I tend to like obscure characters like Shadow Striker, besides, obscure characters don't get much attention, and let me put it to you like this: if we were part of a massive crowd that has a lot of well known faces in the community, we wouldn't be as recognizable because we're not famous people, we wouldn't stick out as much.

 

it's easy to grow up being attached to seemingly-trivial things when they were first important while you were growing up

(also i think it's very funny that we just learned that the only reason her name is shadow striker is because they couldn't get the name "nightracer"...)

(...so they just chose the name of the other botcon female decepticon car)

 

I get the frustration but I can't help but feel like you're overthinking this, and seeing something that isn't there. As you know I'm sure, the unfortunate reality with transformers is that for much of the franchise's early years fembots were not allowed to be a thing, because executives thought those would be difficult to market to boys (which, given the culture at the time, and the demographic Hasbro was aiming for, is an understandable business decision). It's then inevitable that there are going to be less unique fembot molds out there, because there are simply less fembots that have been created.

You can't deny that recently, there's been a massive surge in new fembot characters and fembot toys, so clearly there are plenty of people at Hasbro championing female transformers (because why wouldn't they branch out and appeal to wider audiences and sell more product? completely understandable business decision). Your conclusion that people at Hasbro for some reason are biased against or put dramatically less effort into fembot toys therefore doesn't really hold up. It's completely fair for you personally not to like them, but that in no way qualifies as an objective metric that Hasbro designers don't take designing fembots as seriously as they do designing male bots. The distinction instead may be that they put more effort into giving unique and high-end molds to more popular characters, which given the history of the franchise, are more likely to be male, and that's simply a result of the fact that the majority of TF characters are male, it's just probability.

Also, your point about Elita-1 and Minerva is not really fair imo, that mold was designed with both characters explicitly in mind, and you can't say Minerva only got the hand-me-downs, when so much of the design incorporated distinctly 'Minerva' features (imo the mold suits both of them great). It's directly analogous to the Tarn mold being created with Bludgeon in mind (skull chest), or Cliffjumper being made with a future Bee in mind, etc etc. I will definitely agree that the redecoes/retools of legarcee are reaching Seeker and Kup levels of ridiculousness lol (personally hoping they can incorporate some of that engineering into a new ROTB deluxe Arcee mold, that's my all-time fav Arcee design).

 

we were pretty close to getting a legacy nightracer instead, it seems

 

Hmm i wonder what was stopping them from just calling her nightracer in the show.

 

Probably just a case of Hasbro lost the rights to the name.

 

That’s surprisingly probably not the case. In 2020 they released cards with night racer, meaning they were/have still been able to get the rights in some form.

 

Hasbro initially had issues with the Nightracer name due to the characters' creator. While TFWiki says that they eventually cleared that hurdle for the OTFCC 2015 figure, there's no accounting for it after that point.

Pretty sure you don't have to clear trademarks on trading card text. WotC would have to jump through so many hoops with all the card names they go through every year for M:tG.

 

I can’t speak to the Nightracer situation specifically, but in the US, using a copyrighted or trademarked name on a mass-market item, even on a playing card, without consent, would have any legal team’s head spin like a top:

A trademark is “…any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof” which is used in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer from another. 15 U.S.C § 1127. To prove trademark infringement a plaintiff must prove that a defendant used the same mark in commerce without permission and that the use of the mark is likely to confuse consumers as to affiliation, origin, sponsorship, approval, services by the plaintiff, and/or etc. 15 U.S.C. § 1125.

Regarding WotC card names, the only names trademarked by WotC are specific WotC intellectual properties, like the WotC-created planeswalkers. Vanilla names like Breakdancing Goblin would not be. Collaborative efforts as with D&D, My Little Pony, Warhammer, and Transformers would require either existing ownership of the name or a legal agreement.

 

https://twitter.com/RandolphHeard/status/1664042668350128128?t=MTIJ9qWmMLFDHDR2eDt21w&s=19

they gotta sell toys, that's what kept them

 

Reminds me of how when there might've been the possibility of an accurate Shadowstriker, I suggested Wings Nightracer as a potential remold.

Now it seems very unlikely a Nightracer will come for more than one reason. Too bad... would've been nice to have an extra car female Decepticon within the next year. Really looking like the well's dried on that kind of bot.

 

Looking at shadow strikers chest I wonder if it’s possible that the mold has an optional feature to give Shadowstriker her more show accurate chest to make her evoke her show design more? I hope that’s the case if only to have her not be just a simple head retool of sideburn

 

Why do people want her to look like a Cyberverse character? She's obviously not a version of that Cyberverse character.

 

because she was advertised as this

 

That's exactly what she's supposed to be. See my post from earlier:

 

Unfortunate. Seems like false advertising. She is all other versions but definitely not that one. If they gave her those colors, than I could see her as an Amalgam of all versions. But as of now? Only Universe 2003 + G1 2019 is in there. It's maybe like with Prime Bulkhead. He is more of a G1 version than Prime or Animated. He's just not fat enough and lacks the "wings" on his back.

 

it's not false advertising

not unless you've already bought/preordered the thing

nobody has paid hasbro any money for this

 

Can't come soon enough!

 

Holy crap, I wasn't the only one seeing that?!?

 

I wonder if a similar trademark scenario with Cyberverse Nightbird (or I'm mistaking it for the weapon name)