Transformers: Age of the Primes toyline discussion || update: Wave 1 Box Art
- Thread starter TriBlurr
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Alignment at least got a big ol' two-page spread of acknowledgement in The Ultimate Guide book that a lot of people did read including several writers who would go on to work on the brand in an official capacity.
Named "Soundblaster". The BWR story that introduced him was released after that toy in order to give it some kind of fictional presence.
BWR also shilled the 2006 reissue of G2 Laser Optimus Prime toy by having Optimus Primal briefly reformat into that form for a scene before returning back to his Ultra class gorilla toy body.
It just floors me that Hasbro's brand team will make super deep cuts one moment and then go "what is this we've never heard of it" the next.
A good one at that!
Well an ok one. The Cybertron Soundwave mould was very conceptually cool but lacking in execution. Looks wicked in the Soundblaster colours though.
I consider myself extremely into Transformers and I'm still constantly finding out about stuff I've never heard of. Especially in the realm of stuff that hasn't been made available in English.
I've never actually read Beast Wars Reborn. I just knew who Logos Prime was because 1) I wanted the toy as a counterpart to Cybertron Soundwave and 2) as I alluded to earlier, I've always been into the lore/backstory aspects. Previous Matrix barers is still an aspect of the franchise I'm into. It was slim pickings on that front before stuff like IDW and Aligned fleshed things out, we were bit short on pre-Optimus Prime Primes. So as a fan, seeing a page called "Logos Prime" was gold for me, to dig in and see what his deal was.
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I agree. They really shouldn't design predominantly silver characters if they don't have the budget to paint them.
How many of those deep cuts in early Aligned were to things from Japanese-original fiction never officially released in English markets?
The deep cuts made by the current Hasbro team are because the current team are deep in the sauce like we are. They weren't in charge of the brand back when Aligned was getting started.
Heck, back at BotCon earlier this year, Aaron Archer told me up front that, at the time when the Armada Powerlinx redecos were being worked on, he would have never had any awareness of G1 Sixgun as a toy or character, as he was not that deeply in touch with a lot of G1 lore or knowledge. He had only found out about the existence of G1 Sixshot as a toy/character during Armada when Takara did their reissue of the G1 toy in 2002.
Likewise, when Archer was asked by someone at SDCC 2013 about the idea of recoloring Thrilling 30 Titan class Metroplex into Metrotitan, Archer's response was "Who?"
(gonna steal a joke from the wiki)
You got the pre-Touch! You got the pre-power! YEEEAHHHH!
You got the pre-power! PRE-YEEEAHHHH!
That shot looks like a centerfold from a dirty magazine. Just needs a little more airbrush tool.
I feel like that's just been the brand for a while now.
I blame All The '80s Kids Who Aren't Me that lost their minds over Optimus dying and blaming Hot Rod.
Especially when Optimus has proven time and again that he doesn't need anyone's help getting himself killed.
Wait, your name's "Lord Giga Ice"?
The more I hear, the more I'm starting to wonder how much Archer knew about Transformers before taking it on.
If you told me that someone suggested calling the leaders in Armada "Optimus Prime" and "Megatron," and he was like "Hey, that sounds great!" without any idea of the names existing beforehand, I'd believe you.
Sorry, new guy butting in here!
I like the thirteen more as tribal leaders, and the matrix as either a program that makes new robots or a repository for the cumulative knowledge of previous bearers, or both. Not partial to chosen one stories, so all the mystical stuff with Primus and Optimus being some perfect ancient being reincarnated never did it for me. I just find it sort of, fake deep. I've always liked the Transformers as sentient AI made by the Quintessons or species under their control way more, it feels like it can go to more interesting places.
The new Star Convoy toy look reaaally cool regardless.
I would have liked it more in orange and blue, as in the Marvel comics, lol.
I like the thirteen more as tribal leaders, and the matrix as either a program that makes new robots or a repository for the cumulative knowledge of previous bearers, or both. Not partial to chosen one stories, so all the mystical stuff with Primus and Optimus being some perfect ancient being reincarnated never did it for me. I just find it sort of, fake deep. I've always liked the Transformers as sentient AI made by the Quintessons or species under their control way more, it feels like it can go to more interesting places.
The new Star Convoy toy look reaaally cool regardless.
