Some Clarification about Movie figure sub-lines

Hey,

Being the OCDish type of person that I am, I'd like your opinions to clarify the categorization of the movie figures.

Here are my breakdowns:

1. The obvious cast members. We can sort of group Arcee and Wreckage in here as they were intended cast members, but just got cut somewhere between pre-production and the final piece.

2. Video game characters. Now, this obviously include Swindle, Dropkick, Dreadwing and Payload (Although I never got that far in the game to see the last two). Interestingly enough, Longarm's packaging says "As seen in the video game", but in tiny writing on the front left my package, it says, "Character does not appear in all versions of video game." Regardless, I don't group Longarm here, rather....

3. Alt mode cast members. As later enforced by the Screen Battles, Longarm is really a quasi-cast-member. I've extended this classification to include Landmine, Stockade and Incinerator as all of them appeared in alt form in the movie. Although, I can't decide if Stockade is a tribute to the S7 GMC SUVs as driven by S7 in the movie or rather the Cadillac Escalade affected by the Allspark in the end.

4. Cybertron repaints. This one is pretty obvious. We have all the Scouts, the newest Walmart Exclusives (Jolt, Big Daddy, etc.)

5. G1 Redeco's. This would of course include the TRU exclusives, Starscream and Jazz, as well as Rescue Ratchet and First Strike Prime. Now, here is where I have my first sort of question/dispute. Would you include Thundercracker and/or Cliffjumper in this classification? Unlike the other four, these two ONLY exist in their G1 colored format. I've contradicted myself and purchased Thundercracker under this explanation, but cheapened out of purchasing Cliffjumper, to which Borgeman brought me to task saying that if you counted one like this, you had to count the other.

And that pretty much satisfied MOST of my need for clarification. However, there are a few extras that I'm having a hard time grouping, namely:

1. Evac
2. Offroad Ironhide
3. Camshaft

Where can these toys be wedged in? Offroad Ironhide should have been a nice dark red. I can't believe they didn't G1ify him. Evac (I think) is originally a Cybertron character so you could SORT of group him in point 4, but that's really the reverse, and Camshaft? Would you group him with Cliffjumper and Thundercracker? Such a poor mold choice....

Looks like I've realized there's a few I've already forgotten:

6. Protoforms. I guess they could either be their own category or even lumped in with cast or quasi-cast.

7. Movie repaints of movie repaints. This includes Recon Barricade, Jungle Boncrusher, Salvage and Overcast.

8. Exclusives. The red Starscream, the Aveo, the pink Arcee, etc. Was Black Arcee an exclusive or was that her standard Takara coloring, like Incinerator?

I'm still lost as to the three I mentioned. Perhaps they would all just go in group 7.?

Protoform Optimus Prime _could_ be considered part of the movie cast...

he appears therefore he is


if they dont use the g1 repaints in tf2 then, another microcontinuity is born, to me

What about Rescue Ratchet? He would be both a "G1 redeco" and a "alt mode cast member" because there was an ambulance like Ratchet who was coloured red and white like Rescue Ratchet that appeared in the movie. It was in the U.S. Air Force base where Capt. Lennox and his men were picked up by Sector Seven.

Cool. I didn't know that. I still put him in G1 redeco though as Ratchet already has another existence in the movie.

Wouldn't off road Ironhide be included in group7?

Camshaft is a repaint of a video game character so maybe you could change group 7 to repaints of movie/video game characters?

i actually want a xbox 360 transformer, apparently blah blah with microsoft copyright...

they could make a generic looking game console Transformer that kinda looks a bit but not exactly like an X-Box 360 like what they did with the Real Gear Robots - afaik none of them are based on any specific brands but they do look like they could be real artifacts. Just last Friday I was fooling people with the 'phone camera' in Speed Dial 800. ;) One of my friends knew it wasn't real because he sells mobile phones, but everyone else fell for it. ;)