Fit For Natalie

I hope they release a non-gimmicky version without giant lame rotating gun hands.

Aren't those colours, well a different shade, mayhaps, fairly close to some colour schemes of the MH-53? Does David know?

He looks like a Voyager class there, so I doubt there will be another, larger version of him. There are several sized mainline Prime toys because, well, Prime's the hero. Yeah, he does have an EMP ability, though I think that might have been added after the fact - originally he was envisioned as Soundwave, then as Vortex, the G1 Combaticon Blackhawk helo. I think they found out that Hasbro doesn't have the name Vortex registered anymore, so they used a name Hasbro did have - Blackout, who in G1 was an obscure Micromaster. Blackout is better known these days as the Minicon partner to Armada Demolishor.

Its a joke - Beast Machines had a heavy religious, well TF religious and spiritual theme of TFs concentrating and saying the mantra 'I am Transformed!' to transform. It's as dorky as it sounds.

Yep, the Optimus Prime by himself is a smaller, either Deluxe ($10) or Voyager ($20US) class toy. You can judge TF sizes by the visible screws (they usually use standard phillips heads) and any fist holes. In the other picture, both Prime and Megatron are Leader class toys ($40US). That wire and circuit board behind Prime is just temp stuff for some electronics the final toy will have. Probably light up eyes or headlights or something. I should note that Prime appears to be mistransformed or misassembled - if you look at hom in robot mode next to Megatron, you'll see that his lower right arm is actually his lower left arm, and vice versa. His legs appear to be mistransformed abit, too explaining the sag in them. Its possible Megatron hides his baggage better, but I doubt it. The Autobots seem to have very accurate Earth vehicle modes for their toys, but the Decepticons are less so, and Megatron is specifically a 'Cybertronian' spaceship. Takara apparently doesn't use computers when engineering Transformers. Still pencil and paper for them From what I understand, these are resin hardcopies of the prototypes. I think by now they are already in the test shot stage in China. We'll probably see test shots pop up on eBay as soon as somebody smuggles them out of a factory.

I think you're confusing the Ratchet thread with the Starscream thread.

It was a bad joke - I meant some of his previous modern era planes (except the ones from Zero) seemed to have a samurai motif to their designs. He mentioned the same in his design for MP Starscream, in placing the... big thingy on the hips instead of the legs.

Nah, he's too busy adding samurai motifs to non-sentient plane robots. I quite like Ratchet alot. Best movie toy that we've seen.

Twisted is an extreme exaggeration. More he lost his chin bump thin and his mouth had a strange leer. If you had thought about it, G1 bootlegs copied from vintage G1 toys have poor parts fit, soft, indistinct detailing and in the Aerialbots case, are smaller than the originals slightly. That's what I mean when it does not cut it with the standards of toy quality for both Takara and Hasbro. If you want to push quality of sculpting issues, remember Hasbro did have the Cybertron Thunderblast tooling fixed when it was discovered the Galaxy Force Chromia releases had one eye slightly lower than the other on her face. They also fixed the Wing Saber/Sonic Bomber tooling as the eye guard covered his eyes in the wrong area. That's just anti-thievery paint on his face so thieves (and potential buyers on ebay) have less desire to take and buy him. And yeah, I think he's pretty shitty given TF have done planes with far less crap underneath.

Is Ramjet in any way based on any real fighter? Cost, and level of quality for one thing. Bootleggers don't have quality standards. From what I understand, they make a mold off the parts of the vintage toy, then they need to tool it up for the sculpters to fix up the detail and make it acceptable for a production tooling, then they tool it back down and make the steel tooling. Costly. Plus, there's no guarantee anybody will actually buy Mirage, Sunstreaker or Wheeljack. Look at the reissues of toys nobody expected to be reissued, like Hound, Blaster, Astrotrain, Blitzwing and former collecting holy grail Stepper. They hung around for a VERY long time after release.

