Deliberate Mistransformations

[Tha_Phantom]

Isn't there a tab on Hot Rod's head/chest piece for that specific purpose? To tab in behind the chest, or am I having a Mandela Effect moment?

Yeah, the head/neck is meant to sit in front of the chest, but I never liked that. So mine is mistransformed by having the neck piece behind the chest.

These examples are more for aesthetics rather than mistransformations. I do the same for G1 Coneheads and Omega Supreme.

I deliberately mistransform these figures for aesthetics, yes.

For the glaring obvious reason. *chuckles*

I knew someone was gonna go there.

[Bidoofdude]

I don't fold CW Prowl's backpack thing all the way down and turn it up to give him his wings in some crude fashion. I also fold the combiner peg and his chestplate out at 45 degrees to get rid of the flat chest.

[tinyJazz]

Did the leg swap on Alternators Prowl so the rear windshield goes on his shins like the G1 version.

United Tracks’s legs are mistransformed/reversed so the car bonnet makes up his shin armour and he’s a bit taller than his mouldmate Wheeljack.

[Dan]

Thanks for the comments all. Sorry to be so tardy in feedback. Life has gotten hectic in that 'somewhat aging person with very much more aging parent' kind of way lately.

Anyway that was some interesting stuff. It got me thinking that there is a kind of interpretive continuum from 'posing' to 'fan mode' with my 'deliberate mis-transformation' happening somewhere in between.

[UltraMarginal]

Anyway that was some interesting stuff. It got me thinking that there is a kind of interpretive continuum from 'posing' to 'fan mode' with my 'deliberate mis-transformation' happening somewhere in between.

I think this is very much the case. Especially with older toys that are by design, generally less pose able than newer toys.

[KELPIE]

So out of curiosity and off topic, where did Sunbow get the Coneheads from?

It doesn't appear on the box art, in the instructions or in the catalogues.

If it was a conscious decision I'd be interested to know by who and for why. If it was an accidental mistake, I'd also like to know where/how the mistake came to fruition.

[Metallikato]

So out of curiosity and off topic, where did Sunbow get the Coneheads from?

It doesn't appear on the box art, in the instructions or in the catalogues.

If it was a conscious decision I'd be interested to know by who and for why. If it was an accidental mistake, I'd also like to know where/how the mistake came to fruition.

Don't quote me on but I think I read in a Floro Dery interview ages ago the series 2 character model robot modes were definitely based on the actual toys, rather than the somewhat more improvised season 1 character models. So he (or someone) probably noted the Seeker jet toys could do that, and ran with it as a design idea for the animation.

[Dan]

So out of curiosity and off topic, where did Sunbow get the Coneheads from?

I wonder a similar thing about Jazz flipping back his door wings.

And I'm not sure that's really too off topic.

[GoktimusPrime]

If it was a conscious decision I'd be interested to know by who and for why. If it was an accidental mistake, I'd also like to know where/how the mistake came to fruition.

It was a deliberate decision made by Floro Dery to help further differentiate the second year jets from the first year jets. Because if they stuck with toy accuracy then the second year jets would look more like this:

And bear in mind that this looks "wrong" to us because of our personal bias. We're used to seeing the second year jets look like coneheads in the cartoon and comics, so seeing them drawn normally in that style looks strange. Although other G1 media did draw them normally, but the rest of the body was also more toy-accurate so it didn't look out of place.

Dery made the decision to make many 2nd year Transformers who were redecos of first year toys look different rather than just recolouring the same animation model. I guess the funny thing is that he made the Autobot Cars more toy-accurate whereas the Decepticon Jets became less toy-accurate, but both decisions were made to differentiate the first year toys from the second year toys. And it may have been helpful to animators too, because we know that the first year Jets were often hilariously miscoloured because in black and white they all look the same!

Look at Trailbreaker and Hoist for example. Both are based on near-identical Diaclone toys, but Trailbreaker's animation model was drastically changed from the toy whereas Hoist is far more toy accurate.


Because if Dery had decided to make the Autobot Cars toy-accurate in Season 1, then characters like Trailbreaker might've looked more like this...