I think there is a good chance that this Dante figure has something to do with XTB Hot Spot.

 

I'm in for their Grapple.
I am more than happy with Backdraft as Inferno, but no so much with TT Grapple. The alt mode is... ok, but XTB can do much better.

 

You'd be surprised about how much he has designed. God tier.

Already invested? That's the simplest and most logical answer. Designers don't work for free. Just like Galvatron (and Springer to a certain extent) they've been wise and not entered the fractured character wars. Now they have a clean run for those who missed the first outings or are looking for a more modern version......



Personally I'm very happy with Takara but I'm sure ppl will buy this. Looks better than the anorexic MMC and the bloated Maketoys.

 

This just goes to show me how much my tastes have changed. When Takara Inferno first came out I didn’t like it. The toon look was too much and the alt mode was terrible. Maketoys looked like an abomination (still does to me) and MMc was and still is kind of bleaugh. I was supper hyped for Dante and hung out for it for ages. It was exactly what I wanted at the time. But it fizzled and fell off the radar, I picked up KO’s of Takara Inferno and Grapple and was pretty happy with them. Fast forward to now and my collection has heavily skewed into toon based designs and I can’t imagine putting this on my shelf. The alt modes does look great but it’s just not what I want anymore.
But plenty of folks are constantly clamouring for the older design aesthetic so there may well be a market for this. For now I’m sticking with my Takara KO and will wait to see what FannsToys eventually does with character to decide which I want to use for alt mode.

 

This is what I'm up for too. I didn't have the cash for the MMC one at the time (and was expecting Takara/MT/etc to also make one) and now IF you can even find one, it can easily be 50%+ higher. And finding one at all is a big if.

It would be cool if they made some other variants too. I know XTB is pretty into obscure stuff at times, so a G2 version with a proper water pump would be cool.

 

Agree with this. I had the maketoys ones for a while as i originally remember seeing takaras and hating them. Now i have them and love them. If i ever had the room for both modes though i do dig the alternate mode for these guys.

Now off to buy lotto...

 

I got super lucky last year and snagged a Roadcrane from ToyDojo, of all places. A little higher than I wanted to pay, but not bad at all for a rare convention exclusive. I'd seen them pop up every so often on there or Ages3&Up and decided I should finally bite before they disappeared completely, which seems to have pretty much happened at this point. I think you seem Anubis and Commotus pop up for sale more often than Roadcrane now.

 

I like the original design better.

Poor sales?

 

I'd take an Artfire recolor. The Takara version got snapped up!

 

Alt mode looks good but TTs Inferno is an amazing figure with an ingenious design, I dont see much of a point to this but hey, more choice cant be a bad thing.

 

I already have the MMC (went Official with Grapple) and I'm happy with it but I'm seriously considering swapping it out for this. The vehicle mode is just SO nice

 

Bloody hell... There's being late to the party, and then there's this, which is equivalent of showing up three years too late. In your underpants. To the wrong address. Where a grieving family is mourning their dead granny. And then doing a line of coke off the family dog while they call the police.

OK, that was a bit much, but you get the idea.

 

Happy with my Takara crew but these look awesome. Like the seekers, I am at a point where I'm simply picking one version and closing the book on it. $$$ getting tighter these days and XTB already has me on many of their upcoming releases. If they plan to release versions of the Jumpstarters, Deluxe Insecticons or the Clones, I'll be onboard!  

 

Isn't it interesting that you think mouths that look like the mouth of the guy you're quoting (Charles "Turrible" Barkley) -- and my folks, for that matter -- are bad somehow but mouths that look like other people's aren't? Like, why would full lips even be thought of as "botox lips" when entire swaths of the worlds' people naturally have them, unless your mind's default image of "lips" is the people who don't have naturally full lips? I also noticed there wasn't any hue and cry about the last two Rhinox toys NOT having those kinds of lips even though the source material DID. It's almost like some kind of submerged cultural bias was influencing our perception of full lips. Hmm.

And before you say "we're talking about alien robots here," no, we're talking about human perceptions of the aesthetic qualities of characters created by humans in our image. For alien robots they are WAY more human-looking than they have any right to be. One thing Michael Bay did do that I appreciated was imagine what ALIEN MACHINE LIFEFORMS might actually look like... they're more insectoid/humanoid, which makes sense. Nobody here is asking for a face that looks more mechanical though... they're asking for one with less-defined lips.

For what it's worth, I LIKE the full lips. Maybe I'm cool with it because the lips look "right" to me based on the mouths of the people I grew up with. Sorry you don't like it though.

Carry on.

 

That's one way to look at it. There is another further up. Difference is Maketoys are now dead in the water due to multiple character wars taking their toll. XTB are still here. Wouldn't surprise me if they've updated the articulation on these older designs.

 

or coming to late to the party when all the lightweights are drunk and heading for the bathroom, while you are perfectly pregamed to hit up the ladies when fended off the lightweight tryhards for a couple hours (err years!?)? in this analogy takara is obviously the lightweights for those that don't do analogies good and need to go to school for analogies even if they must be 3 times as big.

 

Oh look, someone's imagining the intent of my comment and putting their own thoughts and insecurities in. Good show, lad. And yes I will carry on without entertaining such BS.

But we have no idea how these will sell. In all probability they will likely sell very well despite having generic XTB faces.

 

I'm drooling over that alt mode...those details!

If this comes to fruition, I'm in.

 

Really like the alt mode, bot mode looks great, but the only way I'd replace the TT with this would be if I could remove the ladder.

 

Naw, I'm not insecure about it, just pointing out how weird it is that folks think robots with caucasian human features are normal looking but robots with non-caucasian human features look wrong. It's not just robots though, it's everything. I get that you think it's BS... most people in your shoes do, we tend to think of things that don't affect us as not being real or objectively being beneath notice. It's not imagined though. People don't have any problems with TFs for having lips at all, only if they're FULL lips. It's strange.

(PS calling me "lad" or "boy" also ties in with the same cultural bias... G1 came out when I was a kid, meaning I'm in the oldest group of fans on this board... you're probably younger than me)