True - but Jetfire is the kind of toy you can play with. Yamatos are 'carefully transform and then admire' collectables. I doubt Takara cares about overseas customers, as they main distribute in Japan and greater asia, which usually don't have the same toy gun restrictions, so customs wouldn't be a problem. They didn't include the stock and silencer either due to budget, the price increase the parts would entail, AND because they want to release Megatron later and need an incentive for peoplr to buy him again. That's why they didn't include Roller with MP-04. If need be, they can release MP-08 Ultimate Perfect KO Red Impact Random-English-Words-That-Make-No-Sense-As-A-Product-Name Edition Masterpiece Convoy with Roller

Well, in the previous renders we've seen, his torso was pretty flat. In this pic, the hood area of the truck is sticking out for some reason, his shoulder pads are bigger, and the doors on his chest are straightened out (on the older renders the doors are folded at an angle). I HOPE its an actual change and not a mid-transformation pic or something, since its easier to tell what he turns into.

In what appears to be the first official image of Prime frontside, he's on the cover of Empire: Looks like they redesigned his chest and head.

Hmm... I'm not familiar with the real P38 - where is the socket (or whatever) to attach a hypothetical stock to?

Erm, are you sure about that? I watched the HD version and Blackout merely seems to transforms while the US soldiers open fire. When he sends out the shockwave, he appears to be transformed already. But there isn't any rule otherwise that a TF cannot used a weapon system or special power mid-way through Transformation.

Yeah but Transformers' basic concept in itself is fairly unoriginal. TF suceeded over Gobots because it had a better product range and a more entertaining fiction. I mean the car jumping-transform thing looks cool enough to do again.

But... isn't that what TF (more or less) is? Alien robots who can turn into vehicles or animals that go around blowing crap up (either on purpose with the Decepticons, or as collateral damage with the Autobots) in their never-ending civil war with humans caught in the middle and with the viewer experiencing it through the eyes of the human characters? That's pretty Transformers right there, mate. They should - its happened enough times in various TF series.

Surely you've never overstated anything in your entire life!

The original TF movie trailer did pretty much explain the plot and show Unicron's transformation for no apparent reason.

Its due to the comic itself - naked underage looking girls covered in white goop, and being eaten by robots with long-penis-shaped tongues (complete with penis-details), drawn by an artist who has reportedly done work on lolicon. Perhaps its not intended to be child porn specifically, but it clearly has been written with some of Japan's disturbing sexual fetishes in mind. Its disturbing and somewhat revolting for people brought up on western values (which are what TF are founded upon, even Takara has admitted this). Now, of course, some asians and japan-favouring westerners are quick to defend it because of culture differences or some such argument. Erm, yellow is a different colour to orange. Its not a simply different shade of yellow. But I can see what they were going for - the hands being part of the flames in the lower arms. Crazy Takara decided to use that piece of artwork as the boxart for their reissue G1 Galvatron toys last year.

Japanese Galaxy Force release was a silvery grey, but the harder blue plastic on it meant the sword was especially prone to breaking at the peg/hilt. According to Hasbro, softer, rubbery plastic actually costs more than regular hard ABS plastic. They usually use it for safety reasons and to prevent breakage on parts that are likely to be weak if made from regular hard plastic.

Post actually said it was a rumour, and Kickback posted his own rumour about the next series that had completely different information.

Here you go: [attachmentid=38690] [attachmentid=38691] The rain of leaks continue - CG render of movie Barricade. I think he looks pretty awesome.

If we judge that the alt modes thus far have been very faithful to the real-world vehicles and props they are based upon, I think Blackout will be one of the best movie toys, given that he stays accurate to the general design and proportions of the movie CG (well the movie CG at the time), but is designed with traditional TF aesthetics and mecha details.

Great beast mode. Robot mode blows. Looks like he might attach onto the bottom of Blackout's helicopter mode. Blackout transforms into a MH-53 Pave Low.