This is what I get for skimming. That said, I now place bets he's going to be a retool of Armada Starscream.

 

A “metal hawk”.

 

Oh this is some much needed good news!

 

if metalhawk is the shell with a robot face, ill be disappointed. that would just be pussying out honestly, but its probably what they went with.


best case scenario is the g1 toy but with more articulation, but id accept the inner robot from the anime. at least that means a 3P can make a shell.

 

I kinda feel were gonna get a decent main shell bot, with maybe a mini inner bot alla Pointblanks targermasters, I wouldn't love it, but could be one way of doing the classic design with modern budget, plus he's the only voyager to do the pretender gimmick so he could do it differently to the current deceptions

 

In my experience, while Disney protects its IP very carefully, they've never been hardcore about leaks. Now, sure, Kevin Feige cares but he doesn't tell licensees anything he wants to protect from leaking in the first place.

Hasbro gets, essentially, the concept art for the stuff used in trailers. They've routinely been out of the loop on movie spoilers. Heck, so was Marvel TV.

When leaks do happen, they tend to stay up.

I honestly think Viacom is the big media company that cares about leaks. They've been threatening everyone with legal action who shows merchandise tie-in art for TMNT Mutant Mayhem or copies of the retailer order sheet for the toys. Which technically is copyrighted but likely protected by fair use and copyrighted by the toy licensee, not Nickelodeon. It's positively tonedeaf how litigious they are about this because many of us rely on leaks to budget and plan for purchases and the window to the product release is fairly small.

That said, it's the same company as Paramount so they may REALLY care about RotB and D&D Honor Among Thieves leaks.

There's a great irony there because there are probably thousands of so-called Star Trek leaks every year posted by disgruntled fans that are far more damaging than real leaks would be and Paramount does nothing there because there's no copyright violation in publishing lies and negative rumors and defamation suits are hard.

So I could post bad stick figures and claim that's the new TMNT movie but if I post actual designs by professional artists then they'll yank that down.

I don't think retailers care. As near as I can tell: nearly all of our leaks come FROM retailers (or stolen factory samples) and retailers don't particularly care about and aren't particularly good at the release of timed information. Walmart would put Star Wars figures on the shelf whenever they get around to it, early or late, if not for George Lucas micromanaging that with a contract that has fines and penalties for early releases and typically has a set date where they HAVE TO put out new movie merch. And Disney kinda sorta kept doing that.

I think Hasbro's marketing department cares more than anybody else does in general and they're essentially rolling with leaks as part of the reality now by showing us renders and concept figures.

 

"pussying out"

i just find the train of thought of "them doing this makes them COWARDS" quite funny. because it's ridiculous

 

So while I am definitely part of the minority that likes the IDW design, that is almost certainly not what we’re getting with this new toy. The only question I have now is whether or not he’ll do the current Pretender thing and transform from a robot mode that looks somewhat like his outer shell into a vehicle that resembles the one the inner bot became or if he’ll forgo the outer shell thing altogether? I feel with Metalhawk it could go either way as there’s precedent for both.

 

I'm guessing the whole thing is a similar situation to the Core Decepticon Pretenders.

Robot mode might be entirely based off the shell (albeit with a robot face, obviously); the vehicle mode might be based on the inner robot's Cybertronic fighter jet mode.
Now that would be cool imo, and I think the robot mode would also have elements from the inner bot, like the wings.

 

Transformers Leaks & Rumors Reveal Possible 2023 Releases - Polar Claw, Guardian, More
Please @Jtprime17 can you confirm or contradict the new products in this list?

 

I'm no leaker but there's so much wrong in the list, I actually laughed while reading.

 

it would, though. if they're doing autobot pretenders, they have to commit to the human faces.

 

I'd be happy with metalhawk being a retool of jhiaxus. Any armada starscream re uses better come In blue  

 

I love spindly IDW Metalhawk but no way this isn't based on the G1 version. I really don't know what to expect as far as merging the shell and core robot though. A lot of Pretenders' core robot forms were kind of indistinct but Metalhawk's definitely stands out, partly due to the gooold, and both forms are about as prominent as each other.
My preference would be basically the chest up being the shell detailing and the rest being based on the core robot, the gooold torso is extremely important.
And he'd better not have a goofy ahh human face.

 

Blaster is nice, but I couldn't bring myself to double dip on SG Blaster, but if Twincast had a new cassette I'd consider it.

 

Honestly they wouldn't be cowards, they'd actually have taste and sense if they ommited the human faces from new Autobot pretender figures. As that would be kinda weird and stupid to do for a new Metalhawk. There's no reason to commit, it turned out bad when the Transformers collectors Club tried to do that with a Metalhawk figure

Especially since he's a pretender character who's inner robot is more well known than the pretender shell. It would be better to just have the inner robot itself or have the inner robot with some of the pretender armour incorporated.

 

they shouldn't change to suit the wants of people who don't like them to begin with.

 

Good point. It's a bad idea to make figures that'll sell to broader audiences.

Worry not, I'm sure you'll hate whatever they do. Regardless.

 

I’ve been wondering if Metalhawk will be a Jhiaxus retool because Legacy Jhiaxus’s forearms resemble Metalhawk’s a bit more than they do Jhiaxus’s actual G2 comic depiction.

 

I'd happily buy metalhawk's inner robot as a voyager, like the toon design. It's not a massive ask