well steamshield has started working on kits to convert the copter mold into blast off's rocket mode. i'm going that route.

 

I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to make a kit that made Blast Off look more like a shuttle, and also if the kit gave him a PROPER HEAD, yeah. Honestly, I'm not too bugged by his change in alt modes, it's the face. Why did they use that face.

 

Dude that would have been awesome.

It would have been a great obscure reference.

Generations Megatron/Dreadwing.

 

Hell, Movar in RID (Original) had more of a personality then Blastoff ever did.

 

I'm not saying that he shouldn't be a space-worthy military specialist; I'm saying a space shuttle doesn't exactly fit with the idea of military assault vehicles, which all the other Combaticons transform into.

Again, we have Onslaught, an anti-aircraft truck (offensive force), Swindle, a XR311 combat vehicle (offensive force and recon), Brawl, a Leopard 1A3 tank (offensive force), Vortex, a SH-2 Seasprite (offensive force and air support)...and Blast Off, a space shuttle. What purpose does he even have on the team? He's never shown attacking anybody from space (Movor is, but he isn't Blast Off so that doesn't count) or spying on the Autobots from space (again, unlike Movor) last I recall, so he can't be doing that. He doesn't really seem to have much point to being a space shuttle outside of just being able to go into space; an ability all Transformers have anyways. Hell, the vehicle he got wasn't even a space shuttle at all, but a B-52, which makes a hell of a lot more sense for a military unit.

I'm not even sure how canon the G1 tech specs are; are they taken from anything official (like the G1 story bible)? Because I don't remember him ever blasting people from orbit in G1.

 

Of them, Swindle had the most defined personality. That's why he's my favorite, and also because he's a filthy scam artist.

 

Even though he's three parts Defensor remolded, I don't get a Defensor repainted vibe from him.

 

well you can complain all you want but i guarantee you arent gonna change anyones mind about the way they feel.

 

I know that.

 

Personally, I don't mind Blast Off not being a Space Shuttle. I *do* mind him being just a regular old jet. I mind even more that he's a straight repaint of a jet we've seen several times already, and they didn't even give him an appropriate new head sculpt.

 

So this means we'll have two possible options:

1. Wait for a 3P to either make a replacement custom limb bot styled after G1 Blast Off or wait for a 3P to make an upgrade kit with a new head/alt mode attachments

2. Hope TT makes a proper Blast Off given their Geewun slavishness

 

If I want a Blast Off at all... yeah, that's probably it.

What I'm thinking to do for myself... assuming I hear nothing from TT (the fact that we haven't by now is disconcerting), I'll probably still get everyone else, but I may well just substitute one of the spare other CW limbs (Off-Road, perhaps). I'd rather have someone who wasn't even on the team there than a toy that tries to be the classic character while falling so far short.

 

My guess is its because Takara is planning an actual G1 accurate Blast Off which Hasbro will eventually release themselves so there's no point in making the current CW Blast Off anything more than a straight repaint.

If I get Hasbro's Blast Off, I'll be putting SG Autobot insignias on him and calling him SG Slingshot.

 

Oh, I agree... viewed purely in terms of alt-mode, he's an odd choice. He doesn't really fit the "vehicle theme" of the team. But if you reverse the equation... and see that the Combaticons would logically have a space specialist, there aren't too many Earth vehicles available to him other than a space shuttle... and there aren't really any "combat style" space shuttles to draw on.

Mind you, Cosmos seems to have dodged that issue altogether by not having a "disguise" mode at all.  

Not all Transformers are supposed to be spaceworthy, but by Season 3, the writing on the G1 cartoon was so poor that they just did whatever, I guess... everyone was flying around in space.

The cartoon took a lot of shortcuts, and simplified a lot of stuff. For that reason, I've always considered it the lesser G1 fiction... even if it was more widely accessible.

But still, having a "space specialist" isn't redundant when other people can still function in space. Anyone can still function in a jungle, or in the arctic... but a specialist is going to be waaaay better adapted to their job.

Haha! Hooboy... where to start?  

The G1 tech specs and long-form profiles are actually the original canon. A lot of people (like G1Warpath) tend to forget that "G1" wasn't limited to the cartoon. It's really irritating to me that it's such a common misconception among some Transformers fans. The fiction was actually fragmented along a few different lines, right from the very beginning.

The G1 profiles were the original Transformers content, written by Bob Budiansky who, for all practical purposes, invented Transformers as we know it. Budiansky was a writer for Marvel Comics back in the early 80s, and Hasbro hired him to take a bunch of imported Japanese robot toys and come up with names and a fiction for them. The concept of the series, the characters, and (almost) all of the names come from him. He wrote the long profiles for each Transformer, explaining who they were, and what their powers were. Then Hasbro shortened those enough to fit on the Tech Spec cards on the toy packaging (Budiansky also assigned the stats in the Tech Specs).

It's fair to say that the G1 cartoon bible was actually written based on Budiansky's profiles, not the other way around. The deviations between the bios and the TV show are due to slight changes (and in some cases, errors), and the fact that the cartoon had a much less consistent pool of writers. Meanwhile, Budiansky went on to write and edit almost the entire first 4 years of the Marvel Transformers comic. You will find that the Marvel Transformers comics had a considerable following in North America and the UK, and are considered a separate continuity from the G1 cartoon.

In 1986, Marvel collected all the long-form bios (un-truncated) in the Transformers Universe mini-series, which was later reprinted into trade paperback form. All these bios are actually available today in a comprehensive online version at ntfa.net. (definitely worth a visit for any G1 fan).

