So is the Fossilizer near the Croc/Postosuchus supposed to be Vertebreak? If so what's up with the chest and that weird blue light?

So we have a styracosaurus, sabertooth tiger, and croc/posto hinted at.

 

@Apollux The big splash art that showed off the Ark had Primal wearing a fossilizer. What I wanted to as you is about the red chest you see beneath the ribs on Primal. Is that a part of the Fossilizer that he's wearing, is that part of Primal himself? I remember talks of the beast guys having some parts be removable to make way for the armor up gimmick, is his chest an example of that?

 

Hope this helps. The deluxe Fossilizers definitely break up into pieces, but I'm not sure about the Core Class one or if any other future size class Fossilizers will be able to break apart. It looks like that red part on the chest is part of the fossilizer while the red below the sabertooth tiger skull is part of Primal's knee. I could be wrong though.

Do no figures in this line come with blast effects?

 

I know that the Fossilizers break apart, but I remember there were talks.of the other guys being able to take their own armor off (a la MP Beast Megs) to expose Modulator/Weaponizer ports to integrate the gimmicks

 

So I’ve been thinking.... in both Earthrise and Siege they had at least 1 repaint/remold of each Weaponizer/modulator mold as either a selects or store exclusive release. So if the trend continues what do y’all think they’ll repaint/remold the Fossilzers into?

An idea I had today for one was the following, but I’m sure I’m not the first one that came up with this idea.

Anyways after today’s reveals I was looking at Paleotrex and thinking to my self... “You know what would be a pretty sweet character they could remold this guy into, AOE Scorn!”

The AOE Dinobots all kind of had a Skeletal vibe going on with them. If they could remold Paleotrex into a spinosaurus fossil and paint it into either a nice gunmetal or Scorn’s AOE toy colors (red and Orange), I’d buy it.  

 

Oh okay. I heard Megatron can do that, but that was probably pure speculation.

 

I’d say either a metal terminator endo skeleton repaint or a dinozaurs homage

 

So I posted a worse version of this in the other thread.

Let's speculate a bit about Kingdom as a line by comparing it to Siege.

Siege has:
16 deluxes (Crossairs and Ironide + Sideswipe and Red alert + Prowl and Barricade all retools)
7 voyagers (2 of which, Starscream and Thundercracker, shared the same mold)
4 leaders (1 of which, Cybertron Optimus Prime, was a half retool of Ultra Magnus... and Astrotrain may have been brought forward from Earthrise)

Earthrise was a screwed up line as discused earlier in the thread. Some of it was shunted to late Siege apparently (Astrotrain maybe, Spinster). Some of it probably got moved to Netflix Wave 2 (Bumblebee, Soundwave, Arcee) and Amazon exclusive (the ER Ratchet/Ironhide mold) because of Covid-19 disruption.

With the now known schedule start of Kingdom on 2/1/2021, it looks like the tail of the core Earthrise line will be very short (so pre-order on the internet!). So we'll base this speculation off of a "normal" line in a "normal year" of which Siege most fits the bill.



So what I did in the above list was the following:
-Assumed repacks are in Red
-Characters we know from art are in blue
-Speculation is in yellow.

Aside from wave 1, I blocked out "imaginary waves" in boxes so we can get a sense of what this would look like when compared to Siege. I also split up Arcee and Wheeljack into two seperate waves, like Hasbro does for Repacks.

So what do we know?

Core
Core is new, so we know nothing about this other than it is replacing the lower end of Micromasters and Battlemasters, which look to be coming to an end (not surprising - they shelf warmed hard). All we know is that there is an Alligator fossilizer in the art today that looks to be core sized. Could be deluxe though. I have speculation on what later Core releases could be at the bottom. But it is also assumed that Core is designed to allow for interaction with the upcoming Titan class Ark at something closer to scale. So Megatron and Starscream are likely on the way for that purpose, among others. Like old Legends it's going to double-dip in purpose.

Deluxe
This is the meat of the line. We know wave 1. The leaks allow us to fill in most of the rest of 4 waves. And this is kind of the problem. With the earlier leak, we already had 16 deluxes including the two presumed ER repacks (Arcee, Wheeljack), enough for 5 waves like siege (4,4, 3,3,2 figures respectively). The surprise image of Gears today adds a 17th deluxe. And where there Gears, Swereve will probably not be far behind (maybe here, Netflix, an Amazon exclusive, or Pulse). However another way of counting is this: Wave 3 of siege had only 3 new molds and a repack/double pack of someone, as did Wave 4. Wave 5 of siege only had two new figures - Spinster who was brought forward from Earthrise, and Crosshairs, which was a minor retool of Ironhide - but the case included 2 repacks. At the time Hasbro also shipped full 4 figure cases of Reflector/Refraktor in order to facilitate troop building and making of the camera.

So the list we got includes 16 deluxes if we count Arcee And Wheeljack as "new figures" rather than the "wave 3 / Wave 4" repack figures. If we exclude them, then Gears is only the 15th figure, which would make someone - Swerve maybe (if he isn't sent to Pulse, Amazon or Netflix) - the 16th. This all, again, assumes the exact same production of Siege.

