so four-armed Shockwave is theoretically Shockprime? Huh... Now I wonder is Thunderwiong, Star Saber and Deathsaurus are in the pipeline post-kingdom.

.....I'd buy it.....

 

A bit vague, what he's saying. He might also mean Bugbite was already in development before the license went through and it was too late to change it. Or that the added cost of the license would have made Bugbite more expensive than they were willing to sell him for.

 

If I remember correctly, Hasbro only pitched Bee for the license. Selects are just low effort, quick and easy repaints that don't cost that much, so you're also technically right.

 

So any possible Glyph would use the Cliffjumper mold then wouldn't she?

 

There's some interesting talking points right there that I often wonder about. Does the cost of the license increase with each additional character Hasbro tacks on? Is VW's granting of the license contingent on approving each character (would they deny the entire license if they didn't approve of one out of X number of submitted characters)? Could they pick and choose ("We approve Bumblebee and Glyph but not Bugbite")?

 

Funny that you put it that way since those low effort, quick and easy repaints used to cost around $100 before Selects.

 

The leader Arcee they are referring to is what we would have gotten had Arcee won the power of the primes vote and gotten an evolution figure. You're reading something into it that isn't there

There really aren't that many more exclusives this year than there were last year

Those were limited run and only about $60 a piece at most for deluxes, the limited run is the technical justification for their higher price.

 

Not really? The TR boxsets that were listed in the inventories but never came out were all killed off because Hasbro was preparing for Selects. It was a mix between making repaints that people actually wanted (so you didn't need to buy a box set and split up stuff you didn't want) and trying to save packaging costs. It was a testing ground for less plastic used for toy packaging too.

 

Was a jab at FunPub.

 

I apologize I wasn’t very clear. Exclusive numbers are about the same, yes. I was more referring to the number of core cast characters who should be in the mainline that got bumped to being exclusives due to the aforementioned reasons.

 

Or, said core cast members were bumped to exclusives simply because most of them were do overs. Think about it, of all of the do overs in Earthrise only 4 are in the mainline (Optimus Prime, Megatron, Smokescreen and Starscream) and one of those was not mainline in Siege (Smokescreen). Every other character in the Earthrise mainline is not a do over from Siege. This was probably intentional so as to not clutter retail shelves with characters that people just bought last year, but becuase the fandom is the way it is people still endlessly complain that the line is full of do overs.

 

I do believe licensing does increase for each character. Licensors can also pick and choose characters as well as aspects of the mold (hence why Maverick looks like ass, the Tomcat people insisted on it being cast in the nasty white colors).

 

Well since were in the Walmart exclusive thread, do you know who are the final Netflix voyagers? Can you tell or hint? Do you know if alicon is the bailiff or battle damage alicon?

 

Ah, ok, thanks. That was fairly perplexing...

 

I just have a question, sorta related, but not a biggie if you can't answer: is there any reason in particular some toys have "shields" that are obviously just alt mode kibble that don't look shield-like at all? Was it a conscious move to add accessory variety or just laziness? Because when you mentioned before that Arcee is shit because they didn't even try, it makes me wonder about Cliffjumper/Bee, Earth Ironhide, and Warpath.

Because it kinda still is? Yes, the mainline is mostly original, but the mainline is also like half of the line overall. When there's so many exclusives and sub-lines and this and that, it seems silly to somehow not count it.

 

That's ignoring that roughly half the line is still entirely new though. People act as if every single figure in the line is a Siege do over and that every single Siege figure was redone in Earthrise, which just isn't the case

 

It’s a shame Elita did not remain a Selects release. She would have been much easier to obtain.

 

Anything about Netflix wave 3?

 

This is correct. The “advance” payable to the licensor would probably increase per character, and aside from anything else the profits are lower (because the licensor takes royalties).

And yes, the licensor would 100% have approval at every step in the process.