That's because originally it was only intended to be an SDCC exclusive and not have a wide release in earthrise.
Is anyone getting bothered by all this concept art showing us better versions of toys we just bought? Like if the actual Quintesson had faces this good I’d have actually picked one up.
Considering this is the first judge toy in the 35 years of its history? No. Especially since Ken is just commissioned to design characters with no information on the gimmicks or how they will be utilized
I really doubt that. They did small barely articulated, non transforming figures for the set. The quentisson would have been like that not a voyager figure with a base mode if it hadn't been intended for a stand alone release. Plus in a line that seems to be cut short with most of the releases put out as exclusives it doesn't make any sense for the quentisson not to be planned all along. And it kinda supports the theory beast wars in kingdom not being the original plan. With Unicron shipping next year it seems like the studio series 86 figures were the original plan.
Sometimes they deliberately over-design the concept art, like with Skylynx, so when they go to see the design managers or whoever they can whittle down the features they don’t need without cutting into the features the designers want the toy to have. I could be wrong though.
yeah it was like dealing with the censors on kiddie animated cartoons...the animation team deliberately put in such over the top stuff that the censors let slide the stuff the animators actually wanted to put in