I was thinking the same thing @OCDChad .

If the rumoured story is to be believed, a talented engineering designer behind the skeleton fell out with FT's top brass. We can speculate a whole bunch of reasons why.

But if he felt shit on or shafted or just plain 'ol NOT PAID he made a decision to part company permanently with them. And if we surmise he was really REALLY pissed at FT, it also stands to reason he would be tempted to make certain all his design work left with him when he left. We could also go one step further that in planning his exit he took his good 'ol time to make DEAD CERTAIN all backups and archives of his designs were deleted when he left.

Thereby forcing FT to (as rumour has it) reverse engineer the skeleton from scratch and perhaps Bandit himself too.

But thats just an outlandish theory, we'll probably never know the truth. If FT shafted a staff member, no way would they share that with the public.

 

This can not get any worse than the Generation Toy's Guardian right?

 

I'm actually pretty upbeat about FT completing Superion to be honest - though I'm probably in a very very low minority. They've shown a lot of stuff to suggest they have a clear vision on how it will work which is still lacking with Menasor. In the past 12 months we've finally got some great looking renders of the last 2 arm-bots for Etheraon. That demonstrates they've still committing resources to see this thing through.

More recently, we got a revolutionary snapshot of how the combiner kibble will be used when not in its primary use. Thats a HUGE leap forward for the designers. It demonstrates its not only on their radar, but getting active development.

The real sticking point for both combiners is the skeleton. But the benefits of Etherean's is that its much LESS INVOLVED than Marauder's. The 4 limb-bots for Superion COMPLETELY form the arms & legs. All is required is to add the feet to the legs and the fists to the arms. Then (like with Zeta Kronos) you fold Silverbolt into a cube and plug him into the back of the chest assembly and pants - like Kronos does - as well as DX9's Attila too for that matter.

Marauder is sooooo much more work in terms of design, part manufacture and weight bearing. Essentially, when all is said and done - FT's Menasor will be pretty much a more glamorous version of DX9 Attila. The skeleton will be fully formed and articulated with the 4 car limb-bots ss plugging in to EXISTING arms & legs.

And just like with Attila, Road King will fold up into a square cube to plug into the back of Marauder.

The added hurdle with this arrangement is (unlike DX9's version) the 5 Stunticon are LOADED with die cast.

I think things are much further along with Superion than Menasor and believe we'll see Fireflight and Slingshot (with combiner kibble) sometime next year.

Just my 2 cents worth gang. Feel free to respond

 

I think the last two Aerialbots were properly revealed a while ago. Bandit was already

Mine is combined, and I'm not going to separate him. Same with Gravity Builder.

 

I agree with you. Personally because I already have XTB Menasor, so I'm not all that bothered to wait for FT. But their Superion, damn... can't wait for that one.

 

Computron before Superion!!!

 

I don’t know could Computron be released before Superion, (I did understood your sarcasm) but if at some point that would be great.

 

Computron is severly overdue for a G1 treatment. Same with Abominus.

 

A possibility is that you're seeing FT the wrong way. They're likely not an actual company with an office proudly displaying their logo and where everybody comes together to work. Going by what I've read about other companies, it's likely someone's running FT from their own house, while the designers work from theirs. That way everybody would be working on their own computers. No network, just individuals. And thus no way to backup files.

Also, IIRC, with Zeta/Toyworld it went to court over who owned the designs. So even if FT has backup files, that doesn't mean they're allowed to use them. (And chinese copying a USA owned design is very different to Chinese law than them stealing from each other.)

 

If you only want it for combined mode, then yes I can see this point of view. However Zeta only have okay alt modes and not so great bot modes. You'll have to determine how important those aspects are for your collection.

 

If only there was some common place where files could be stored where anybody could access them, regardless of location.  

 

You don't need a company network to backup files nowadays. There's this thing called the cloud. Kinda like Google Docs. This being China, a number of companies there have equivalent offerings.

 

Like Croud?

 

Always figured everything was done on etch-a-sketch and they just pony express stuff back and forth to each other. Damn kids and ur new fangled technology

 

I don't follow. Alibaba Cloud is one example. Amazon AWS is another.

 

Dalianjj loves his Iomega Zips. His designers though ... still prefer floppy disks.

 

And yet, both with Toyworld/Zeta and now perhaps with FT, it has happened.

Kind of suggests the designer didn't share everything to make sure they couldn't just fire him/her and keep his/her work for free. You know, something that has happened before with other 3rd party companies where the designers simply didn't get paid.

 

looks superb but this whole set is getting the red and orangey yellow stripped and repainted when they finally finish them!!! hopefully by that time i will have my spraystation all set u p and all my other projects that are on hold are finished , got quite a bit to get through   honestly don't understand why they went with that shade of red

 

If this ends up being true, maybe we'll see a KO of Bandit/Skeleton before the actual product? If I was pissed enough at FT to delete backups, etc, I'd sure as hell be pissed enough to sell my designs to a KO company.

 

Hmmm, while it's not impossible, FT owners have to be pretty dumb to not take copies of any design work they have paid for and keep them in a safe place so exactly this can never happen. Especially given the game they are in and how long they've been playing.