Much Ado About Pretenders

[Verno]

I'm interested in seeing these characters brought into the 21st century. The question is: How?

In all honesty, I can't see Hasbro producing non-transforming components, IE shells. But I think a clue about how they could approach it lies in the current Titans Return Titan Masters.

The Headmaster transforms from Head to Robot, and comes with an accessory of its own -- a vehicle or beast. Said vehicle or beast transforms into a weapon, but can also combine with the Headmaster to create a larger vehicle or beast. It's a marvel of engineering.

Take the example of Clobber: Grimlock's head combines with a dragon to form a little T-Rex. When the (presumably) eventual larger Grimlock body is released for this head to call home, you've essentially got a toy that's doubling-down on the T-Rex mode as both the larger toy and smaller components transform into dinosaurs.

Now, apply a similar kind of thinking to characters like the Pretender Beasts: A robot transforms into a beast which hides inside a larger version of the same beast. Catilla, for example, is a saber-tooth tiger inside a saber-tooth tiger. You're doubling-down on the same kind of beast.

The wonderful thing about the Pretender Beasts is that the originals came with accessories -- helmets and blasters that plugged into the shell. What if Hasbro took a character like Catilla, made it an organic saber-tooth tiger which had accessories plugged into it (like the original shell), that could transform into a robot and said accessories could combine and transform into a smaller saber-tooth tiger.

This does away with the potentially troublesome shells altogether.

Am I making sense?

[UltimateGalvatron]

Cool idea.

I don't like Pretenders though so I wouldn't buy them.

[Verno]

Cool idea.

I don't like Pretenders though so I wouldn't buy them.

Thanks.

It takes the Pretender characters and turns them into sort of Targetmasters. Do you like Targetmasters?

[morg176]

I always liked the pretenders line.
Admittedly, the shells were dust jackets of sorts.
I loved the whole monter approach to it.
The robots were simple with good cybertronian modes.

Ideally, smaller pretender monster type shells that just stored the titan/head master figure would be cool and would keep the cost down

Imagine every mythical/ weird creature/ folk lore/ dragon was a titan master in a little pretender shell

[BigTransformerTrev]

I'm interested in seeing these characters brought into the 21st century.

Som of the characters like Bludgeon and Skullgrin have gotten toys this century but admittedly not as Pretenders.

Alice from ROTF in 2009 was a Pretender - was gutted she didn't get a toy.

I think this years TFSS 5.0 has a Pretender in it.


Personally I only ever got Roadgrabber and Grinlock from the G1 toys (and even then only Grim because I'm a big fan) as I've never really liked organic looking TFs

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

The wonderful thing about the Pretender Beasts is that the originals came with accessories -- helmets and blasters that plugged into the shell. What if Hasbro took a character like Catilla, made it an organic saber-tooth tiger which had accessories plugged into it (like the original shell), that could transform into a robot and said accessories could combine and transform into a smaller saber-tooth tiger.

This does away with the potentially troublesome shells altogether.

Am I making sense?

I7m a bit confused with this idea. So, you have BW type robot with a target master buddy or something?

I'd like pretenders to come back somehow, I've always liked the look of them as space adventurers and rather liked US marvel comic's look of the Autobot pretenders in their shells.

One way it could be done is give them organic looking helmets and armour that makes them more organic looking, or monster looking for the Deceps and the armour becomes accessories/weapons etc.

So imagine, a toy like TR Blurr, but you plug bits on him to hide his robot look and the bits can make an artillery cannon or something like that when not ebing used as armour. ,Personally I'd like to see the toy keep it's pose-i-ness too.

Overall, I think the pretender concept is a bit hard to engineer well, and will also be expensive to make, so I'm not going to hold my breath. Or we'll end up with basic one step changers shoved into a static shell...

[Verno]

I7m a bit confused with this idea. So, you have BW type robot with a target master buddy or something?

Essentially, yes. Let me see if I can explain this better with some pics.

Here's Carnivac from the recent Sins of the Wreckers miniseries:



He's organic, like a Season 1 Beast Wars character.

Looking at the shell of his original toy:



It too was organic.

So what I'm suggesting is a toy that would transform from the organic beast to a robot, much like the original Wolfang toy. Those accessories that are mounted on Carnivac's back in beast mode would transform and combine into a small robotic wolf, referencing Carnivac's original inner wolf. A Targetmaster partner for lack of a better term.

I still don't think I'm explaining this very well

[CHILENO20]

I confused

[Verno]

I confused

Haha, let me try it another way.

Take the original Beast Wars Wolfang toy:



It transforms from organic beast to robot, right?

On its beast-mode back, attach transformable accessories that look like the ones on the original Carnivac Pretender shell. So now you've got an organic wolf with guns on its back. Still with me?

The accessories then combine together to create a small separate robitic wolf that pays reference to the smaller robotic wolf that was inside the original Carnivac pretender shell.

Any clearer? More confused than ever?

[SMHFConvoy]

The armor would combine into a partsforming robo companion? Like B-Mogs?