You can tell Hot Rod is a great figure by how we've had to resort to whipping out paint swatches to figure out if we like it or not.

 

I used to love stuff like this when Transformers Alternators/Binaltech was out.

 

Absolutely. I love the red version, but would be happy to buy additional repaints. Looking forward to Nitro Convoy, as well

That’s a weird argument to make when the designer of the toy has said he wanted it magenta but management made him change it.

 

gosh I hope that isn't the case, these behind the scenes tidbits are fascinating...

 

One of their earlier posts talked about how the goal is to provide more insight in to the design process going forward for those who are curious. Nothing nefarious about it.

 

Yeah, clearly they've heard all the people complaining about design choices based purely on personal opinion and conjecture. So now they are actually telling us not only why they made certain decisions, but about the process in general.
Glad to see these, keep 'em coming!

 

I don\'t think there\'s anything untoward about this - it\'s fan engagement content. There have been multiple discussions in the replies about things they\'re explicitly not allowed to discuss; upcoming product releases is an obvious one, but more interestingly, they cannot answer your questions about modifying toys. Someone asked about what paints to use and got shot down very very nicely.

For my money, this is preferable to the livestreams where they read off some canned copy about stuff that was leaked two weeks earlier.

 

These are finalized and released items. It's basically the equivalent of a DVD commentary track or something now. The product is already out there.

They definitely aren't supposed to be talking about stuff that hasn't been formally revealed yet, and AFAICT, they haven't - and I think Mark Maher explicitly said he couldn't talk about future product offerings, although he has sometimes replied to people with "great idea!" which you can take as you like.

 

Heck, on the Friday stream a few weeks back one of the designers revealed Core Spike by accident and the Marketing person was like "nope nope that wasn't for today..." and they all had a good laugh about it.

So it's not even the design team's decision as to what gets shown off and when. Which is why there's always a marketing person on the stream (or in the room) to help guide the discussion and make sure they don't stray too far off topic or say anything they weren't supposed to about upcoming stuff.

Because the design team also just has whatever they're working on in front of them when they're streaming from home and lord knows it's not always just the stuff they're showing off on any given day.

 

I would love a full-on uncensored talk from them about what actually goes on behind the scenes there, who they push for, thought processes and the like (though I realise that could never happen until they left Hasbro, alas!)

Even from hearing things today like Evan wanting to make Hot Rod Magenta and the way the unpaintable parts on him had to be yellow was broken down for everyone was really great.

 

Appreciate the insights and perspectives like these. I feel a compendium is coming or atleast in consideration. SS86 Hotrod/Kingdom Rodimus Prime, from the voting in TFW2005 for one of the better toys (top ~5) released last year are a testament to these toys.

 

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Why is this guy so accurate while the Dinobots are nowhere near their movie appearance?

 

“Nowhere near” is quite the hyperbolic statement.

 

They're not as off as Coronation Starscream, but compared to Scourge, Hot Rod, Jazz, Perceptor, and Wreck-Gar I find they don't even look like they're from the same continuity.

 

Probably because the Dinobots are characters that had absolutely shitty and ugly animation models, and thus had to be softly redesigned to have more modernized visual appeal. Most of the movie's cast are significantly more traditionally attractive than this... thing's robot mode.

 

Speak for yourself I think they look great. This is Studio Series 86. It says The Transformers The Movie on the box, the idea is to look like the movie.

 

That is a "you" problem, I fear. Clearly the people in charge of the toy design work thought the cartoon designs were bad, clearly that clashed with your personal OCD as you put it yourself, but they do not in any way go against what the Studio Series aims for. Studio Series featured multiple toys that are not accurate to the animation model within the movie, be it due to specific design choices Hasbro wanted to make (see: Thundercracker, copter Dropkick) or the mere fact that they were unable to get the rights for certain vehicles.
In the same way some Bay bots took liberties, Grimlock is a 86 case where liberties were taken, but he still fits with what the line is and the inclusion of Wheelie shows he really is a representation of the movie appearance.

 

Gnaw/Sharlticon updated

Hello and happy friday to everyone where it is currently friday!

Sorry about the delays on updates, just been a rather busy week.

So next up we have SS86-08 Gnaw!
I guess technically this is just a Sharkticon but we called them "Gnaw" because of the history of the toys.

Worked on this character with Hasui san (the living transformers legend!) who you can really see took the reins on this figure. I always look forward to seeing his design sketches because the details he pumps in just look so natural. He did a fantastic job of referencing the Floro Dery sketches and transferring some of that greeble detail over to the final toy.

We bumped this guy up to DLX scale to give us enough room to really nail his conversion(and we even had room at the end to add in his Blaster from the g1 toy!). The antenna on the shark mode had to be removed due to thickness and flexibility of plastic but I still think it reads as an iconic Sharkticon.

The only issue we ran into was the robot eyes had to be sunken back in the head for some reason that I can't remember. I believe there was an issue we were running into when we made the first physical model so the eyes where then pushed further back into the head. Bit of background on Transformer head designs, on the DLX and bigger figures the head of the robot is usually 2 or more pieces. Normally, it's just a front and back piece that then encloses on a ball joint for the neck. The eyes for the robot mode are usually on the back piece of the head so that they're easier to paint without having to worry about over-spray on the face. Then of course, their are a few figures that have light piped eyes so they're their own unique piece.

But other than that, I love our little army builder figure. I think he even works well with the previous core/legends scale versions so you can make your swarm come in all sizes!

Do you all have a favorite army builder character you wish we would do more of? Let me know what you think! Hope you all have a good weekend.