Wheeljack could be retooled into Backstreet if they don't have the budget to give Backstreet his own mold.

 

Hopefully, he'll be as big and as hollow as possible.

 

That's how we wanted it!
First the bird please, then the leopard.

 

THIS

 

Slicer is still my most wanted Wheeljack redeco.
But I'll take a stilt-less Lockdown and a Sunstreaker to complete my Lambo trio obviously.

And if they can use WJ to create Backstreet I'll buy that in an instant.

 

If you want the skylynx to be sold as two commanders you kinda gotta realize what the fuck are you gonna do when it’s just the lynx component? It’s a freezer block. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty sure most customers don’t wanna buy an 80 dollar figure that turns into a rectangle and only can work if you spend another 80
Just food for thought, maybe if they turn the block into a transport carrier for micromasters maybe that could work? But I can’t see much in the realms of “playability” for a lynx that turns into a freezer block by himself I feel like people are neglecting the fact of “how do you sell a cat that turns into a freezer block for 80 dollars”

 

Flip out the lynx head and give him some guns, boom you’ve got a thunder tank  

 

I was gonna say he can actually be used as an ice pack but this works too. Sometimes scale shouldn’t be the primary focus....because only a 3rd party company can sell a lynx freezer block. Just a lynx by himself (is it himself? How the hell does the two parts of sky and lynx work? Are they two separate guys who link together or Is it like a duocon but with bot modes?) doesn’t really seem that safe to Be sold individually at retail. Also what the hell do you name both parts? I don’t think you can trademark sky or lynx,

 

Don't go breaking my heart. That would have to be larger than life.

 

I love the idea of “alternate transformations” like having a mold transform into two separate bot modes to accommodate two character, guzzle and warpath could probably do this, one where the tank turret becomes the chest while on the other the turret is on the back And a separate part becomes the chest

 

I think they did this with the Universe Sideswipe and Sunstreaker mold


Edit: and RTS Tracks' legs transform a bit differently from Generations Wheeljack's

 

The idea of Skylynx’s scale relies on the assumption that the Dinobots or Predaking are being drawn in scale chart scale.

The Lynx portion appears as a large Voyager-y scale in Five Faces of Darkness and Return of Optimus Prime.

Likewise TFTM and S3 VERY consistently make Grimlock smaller than he is in S1-2. Whenever you see Grimlock next to Skylynx, keep in mind that Kup is around Grimlock’s height and Optimus Prime is around the same height as either individual Skylynx section.

I’m all for being a scale pedant but I think you have to take into account some of the following:

Skylynx had no official chart entry.

Combiners are almost never depicted at their weird mass shifting UP scale chart height. They are almost always depicted at the size of a Combiner Wars combiner in animation. (And frequently depicted nonsensically even larger in comics.)

Grimlock shrunk starting with TFTM. He is around Kup’s height in dinomode and he only enters robot mode once. He appears to be a small Voyager in Dinomode and a middling height Deluxe in robot mode. The other Dinobots also shrink and seldom appear.

Skylynx and Predaking aren’t rivals. That’s fanon. They fought once, period, in a fight where their scales fluctuated but where Skylynx seemed to occupy slightly more volume than Predaking’s torso.

Skylynx’s neck and tail vary wildly in length.

In general, the two halves are shown shorter than the combined mode and the neck and tail get much longer (around 3x as long) when the halves combine. There’s a pretty solid opening for Hasbro to make the toy feature insertable extensions.

If nearly 2/3rds of Skylynx’s height is his neck, he doesn’t need a lot of physical volume to be very tall.

 

So you are saying that during the preproduction phase of the cartoon, then and now, no offical scale chart for Sky Lynx exists anywhere on Earth at all?

 

Sky Lynx is NOT Predakings rival? There is more evidence FOR than against, plus its possible to have more than one rival, in the Japanese Universe, Raiden is Predakings rival, many pit the Dinobots as Devastators rival based on the movie, Omega is his rival based on one episode, one episode, one scene, it doesn't take much to establish a rival but with PK and SL, we have years of material, Art work, toy commercials, 3rd party, all pitting Sky Lynx as Predakings rival.

 

It would appear that none exists.

He also seems to have at least 3 different character models in the cartoon.

I know with TFTM characters that they tended to have 2 designs each that got mixed up but my inclination with Broadside, Skylynx, and a few others that the animation studios were probably just provided with toy photos or boxed art with no guidance on how to interpret that for animation.

There is no indication of a model ever having been drafted for Skylynx. It seems reasonable to think that the bulk of S3 characters had no model sheets and the studios had to wing it on drawing them.

I know Sparkplug Witwicky was in some S3 scripts and he was removed because the studios had zero reference for how to draw him in 2005 form. Working directly off the toys for newer characters doesn’t seem far off from that.

