Its kind of the better of 2 evils. An upside down Autobot symbol in car mode would just be weird. Only seeker wings can gwt away with that and even then it looks weird.

 

but they could have just had a flippable panel like with skyfire, one side blank one side symbol

 

Poor color matching should not be expected. Ever. Maybe you don't care that much for how accurately a character is portrayed, but there are plenty of us that do. This release doesn't even have any grey, which is one of Cliffjumper's 3 main colors. He has more grey than black, but here he has none at all.




Not caring sets low expectations for Hasbro because they start to think we don't care than much about colors being right, and organize correctly.

 

I\'d love to see an animation coloring of this starscream. Just like how they did siege megatron and Optimus, I wanna see starscream and maybe another character get recolored with the cell shaded paint 

 

I hear what you are saying, but I feel the original figure on the left looks better, more cohesive etc. Some things are better on paper or in cartoon than in real life, also these figures are homages, not exact reproductions of the animation etc, they are based in it as all things are but not meant as exact copies 1 for 1, in some regards that may be impossible to reproduce as some had crazy unrealistic proportions or transforms etc

 

Your timeline's a little off - Cromar and Hot Shot were revealed and released simultaneously, a bit after Nightbird and Zetar.

 

It'll certainly have resulted in things being rejigged. How embarrassing if Selects Artfire comes out before Inferno!

The ER based run of Selects should be quite interesting, I think. There's some glaringly obvious candidates for the ol' exclusive repaint fodder, such as the aforementioned Artfire, but as to whom out of that pool will actually wind up in Selects?

(i'm not going to wait for you to ask. I didn't get to where I am today by practicing good manners)

Ok, so I think a minor retool of Runamuck to Runabout is the most likely candidate for the Wallgreens exclusive. But then I said that was going to be Trailbreaker before the retail listing for him showed up so...no cassandra am I.

Undeterred, I also predict that those 'Mercenaries' repaints such as Detiritus from Hound and Mudflap from Grapple (and maybe even Lockdown from Wheeljack and Deadlock from Springer) will all be Walmart exclusives. so they're not going to Selects.

If we do get the Coneheads I reckon at least two of the fuckers will be Amazon exclusives. I'm expecting the hinted Quints boxset to be Amazon too.

I'm expecting any redeco of Leaderclass Optimus to be a convention/shared exclusive. They're bound to do some clever reuse of the Modulators, but I'm buggered if I know what (I certainly wouldn't have guessed Powerdasher from Weaponisers)

So what's left?

Hauler, Roadrage (assuming we get a Tracks), Flamewar (from the leaked Arcee), Hubcap, Slicer/Exhaust (can't see us getting both. it's either or), Earthmode TC and Skywarp (if Hasbro have any decency and don't put these out as part of the main retail line), Ghost Starscream, toyhead Bumblebee (if we actually get a Bumblebee)

black and white Astrotrain maybe?

I feel like there's another use lying around for Spinister. I feel Blackout fits better than Whirl or Rotorstorm.

Maybe it's too radical, but there's got to be a second use for this pair somewhere; Beast Wars two-pack featuring Optimus Primal (Apeface) and BW Megatron (Snapdragon)?

Maybe they'll surprise us and give us some more Throttlebots from Runabout/Runamuck mold? Searchlight, Chase, and Freeway seem like the most obvious candidates. Goldbug from Bumblebee might work if they're happy to pay for a new head. Poor old Rollbar and Wideload!

Maybe there'll be a selects release that's just Cliffjumper's shield. That'd be awesome.

 

This is one thing I kind of miss about TFCC. They would more or less show everything they had planed for the next year toward the end of the precising year. I got why Hasbro does not what to "show their hand" but It would be nice if we had at least some idea of what was coming from Selects.

Maybe release two during NY toy fair, reveal two more and tease the rest, with an approximate release schedule.

Artfire is going to be an amazon exclusive with three battle masters, like the Skywarp set, surly you can see the logic in that.

 

Also, they gave him Bumblebee’s arms on a mold that Warden said will never become Bumblebee.

None of us understand the backpack decision entirely.

At the end of the day, I’m willing to take it as an MP23 quality engineered figure (minus a number of accessories) for $20 as an official release.

