Jesse Wittenrich on Twitter

 

Cool but shame they dint do it

 

Damn. I was really hoping to see that repaint happen. Shame to see it was indeed planned, but dropped somewhere along the way.

 

Fuck.......

 

Seeing that hurts my soul. HASBRO!!! IF YOU READ THIS, PLEASE RELEASE IT IN THE GENERATIONS SELECTS LINE!!!! PLEEEAAASE!!!

And thank you for taking the time to notice my post..
.

 

I keep telling you guys Optimal was always planned for PotP, and one potential repaint was Primal Prime until he won the poll and they needed the SDCC version to represent the "next Prime" form.

 

why include someone who was always going to be in the line in the vote? fanvote losers are not supposed to be in the same line for the vote they lost, siege spinister is an exception since he was pulled forward from earthrise. its much more logical that whoever got the winning vote got a figure and whoever lost didnt get a figure

 

Dang, I hope we get a selects version.

 

Why didn't they do this? I would have rather had this than the one we got. Maybe I would have bought it.

 

Because the poll was "Who will be the next Prime" not "Which figure should we make." We were picking who'd be the SDCC Exclusive, and Hasbro lucked into us picking a guy who was already slated for retail anyway.

We already know that they go through early design phases long before the prototypes are whipped up. We've seen some of the proposals for PotP. We also saw an Ultra Magnus figure and a Shockwave figure in Seige that, with a few adjustments, wouldn't have been out of place as PotP Leaders.

I have no doubt that they had a bunch of different figure concepts they were working on at once as they were coming up with the themes for stuff like PotP, Siege, and beyond. So at that point, they said "Here are nine characters who we could potentially work into PotP based on the designs available."

They didn't pick those 9 names at random. They were characters who are all slated to get new figures in the next few years and would be slotted into the release plan with preliminary designs anyway. They could shuffle around repaints and retools as needed, and in some cases simply scrapped them in favor of other figures.

That doesn't clash with what I'm saying. There were nine characters who they looked at and decided could fit into their current slate of designs/prototypes if they were to be given a "Prime form." It doesn't mean they were going to make those Prime forms, it just meant that none of the nine choices would've upset the apple cart if they won. They just took the design they would've used for PotP and tossed it back into the pile to be adapted down the road if need be.

Example: Shockwave. We will likely never know what Shockwave Prime would've looked like, but I bet Siege Shockwave is a hint. Though there are a number of ways you could go with it considering he's never been a Prime before and we've already established that becoming a Prime doesn't mean you have to keep your current alt. (My theory was, had he won, he'd have used Deathsaurus as a base in honor of the Onyx Prime twist in IDW).

TLDR: When they did the poll, there were a few characters who were/are getting figures. The rest of the characters in the poll would've been repaints/retools of those designs based on who ended up winning the poll and how they could fit it into their existing plans for PotP. At which point we'd get the winner at SDCC, not retail.

 

Hey I think this post beats that one on time of uploaded.

just curious on this being made into a new thread when it was talked about already

 

The label says "Optimal Optimus (unused color scheme)." Would be interesting now that this is out there to ask Warden about it at the next opportunity.

Also, probably an unpopular opinion...but the Throne deco was superior to this. Rodimus didn't turn blue and red as a result of carrying the Matrix. Wouldn't have made sense for Primal to either. Love the idea of his Prime form being the same deco as his core. It looks fantastic.

Primal Prime, also his own character...so again...glad they didn't try to meld the two into one if that was the original concept.

 

It would've been even better if they had made the smaller prime Ape-Linq. Ah well.

 

Nothing stopping Hasbro from releasing it as an Exclusive during the Earthrise Chapter. 

 

if we were only voting for the sdcc figure then that makes even less sense, there is no way hasbro would produce a one off mainline mold and limit it to an sdcc exclusive. precedent shows that hasbro (not takara, not funpub) gets 2 uses out of every new mold fan vote character with the exception of trypticon since titans are a bit pricey for multiple uses

windblade and sdcc combiner hunters windblade
victorion (exempt, not a new mold)
trypticon (exempt, too expensive for opportunistic repaint)
Optimal Optimus and throne of primes
mirage and holo mirage
impactor and decepticon impactor

also, siege ultra magnus and shockwave do not work the same way as potp leaders. if their designs were reused from the poll then they were massively reworked. potp optimus prime, rodimus prime and optimal optimus have "trailers" that transform into the legs, arms, and waist of the larger robot with the smaller figure becoming the chest and head (with little to no partsforming on the main body/limbs of combined mode). magnus and shockwave have partsforming armor. the concepts may be similar, but the approaches are entirely different

 

Power of the Primes, Primal Prime of Power for the Primal Primes (Prime Addition) 

 

That's not what I'm saying. At all.

I'm saying the winner would've gotten their Prime mode debuted at SDCC, and that mold...whatever it was...would've been given a pre-tool in PotP or *been* a pre-tool of something in WfC.

Because it's SDCC, where repaints are popular...you can either repaint something that was in SDCC and say "There's your winner!" or your can debut the new mold as a repaint of something slated for Siege and say "There's your winner!"

And this is also the one and only time we've ever specifically "built" a new mold from scratch. But that was also one of the longer polling processes as well as a longer time from poll result to figure to release. Which is why they never did that again.

She's not exempt, as she *was* the retool. That whole poll was us picking from a list of repaint/retool options. And even then, they *still* found a way to get two uses out of Victorion by repainting her for Unite Warriors as Megatronia. Which contributes more evidence to my argument.

Except all of us knew from the get-go we were essentially telling Hasbro which Titan to release first. The only question is how they'd have added the Headmaster element to Omega had he won, because Skorpy already fits and *all three* have the same city-connectors anyway. So it's really more evidence towards my argument.

But we also just saw evidence a Primal Prime was originally in the cards. So what's not to say that if he doesn't win the poll they slot Primal Prime somewhere in the release plan and slot the winner in to the SDCC spot instead. Which could be argued is even more evidence of my point.

Except these guys won the poll, and then we got Spinister and Wheeljack anyway. And we saw concept art for a Tetrajet Needlenose (via the TCG) before he was put *back* into the poll. Which means there were already designs in place had he won. And just because he didn't doesn't mean plans were scraped...he was just slid back into the next line where he could be repaint/retool of someone else.

Which is what I said was the plan for the Poll. They had designs lined up for new figures, and decided that a handful of them could be worked into Evolution figures depending on the results of a poll. The 9 characters they picked weren't by accident, but rather based on who could best fit into their figure designs without throwing off future plans if they won/lost.

"Little to no..." except where there was on Rodimus. Meaning there were designs on the table that could lead to partsforming if needed to pull off the Prime mode. And when the winner was decided, they took the designs that didn't make it into PotP and put them in a pile to come back to once the opportunity arose (and it did with Shockwave/Magnus).

When Shockwave and Magnus didn't win, those designs were later adapted into Siege (and who knows what else coming down the road). Hell, Star Saber *is* an Evolution figure in the vein of PotP...but he would also have fit perfectly in Siege since he's also Cybertronian.

 

Power of the Primes, Primal Prime of Power for the Primal Primes (Prime Addition) 

 

A shame really. In hindsight, Primal Prime should have always been the main color scheme for Optimal, so it would have worked to finally fix that. It's the kind of thing FunPub was always good for, but with Hasbro doing Selects now there's always a (remote) chance it could still happen.

 

Fingers crossed