These bios would later form the basis for Dreamwave's More Than Meets the Eye profile books; in many cases, the bios are little more than paraphrasings of the Budiansky original profiles.

So... arguably, there were three major continuities when Transformers debuted... the Cartoon, the Marvel Comics, and the original Tech Specs themselves... each format has certain distinct elements, though overall the Comics and the Specs are pretty consistent with each other. The beauty of the original bios is just how detailed and well-written they are... as an introductory fiction to help facilitate play scenarios for kids, they tend to give way MORE information on the Transformers characters than you ever saw in the comics OR cartoons. In a sense, these were sort of the foundation for any G1 story that came after. Reading them, you get a much better idea of who all those characters were supposed to be, even if they never got a lot of individual focus in the other media.

Blast Off is a perfect example of this... because of the commercial-oriented nature of the cartoons, characters were often introduced rapidly, with almost no character development. Combiners spent most of their time combining, in order to advertise the gimmicks for the toys. As a result, you rarely get insight into the individual team members. Blast Off on the cartoon seems like a virtual nobody. However, reading his bio you get a different impression... like "holy crap, this guy is is actually really cool!"

I always thought it was a shame that so many kids thought Bruticus or Devastator was so great, but could barely name the Combaticons or Constructicons to save their lives. Almost universally, the component robots are waaaaaaay more interesting than the combined forms.  

zmog

 

TT have teased their own Blast Off though, twice actually, but like Groove he's being designed separately long after the rest of Combaticons. If UW Groove is anything to go by, we won't properly see anything until around or just after the release of Hasbro's Combaticons.

 

Yeah, which probably means spring 2016, I wager, given the time delay between CW Defensor and UW Guardia.

 

Yeah there is probably some agreement there, where TT can't showcase theirs until a month or so after the Hasbro version is released.

 

Interesting. Budiansky really created an enduring legacy. I loved reading those profiles as a kid. I remember traveling with only the comics (including those Universe profiles) to read and pouring over them.

And yes- the profiles helped flesh out a lot of the characters who otherwise didn't seem that interesting. It seemed that each of the Decepticon combiners had at least one limb who had some facet to his personality that made him rather unusual and even sympathetic. Blast Off was one- the lonely Decepticon. Scavenger was the Decepticon with self esteem issues (and he's still the only one of the Constructicons I can recognize among them as a result), and Dead End was the depressed Stunticon. Those all stuck out in my mind as a kid. With Blast off, the fact that he was aristocratic stood out too- definitely not your typical brutish Con. (Ironically, most of the Combaticons weren't, which is another reason I like them so much despite being part of /BRUT/icus.)

Thundercracker's another example. I remember reading about how he sometimes questioned what the Decepticons were doing, though he didn't dare say it out loud. That inner conflict struck me as very interesting and I remember discussing it with my friend back in the 80's. We both wished the cartoon had done something with that. Needless to say, I was very happy almost 30 years later when IDW picked up that thread and finally explored that aspect of his personality.

 

I think it's just an issue that the figure isn't even done yet. There's nothing to show. When TT's deluxe Groove was shown, it was obviously so far up in development that they were able to tease UW Defensor with a silhouette. But the first two teases for Blast Off indicate that they just barely got to work on it. Chances are there isn't even a prototype that is ready to display yet so we haven't seen anything physical at this point.

Again, I highly doubt that what Hasbro is doing has any influence on how Unite Warriors develops. They're not even for the same demographics, nor markets. CW is catering to Americans and the western world, while Takara is aiming squarely for their own Japanese market, while we westerners have a shot at them too.

 

Yeah, exactly. What I like about the profiles in relation to the Combiners, is how you really get the sense of a team, where everybody has a job... not only on that squad, but performing a role in the Decepticons in general. You feel like these are guys who would function individually as part of the larger organization, not just in a small 5-man unit... or as an "arm" or a "leg".

The idea that Blast Off spends most of his time isolated in space, on overwatch, makes him an interesting character (he shares some traits with Cosmos for that reason). And the fact that he can be lingering in orbit, and snipe Autobots on the ground with a high-powered laser....? Awesome.

The "aristocratic" dimension always made me think about the "elitist pilot" mentality, especially going back to the first and second World Wars. He considers himself better than the guys on the ground with dirt on their boots.

Also, one of the things I always found interesting about the Combaticons is just how SMART they are. They have just one brute on the team (Brawl, who has a relatively high tech spec rating for Skill compared to most other heavies), but all the others have Intelligence and Skill ratings at the top end. They aren't just "warriors"... they really come off as "professionals"... military specialists of a higher order.

As a private joke, I also always liked the way that the Combaticons (minus Blastoff) actually work as analogs to the A-Team... Onslaught/Hannibal, the master planner; Brawl/B.A. the blustering bruiser; Vortex/Murdoch, the crazy wild-man chopper pilot; and Swindle/Face, the smooth con artist.  

Anyway, to veer back on topic... Hasbro really should have delivered a shuttle version of Blast Off, rather than a half-assed Slingshot repaint. It's really obvious that the Combiner Wars figures have all been distinct homages to their original G1 versions, which has also been a major factor of their success/popularity in the fandom. It just seems dumb to do Blast Off wrong, when in the case of the other teams, they at least offered new characters.

Slingshot, Wildrider and Groove have all been made available as exclusives of one kind or another... obviously Hasbro decided that the adult fans (the ones who actually CARE about G1 accuracy) are capable of taking the import/online exclusive route, rather than being stuck with regular retail. The kicker is that I'd have to buy the Takara version to get a Blast Off or Groove. Boo.  

zmog