys are "cheap, hollow unpainted" but it's really a budget thing. Net-worth is how much a company is worth and how much money it has , but manufacturing thousands of premium painted , Masterpiece-level toys with intricate transformation schemes with zero compromises for gimmicks would in one itself hurt Hasbro financially. It's astonishing that people think Hasbro doesn't want to make good toys and yet there's many examples from all three of the Prime Wars Trilogy lines that they at least TRIED. But if you look at the concept art that is "oh so much better then Hasblow's cheap shit" I don't see how Hot Rod could form Rodimus's chest without removing everything from his chest as I don't see any Hot Rod arm or leg kibble anywhere.
Besides , if that is a picture you taken and you are complaining about how shitty POTP Rodimus is...why did you buy it outside of completionism? Keep in mind , I'm not trying to prove your point wrong and I do see what you mean.

 

You do realize that HasTak is making toys for kids, right? They have to meet certain safety standards that third party companies don't necessarily need to adhere to. This is an apples and oranges comparison, especially when you consider the prices of Carry and POTP Rodimus.

 

While I don't think its fair to compare a non-Masterpiece Hasbro figure to a 3rd-party one, I think its obvious there has been a sharp decline in quality since around 2011 on. It seemed to start with the odd release of the Prime: First Edition figures, and things haven't been the same since.

I understand boy's toys sell less and less each year over electronics. IMO however, I'd rather have a handful of figures released twice a year with the quality of HftD Voyager Prime compared to waves of toys with plastic so thin they've got stress marks out of the packaging. And that was when you actually could find new waves on store shelves.

 

Looking over that concept art, while I like it. I don't see how it'd work. It still uses the two fig pattern, but the concept art removes the smaller hot Rod's legs and head to fit it into the torso. There's no way that could work while still keeping the room for the matrix and prime master behind it. At least not in any fashion that'd keep it as color coherent as it is in the art. You can see elements of smaller Hot Rod in the bigger though like his shoulders go into the sides of the torso. Which would have made Hot Rod either smaller closer to scout sized, or the leader class figure would have been bigger closer to Primus or combiner sized.

Then there's also the problem of the the excess car parts. Hot Rod looks like he has his car mode still, but then Rodimus looks like he has his space winebego without Hot Rod too. They both have elements of car fronts in their bot mode design that look like they aren't solely for decorative reasons.

I like this concept art, and it might be possible in the future to get this Rodimus Prime made after the WFC trilogy, or even in part 3 of the WFC trilogy, but that combining to hot rod part of the design would have to go entirely. I can see why this version of it wasn't used for POTP. It's not cost effective, scaleable, nor fully fits with what POTP ended up getting settled on to be in concepts of prime evolution. But hasbro is never one to fully discard concept art, and often comes back around to tweak it later and reuse it later. So we may see this get used in the future with some tweaks like removing the Hot Rod component. They did manage to get transtech concepts readapted for Animated of all things, so I wouldn't be surprised if they find a way to use this one later somehow. So we may see this come back around later with some of those features added(double matrix) while other features are taken out(hotrod combining into it).

Though I do like the potential here in a "reconceptualized" powercore combiners idea. That might have some potential to look into later if it can be done in a universal compatible way between figures of that size class. Especially interesting if they do that with Transformers and Power Rangers at the same time to allow megazords to swap with them too.

That has a lot to do with labor costs, material costs, etc. For us to get the same quality figures as older releases in many cases(some exclusions apply!), there'd be a sharp price increase. Hasbro has been trying to maintain the same prices for almost 15-20 years now. It's something hasbro has been adamant on though on keeping prices as is for the fans and market. They've been fighting against increasing their prices for a long time now, while still giving us better and better material and finding ways to balance it. This is also why we've been seeing some sharp increases in Voyager and Leader figure costs too, while deluxes have maintained a minimal increase.

They aren't the only ones. You see this over with Bandai of America and even with Bandai of Japan with Sentai/power Rangers and the megazords. Same to Takara in their original series releases too. This is something that's been gradually happening across the entire toy industry around much of the world in trying to find cost effective ways to maintain certain prices and still make great material.

With Bandai for example compare mystic force/Magiranger to Nin/Ninja Steel and you see it really pronounced in the design degradation of how intricate it used to be to what it is now. Sadly, same to Kyu, but you can also see how much love was pushed into Kyu to still make them great figures, but the cost cutting and cost efficient aspects are still pretty visible. So while some engineering has gotten even more complex and intricate, other engineering and cost cutting has to also get made. Toys are getting better in some regards, but costs are getting prohibitive in other regards too. Another example of this is comparing Motion Revive Series figures to Shodo, its successor line which was created because MRS was too pricey to keep going at that price point any more. (In the power rangers/sentai example, this is also because of making the figures easier on kids to play with, but it still factors into costs too. It happened to be a way to do both at the same time though.)

Especially in america for brick and mortar retail, prices have to stay moderately reasonable. Deluxe figures for transformers are the bread and butter of the line. And the other issue actually is complexity too. Part of the reason Beast Hunters failed is because it was too complex. This is also why we saw that decline from premiere edition to RID. The toyline was streamlined to be kid friendly. Happened over in the movie lines too. Where movie 1 and 2 were extremely complex, but then movie 3 was simplified, and movies 4-5 tried to blend the two areas. (Also keep in mind a lot of features of movie 1-2 figures broke because of over-complexity in casual consumer hands, even fans had a large amount of 'automorph breakage' from whatever reasons/user error but the toy itself got the blame.) So a large chunk is also in trying to make material that's that right level of complexity, still kid friendly, and price efficient to reach shelves and move material. That's a lot to juggle, plus still fit within US toy safety guidelines. The complexity level is something that's been a constant working on aspect too after looking at what fans want, but also looking at how kids react to it, and even some fans were rather put off by over complexity too. Complexity also factors into cost too though because of assembly, which goes to labor costs.

Oddly enough, this is also why Kre-O and Construct-a-bots came into existence. It was an attempt to push creativity with kids, reduce amount of new tooling, and also remove assembly costs by pushing that onto the consumer. That's why they were able to do voyager sized transformers for the Dinobots in AOE at 10 USD each.

 

You are aware that 3rd parties barely and sometimes don't turn a profit right? When they make a figure, whatever they made from the last one is funding it. It's a break-even business If Hasbro turned to that they'd be ruined. And shouldn't 3rd party collectors be thanking Hasbro for not sending out the lawyers to end the 3rd party market?

 

To all this hullabaloo i’d say two things

1) Santalucia has provided the very awesome concept art to a whole host of severely compromised toys (thundertron, alpha trion &c &c). Great artist, but in terms of actual toy design, so many of his transformation solutions are awkward to downright uninspired.

2) that said i still love the awkward and also overdesigned conan the librarian version of trion that we got. He is chunky, clunky, clicky where it counts and just a dang satisfying piece to hold even with all his problems. If i got this thing as a kid, it would have blown my coconut wide open. I feel the consensus on hot rod/imus is the same no?
Flawed but not without charm.

And ultimately that strikes me as hasbro’s mandate surely?

CLUNK
HEFT
CHUNK
FUN

they dont want it to be too finnicky or ultra poseable cuz it kinda gets in the way of the design theyre after?

 

The concept looks good. I might have bought the figure if it looked that good. How do these figures go from awesome concept art to crap figure?