Hasbro reveal - Legacy w2 & Robosen Trailer

[griffin]

Just putting up a copy of the video outline from tfw, for future reference...

• Relaunch/rerelease of Robosen auto-converting Optimus Prime
• Auto-converting trailer and Roller for Robosen Optimus Prime (watch the promotional video at the end of the news post)
• Trailer for trailer, voice of Cullen asking for back-up
• 3 feet long trailer
• RC Roller
• Trailer unfolds and stands up on its own
• Spike figure included
• Opening doors and extending service sentry
• Roller connects with trailer for towing
• Transformers Forged to Fight 5^th Anniversary celebration
• Video showcasing Forged to Fight gameplay and New Quintessa
• Anniversary event is live in-game
• Rodimus Prime coming to Forged to Fight later this summer
• Beast Wars 2022 Annual on sale April 20^th
• Glimpse at characters’ lives outside main stories
• Last Bot Standing covers shown (on sale May 11^th)
• Post-war setting on another planet
• Final issue of ongoing series shown (on sale May 18^th)
• War’s End final issue shown (on sale May 25^th)
• Art and Making of Transformers War for Cybertron deluxe artbook
• Artbook shows concept work for Netflix series and toy design interviews
• John Warden worked on Legacy line
• Showing already revealed figures
• Behind the scenes look at Legacy Arcee design process
• Showcasing Wildrider
• Added molded detail to help give figures more story
• Knockout revealed
• Heavy remold of Studio Series Jazz
• Two weapons combine to make show-accurate staff weapon
• Tarantulas revealed
• Some shared BA parts/engineering
• New buzzsaw weapon
• Fur texture in tarantula mode
• Bigger beast mode legs
• Deluxe Elita 1 revealed, new mold with two rifles
• Alt mode is more dune buggy-esque
• Backpack can collapse or extend for different looks
• Voyager Jhiaxus shown, new mold
• G2 insignia
• Clean Siege Soundwave rerelease (Siege mold, not Netflix mold)
• Blitzwing shown
• Takara designer video discussing Motormaster engineering and design process
• Motormaster is the same size as Earthrise Optimus
• Showing Motormaster pics
• Trailer forms gunner station
• Combination demonstration
• Push-in tab moves panels to fill in shins
• Plugging Dragstrip in allows car mode to split
• Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus
• Kingdom mold with new headsculpt to match Botcon toy
• Comes with Laser Prime weapons
• Alternate Delta Magnus head included
• Magna Convoy shown
• Comes with variant cover comic issue

[reillyd]

Transformers have genders to make them more relatable to the audience, and because languages like English lack gender-neutral third person pronouns. The first (and only?) tech specs bio in English to have no gendered pronouns was G2 Dreadwing/Smokescreen, making them the first gender-neutral Transformers... for a short while at least - until they appeared in the G2 comics and were referred to with male pronouns. And also because the voice actors/actresses are either men or women, and will have a man's or woman's voice.

I always thought Starscream was the first gender neutral, or at least gender non-binary, Transformer.
The voice was always ambiguous and sounded very feminine, and at best Starscream?s personality was androgynous with elements of masculine and feminine. Even through the eyes of a child at the time, Starscream seemed?.. both boy/girl combined.

[Trent]

It is a strange way of seeing if there is interest (I couldn't find anything on their actual website), so if they really are doing something for non-Americans, I'm not sure how they were going to do it (like through an agent in certain countries, or directly from America).

The official product page on the Robosen website, with heaps of info and images, to be released in November 2022.

(the price for the trailer from the site (only to America) is us$750... but they are currently selling the Optimus cab for us$1000, which keeps going up, as it was originally released for us$700)

I look at this trailer and all I can think is that Armada Optimus says hi.

[griffin]

Hasbro America had another roundtable with invited (american) fans, answering some questions after the latest round of reveals...

Transformers Roundtable April 20th 2022
** Below are very short notes from the Transformers Brand Team roundtable today. This is ALL PARAPHRASED, jotted down quickly during the event.

General notice – Asia leads the Masterpiece reveals, MPM Blackout will be offered in the US soon.
TFormers – Will the non-G1 universes be considered sub-lines within Generations/Legacy going forward? Legacy is it’s own line, won’t be sub-lines within it for each universe. Buzzworthy and Selects are separate, and will have cross branding with when it fits.
Awesome Toy Blog – Concern with limbs being split across waves, hard to find first ones for someone coming in late. Box sets like what was done with Devastator not off table.
Transmissions – Yellowing on recent figures – Aware, researching issue. Has been seen by Mark and team, forwarded to engineering for research. Feedback, specifics always welcome, helps narrow down the problem. Pandemic restricted traveling to Asia for quality checks.
Allspark – Legacy Blitzwing – turret – can it turn all the way around. Yes. Got a sample and did so on camera (though choppy connection).
Anthony Karcz – How do you pick out which characters to do? Delicate balance. What’s on shelf all together, cars, planes, beasts, colors. What’s been done before. Budget. Takara’s input, marketing wanting tier 1 characters. Lots of angles.
TFW2005 – Cybertron Metroplex – what was the thought process behind choosing a non-G1 character for such a large expensive figure? Story at first. He mines Energon, play pattern across Legacy involves Energon. So initial trigger for including this Metroplex was story. In addition, toys are still designed with kids in mind so the play pattern and overall coolness of a big construction vehicle was factored into the decision.
??? (sorry) – How is Legacy doing sales wise, non-G1 characters etc. – PO numbers are doing well, crushing War for Cybertron. The non-G1 characters are also doing better than some G1 characters, which shows demand is there.
BWTF – Pricing. 12-18% increase across line. Will this continue? Can’t say there won’t be more. Reacting to world events. Deluxe will be 24.99 going forward for now.