 

If you google traditional animation, the animation process or watch videos on how animation comes into play, they start out on paper and 99% of shows in the preproduction stages have character charts and scales, at the very least they have character models and scales, you can't animate without a base model even if the size of said model changes in terms of animation frame to frame. There is all manner of information on this subject, typically, you can not animate without preproduction materials thus its illogical to say there is no character chart anywhere in the world, all offical data is not available to the public but obviously 3rd party companies have managed to get their hands on it as their duos are in perfect scale to each other based on consistent animation depictions and other material. the original G1 toys were near perfect scale
Somehow MMC got it perfect
And where ever this art is from, they've got it near perfect also, there are dozens of images and media that depict this scale, I've given 3 examples, my point with that is that while a fan may not be able to produce it, there must be some official reference out there even if in a Hasbro vault or Hasbro reference guide book or manuscript etc.

Just because we dont have one, doesnt mean none exists anywhere on Earth.

 

I think part of the reason for S3’s inconsistency is that they used a handful of studios and didn’t create or supply organized reference material.

Did AKOM have a Skylynx model they drafted? Probably. Maybe. But I don’t think they were given a production bible and I think they were more or less forced to approach Skylynx like any incidental character.

What you’re describing is an organized process that is how things should work.

Ideally a comic book has character model sheets going in and the artist is given complete issue scripts, either full scripts or a plot summary. That has frequently not been the case though. Some of Stan Lee’s scripts were 10 minute phone calls with nothing ever printed. Alan Moore remarkably didn’t plan Watchmen very carefully and improvised much of the story and would give handfuls of pages to a taxi driver who delivered them to Dave Gibbons as he finished them.

Most of the humans on Transformers don’t have model sheets. One animator started drawing them in a scene and other animators copied them but there are no turnarounds or scale charts.

Orion Pax’s model sheet was an unused Ultra Magnus design for the in-production movie. As I understand it, Hasbro initially wanted all new designs but somebody freaked out over the tooling cost and Powered Convoy was used as Ultra Magnus’ model to save money on toy tooling. The decision not to use Diaclone colors was in the middle of production hence there are trailers in the PC/Delta Magnus color scheme. With Ultra Magnus’ intended model no longer in use and with Orion Pax lacking a model, the Marvel folks faxed a draft Ultra Magnus design sheet over and basically said, “Color him like Optimus Prime.”

 

It might be more accurate to say that one isn't available.

This post, which I've linked to before when talking about the ol' scale thang, gives the clearest understanding of how well both we and the Hasbro design team can apply scale. As that post details, the late season 2/Season 3 bots who didn't appear in the movie, such as Sky Lynx and the '86 Combiners, do not appear on any of the available scale charts. There are, of course, character model sheets available and the majority, if not all, of these have been published in Jim Sorensen's 'Ark' books.

So the design team have good reference material for the likes of Sky Lynx, but nothing that definitively shows his height in relation to others. It feels like John Warden has provided a get out for this, with his reference to mass shifting and Sky Lynx.

The argument that Sky Lynx and Predaking are rivals is...kinda tricky. I mean, I could argue that Skywarp and Jazz are rivals because of that iconic tussle in the opening credits to the '84 cartoon, and I know that people would arch their eye at me. But if I said that Hound and Ravage were rivals I feel like I'd get a lot more supportive nods. I mean, for me an old 80's UK comic head that didn't see much of the cartoon as a kid, I don't really acknowledge Omega Supreme and Devastator as rivals in the first place and it's always been Predacons vs Dinobots in my household. So there's a definite level of subjectivity on the whole 'rivals' thing. Seeing as the Constructicons played such an integral part in Omega's origin story, I can see why Warden and co would want to play up to that. There's not the same intimate connection between Skylynx and Predaking.

However, my thoughts and feelings on the subject, like everyone else's, are pretty much irrelevant. If Hasbro acknowledge the link and rivalry then they might scale. If not then they won't. With the near confirmation that Skylynx is coming in at Commander class and Warden's 'get out clause' that he's a mass shifter, my read is that the two characters won't scale as well as Omega and Devastator did. But I've been wrong plenty of times before. I look forward to the first Skylynx reveals, if on;y so we can put this particular debate to rest, because man...we've really driven this into the ground.

 

I mean, if he can be a playset for Micromasters then I'd certainly buy him. But then the problem is if Sky Lynx is two separate Commander class figures, instead of two smaller figures in a single Commander Class release, I would likely waste $ to "complete" the two components.

Thinking about it now, if Sky Lynx is going to be in scale with Predaking, maybe Hasbro is going to do a repeat of Titans Return and give us two Titan class figures for Earthrise?

 

Nice companion pieces for Scorponok as well.