Hasbro acquires Porsche licence for Transformers

[GoktimusPrime]

Hopefully ROTB Mirage will sell well enough to convince Porsche to grant licence for future Transformers. The important thing is that this has now established a precedent. For decades, Porsche has refused to grant licence based on the grounds that they don't want their vehicles to be "affiliated with war." They have clearly shifted on this stance (much to every TF fan's delight). For decades we've lamented about how Porsche refused to grant licence. Now that Porsche are doing the right thing by TF fans, I reckon we should all consider buying a ROTB SS Mirage to reward them for this choice, and also to cast a "yes" vote for more future Porsche TFs. Because buying or not buying the toys is the best way that we can tell these companies about what we want; demand generates supply.

And for those who just don't care about Rise of the Beasts; fine... may I suggest that you consider buying a Mirage toy anyway, and then just immediately selling it to other collectors? Because there will certainly be collectors out there who will want to buy this toy but have difficulty finding one locally. So you'd be helping out a fellow collector plus encouraging Porsche to grant future licences, which in turn helps the entire fandom. I've bought toys before just to sell or even outright give it away, just to incentivise Hasbro to make more.

MP Cliffjumper is the MP i'm looking forward to the most, if it ever eventuates.

It'll be funny when Takara team shows the Porsche team what the MP Porsches look like, and the Porsche team asking what kind of car the chibi Cliffjumper is meant to represent. "Yeah, no. You can't put our logo on that thing. Make as many as you like, just don't put our name on it."

I reckon they could work out a similar deal as they did with Lamborghini with MP Sunstreaker. As I understand it, Lamborghini's licensing with the MP Sunstreaker mould had two conditions:
1. the bonnet cannot split
2. it must be packaged in factory standard/default Lamborghini Countach form, not the modified Super Tuning form that is iconic to Sunstreaker
So TakaraTOMY worked around this by giving MP Sunstreaker a non-separating panel that went over the feet to form a seamless bonnet, as well as engineering the rear half of the car to transform between the standard Countach and Super Tuning modes. In a similar vein, TakaraTOMY might engineer MP Cliff to transform between the standard Porsche 924 Turbo, into the deformed Choro-Q form that is iconic to Cliffjumper; and the toy would be packaged in factory standard mode, just as MP Sunstreaker, Cordon and Spin Out were. And you can expect the same from an MP Hubcap. And MP Cliff would have two spoilers; the normal sized one and the oversized one, and Hubcap would only come with the normal sized spoiler. This would admittedly be the more expensive method; one of the reasons why MP Sunstreaker is substantially dearer than MP Lambor is due to the addition of two variant vehicle modes (it's not the sole reason for the higher price tag, but it would definitely be a significant contributing factor).

Or they may have TakaraTOMY release two different MP Cliff toys. One only transforming into a normal Porsche 924 Turbo, then a later one transforming into a deformed Porsche 924; similar to how MP21 Bumblebee is a realistically proportioned VW Beetle, but MP45 Bumble is deformed. Volkswagen allowed TakaraTOMY to release a deformed Beetle, but they had to do the realistically proportioned Beetle first. This is the cheaper option; although arguably dearer if collectors are purchasing the character twice. The Sunstreaker option would offer better value, as collectors only need to buy the toy once.

Or... Porsche may just not be fussed about insisting on a realistically proportioned 924, and just allow TakaraTOMY to go right ahead with the deformed version. Who knows? Different licensors seem to have different conditions (e.g. VW clearly don't care about splitting the bonnet like Lamborghini or Corvette do).

Although, toon Jazz did not deviate from the toy design as much as others, so I may be pleasantly surprised, and like the design. If not, my Transformers collecting journey probably ends here.

With the current trend in MPs, I think MP Meister would surprise us in terms of how much it would deviate in order to be so slavishly cartoon-like. I mean, Optimus Prime's cartoon model doesn't fundamentally differ from the toy that much, and yet MP Convoy 3.0 just goes to a whole 'nuther level with complexity, achieving cartoon-likeness in places that a lot of people barely even noticed, if at all (e.g. Optimus Prime's stripes not existing in his truck mode etc.). Some of the key differences with Jazz's cartoon model include:
* No door-wings
* No shoulder wheels
* Bonnet-chest is less protruding
* Rear wheel sections are shrunken
* Spoilers fold down and are shrunken
etc.
These may seem like small things, but in terms of MP level toy engineering, they can make a significant difference. If they made the MP in the same vein as the early MP Cars (e.g. MP Datsuns), then yeah, it'd be pretty similar to the G1 toy. But in a post-MP Inferno era, I expect that it would be much more complex. I wouldn't mind if they went the Skids road and made it simpler again, but given how much more popular Jazz is, I reckon an MP Meister would be more like the more recent MP Cars (ex. Skids).

And let's face it, MP consumers aren't exactly price sensitive. With MPs they can afford to throw in the money to make the toy more cartoon-like, and we fans will pay it.
The joys of a collector-centric line targeted at adults with disposable income.

P.S.: Not sure if TakaraTomy can legally get away with "MARTINII (sic) RACING." TakaraTomy did acquire the rights to use Alitalia's name for MP Wheeljack, which is why that toy has Alitalia spelt correctly as opposed to the G1 toy's deliberately misspelt "Alitalla." I'm not sure if they can get away with putting Martini's name on a toy, even misspelt. I don't think it would cause the same issues as Marlboro did for MP Exhaust. I reckon they could get away with a further deliberate misspelling, like SMARTINII RACING, and just let fans cut out the "S" on the stickers; similar to what they did for the Red Cross stickers on MP Ratchet. or just give us a sticker of the Martini logo with no text... or even have the red circle and black rectangle as separate stickers and let fans work out how to put them together.