I would love a 20 minute interview with Warden just about this one figure but I’m not passing on buying it because of unsolved mysteries...

 

I see the logic in it. But if you want to exploit the completist then don’t give them everything in one pack. Like giving us one of Spinisters lads in the Skywarp pack.

 

He could come with Sparks, Pinpointer, and "Stepper" who would be based on Nebulon. Then a Decepticon set could include Runabout, Exhaust and Artfire's Nightstick. With the theme of the two sets being a rescue operation.

 

I always took it to be Hasbro saying, “We’ll eat more of the production and design budget if you stop poaching U.S. buyers with these premium decos.”

And Takara saw the retail numbers and production costs and agreed.

And then it turned out that 30%+ of retail sales in Japan were being resold to Americans and other westerners and the lack of premium decos killed the Japanese scalper market which killed Takara’s retail numbers. And the Japanese buyers themselves were probably ALSO picky and not fond of the muted, battle damaged color schemes and like what I refer to as ice cream colors.

The only colors that belong on a Japanese Transformer, ideally, would also be found in the ice cream selection at a Baskin Robbins catered birthday party. I know this instinctively as someone who imported Takara a lot and I bet it was instinctively what drew in a lot of Japanese buyers too.

The colors of a good Takara release are candy colors. If you don’t have to fight the urge to put it in your mouth, the color scheme won’t appeal to a lot of Takara’s customers.

 

i thought i was slightly off on something but couldnt remember which. i just remember 3 dropping in quick succession around september and that smokescreen was the 6th overall revealed, 3rd revealed for wfc yet numbered 06. there was a good while where we didnt know what 03, 04 or 05 were and i think thats around the time the decision to pull crosshairs was made because thats when the release order started skewing from the reveal order and figure numbers

 

The Modulators and hypothetical leader class MM bases hold the most interest for me in terms of Selects. Not in the sense that there are obvious options for them, but because there can be wildly non-obvious uses for them. This digi, for example, is both out-there and completely sensical:

If Hasbro was inclined to swap factions for each re-use (so we get 3-4 Autobot bases and 3-4 Decepticon bases, depending on how many Modulators we get), they could also go this way:
Ransack (Universe 2003) - Transformers Wiki
or with a generic new Constructicon.

I do hope that Selects give us the other two CDF members, Hauler, and at least one solid Arcee re-use (Lifeline and Flamerwar would both be solid choices).

 

Huh, so  Bombshock is a heavy remold of Greatshot, I see by the legs. Weird why in none of the shots did they rotate the turret. There is a clip showing so it definitely can rotate.

 

I think your thoughts about the modulators are...stimulating. Intensely so. I may need to take five minutes.

And don’t call me surly!

 

Earthrise isn\'t 100% G1 accurate bc it\'s a chug line, his colors aren\'t wrong they are just reflective of more modern versions of the character. That said I am buying him as my g1 mp stand in, if the lack of gray ends up bothering me I\'ll paint it, I imagine if you plan on standing it next to a Bumblebee the gray will help him pop more.

 

I thought about that but didnt really touch on it for two reasons.

1. The transformation most likely wont allow for that feature.
2. The budget doesnt allow it for the figure because of that big cannon and skis to justify it being deluxe price point.

 

It just seems like everyone is nitpicking Cliffjumper to death. Oh he's too small, he partsforms, the colors aren't right. I don't care I love this Cliffjumper, I will hug him and squeeze him and call him George.

 

Welcome to the magic world of "gang molding" where some color accuracy is lost to save money on extra molds. I guess they felt black was needed more than grey for the tires and the budget only allowed 2 colors of plastic. During the previous lines up until POTP, Takara might have painted these. colors up, but at a price. Im all for cartoon accuracy, but within reason. I dont want a carbon copy of poor 1980's animation either. I dont want yellow on my dinobots to represent gold, or ugly light grey to represent silver, or allspark blue to represent translucent glass windows. Just give me what it would be in real life. The grey somewhat falls into this catagory. Im inclined to believe that would have been gunmetal which black is pretty close. I can understand where youre coming from with the red arms. But the arms in red do look better in my opinion. Especially considering the mold itself sports features that are not cartoon accurate due to transformation into a non- cartoon accurate car. (Rather than a ridiculous looking Chibai car)