I also threw in there for just discussions sake Tarantulas. The secondary protagonist of Beastwars is odly missing, made stranger by the fact that he and Blackarachnia would easily share engineering, and eyeballing it probably about half her parts. It's strange he's nowhere to be scene. But that being said, his season 1 design kind of sucks, and he really distinguished himself in Seasons 2 and 3 of the show, in which he had his Transmetal body. Most fiction also adopted spins on Transmetal body for this reason. Doing a 50% retool of an existing figure is right up Hasbro's alley nowdays, so his exclusion given his prominence is strange.

Voyagers
Siege had Voyagers in the 5 waves - 2,2,1,1,1 respectively. Wave 4, Thundercracker, was a redeco of Starscream. Wave 3,4 and 5 all had single figures and a repack of another Voyager (Megatron was one of them). Wave 5, Apeface, was believed to have been brought forward from Earthrise. We'll still operate off 7 Voyagers though.

The leaked list gave us Optimus Primal, Cyclonus, Rhinox, Inferno (G1), Dinobot and Scourge. Scourge has since been confirmed to be part of Studio Series '86, so that was a mistake. G1 Inferno was always assumed to be coming because of Grapple. Rhinox was in the list, both pieces of art. Also of note, at the edge of the picture to the left was Soundwave. This may have been just for artistic license, given that his Netflix figure will be on the shelf at the same time.

Today we got Polar Claw, who was a surprise of sorts. Polar Claw makes a sort of sense. A "Bear Transformer" is sort of obvious but surprisingly not done. None of the voyagers really give themselves to easy retools, such as the very economical reuse of the Megatron engineering and parts between Siege and ER (and 35th, and Netflix, and Selects). You can't retool Rhinox into Dinobot. But I think you could do a 60% retool / reshell of Optimus Primal into Polar Claw. Looking at the stills of primal, if you transformed some of the parts a little bit different and reshelled his ape parts... yeah, there could be a bear. What got me thinking this is that if you look at his drawing, his chest very much has the "prominence" of Optimus Primal's classic design. So that's my speculation: Polar Claw is a retool of Optimus Primal. Bear not munkey.

Now assuming all that is right and assuming the numbers are exactly the same as Siege, we'd be missing Voyager #7. This may not exist because the 7th voyager in Siege was Apeface. If it did exist and it's a late-in-line release (let's say, Wave 5, with Polar Claw Wave 4), obvious choices are Beast Wars Inferno (named Scavenger maybe?), a Transmetal-ish Tarantulas (unlikely), a redeco of Netflix Soundwave into Soundblaster (which would go a LONG way to explaining how a major the new retool found its way to the exclusive repaint line - it's the "prepaint" of the intended Kingdom release, and would explain his presence here).

Some are saying there could be an ER Starscream repack here.

So there could be 6 voyagers, and that's it. Or 7. Who knows. But I'm gonna guess 7. And you made me put money on it, I'd go with Souldblaster, in the Netflix Soundwave mold.

Leaders:
Leaders are the most expensive main figure Generations releases and they are inconsistent sellers. Some move fast (ER: Optimus Prime). Others are mega shelfwarmers (Studio Series Scavenger is doing that right now. Also Siege Shockwave late wave repacks). The dirty little secret of Leaders is that even with a price and quality increase the past few years, Hasbro is doing less new tooling of them than ever before. Siege had 4 leaders - Ultra Magnus, Shockwave in wave 1, Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime in Wave 2, and Astrotrain in Wave 3. Ultra Magnus and Shockwave were all new. Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime was a 40% retool of Ultra Magnus (most of the trailer, none of the cab). Astrotrain may have been brought forward from Earthrise and was re-released in ER Wave 1 much to map collector's annoyance.

As is, let's say we got 3.5 leaders in Siege.

Earthrise was worse. We got the all new mold Optimus Prime most notably. Most of the $50 you put into him went into the cab, which was engineered at above-voyager parts count and engineering (let's say, that of what would be a a $40 figure's, kind of like how SS'86 Hot Rod is a $30 "super deluxe"). He got a a serviceable trailer. Astrotrain was unchanged from Siege. And lastly we got Doubledealer, and all new mold. With Earthrise, we got 2 new molded leaders. Yikes.

So what do we know of Kingdom's leaders? Beast Wars Megatron is aready know. As is a repack of ER: Optimus Prime (which makes sense, because he's the face of any line) in Wave 1. Galvatron and Ultra Magnus are also coming. Galvatron is probably going to be something like Astrotrain/Shockwave/Optimus Prime all rolled in one - an over engineered super-Voyager with some addon parts. Ultra Magnus is presumed to be a modified, de-cybertroned version of Siege Ultra Magnus's Cab with all new armor.

This would get us two new molds and one heavy retool with one repack, so let's say 2.5. This lands Kingdom between Earthrise and Siege. And we have no reason to expect a 5th leader class.


Speculation - Fans Choice figure leftovers and troop building.
With Tracks showing up in Kingdom, the last three men standing for the last few rounds of 2018 and later Fans choice are Gnaw, Needlenose and Shrapnel.

