Transformers Toy Rumours (must note a source)

[griffin]

Images of what could be a Shattered Glass Flamewar toy showed up from a UK online store, and if it turns out to be legit, I will move it to a proper news topic.
(it is likely to be officially revealed at SDCC next week... as this online store was probably sent the new product images to be ready to list pre-orders on the day of the reveal, but shouldn't have leaked them yet)

Flamewar appears to be a redeco of the Legacy Arcee, done to homage a BotCon toy from way back in 2005... but like Slicer, the allegiance is wrong, or being placed in Shattered Glass is wrong, as the original Flamewar was a Decepticon in those colours, and yet as part of Shattered Glass it still has the same colour scheme. Granted, on some rare occasions there have been some Shattered Glass toys that had similar colours to the regular universe toy, but they still had something different about them to make it worth issuing a "new" toy for fans to collect a "new" toy.

This Flamewar also comes with a Battlemaster (Fireglide - a redeco of the Pteraxadon toy from Siege), which doesn't seem necessary other than to increase the price of this toy, as the original Flamewar toy had a crossbow, not an axe.









The original 2005 toy -





There was also a toy in 2012 in TFPrime, and all three times it has been a redeco of an earlier Arcee motorcycle toy.

[KELPIE]

I'd like to see more of the show characters be re-released. Of course price is a factor, but for some figures like Retrax, it wouldn't matter how cheap it is listed for. It was a massive shelf-warmer in the 90s, and it will be again.

I suppose if there's any I'd look forward to it'd be Quickstrike and Spittor.... however I'm not confident they wouldn't shelfwarm since even Rattrap and the leaders are.

[griffin]

The first wave was very poorly priced, and by the time that was fixed, it was too late.
And Rattrap, along with any of the original Basics (which would be like Core Class today), was wrongly priced by Hasbro (globally, not just here) as the same as the Deluxe toys, making them even worse value. At least with Rattrap being a key cartoon character some would have been more willing to buy it, but the same can't be said about one that hasn't yet been released, as it wasn't even a show character, so if it has a Deluxe price tag it will not do well at all.

[griffin]

Looks like at least one factory sample of Crasher has been stolen and flogged on Carousell. And that's the toy-version head for Mirage, not the head shown on the recently found renders.

Some of those images of what could be Crasher...

[High_Q]

Here we go again with more photos of what could be MP Cliffjumper.

If it's official, then they've tweaked the MP Bumblebee v2 mold for the altmode shell to hold together more effectively, and maybe slight improvement to the feet.

[Autocon]

With the numbers on it I think its a test cliffy

[High_Q]

With the numbers on it I think its a test cliffy

What does 'test' sample mean in this context? I'm unfamiliar with design or factory QC processes. Does it mean we're very likely to see this mass-produced soon etc.?

[JJJ]

Factory test shot - a pre-production sample made to make sure that the production model will be right. Could be checking the colours, could be checking the physical fit (to make sure the thing can actually transform, with parts moving past each other rather then through ), could just be checking that the mould produces the required shapes without defect.

Normally this might indicate that the toy isn't too far off (the Star Sabre toys recently shown off at SDCC were all test shots of one sort or another, and it is due out some time before the year is over), but this Cliffjumper seems to have had a history of revisions, so who knows?

[griffin]

Playing devil's advocate here for a minute... since this toy has been leaked for well over a year now and we have suspiciously had no hint or mention of Cliffjumper from TakaraTomy (or any other official JP source) what if, this "Masterpiece Cliffjumper" wasn't actually done by TakaraTomy.

What if these samples were being done by one of the KO companies that have been replicating various MPs within months of their release, or a 3rd party company... by replicating all of the parts of the Bumblebee toy and swapping out a few parts. It probably wouldn't be too difficult for some of those companies that have been doing Masterpiece scaled figures with significant detailing... to strip out a Bumblebee toy and replace enough parts to replicate Cliffjumper.

I know that TakaraTomy operates to a different strategy to Hasbro (Hasbro would often do an official reveal within days or weeks of something that has leaked), but this just seems like a really long time for a toy to be floating around and not be included in a product display somewhere in Japan or Hong Kong... considering how they often display grey prototypes or odd-coloured prototypes (like MP Trailbreaker at the recent HK exhibition) just to have something out there to hype up the interest from their target market. To have these samples of Cliffjumper look to be a production level sample, it just doesn't make sense that it would already be in production (or ready to be in production) and not be listed anywhere for pre-order yet.
(I don't think we've ever had a Masterpiece toy be released straight to sale without going through a pre-order period... and pre-order periods these days for MP toys are 6-9 months now.)

[griffin]

Movie Masterpiece rumour that shouldn't happen, but probably will - ROTF redeco of MPM-10 Starscream (with the Cybertronian tattoos).

Two reasons why I think it shouldn't happen - 1) we just had MPM-10 Starscream released in the last couple of years, I don't think we need another one while there are plenty of other characters to do first (including the last two of the robot cast of the 2007 movie - 3 if you count Frenzy)... 2) technically we already have MPM ROTF Starscream, as MPM-1, which was just the Japanese release of Leader class Starscream from 2010.

It also shows how it was the wrong decision to start the new Movie Masterpiece toys from number 3, as it means that the first two are considered part of the series, even though they are a completely different style and size to the current ones. They should have started from number 1, and there wouldn't have been confusion because this is the Hasbro MPMs, while the first two in 2010 were Japanese MPMs.