Usually, there are 10-20 test shots done and passed around to test quality, different plastics, paint samples, and more. The most I've heard of is that the Forms Robo test shots were produced in quantities of around 50-75 pieces; each one being made in sets of 20-25 in various colors. The ones I have are grey and green, but there was a third color as well I think? I've had Aaron Archer confirm that the Tidal Wave testshot I had back in the day (wish i still had it) was in the 20 piece range.
He's designed to go together in a pretty systematic way. You don't really have to do any supporting of the planet quadrants, you can just let them dangle while dealing with the rest of him. Ball up the robot bits, then wrap the entire middle segment around it. Chain each of the quadrant segments together one by one, and they easily "zip" into place by first lining them up at the back, and then gently pressing them into place, leading up to the clips around the maw. His enormous heft aside, he's one of the most painless shellformers HasTak has ever designed. That main act of wrapping that first ring of planet crust around him gives you a really solid base to work with, with well-defined locking points that don't create any margin for error. And then they designed the zipper-like tabs for the quadrants really well, with soft bevels to them that make them self-guiding. There's none of the usual need to carefully line up multiple parts at once, and precisely align tabs.
The main sections that give me trouble are the quarter sections that hang from the top half of the planet. Getting the arms into position while those are flopping up top gives me trouble. Because if I don’t support them they’ll be clashing into the arms.
Some convention Q and A they said Unicron is Jupiter-sized so I then reverse scaled it based of MP-10 and came to roughly about the size of the moon a hair larger thou i kinda figured if your making a moon sized Unicron you would mine and plate over the surface bumping him upto scale and also allowing mining to happen. It was lockdown i had spare time, don't judge.
Well when making the show I am sure they needed some reference for the scale and at the time we did not know about exo planets so limited options for reference.
He's all over the place, that's for sure. That's nuts. Years and years back, I think the consensus was that Cybertron was Mars-sized. I don't think it's even that big using The Ultimate Doom as a reference point (closer to Moon-sized than Earth-sized) but let's just go with it. TFTM has him standing on Cybertron swatting at the coneheads. He's smaller than Mars and Mars is way smaller than Jupiter.
I like transform him about twice a year and every time I'm finished it amazes me how gorgeous this thing is. I know folks have their nitpicks but it still amazes me that this thing was even produced. Makes me feel like a 40 something man child every time.
yeah i haven't really transformed mine in like a year or 2... but when i have it in planet mode it still blows me away. i walk by it in bot mode like every day and it is always impressive as well even across the house.
Makes sense that cybertron would be as small as our moon; they can get to its core pretty easily even in G1.
Pretty sure it was not that close but being so large it was visible. Everything we see besides the sun and moon is star size. In cybertron cartoon series cybertron is roughly the size of earth but G1 there was billions of 30-ish-foot-tall robots some taller and others smaller all moving about all of that takes requires space. Then add in the theory that junkion is part of cybertron that got blown off from the bottom of the planet and that in itself is considered to be a planet. Another thing is they used high speed shuttles to get to the center of the planet others flew in and keep in mind they fly in space as well. For Ultimate doom i think the animation did not give the perspective justice i will add a pic that gives an idea what Jupiter would look like if it was between us and Mars, so cybertron got placed in our solar system and semi close and even so it caused massive issues but if was like the moon orbit it would have crushed earth within minutes.
The wonky thing is that Cybertron's G1 design also makes it look tiny. Like, you can actually see distinct spires/buildings radiating from its core, and not just indistinct masses. Sure, those buildings/spires are Transformer-scaled, and not human-sized, but Cybertronians aren't that many magnitudes greater in size compared to humans, on average.
Billions of robots? I seem to recall there being evidence that there were more like hundreds or thousands. The Teletraan-2 shorts in Season 3 describe things differently. The Autobots seen on Earth in seasons 1 and 2 are described as "most of the Autobots" from Cybertron in the Autobots short. Kup, Arcee, Springer are described as Autobots who were "reunited" with the main Autobots after adventures "around the galaxy". In the Decepticons short, the Autobots on Earth in the 80s are described as "the remaining Autobot forces" and says the Decepticons were losing the war by "the year 2000" until Megatron became Galvatron. The comics have a point where Primus summons "all Transformers" to Cybertron and it's a crowd of around fifty. I think, from a G1 perspective, we were meant to infer that the Transformers we met were essentially the only Transformers and pains were generally taken to establish new characters as newly created, moreso in the cartoon. But the comics did generally treat the Season 2 cast as being in stasis on the Ark until Simon Furman really started expanding TF lore. It's only in subsequent media that we're presented with all kinds of characters who are presented as always having existed on Cybertron.
If anyone was curious about what happened to that HasLab Unicron testshot, it was me. Full unboxing video on ToyRobot Magazine's facebook page. ToyRobot UNBOXING A Test Shot Transformer | HUGE PROTOTYPE TEST SHOT UNBOXING! You guys aren't ready for what we have to show you. This is probably the most incredible item we've shown to date!... | By ToyRobot Magazine | Facebook
Ha! So, I'm the hippie in the video; I have a condition called Essential Tremors, it's a lot like Parkinson's; I've had it since I was 2 years old; so 38 years now! It's a progressive condition, meaning it gets worse and worse over the years, so it's pretty bad now; good news is, as bad as it looks, it's never really effected my ability to transform toys (except the smallest of pieces).
Ahh man, you're ruining my initial reaction. I just believed you were as fucking excited to mess with that proto, as I was just to see someone messing with that proto! The magic is gone.
