Clay wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:05 pmAs I say above, I think they may have started out as internal proof-of-concept customs for what became TM2s. Or, they may have started as their own wacky remolds for retail sale that, upon reflection, they liked and developed into the general 'look' of the TM2s for the following year.
Again, we'll probably never know, but I'd like to. I find it fascinating.
I feel like there wasn't enough time between the two, but it's also possible their release schedules weren't reflective of their development schedules. The Wiki says that the Cyborg Beasts came out at the tail-end of 1998, and since the Transmetal 2s were 1999's subline in the west I'd guess the first wave would have started to trickle out around the same time. Also, I'm not sure how much of today's cooperative relationship between Hasbro and Takara was in place at that point...with the production of Beast Wars being farmed out to Kenner, did they still use Japanese sculptors and engineers for the Western figures? Or was all of that done in-house for four years? And either way, would the Kenner people have even known that the Cyborg Beasts existed?
It's also possible that someone at Takara saw concept art for TM2s at an early stage, fell in love with it and decided to incorporate that style into some of their remolds since it would be a long time until those designs saw release in Japan.
Like you say, it would be really cool to know how the process worked back then.
Clay wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 11:05 pmAlso, I used to have a Ramulus. Not sure why I got sold him off. I do remember that I bought him carded for basically what the retail price was even six or seven years after the fact, and that even though he was fine while sealed, it didn't take long for the chrome to start flaking.
I feel like whatever process they used to vac-metalicize the figures in the 90s must have been flawed. Tons of early G1 toys had chromed parts and I've never heard about
them flaking and falling apart. Toys from other lines, likewise. Beast-era stuff seems to sport uniquely-bad bling. But it also seems to be pretty binary. None of my Transmetals have ever "started" flaking, if you know what I mean. They've either
always flaked since the first time I handled them, or they were fine and they still are.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:07 pmMy Ramulus I remember managed the astonishing feat of losing all his pink colouring to reveal a lovely shade of silver chrome underneath. And then that started falling off.
Same happened to my TM2 Prowl. Shed a ton of blue sparkles to reveal the silver undercoat, then started to lose the silver too to reveal bare plastic.
Prowl and Scourge are by far the worst in my collection. I literally cannot move them anywhere without leaving a trail of barely visible coloured dust. My TM Cheetor and TM Tarantulas both have chrome damage too, but in their case it seems more like play wear from the previous owners than self-destructing paint. Most everyone else of mine seems to be in good shape though, minor scraped paint on joints aside.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:07 pmMy Transmetals are all largely fine
I feel like that makes sense. The TM2s have a lot more texture to their molds that creates a lot more little bits that can get dinged up, or little crevices where the paint maybe didn't bond correctly.
Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:07 pm
In other old toys funtimes, I dug out some curious Live Action Movie G1 redecos I keep forgetting I have:
These toys should not be!
(Actually they're super cool.)
After getting that Command Ravage last week, I decided to take a stroll through my remaining Unicron Trilogy toys. It wasn't a long stroll by any means. Let's start with Armada!
I was surprised by how little Armada I still have. But then, I don't think I ever had much of it really. I was more into collecting Universe toys, G1 reissues and Alternators at the time. The small Optimus is really cool-looking. I think Armada Optimus might actually be my favourite look for the character. He's just so beefy and powerful-looking! But it's hilarious how we looked at this toy as if it was some sort of super-articulated masterwork back in 2002ish. It has a lot of moving parts but this isn't a poseable figure
at all. And not even by modern standards...most Beast Wars toys and even some G2 stuff beats this out. I still love it, though.
Wheeljack is another design with great aesthetics but he's a
huge Deluxe with super simple engineering, and the whole thing would be so much better if it was shrunk down to 50% size. I used to have Overload (a G1-tier brick but super charming) and Cyclonus (a cool design hampered by too many gimmicks) as well but not anymore.
(I have several of the Beasts, but I didn't include them in this shot because I honestly don't even think of them as Armada toys most of the time.)
Energon, though? Energon was a blast! The Deluxe Autobots were uniformly terrible and I think everyone just remembers that and Fat Megazord Prime, but so much of this line was super cool!
With the exception of the long-departed Arcee, all of the Basics I owned were great. Ravage is a standout, one of the best cat molds Hasbro has ever done. Treadshot (the blue/black jet) is also super cool...great colours and great accessories. All the combiner limbs are fun, and I really want to collect more of the Omnicons and Terrorcons.
In the Deluxes, Starscream was a really nice take on the basic Seeker concept and it's really too bad that Hasbro hadn't started repainting him into every Seeker under the sun yet, though I would like to track down the more G1-coloured version one day. But Sharkticon is legitimately one of the coolest toys (not just Transformers either) I've ever handled. The ship mode and its four separate, double-articulated gun mounts is so much fun. The robot mode is very poseable in spite of the HUGE cape and the hidden missile launchers are a really nice touch. The best things about him are probably the colours, though. I also love his sleek head, which I'm only now realizing I managed to block with one of his guns in my picture... The Autobots I owned (Rodimus and Downshift and maybe one other?) were pretty awful though.
I don't have any of the bigger toys from the line anymore, but I have a lot of fond memories of Shockblast (who broke in half at the waist
). Wing Saber had a lot of presence too, in spite of being a literal unposeable wall in robot mode. Megatron and Galvatron were always eye-catching but I've never tried to track one down.
And then there's the combiners.
I'm actually surprised I remembered how to do this. It's probably been a decade since I last put this mismash together. It's surprising how little progress they made between this and the Prime Wars combiners. Handfootguns? Check! Limbs that really don't convince at all in limb mode, and start to fall apart if you try to pose them? Check! Terrible balance in combined mode? Check! Team leaders with no weapons? Check! A zillion repaints? Check!
People don't like them as much as CW because they're not the "classic" teams and looks, but I feel like the Energon combiners come out ahead. All else being equal, they at least crammed all those compromises into four Basics and a Deluxe instead of four Deluxes and a Voyager. And honestly, all else
isn't equal. These Basics are miles more fun than all but maybe one or two of the CW/POTP limb molds. I raved about Treadshot already. Sky Shadow (the A-10) is super creative too -- I love that his head turns into a gun turret. The copter and flak tank (Stormcloud and Kickback?) are really well-built too, and don't feel like they're weaker at all as robots or vehicles for being able to combine.
Cybertron is last, and honestly least too. All of these figures feel exactly like Armada Wheeljack did: really cool designs that are twice as big as they should have been (and Starscream here is already like 1/4 the size of the original version of Starscream, which is a shocking thought). The fact that so many Cybertron designs were so successfully downsized to Legends of Cybertron figures without losing any of the essential character of the designs goes to show that Hasbro knew it, too. Override and Universe Springer were the same way. Movie Crankcase was more just "bad". Tank Unicron was just kind of messy. Ironically, the only Cybertron mold I own and actually really like is Universe Ratbat...who I couldn't find for these pictures because I stowed him in a different bin from all the other UT stuff.
Like Energon, a lot of the Scouts from Cybertron look like really cool toys but for whatever reason I didn't buy
any of them at the time.