I somehow missed they were doing a Wheeljack. This may well be the one to fill the Wheeljack sized hole in my Legends line-up.

 

I wonder if we'll be lucky enough to get some extra hands for Sunstreaker with this. This is just a retool of the same mold, but has interchangeable hands... seems like a great opportunity to retcon the same feature into the original mold.

 

I don't know if they will. IF is better about repaints then they used to be, OP and the Seekers certainly have been repainted, but their Bluestreak repaint took a few years.
They definitely aren't as fast or fruitful as NewAge when it comes to repaints.

Like the Starscream hands included with their Megatron?

 

Yes and no. Megatron wasn't a retool of Starscream and they'd never done anything like that prior. It was a pleasant surprise, to be honest - but not without its drawbacks (there are now 123987329847234987 other seeker repaints that could also use interchangeable hands with none in sight that we know of).

In this case, the Wheeljack figure is direct retool of the Sunstreaker mold. It should be pretty straightforward enough to crank out some yellow hands and throw them in with the Wheeljack. IMO, straightforward enough to actually expect at this point.

I never thought "Illegal use of hands" could ever be a penalty flag thrown in this context.

 

I thought this at first, too, but the more I look at it, the more I think it is a completely different mold that just shares a LOT of the engineering concepts. Yes, the various parts of the body end up in the same spots between the two figures, but everything is different. The screw placements on the joints are different, every piece has different features.

 

Slicer repaint would be bought immediately. No interest in Exhaust.

 

Jazz is like that. It seems like a retool of Sideswipe, but almost all the parts are new.

 

Just got Hound in today from netclow:


​

 

Indeed... I was one of the first to post about that too  

 

Oooooh yeah.

So, yeah. It is like that other thing you said.  

 

Seeing these guys makes me wish for 2.0 versions of Prowl, Streak and Smokescreen. I can’t get on board fully knowing I won’t get those guys.  

 

And Optimus

 

Yeah.

Maybe a 2.0 for him too.

 

The leg transformation is the same, with the crab claw toe transformation and the folding upper leg. The arms are the same as well and the chest looks to be similar.

The reason why they made the Racing Bros was to have two basic car bodies that they could work a number of characters into without much reworking. They've done a pretty good job of it.

 

Yes, I agree that the engineering is the same, how some parts rotate the same way or unfold the same way... but the pieces themselves are all completely different.

Compare these two pictures:






Notice how the screw-holes differ between the two? That's not a retooling, where the same piece gets a slightly different trim, like TF: Prime Beast Hunters figures, those are all entirely new pieces - a different mold.

 

My Hound is arriving this Thursday.

 

That's one hell of a good looking (IDW) Wheeljack.

I don't want my (small) Legends collection to be the same as the larger figure collection. So by that rule I can't buy this, because I already have MP Wheeljack.

That means hoping for a diaclone Marlboro (Exhaust) deco. Sadly, I don't have much faith in IF doing that and if they do, it being a general release.

 

Slicer and Exhaust repaints would be great. Surprised that they haven’t done a Stepper repaint from Jazz and Clamp Down/Deep Cover from Red Alert/Swipe, given the number of seeker repaints they have pumped out.

 

Fair enough, I've been thinking the engineering this whole time and you were thinking of specific pieces, the difference between an engineer and an artist lol