GREATEST!! THEY'RE MINE!!

 

I think that's the appropriate reaction.

 

I daresay that the notion of Takara either retooling out a line-wide gimmick or skipping all or nearly all of a line entirely is rather silly to contemplate, so my interpretation is that Takara released the line, Hasbro implemented initiatives and all (the Titan Masters), and used their storytelling abilities to explain discrepancies between the original portrayal of the characters and their TR figure interpretations. As for certain characters being released with the "wrong" Targetmaster, I'm fairly sure the wiki already had an explanation for that (there not being contemporary Targetmaster partners for them). I did not, however, suggest that Takara was slavishly devoted to G1 accuracy as you seem to infer (see my point on minor differences being let through by Takara such as the number of wheels on UW Drag Strip or to give another example, UW Motormaster not having a trailer), so in my eyes, the inclusion of an extra minifigure accessory that isn't even integral to the figure itself (and can be ignored if you want) is a "minor change" that doesn't drastically alter the figure from how the G1 portray went, like Sky Shadow's alt mode does. This is clearly not the case with Sky Shadow, and so I still think they would skip him because of his deviations from G1.

I'd argue that Windblade was released because there was no pre-existing G1 material to compare her to, unlike the case with Sentinel Prime. Same goes for Megatronia. Takara can more freely do what they want to do with those characters and not be so accurate to a G1 basis (because there isn't one). But because Sentinel has a G1 cartoon basis and Hasbro pretty much discarded almost all of it to do their own thing with TR, I can see Takara not wishing to play along with that. Sentinel's TR figure does not fit with his G1 conceptualization, ergo, Takara did not release him. Windblade doesn't have a G1 conceptualization, so Takara got a freer hand to do what they want to do with her within their confines and so released her.

I never said Baldigras was a complete one-off. He was released after the general end of the UW line, ergo, the UW line was "uncancelled" just for that one release of him. I'd argue Liokaiser could have received the same treatment. The end of the UW line is not indicative of a preclusion to a release of Liokaiser, especially since Takara has released one-offs belonging to a specific line after said line's general timespan ended.

 

Yeah, I don't understand the general hate for Liokaiser other than it not matching the original. The limbs were pretty good, and even the torso wasn't bad if you had no prior expectations of what Liokaiser should be. Having said that though, I would still like to see a two-bot torso. What would be really nice would be for Hasbro (or Takara) to offer an option of only purchasing Leozack and Jallguar for those of us who already have the box sets. But probably not happening.

Aside: I think the Sky Lynx mold is a pretty good candidate for retooling into Snaptrap. While it might take some work for the robot mode (since Sky Linx didn't really have a bipedal form), the shape of the combiner torso isn't far off from Piranacon.

 

But why wouldn't we have prior expectations, when all other pre-existing combiners in the line were slavishly G1?

 

Or included options to make them so?

 

Except they weren't. The CW combiners each swapped out a limb from their G1 Scramble City incarnations. In some cases, it was wholly unnecessary (Slingshot), but in others it made sense (space shuttle Blast Off) even if I wasn't crazy about it. Plus they added a sixth, legends-sized member just to try something different.

Which is where the exclusives came in. If only we can get those "options" in this case...

 

I bought if only to support more products like that. Plus the Japanese Cons just look cool.

 

I want to be true to myself. 

 

Or you release a 6th Predacon at the Legends pricepoint who becomes the wings.

 

Preorders are up at Anime Export for 18000 yen plus shipping and Robotoybase for $130 plus shipping. Seems like for me Kapow is the best option out of the three.

 

Guys, are the figures “headmasters”? My bad for such a noob question as I’m out of the loop.

 

Yeah, in some previously posted pictures you Can see their titan masters.

 

Yep

 

There seems to be a problem with ordering Big Powered on Kapow. Orders over £100 have free shipping, but if I select the 10% deposit then I still get a shipping fee at checkout. Is anyone else having this problem? Should I simply forgo the deposit?

 

I never liked the Headmaster gimmick being used in Titans Return by bots that never originally had the gimmick to begin with, so that's definitely put me off of this set as well.

Other than that issue, this look really good, and I'm glad so many folks are excited for them, they're just sadly not for me.

 

Don't know if either of these topics have been covered yet, but has anyone compiled a list of stores that will be shipping Big Powered to the US? I usually go with amiami but I can't seem to find BP there.
Does anyone know if Dai Atlas's torso and legs are able to separate like on the Overlord and Sky Shadow versions of the mold?

 

That's...and odd reason to not want these. They ARE making Micromasters in Siege if you want little cars to hang out on the base modes...

 

All I inferred is that Sky Shadow wasn't skipped because of his alt mode, because similar changes were still made to other figures in the line and Takara didn't mind them and made them work. I think it's silly that you're still defending all of the other changes as being ok, but somehow Sky Shadow being an Overlord pretool must have been a bridge too far. There really likely was other reasons.

You do realize U-Haul Robot isn't actually much anything (or actually Sentinel, that was a fan club driven retcon), so Takara could have been as free as they wanted with Sentinel. Again, they could have made it work even if it doesn't conform to G1.

You still called him a one-off after the line. He was not, he's actually the third of the three final Unite Warrior EX releases that were still a part of the Unite Warriors line proper.