This is the origin story for my Gizmo-verse. Primus and Unicron do not exist (at least not as gods) and the Transformers are AI beings created by the Quitessons. However, just because that is how I have arranged my universe, I am open to seeing this 13 Prime aspect of the fiction explored. I will not be basing me collecting habits off of any of it, but it is interesting.
Same. This is shaking my confidence in my ability to read.
The Hasbro Pulse video is up.
I’ll be honest, for far too long long, i thought it was Lord Gigalace. 
I guess this is another lessonn that we, the fans, focus far more on the multiple lore (any lore) versions and snip[ets, than the guys making it do and most likely have the time too.
And that we also never know as much as we think we do.
Also, Prima looks more interesting the more we see of him. Plus, big robots with big swords will never not look good.
I guess this is another lessonn that we, the fans, focus far more on the multiple lore (any lore) versions and snip[ets, than the guys making it do and most likely have the time too.
And that we also never know as much as we think we do.
Also, Prima looks more interesting the more we see of him. Plus, big robots with big swords will never not look good.
Ha! Even Marvel knew that when they made their adaptation of TFTM:
Look! No Hot Rod interference, and Megatron still guns him down!
He first came on to the Transformers brand during the Transmetal 2 portion of Beast Wars, working on such toys as the gimmick-heavy TM2 Megatron. Before that, he had been part of Kenner's 90s Ghostbusters toyline, from which both TM2 Megatron and later the Armada toys took a great amount of influence from in terms of how much variety in gimmicks those toys had. The man had a reputation of saying "No" to a lot of things suggested by fans, and many of those suggestions were always "Go back to G1" in some way, shape, or form, whether it was requests to bring back the old characters, requests for old gimmicks like Headmasters/Combiners/Sky Lynx (all of which Archer was known for being than fond of), or simply requests for new G1 animation that either continued the 80s cartoon from where it had left off or new G1 animation that was like a modern reboot of the old show (Armada/Cybertron/Animated/Prime/etc. weren't GEEWUN enough for these people). Archer wanted none of that.
He wasn't interested in going back to G1 because he was always focusing more on looking toward the future, aiming to reinvent, reimagine, and re-innovate rather than recreate, retread, and redo things that had already been done decades ago. He set his sights on grabbing the attention of newer audiences (meaning kids) instead of catering to older manchildren who just kept whining about G1 all the time. This is all partly why the Unicron Trilogy and the live-action Bay movies were so wildly different from G1 in terms of character designs and aesthetics. Archer simply had little reverence for G1. He acknowledged the impact it had had on the brand and respected that impact... but never wanted to be beholden to it and shackled down from focusing on the new over the old. It had its time in the spotlight, and that time had already ended long before he had come onto the brand. He was down for things like Alternators and Classics since they were NEW designs rather than ones 100% faithful to the 80s designs. And he certainly wasn't an uber geek who dissected every piece of Transformers media never released in the west; the majority of his TF knowledge was strictly from works that had been released in English and during his tenure.
He enjoyed his work at Hasbro at the time and was passionate about the concepts he helped to create and innovate, but at the end of the day, it was all still primarily a job and a business for him, not something sacrosanct for him to get fanatical over.
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While I personally mostly enjoy the place Generations is at, I dislike the dominance it has over the "new stuff" lines, and how much the supposedly "new stuff" lines feel like remake toy lines anyway. I feel like we need someone that's more like Archer right now. The way the One toyline was handled was a disaster, imagine if they'd handled the 2007 movie line the same way... Although One's marketing was a failure in many fronts, not just toys.
That is all part of why I feel a bit weird when people talk about "the lore". There shouldn't be a "the lore", having a "the lore" means that stuff has started stagnating, that there's no more new interpretations and there's just the old stuff congealing into a single relic, which isn't really true, Transformers stories used to be pretty different from one interpretation to another.
That is all part of why I feel a bit weird when people talk about "the lore". There shouldn't be a "the lore", having a "the lore" means that stuff has started stagnating, that there's no more new interpretations and there's just the old stuff congealing into a single relic, which isn't really true, Transformers stories used to be pretty different from one interpretation to another.
Well it's not like Optimus would just blow his head off in cold blood. Even eight year old me wouldn't have believed Optimus would do that. What depraved loon deviated from the rest of humanity would?Ha! Even Marvel knew that when they made their adaptation of TFTM:
Look! No Hot Rod interference, and Megatron still guns him down!