The toy and packaging variation oddity, mystery and discovery thread

[Sabrblade]

A thought has crossed my mind after thinking more about all this

What if the reason there were two versions of these molds released in Machine Wars wasn't simply to bulk out the line's Basic class assortment, but also because there were always going to be two versions of each released in G2?

Looking at these four deco sheets, Greasepit is mostly yellow like Hubcap ended up being, Lightspeed looks to use white as its main plastic color like Prowl ultimately did, Thundercracker is likewise primarily white like MW Skywarp was, and Skystriker looks to use gray plastic like Megaplex did. Yet, the head designs for Lightspeed and Skystriker are unambiguously meant to resemble those of Mirage and Megatron, respectively. One could even make an argument for Greasepit's head resembling Hoist, too. It's only Thundercracker's head that looks to be a completely original design, but with the decision to make him Thundercracker it doesn't seem unreasonable that there could have been a second version as Skywarp planned to go with him.

Perhaps the original intent for these four molds was indeed for them to be made into new toys of Megatron, Mirage, and Hoist, with Skystriker, Lightspeed, and Greasepit as accompanying moldmate uses, along with the other jet mold doubling as the duo of Thundercracker and Skywarp. Then, when these molds got canceled and revived for Machine Wars, the mostly-yellow Greasepit was changed to Hubcap, the white-plastic'd Lightspeed was changed to Prowl, and the gray-plastic'd Skystriker was changed to Megaplex, while Thundercracker's mostly white basis got used for Skywarp (while Thundercracker himself became mostly green instead).

G2 was also no stranger to seeing several of its new molds getting second uses in the same line, with the Cyberjets, GoBots, and Dreadwing/Smokescreen* each getting at least one new redeco, while redecos of the Heroes, Auto Rollers, and Laser Cycles were all planned before each of those redecos were canceled.


* -- The ATB Megatron/Starscream set saw limited release in Ohio test markets.

 

[Nevermore]

Also, many of those redecos were initially intended as same-character running change deco variants before Hasbro decided to instead market them as different-character redecos instead. Indeed, some of them were sold as the same characters in Europe.

 

[Sabrblade]

Here are the complete posts of the G2 pre-Machine Wars flipchangers, containing all the information given about them and all the included images in full form:

 

[Sabrblade]

Part II

 

[Nevermore]

Almost a year later, and I'm back with another theory!


This time: Armada Powerlinx Thrust.

So supposedly the reason behind the whole color conundrum for Powerlinx Thrust was because of Powerlinx Demolishor.

Hasbro originally wanted Powerlinx Thrust to be an homage to G1 Thrust. That's why the red color scheme is depicted on the back of the brown US version's packaging. That was Hasbro's original plan.


But then Takara decided to make Powerlinx Demolishor red, because the character was named "Ironhide" in Japan, and Takara wanted the "Ironhide Super Mode" redeco's colors to be an homage to G1 Ironhide.


And because the Ironhide Super Mode/Powerlinx Demolishor color scheme was going to be featured in the cartoon, Hasbro had no choice but give their version of the toy those colors as well.


But then Hasbro didn't like the idea of too many red toys on the shelves at the same time, so they decided to give Powerlinx Thrust a new color scheme, this time as an homage to G1 Thrust's fellow conehead Dirge.


The decision to change Powerlinx Thrust's colors happened at the eleventh hour, too late to change the colors on the back of the packaging. (Something similar happened later with the last-minute Armada redecos released in the early waves of Energon, namely Rapid Run, Treadbolt and Ultra Magnus, which depicted the toys in their original Armada decos on the back of their packaging, while an early production run of Energon Unicron was actually the figure in its original Armada colors in Energon packaging.)

Eventually, Takara did release the red version as a Toy's Dream Project exclusive "USA Edition".


Soon after, Hasbro promised in their website Q&A that they would like to release a running change variant of Powerlinx Thrust in his originally intended colors. Of course, anyone who knows Hasbro will know that whenever Hasbro promises a running change, it most likely won't happen, while the running changes that did happen typically weren't announced in advance.

And then the figure popped up at retail in Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom (years after the fact), and even in Australia (but only as an import in European packaging).



Now here's my theory: What if that stock in European packaging wasn't part of Hasbro's announced-but-never-materialized-in-the-US running change, but was actually old stock from before Hasbro's last-minute decision to change Powerlinx Thrust's colors in the first place?

Effectively, we're not looking at a running change here. We're looking at a market specific variant.

US Powerlinx Thrust is brown. European Powerlinx Thrust is red. I'm not aware of any specimens of the brown version in European packaging.


It wouldn't be the first, nor last, instance of Hasbro making a change just in time for the US release, while the European release (at least the initial batch) got released as originally intended:

Beast Wars Jawbreaker was originally going to be named "Cackle". While the US and Canada got the final version named "Jawbreaker" on his packaging, Europe got two different packaging variants (English/Spanish/Italian "Beast Wars/Biocombat" and French/Dutch/German "Beast Wars/Ani Mutants"), both of which still featured the outdated name "Cackle".


Revenge of the Fallen Fast Action Battler Grapple Grip Mudflap was misspelled "Grappel Grip Mudflap" Hasbro's website. While the name was spelled correctly ("Grapple") on US packaging, it was misspelled "Grappel" on European packaging.


Revenge of the Falle Scout Class Dead End was initially going to be named "Detour" before Hasbro made another last-minute change. While the US release was called "Dead End", the initial production run in European packaging was a weird hybrid, with the name insert on the front side of the packaging retaining the oudated name "Detour" and the back of the packaging correctly calling him "Dead End". A later running change for the European market saw the name insert replaced with a corrected version.
(called "Detour" on the name inserts of the initial European production run's name insert).

