Fan-backed Hasbro project: Unicron

[DELTAprime]

Well that’s the multi-million dollar question - if they make enough profit. If Unicron turns out to be a cash cow then it’s possible that for the 40th or even 45th anniversary of Transformers we could see a Cybertron/Primus figure on a similar scale. Whilst not nearly as iconic as Unicron, I could see most folk who shelled out for The Chaos Bringer considering shelling out similar cash for his similarly scaled counterpart.

Given that Haslab Cookie Monster failed a couple of days ago I bet Hasbro was not willing to take any more egg on their face by having Unicron fail also. If it's true that BBTS, RK and others have not been added yet then Unicron might make it without any fudging of the numbers, but I bet if he doesn't reach the goal legitimately he will make it after the numbers are fudged.

[Magnus]

I think it's funny all the people asking for electronics to be added.

That's the worst thing they could do to this and I'm glad it's not included.

Give the size and cost, I think it makes sense to ask if an electronics box would be included - it would add a little extra value to the piece by having it actually 'do something'. The torso is certainly big enough to house a sound box, and it may be possible to wire the neck with metal contacts to power an LED in the head.

I suspect they may just need more time to integrate the international orders, which seem to be quite large. There was a HUGE jump up to 5000 after doing this, and it may be that they are anticipating last minute orders across the globe to make the difference.


I rather suspect if its close enough they'll fudge the numbers though, because they spent SO much design money getting it to this stage. But if they don't make enough profit (this is my real concern) we won't see future haslab offerings on this scale.

The previous Haslab project, Jabba's sail barge, hit its target within the original time frame, so Hasbro likely felt confident that they could meet their target within the original deadline.

There has been speculation that the 1000-order jump was due to international pre-orders being incorporated into the count, as "1,500 Sales Via Hasbro Affiliate Retailers" had been announced by Hasbro a couple of days ago, so maybe you're right.

[Bidoofdude]

Give the size and cost, I think it makes sense to ask if an electronics box would be included - it would add a little extra value to the piece by having it actually 'do something'. The torso is certainly big enough to house a sound box, and it may be possible to wire the neck with metal contacts to power an LED in the head.

I really like the idea of electronics in this guy, given it’s not very invasive. LED eyes would be really cool and add to the spectacle of having him display all huge in a menacing pose. A voice chip would be super cool, but it may just be because I am a sucker for electronics in toys, coming from the UT (Cybertron) era.

Though I get why they did it, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that the new Omega Supreme and Trypticon didn’t have walking/rolling electronics, even if I’d never use them.

[reillyd]

I suspect some third party will make a replacement head (since it is attachable) with electronics. Shockwave lab does a lot of low cost led's for example. I would prefer a sound chip with unicron talking myself, but lights would be cool too I guess.
Still you can queue up some sound clips on an iPhone if there isn't a 3rd party electronics release, and it will almost be as good. I'm not going to let anything take away the shine of owning the planet killer Unicron

[Ultra Mackness]

Things are getting exciting - at the moment Unicron is up to 6869 backers, with 5 days to go...

https://hasbropulse.com/products/tra...ertron-unicron

[Jazzman]

Hard to believe they won't produce it with that many backers already...

[Raider]

Hard to believe they won't produce it with that many backers already...

I tend to agree. I also suspect that the current total doesn't include all international purcahses yet. With all the marketting and little extras they have gone tot he trouble of showing, my money is on this making the 8k target.

[griffin]

Two new bonus items announced in it's final week...

- a digital comic bundle from IDW through comixology with "Unicron" cover (it is rather vague with being "exclusive", in that it could just be existing comics that haven't been offered in that combination before)

In addition to this once-in-a-lifetime figure, HasLab: Unicron backers through HasbroPulse.com will now receive an EXCLUSIVE digital comic bundle, made in partnership with @IDWPublishing and available only through @comiXology!

- a Hotrod figurine (to go with Galvatron), an Autobot shuttle, and a stand for the floating head of Unicron. (they also note that the hands have more articulation now, but the original images looked to me like they they already had 15 points of articulation)

Things are getting exciting - at the moment Unicron is up to 6869 backers, with 5 days to go...

https://hasbropulse.com/products/tra...ertron-unicron

I think they might have just updated more of their international orders, which might have included the Europe, which only recently had a retailer there offering it.

[Paulbot]

I saw a tweet claiming the digital comic was the IDW TFTM adaptation but don't know if that was sourced info or a guess.

The Autobot shuttle is a little disappointing to be honest. Those shuttles never interact with Unicron. The ships the Autobots try to escape the Moonbases on, or the Quintesson or Junkion ships would be better options.

[griffin]

As pointed out by someone on facebook, the bonus digital comics might only apply to orders placed with Hasbro Pulse. The Unicron page is rather vague about it, so it could go either way.

Unicron was on display at NYCC this weekend, showing off the newly announced accessories (with the yellow looking very bright - the Unicron on screen was orange, so I wonder if these hand-painted prototypes are just a little off with the final colours).

From the aggressivecomics website, an interesting interview with Takashi Kunuhiro (Takara Tomy Senior Product Designer), noting that he had originally wanted the Unicron toy to be 100cm tall, but the sheer weight of all of that plastic wouldn't be able to work in planet mode, so it was scaled back to being about 70cm tall.

How did you first hear about this project?
2 years ago when we heard that Unicron has been selected as part of the Haslab project I was ecstatic! Being on the same platform as Star Wars, I felt happy that Transformers in now seen in the same spotlight. My immediate thought was that I wanted to make this at least 100cm in size. But very quickly after, I had a feeling of “this is going to be an extremely complicated project” and as I looked around the room with other senior designers we all felt the same without saying a word.


Where did you even start with the idea of designing this giant toy?

There were a lot of trial and error at the beginning of this project. The biggest setback was how we started our thinking from looking at the previous largest Transformer toy we’ve created and that’s Titan class Fortress Maximus. My first instinct was that Unicron has to be at least twice as big if not more than Fortress Maximus. So I consulted with Ono-san, our senior designer who made the original G1 Fortress 30 years ago and see if there’s anything we can learn from his development of the toy.


So how did the learning of Fortress Maximus apply to Unicron?
I quickly realized that it doesn’t. Not in the slightest bit. Ono-san had a lot of creative liberty within Fortress as long as he can create a big, cool robot that convert into a big base. On the other hand, our Unicron is inspired from the 1986 movie character where he has distinct Robot and Planet mode design.


Then what would you say was the biggest challenge in designing Unicron?
The biggest challenge is to make the planet mode a perfect sphere with absolutely no space/crack from any 360 angle. As if that’s not a challenge enough, Unicron has unique robot features so I knew the conversion steps was going to be extremely complicated to build. Another challenge worth mentioning is that even if I wanted to recycle parts like his horn, the size varies as robot vs planet mode so I couldn’t. Therefore, we ended up with twice as much as parts for Unicron and much heavier toy than Fortress. Speaking of weight, if I made this toy as big as 100 cm like my first instinct, there was no way plastic could hold that much weight to create the Unicron shape.