Matt Thomas – Soundwave – Siege vs Netflix – why? Walmart exclusive originally. When exclusives are done, they have it for a certain time, so couldn’t be done now. Walmart does have right to do another run right now. (No clarification or confirmation that it would be done after the exclusive time frame ends.)
Rodimus Primal – Open box – issues with heads removed, crushed boxes from shipping. – Most likely not going back to plastic. Closed box an option. Balance out seeing figure and how important. Kids testing likes the open box.
West Lee Dixon – Menasor – compatible with Combiner Wars? – legs, yes, but not 100% sturdy. Arms – no. Goal is to make Menasor proper best he could be, not be scramble city functional.
Siebertron – Weapon packs? – anything possible, on radar, looking at things like this. Try to get missed weapons into new molds if tool and budget allows.
Anthony TFU – Legacy and ports/connections from past lines present – Metroplex using them? – lots of 5 and 3 mm ports, connectors for city /road connections. Drill Bit – costed out. Core offering in future – possible.
Kevin Unicron – ROTB delay affecting product on shelf this year? Didn’t affect Legacy / fan side. And for Studio Series – that’s when SS ROTB stuff was intended to come out anyway. RE: live events – looking at the options now at corporate level.
TFwiki – Legacy core not mentioning Weaponizers gimmick – not called Weaponizers but there are “gimmicks” for collecting more than one to build things out. Kids focused angle. Not making it a primary focus, just there to let fans/kids create their own things from all the pieces.
Jeremy – Shattered Glass comic with Magnus? – New 5 part mini series, Magnus issue, continuing story.
Matt Thomas – Can Galaxy Upgrade Prime hold Cybertron Metroplex weapon? Not sure, didn’t have one handy to check. Wheel doesn’t open.

[griffin]

Seibertron have also posted up some details from the invite-only roundtable, which includes some extra details...
(I was not aware that SS Ravage has an accessory specifically for Soundwave... due to Soundwave going over its budget if it had it)

Seibertron was part of a round table discussion with Hasbro a few days ago. Nothing new was revealed, it was just a question and answer period. Our question was to know if there would be more weapon multipacks but we got the same non answer though Hasbro did clarify that sometimes weapons that are not included with a particular character could be released down the line with another if there is room in the budget and tooling for it. For instance, we saw that with Core Class SS Ravage who had an accessory specifically for SS BB Soundwave.

One of the biggest points of discussion was the whole deal with Hasbro releasing Siege Soundwave, which was plentiful, rather than the Netflix Soundwave which both had the G1 alt mode many fans wanted AND was only released as a Walmart exclusive at a higher price due to coming in a multipack. Well, Hasbro was very blunt and honest regarding this, it is due to the exclusive status of the molding. If new molding is released exclusively through a retailer, then that retailer has the rights to the selling of that toy and the tooling for a certain amount of time. Not all contracts are the same. For instance, Amazon had exclusive rights to the Kingdom Terrorsaur release/tooling but the time of that exclusivity was short enough that now Target owns the rights to selling that tooling since they will do that with the redeco coming soon.

But the time for Walmart's exclusivity on Netflix Soundwave has not expired yet and we don't know when it will expire or if Hasbro intends on rereleasing it when it does. But at least now we know why Hasbro is rereleasing Siege Soundwave instead of the other Soundwave. We have images of the packaging below.

Speaking of the packaging, questions came up regarding the open box nature of the legacy line. This is where Hasbro clearly stated that the legacy line is still designed with kids in mind and they product tested this line with kids. It turns out kids prefer the open box design over closed box. Also, Cybertron Metroplex was picked over other titan options for its appeal to kids. They said kids liked the idea of a big construction-type vehicle, it added to the coolness factor of the giant robot.

There was also acknowledgement of price hikes that are not confirmed to end, and of yellowing on toys, they are looking into that.

Finally, the question of Menasor's Combiner Wars ports came up. Yes, they did use the same port system used in the Combiner Wars line, but it was done simply because it's a good system for partsforming and not for backwards compatibility. It is only used in the leg segments and while people could attach legs from the combiner wars era, it will not be 100% sturdy.

[Autocon]

Redeco of terrorsaur??! Will it be the purple or black?

[griffin]

Redeco of terrorsaur??! Will it be the purple or black?

Original toy colours. The GD version was cartoon colours.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

play pattern across Legacy involves Energon.

this "play pattern" they refer to, is that the building of weapons?

Having not seen the toys yet, and not sure about the box blurb, but also remembering that they don't want to translate too much, how do they get across that the story and "play point" is energon related?

[griffin]

this "play pattern" they refer to, is that the building of weapons?

Having not seen the toys yet, and not sure about the box blurb, but also remembering that they don't want to translate too much, how do they get across that the story and "play point" is energon related?

I think so, as the three Core class toys in wave one had their accessories combine in some way... and a lot of the accessories appear to be from translucent plastic. Perhaps there is some big plan for them over the entire toyline, as those blocky accessories with Blitzwing look like hands to me.

[TaZZerath]

I really don't know why, but SG Magnus really tickled me, so I've preordered him.

I dont get many toys very often these days, and those that I do go for have a tendency to have multiple layers to them. A multi-homage character definitely ticks all the boxes, and the colour scheme definitely got me over the line.

EDIT: Okay in hindsight i DO know why he tickled me