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

And because the Ironhide Super Mode/Powerlinx Demolishor color scheme was going to be featured in the cartoon, Hasbro had no choice but give their version of the toy those colors as well.

I'd say this is where the theory falls apart for me (gestures at Tidal Wave, among others), but knowing Hasbro?

Yeah, could be.

 

[Sabrblade]

@Nevermore

Inspired by your recent research regarding Red Powerlinx Thrust, I thought I should share with you in this thread (if you hadn't already seen them) some findings and discussions I had with Aaron Archer back at last year's BotCon, as among the things we talked about were the Armada Powerlinx redecos:

After the final panel, there was one more hour before the dealer room closed at 3:00pm. I ran back inside to make some final purchases, and to talk with Aaron Archer at his booth about a few things.

First, I was requested by an online acquaintance to ask Archer about a statement he had given way back in 2003 at Orson's World on TFW2005. In this original statement, Archer had stated that the original color scheme for Armada Powerlinx Demolishor was planned to be based on G1 Sixshot, before it was ultimately changed to the red color scheme the final figure ended up having.

Over on TFWiki, the toy write-up for Powerlinx Demolishor suggests that Archer might have meant Six-Gun instead of Sixshot because Archer apparently said that Demolishor's gun hands made him think of Sixshot when Sixshot doesn't have any gun hands, whereas Six-Gun does. When I asked Archer about this, he explained to me that, back when he was working on Armada during that time, he was not a big enough fan of Transformers to know all that much about Generation 1, and assured me that he definitely would not have known about Six-Gun at all back then. He said that he had known about Sixshot at the time only because Takara had recently reissued the G1 Sixshot toy back during 2002, so Sixshot was fresh on Archer's mind at the time.

He also rationalized that the most likely reason the plans for Powerlinx Demolishor's original Sixshot-based deco had changed at all was due to Powerlinx Cyclonus having already had a green color scheme, and his bosses at Hasbro possibly felt that there would have been too much green for that part of the toyline's Super-Con range. He also suspected that the green deco for the later Energon Demolishor release was possibly recycled from Powerlinx Demolishor's original deco.


Relatedly, we also talked about how Tidal Wave's original purple deco was changed to the green one the Hasbro toy ended up having (as opposed to how the Takara toy kept the original purple deco), providing an additional layer to the notion that there was too much purple in the line at the time. Archer told me that Tidal Wave's deco was changed by request of Samantha Lomow, who was his boss at the time. Back then, Transformers was still primarily targeting boys, while the color purple was still kinda felt by Hasbro as being a "girls' color", so there being "too much purple" in a "boys' brand" was a concern of Hasbro's at the time.


And finally is something really special, involving the mystery of what might very well be a discarded exclusive proposal. Back on Friday, I had previously approached Archer's booth to find him talking to three other attendees, who had just purchased some unpainted test shots of older Transformers toys from one of the vendors at the convention (one of which was a red test shot of ROTF Deluxe class Lockdown). But, among these production items they had with them was a most mysterious curiosity.

Rather than a test shot, this item appeared to be an officially-painted Transformers figure, but with a different color from the final version. It was Alternators Decepticharge, but with all of its matte yellow colored in a weathered metallic gold instead. It also even had the full-length gun barrel from the Binaltech Overdrive version instead of the barrel-less weapon of Alternators Windcharger/Decepticharge. The guy who bought this item showed it to Aaron Archer in hopes that he, Archer, might be able to identify what it was.

Archer examined it and looked it over thoroughly and meticulously. He was absolutely certain that it was not a fan custom, as he recognized the paintwork as being identical to the official in-house paintwork for the toy. In other words, the yellow parts were colored gold, but all of the black paint details were painted over the gold in all of the same places and patterns found on the official yellow version. Archer then grabbed his phone and contacted several of his colleagues, both former and current Hasbro employees (including Mark Maher, whom Archer said had been a painter for Transformers way back then), to try to figure out what this mysterious gold Decepticharge really was.

It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I got back to Archer's booth to hear about his findings. After consulting several individuals over his phone, he had determined that this gold Decepticharge was most likely a marketing sample made in-house at Hasbro for a potential retail exclusive, a physical example that would have been shown off to various retailers for the offered proposal. What really tipped him off about this was the fact that all of the figure's joints were left unchanged from the normal retail version, as the joints would have been left in their original matte yellow color for this kind of proposal sample.

Evidently, no such exclusive was made, which according to Archer means that no retailer accepted the offer proposed. Exactly how this marketing sample got out of Hasbro and into the hands of the vendor who sold both it and the test shots to these three other attendees is anyone's guess. And while I was not able get the names of the three who had purchased this gold Decepticharge, nor did I ever find out which vendor had sold it to them, they did allow me to take photos of it in its plastic Ziploc wrapping:

Archer also felt that the gold would have originally been much brighter back when it was first applied to the sample, and that it has since dulled over time. Also notice that the underside of the car is left unchanged too (save for, again, the barrel on the weapon). Such an extraordinary discovery was completely unexpected and a delightful surprise.

 

[Nevermore]

Huh.

So we got a full circle of color changes? Powerlinx Cyclonus became green, so Powerlinx Demolishor had to be given a new color, so Powerlinx Thrust had to be given a new color?

Regarding Decepticharge... isn't that what the original test shots looked like, minus the long barrel? Pretty sure our first look was this darker color.

Alt Overdrive/Dragstrip Repaint Gallery

Thanks to Bbabshop, we have a big ol' batch of ten new images showing us the first good look at the Atlernator Overdrive repaint that is rumored to be called Dragstrip. The new figure has a real roof.

tformers.com

The darker color also seems to match the official stock photos. My own theory is that the figure was originally supposed to have a fully painted car exterior (similar to Silverstreak), which was then dropped for the final figure.