An article on TFW has revealed that a toy designer had developed and submitted a Transformers toy concept in 2011 as a potential 30th Anniversary set of toys, in an "Evolutions" style, but with just one toy instead of two in the Movie Evolutions sets.

Basically, they look like they would have been triple-changers - transforming from alt-mode to Gen1 robot mode to Movie robot mode. (a mock instruction sheet for Optimus shows how it would have transformed from Gen1 robot to Movie robot)

Images shown as prototypes or concept drawings are Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Starscream.


It's a very creative concept, that would really push the boundaries of Transformers engineering, as we've seen in the past that there aren't too many Transformers toys with more than two modes that aren't burdened/spoiled by kibble in at least one mode. As such, I think it would have been good to have one iconic toy done using this concept, so that if it did have any kibble/design flaws to squeeze in different styled modes, it would be offset by it being a one-off unique collector toy.

At the very least, this could have been done similar to the Japanese Tran-scan kits of 2007 (Bumblebee & Optimus), which could have different parts that attach and detach to "transform" between the three modes.