Wrong thread for the fIrE tRuK nOt FiRe AnT chat. However nobody is going to confuse these two... much.
The two Inferno are fine, they're both red, aggressive and associated with fire I like to think in the cartoon continuity the Predacon is an incarnation of the Autobot, being a Maximal Protoform... Without the Stasis pod damage and Predacon influence, I imagine his personality would have been in line with his predecessor. Much the same way I perceive Fuzor Silverbolt as a descendant of the Concorde, since he knew his name was Silverbolt upon activating.
I'm definitely looking forward to this guy. The car mode is right on the money, and I would probably buy it for that aspect alone. Robot mode is alright, the lack of screen accuracy isn't a huge issue as this design still looks neat. Transformation looks like it'll be interesting too since the chest doesn't look like it's a fake part. I really hope they give nightbird the licensed treatment too.
Looks like a great car-bot (assuming the chest-kibble is real,) and the fact that it looks nothing like he does in the trailer means that the figure won\'t be tainted too much when the movie inevitably sucks. I was worried when I saw Mirage\'s design in the new trailer since his robot mode is just a random jumble of mechanical parts, but it looks like they\'ve gone with a much better design for the toy than they did for the movie.
That is simply incorrect. If it wasn't for Hasbro's Henry Orenstein going to Japan on that fateful day, we wouldn't even be sitting here talking. Hasbro came up with the idea to import Takara's molds at the time, Marvel was hired to create backstories and names/locations, and Hasbro owns the rights to Transformers, lock, stock, and barrel. If they broke off from their partnership with Takara-Tomy tomorrow, they'd have to come up with new designs, but they'd own it. And Takara-Tomy would still have to license Transformers from them. (As they currently do, now.) Much like Hasbro has to license the Bayverse and Knightverse from Paramount and the automotive manufacturers so they can produce the toys. It's all tied up in legalese, but to say Hasbro didn't create Transformers is a complete falsehood.
I am rather fascinated to see the conversion process for this figure, there are a lot of car parts scattered about.
Same as most shellformers. fold limbs into position, encase him in the car shell, and then lay him down on his face.
I mean he wasn't in the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie movie, the Bayverse movies, Bumblebee 2018, or the High Moon Studios games. So unless he shows up in a hypothetical sequel to ROTB I wouldn't get your hopes up.
The problem is that the movie and the main line was supposed to come out a year ago, while the SS figures were supposed to come out now. The movie and the main line got pushed back, but SS being part of a larger line couldn't really just shift around. With the rest of the movie. So the designs these figures were based on, continued to change as the movie was worked on for another year, meaning now we have two different lines of figures releasing at the same time alongside the movie, and neither of them are accurate to the final movie
Y'know, not to crap on the designers because God knows they fight an uphill battle with any movie design (let alone ones for still-in-production films) but if there's going to be blatant inaccuracies anyway why not at least make for a more involved, satisfying transformation? It looks to me like they basically designed it like you said: make a robot, then make a car shell, then break it up into however many pieces needed and hang them wherever. For example, why not actually make his arms part of the vehicle? The doors could actually be the forearm panels, the headlights could actually form the shoulders, etc. It's already not accurate with all the kibble, so why not at least go for something visually appealing and cohesive? Why is every piece of kibble aside from two tiny bits of front and back bumper hanging off and not at least part of the body? Sure you wouldn't have as much sculpting replicating the movie model, but you're already sacrificing accuracy on proportions and kibble. Would the shoulders being chunks of the actual front fenders with the real headlights be any more egregious than the chunks of the front fenders they are now with the fake lights? It just seems rather uninspired.
Sure they legally "own" the brand, but they sure can't manage it much better than WB can for DC. They were effectively just middlemen and lawyers living of the creative energy of others. Are we going to suggest WB's truly the creators of DC and Charlton through their buyouts and corporate shenanigans. Hasbro's only creative action was hooking up Takara and Marvel, which wasn't a spontaneous innovation since Marvel was already working with Japanese companies such as Toei.
The toys really make him looks like Jazz, wonder if he's gonna be Jazz before suddenly changed to Mirage in the movie.
