Post Pictures of your Transformers, Let's see 40 years worth of Transformers!

[Superomegaprime]

Now combine them!

Huh, never did work Slammer into this....

Upon seeing that only one thing came to mind:

 

[Agent X]

Make no mistake, I DO WANT MW Prowl from KI Mirage and Starscream from LG Skyquake (with a new head so we can get EG1 Skyquake).

And if there HAS to be an Optimus in any hypothetical Machine Wars themed capsule, I propose the Combiner Wars Optimus/Motormaster mold, or Legacy Trashmaster.

Toy pic for pic thread.

 

[LordGigaIce]

When doing some research awhile back, I watched the Bob Forward panel video YouTube from BotCon 1997, and while the majority of the questions asked of him were appropriately Beast Wars related, there were some in the room who just kept on pestering and badgering him about a Machine Wars cartoon that Bob had no knowledge of or association with since it was never even going to be a thing. Yet so many in that room were so sure that such a cartoon was coming and that Bob and Larry were definitely making it.

To be fair a Transformers toyline without a cartoon, in the West anyway, was unheard of. Even G2 got a repackaged G1 show. If you were a teen or adult fan in the late 90s the idea that they wouldn't have some sort of animation to push a line would have been wild.

I kind of want to find out more about how Hasbro came up with the name. Like I'm sure it was some variation of "try to be consistent with current branding, so Something Wars" and "to go with Wars, Vehicle sounds too on the nose and has too many syllables, got anything with two syllables?", but I'm curious if anything else was a factor.

It's crazy, but if you look at the Machine Wars packaging it's almost beat for beat imitating the Beast Wars packaging. It just swaps the red scales out for metal grating.
It really does feel like Hasbro (well Kenner) was trying to keep the branding as consistent as possible.

And really, the rest of it too. Like was it a small team within a team tasked with this, were they on a sharp deadline, was it just one guy who liked military decos, was he drunk a lot, how did the box art come about (this not too long after Some Kind Of Bucket)...

I'm convinced whoever did the decos was an Eastern European military nerd who slapped everything together one night after getting drunk watching a CNN special on rising tensions in the region. Megatron and Megaplex don't end up Polish and Estonian by accident.
He did Thundercracker and Sandstorm's decos after getting drunk watching The Green Berets.

IIRC the story for why MW was so haphazard and rushed was because some Kenner rep at BotCon '96 got overly excited and promised a revived G1 line, which got everyone hyped. If anything like that had been planned it was likely as just an idea on a whiteboard somewhere and this dude just jumped the gun, but Kenner still felt the need to make good on the promise. So they rushed something out at breakneck pace.

 

[Agent X]

I never bought the story of Machine Wars coming about from the big mouth Kenner rep at a small, but dedicated convention. The cost and logistics of production alone should put that in "Myth: BUSTED" territory.

I wish to believe that since Beast Wars was a big hit, and has breathed new life into the franchise as a whole (as the BW Zealots will not let anyone forget) Hasbro tasked Kenner to:

A- get out more Transformers merchandise as quickly (and cheaply) as possible. And since they had the practically done four Flip-changers tools, they dusted off some of the "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" molds and shopped it around, with K*B Toys picking it up being the only reason the the concept wasn't binned. Or

B- Take the practically done four Flip-changers tools, dust off some of the "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" molds to test the waters for a vehicle-based revival.

Obviously Beasts were too big and profitable, and it would take Mature Storytelling that went over of the less-mature 20-somethings involved in the franchise since the beginning to move on to another well.

Unrelated Pic:

 

[lastmaximal]

Oh man. This unreleased trio was three really handsome decos.

I wish there were an affordable venue for this one.