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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 17:22:13 GMT -5
The coverage continues! Click here for a full comprehensive gallery of images from then panel, featuring the first official look at Omega Sentinel, as well as the upcoming Wal-Mart exclusive Piranahking Universe gestault. Read on for the full report. Updated - Info regarding the Online Collector's Panel and unused mold fan's choice toy.
Movie News - Not much here. The movie will not stick to any one continuity, and will pull from the best the Transformers brand has had to offer for the past 20 years. Prime, however, will be a truck ... and not a monkey.
Energon - Omega Sentinel, a repaint of Energon Omega Supreme based on the G1 guard sentinel scheme, will be released later in the year. This repaint will be featured on the Energon show as the troops of Omega Supreme. Energon Starscream was show in his G1 style paint job ... the previous battle damage on this mold has been corrected as Starscream is no longer a ghost. The Alpha-Q toy was shown as well. This toy does not transform but features a rolling base as well as attacking tentacles and ports for Energon weapons. The faces do however change.
Alternators - Tracks has been changed to blue, due to paint issues surrounding the yellow plastic and the interior paint. Meister and Swindle where shown officially. Bumblebee is among the many possible characters being explored as possible future Alternators.
Store Exclusives - The largest surprise of the panel was the unvieling of the Wal-Mart exclusive Piranahking Universe gestault set. This is a repaint of G1 Piranacon INCLUDING the 6th member. Scalor (named "Archerbot" at the panel, has had name complications and may need to be renamed. The K-Mart exclusive Swat team was shown, and their backstory revieled ... they are a special ops team assembled by Prime as a Swat-style force on Cybertron. The Smokescreen vs. Ransack set will be released, as will the rest of the Battle in a Box sets, at secondary chain such as Walgreens, Cosco, Meijer's, and Sam's Club.
Online Collectors PanelHasbro will bring an online collectors panel to the community sometime in the fall. The first order of business for this panel will be the chosing of the first ever fan-chosen toy. A number of unused concepts and ideas will be posted, and the fans will be able to choose their favorite concept to work into the current line.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:42:33 GMT -5
Ok because of the length of the Allspark Writeup I have to break it up into sections. To see it in one post go here. boards.allspark.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=50058 . This is a more detailed writeup. Enjoy. Movie: - They are looking to combine the best parts of Transformers. It hasn't been decided to base it on the G1 cartoon for sure, but the "truck people" will be happy, basically. - Other than that it's way too early to know much of anything, but next year they expect to have a lot to reveal.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:42:49 GMT -5
Cartoon - Energon: - The last 13 episodes of will be called the Powerlinx Battles. They will heavily feature battles between the two gestalts, Devestator and Superion. Bruticus is the third gestalt but they didn't mention his role in the show. - Omega Sentinel is the leader of a group of Guard Sentinels, they will be on the show in the spring. - The gestalts somehow are tied into the Sentinels in the storyline. - Blue Energon plays a big part in the end of the show (see below). - Starscream will cease to be a ghost and will become a regular transformer, hence his new color scheme (G1 Baby!) - Grimlock and Swoop won't be in the show. - Alpha-Q will shortly start being referred to as Alpha-Quintesson.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:43:05 GMT -5
Cartoon - Cybertron: - The cartoon is a year away. - It will be done by a new animation studio in Japan. - The story concerns them trying to save their home planet. It is a direct sequel to Armada and Energon, taking place several years after Energon. - There will be new human characters, I believe they said most or all of the existing humans will be gone. - Some Armada characters that did not show up in the Energon cartoon will show up in Cybertron. - Primus will factor into Cybertron.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:43:23 GMT -5
Toys - Energon: - Wing Saber was initially called Superion Maximus but then they decided to use the Takara name. - The gestalts have two molds used twice for financial reasons. Each gestalt will consist of four basics as limbs and a $9.99 middle figure. - Sharkticon's vehicle mode was initially based on the design of the Decepticon ship Nemesis, and then it was modified. - The Alpha Quintesson toy may not transform but can roll (and the legs spin around), and the faces inside do turn around inside the head. - The Energon Inferno remold is indeed called Roadblock. - Cyclonus and Ironhide will be KB exclusives. - For Energon they wanted a lot of characters in the initial waves but someone was delayed in production (Scorponok, probably). They made Energon Ultra Magnus as a fillin, underestimated his demand and also for unknown reasons he was just underproduced. I yelled out "MAKE MORE!!!!!" and Michelle said "I reserve the right to put this figure into TFU" and said they didn't have plans to do it but it would be a possibility. - Someone asked why the Decepticons don't have a cool action feature like the Autobots' combining feature. Aaron said they think the "hyper power" feature is exciting. (I guess he hasn't seen the "hyper power" for Shockblast? Go go Gadget-solar panels!) - Will we see a Hot Rod repaint of Hot Shot? "No." - Arcee is small for financial reasons and because they didn't think she'd appeal to the main market. Michelle said 7 year old boys don't want a $15 woman. - No more Dinobots planned after Grimlock and Swoop. - Sounds like Takara maybe wasn't as involved in designing Grimlock and Swoop and they didn't see a place for these toys in Superlink. - The face on Insecticon is just some sort of "lucky accident". Ooooook. - Will we get recolored Energon weapons like in Japan? Not planned for right away but next year, yes. The gestalts have blue Energon for a reason, it's a purer form of Energon found in special "spark wells". - The $50 price point will stay in Energon/Cybertron and we will see new molds
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:45:02 GMT -5
Toys - Cybertron: - They are currently working on Wave 2 of the toys. - Optimus Prime will have a mouth and a mouth shield. - Will there by more Unicron toys? "No." - They realized late in the game that Minicons are really popular and they backed off too far on making them. We will be getting new Minicon molds.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:45:18 GMT -5
Toys - G1: - The G1 line will start to lean more towards figures such as Astrotrain and Ricochet (they didn't have rights to the name Stepper, by the way). They will be mostly figures that most US collectors don't have already. - Will we get more reissues that are presented as new characters like Ricochet, or Japanese characters we never had? "Maybe". - No Dinobot reissues planned. - No plans for Soundwave (BOOOOOOO!)