A deluxe Gnaw - a larger sharkticon - was on the leaked list of Studio Series '86. So let's cross him off for now. That leaves us with Needlenose and Shrapnel.

I would not be surprised if Needlenose shows up as a late round deluxe. We don't know what post-Kingdom's direction will be, but Hasbro seems to be just going all in on anything. Per the discussion above, if Hasbro plans to make Gears Deluxe #15, then Needlenose could be #16 and Swerve could be booted to Netflix, an Amazon exclusive set, or (most likely) Pulse.

Sharpnel is pretty important. Why? Troop building. Hasbro has come to troop building. They love it because they make the mold once and you buy it 5, 10, 25 times. So much of their purchasing strategy for hardcore fans revolves around troop building, across every line. Power Rangers does putties. Marvel Legends does Hydra (and just put up Hellfire Guards for $15 in a simple paper box, not even a mailer). You've been doing it for years in Transformers with Titans Return Gnaw and Scourge, with the Insecticon releases, and perhaps most notably with the the Seige Reflector mold (which you bought 3 of), and Siege Voyager Seeker mold, which if you "collected them all", you have 7 of (Starscream, Skywarp, THundecraker, Rainmaker trio, Hotlink). Think about that. They got you to buy a $30 mold, 7 times. Earthrise has allicons, dudes that form bridges and shields, and Quintessons.

Some may call this cynical business, but I don't, because Hasbro has no shortage of releases of new molds released regularly. Rather these are long standing characters (more or less) in a franchise that very simply, has "troops". It could be worse. It could be Star Wars and we could be talking Clone Troopers.

Every line since Titans Return did a large degree of Troop building at various price points. But so far nothing in kingdom gives itself much to troop building. What gives?

My thought? It's gonna be Core class Insecticons - starting with Shrapnel that has shared engineering with eventual Bombshell and Kickback releases.

Consider the current Troop building approach. They get you at a <$10 price point with a battlemaster for making a road. They get you at a $20 price point with a deluxe Allicon. And they get you at a $30 price point with a seeker or a quintesson.

Fast forward to 2021/s combo of Kingdom and SS'86, which will be on the shelves at the same time (so much as we know).
They're gonna get you at the $20 price point (well $23) with Gnaw/Sharkticon a a deluxe mold. You will buy that 6-9 times. They're gonna get you again at the $30 price point with Scourge, who you'll buy 4 of (1 for Scourge + 3 sweeps). Sound familiar so far? Now we need the $10 price point. And while an army of Rattraps sounds horrifying, I think this is where the Insecticons make the most sense, especially with the "beast" theme of Kingdom. Prepare your wallets. And lament buying those Legends Sharkticons and TR Scourages.


So that's my speculation - informed I think - of how this line will more or less play out for Kingdom. Now here is some mindless dreaming on my part below:

Selects/Exclusives
- Swerve will be a Selects retool of Gears like Hubcap was to Cliffjumper.
- Polar Claw ill be redeco'd into a Black Bear exclusive, probably for Amazon.
- Dinobot will get a $40 or $50 release as Selects or an Exlusive, redeco'd as "Code of Hero" Dinobot with extra guns, and a metallic paint job that's been shot to shit.
- Starscream will get a "Ghost of Starscream" transluscent redeco of his Voyager mold (like was do 10 times for the deluxe predecessor) exclusive somewhere. There will probably also be a "Decepticon Emperor Starscream" with crown, shoulderpats and cape exclusive as part of Studio Series '86 at some point.
- Ultra Magnus will get a Delta Magnus redeco somewhere. Maybe selects. Maybe Amazon Prime Day 2021.
- Dinobot will get a Selects or exclusive "Beast Wars Grimlock" new head retool / redeco.
- Scorponok will get a "Sandstorm" desert repaint.
- Rattrap will get a Packrat Selects redeco.
- They're going to come up with some second usage of that BW Megatron mold. Somehow.
- Toy-color / Marvel color Galvatron will happen.

 

Rodimus does

 

Has gears been cancelled already?

 

About the only thing I would add is, assuming it hasn't been canceled like Polar Claw is rumored to be, there are hints in the poster of a sabertooth tiger Fossilizer.

 

Rodimus does. More proof that he's the commander for this line.

Sadly  

Still going through the 5 stages of grief. Currently at the bargaining step right now.

 

A lot of this rings true.

That said, one of our credible leakers implied we'd be seeing a lot of Shattered Glass.

I think there's a decent chance of the Selects lineup hedging its bets by going back through WFC and mining vehicle modes.

 

So how does the railgun look? Does it resemble anything in the shows?

 

How do we know? Kind of annoys me when we're getting things like the fossilisers

 

Apollux said that both polar claws and gears didn’t make the cut.

Here’s the quote:

 

I mean I posted that idea literally on the same page of this thread.

 

Maybe not. I have a feeling there might be another trilogy coming after WFC that could give us the leftover figures.

 

How do we know Gears is cancelled?

 

Apollux said he was cut