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:45:36 GMT -5
Toys - Alternators: - Not only will there probably be an Alternators backstory soon, but if we keep supporting the line they will "grow it accordingly" and make a cartoon or other media. - Tracks was initially going to be yellow with a blue repaint later, but the interior was showing through the plastic. Since Takara paints over metal they could keep the yellow, but we are getting blue instead. - Aaron Archer chose to use Meister because he thinks "Autobot _____" isn't a cool name. He did give us permission to call him Jazz, as well as calling Downshift Wheeljack. :-) - Swindle has a new head, a bar on the front and bigger tires. - They want to do Bumblebee and are trying hard to get him done. - Someone asked about how licensing works. They said it's different with different companies. - Will we see other types of Alternators like planes and motorcycles? They want us to tell them what we want in the survey at the con so they can decide if this is doable. - Alternator Sunstreaker is probably going to happen once they start doing Alternator exclusives. - They have not tried to get the license for a Lamborghini Alternator. - No plans for Alternator Blurr. - The Ford Mustang -will- be Grimlock and it will be grey (I guess not silver like the Binaltech?) - No plans for an Alternator Soundwave or Blaster with cassettes. - Older cars in the Alternators line? Sure...but that's also what they hope to find out from our (800-freaking-page) surveys. Michelle said they won't be doing the Batmobile. - They really want to do a Mini Cooper and are trying to get the license. - There are no plans for an Alternator Prowl. - Emergency vehicles in Alternators? "None that I'm willing to talk about". - No plans for a Dodge Neon Alternator.
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:45:50 GMT -5
Toys - TFU: - The Smokescreen and Ransack two-pack is an exclusive to one of the second string stores like Meijer or Costco. Aaron used a lot of new terms to refer to these stores but basically it meant "not Wal-mart or Target". - The TFU Piranacon repaint will be a giftset released in the spring as a Wal-mart exclusive. - The third micromaster combiner will be Sixliner, he referred to them as "railbots". - TFU Devestator was announced as "because you demanded it". - No plans for bringing over Star Convoy. - No plans for bringing over Predaking (BOOOOOOO!) - They are trying for bringing over SOME Robot Masters for TFU (it "makes sense"). They said they would probably not bring over Takara's original molds (ie the remolded figures). - Will we see Dirgegun released here? Direct quote "Not him....". Sounded like "not him, but maybe someone similar". Thrustol?
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Post by Gunman_sr5 on Jul 31, 2004 20:46:09 GMT -5
Misc: - Aaron Archer said there are a lot of TF designs that have been abandoned. He was looking through a lot of them in Japan recently when he had an idea. Transformers.com is going to have a contest for a fan's choice figure that we can pick from some of these (sometimes bizarre) designs. - They aren't planning on a Big Daddy toy, it's a weird name. - WSTF - They planned to bring over Optimus and Soundwave as a bonus (I think in TFU) but they are having trouble getting support from retailers (if I understood them correctly). They are still going to do it once they get the support for it. - Someone asked why they weren't doing anything about the test shots on Ebay all the time. They basically asked people not to buy them. They didn't make any distinction about test shots vs. finished "dealer samples". - A 10th anniversary celebration of Beast Wars "makes sense", which seems to be Aaron Archer's way of saying "I hadn't thought of that but it sounds cool". - What was the origin of having "Decepticlones" in the PS2 game. They wanted something to blow up without it being established characters. - They have no plans for more female characters but they heard us loud and clear that we want them. - Techspecs should be updated more often but the web designer has been backlogged. Sorry. No, we won't see them on boxes for the same reason as always, they'd have to be trilingual. - We probably won't ever see more chrome paint schemes because it's shown itself to be too fragile over time. - We won't see more decoys like we got in G1. - HOC was discontinued despite Hasbro really liking the line because the secondary stores (Meijer, Rose, etc) weren't giving them the support they wanted. - G1 homage characters showing up with the wrong name sometimes occurs because they pick a name before a design really gets too far along and then it's too late to change it. As mentioned, Aaron gave us all permission to call Downshift Wheeljack and Meister Jazz. - Aaron would like at some point to look into using characters such as Alpha Trion or Devcon, but no plans for right now. - We probably won't see more Masterpiece toys right away because it was an expensive toy to make and it was really just to celebrate the Anniversary. Aaron anticipates people making him part of the Alternators line so he has bad guys to fight. If we do see more Masterpiece toys it'll be as part of another Anniversary. - We aren't getting a trailer for 20th Prime because Aaron thinks it's basically an expensive box, and that there are better uses for their investment. He encouraged us to look online for people making customs. - No plans at present for a crossover between TF's and either Zoids or Xevox. Although Michelle seemed interested in how many people liked Xevox. - Will we ever see organic Beast Modes again? Well, you know how Transformers trends seem to come and go, so eventually we probably will. For now, however, Cybertron is vehicle based and they want the movie toy line to be that way too. - Fort Max won't pass safety laws, period. They have no plans to make a new Fort Max. - They are extremely pleased with Atari's work on the PS2 game and there is another game coming out in the next couple of years (which I think we've heard from other sources is a sequel to the first game set in the Cybertron storyline).
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