Radio Free Cybertron - All of our Transformers podcasts!

This week: A new Artfire! A new Wreck-gar! New RED figures are rumored! New RED figures? Okay. I guess two out of three ain't bad.

News

Wreck-Gar revealed

Transformers Deck Building Game Updates

Extremely Early Looks At Masterpiece Skyfire And Shouki

Premium Finish Line Revealed – And Possible Future Figures?

MPM-12 Optimus Prime (Bumblebee Movie) Officially Revealed

Generations Selects Artfire Leaked

Good thing Kilby just bought a G1 Artfire.

More Leaks? Sure! RED Collection, Kingdom Gets Extended, And More!?

This week: A new deck-building game, new toys, and two Unicrons are better than one, it's double the pleasure and triple the fun.

News

* RFC News Desk 142 – Amazon Exclusive Mirage & Grimlock, Plus Premium Finish!

* Transformers Deck-Building Game

Hasbro made the official reveal for the Amazon exclusive Battle Across Time Collection, giving us the very first look at the first set in the series: Maximal Grimlock and Autobot Mirage!

These are reuses of Kingdom Dinobot and Siege Mirage, respectively. Grimlock is loosely based on the original Beast Wars Grimlock, though virtually every specific, identifying detail has been made different. Mirage is a heavy remodel to effect an "Earth mode" form, but sticks pretty close in appearance to Siege Mirage. Notably it lacks clear plastic which should be an overall positive. But it simultaneously seems to have lost the shoulder mounting points for the weapons with the minor engineering changes, which is definitely a negative.

The set is up for preorder via Amazon for $52.99 with release planned for November. You can click our link to preorder and send some referral revenue back to us at no extra cost to you!

In Demand Toys has leaked the first look at TakaraTomy's new Premium Finish line, from retailer solicitation images.

The first two toys are a Bumblebee Movie Bumblebee, and Siege Optimus Prime. It seems like the purpose here is extensive use of paint to make the most screen-accurate figures possible. Bumblebee looks to have a very dull, worn finish to the car body panels to match the aged, neglected look from the movie. Siege Optimus goes for high accuracy to the Siege animated series, down to the green-tinted windows and lights.

Does this indicate that we may be returning to the days of having unique Takara decos for Transformers? Probably not the way we would really want it, if at all. With only two toys being solicited to start, this is probably going to be a comparatively limited project, and is unlikely to "rescue" any Siege toys of their battle damage, which would be a leading wishlist item for many collectors. But that doesn't mean there aren't interesting possibilities for a series like this.

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This week: Botbots Ruckus Rally, some Road Rage, and more crazy Covid-era trends in collecting.

News

RFC News Desk 141 – Leaks, Buzz, BotBots, And Jam

BotBots Ruckus Rally artwork

Target DPCIs: Kingdom Road Rage, Buzzworthy Bumblebee Power Charge Bumblebee and Deluxe Origins Bumblebee, and mystery listings for $50 Optimus Prime and Megatron figures, plus a new $40 assortment. Specific line unknown.

Studio Series 2022 wave 1 data mining: Bumblebee Movie Deluxe Brawn, Wheeljack, and Ratchet, Voyager Soundwave; 86 Deluxe Perceptor, Voyager Junkion Junkyard, and Leader King Starscream.

Project Jam. Not to be confused with JAM Project. Speculated to be Space Jam related, but one supposed insider indicated a Blaster tied into an unspecified band.

There was a lot of activity over the weekend, mostly involving retail system datamining that has pulled some interesting info for us.

Mr.Chaos from TFW has shared information on the first wave of next product-year's Studio Series figures. We hope you like either the 86 movie, or the Bumblebee Movie...!

Deluxe:

Tra Gen Studio series Deluxe TF6 Brawn

UPC: 195166158518

Tra Gen Studio series deluxe TF6 Ratchet

UPC: 195166158532

Tra Gen studio series deluxe 86 Perceptor

UPC: 195166158556

Tra Gen studio series deluxe TF6 Wheeljack

UPC: 195166160016

Voyagers:

Tra Gen Studio series voyager TF6 Soundwave

UPC: 195166153438

Tra Gen Studio series voyager 86 Junkyard (Wreck Gar Re-tool)

UPC: 195166158525

Leader:

Tra Gen studio series leader 86 King Starscream cape

UPC: 195166153421

LivingRangerKey, and UncagedOtaku came up with some Target system finds.

Anticipated Kingdom Tracks retool Road Rage is confirmed to be a Target exclusive, much lime Runabout during Earthrise. Right now it seems the product listing doesn't tie Road Rage to Target's Red Card, which will probably be some small relief, but only until you realize that it's still a Target exclusive and that experience is rarely fun no matter what.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee is somehow still a thing that's happening. Power Charge Bumblebee is being rereleased from the Bumblebee Movie line in Buzzworthy packaging, and a Generations Deluxe Origin Bumblebee is listed, but we don't have any solid indication of what that name might actually mean. Could Hasbro be further retooling the Earthrise Cliffjumper body to resemble Bumblebee's G1 Cybertronian form?

There's also some mystery listings. An Optimus Prime and Megatron at $49.99 each, but without a line name attached. And a new assortment price point at $39.99 that also doesn't seem to be connected to anything specific.

Jtprime found some official art for a new BotBots series, the Ruckus Rally. On the art you can see BotBot vehicles made from a slice of pizza, and a game controller. We don't know anything else about this series currently, including when or where it might show up. But it looks like BotBots is continuing to survive, and we're very glad to see it!

Finally, another Collaborative figure has been uncovered: Project Jam. Nobody has stepped up to give any real hints about what this might be. Common conjecture is a Space Jam crossover, which isn't a huge leap. One supposed insider has been reported second hand as attributing this to a Blaster in collaboration with a band that wasn't specifically identified.

With the Jam listing having a price equal to X-Spanse, that points to a leader-size figure. If the band thing is true, Titans Return Blaster sounds like a possible jumping off point, if its base mode were repurposed as a stage, and figures added to represent the band in question. But none of this should be taken as anything more than speculative.

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This week: News. Stuff. Glass Shattering. Price hikes. Toys. NFTs. The usual.

 

News

RFC News Desk 140 – Shattered Glass Megatron And Rising Prices

Hasbro managed to reveal the Megatron for their Shattered Glass subline before anyone could leak it! Amazing! SG Megatron is a redeco of Siege Megatron (because of course it is) with new parts to permit making a "spaceship" alternate mode. Megatron is up for preorder on Hasbro Pulse for $36.99, and is due to ship in October.

In other news, Hasbro's about to raise prices on toys and games again, as a resulting of rising costs in materials and transportation. The increases reportedly could come as early as the second half of this year. No details are available about the specific impact this will have on any individual line, but my guess is, get ready for $25 Deluxes still at the current $15 level of overall quality.

Original article at Reuters.

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This week: The pains of retailer exclusives, Diecast's Unicron update, discussion of our Hasbro Q&A, and more!

News

RFC News Desk 139 – Hasbro Roundtable Interview Highlights

Last week, we were invited to join a roundtable interview with Ran Sun and Lenny Panzica from the Transformers team, along with representatives from several other sites. Over the course of about half an hour, we had the chance to pose questions related to the Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest reveals, and talk and give direct feedback about the brand.

With big thanks to our buddy Anthony at TFU.info, we're able to bring you audio clips from the conference call, highlighting some interesting segments of the interview. There are also text format versions of these questions and answers below for easier reference, though in this case both the questions and answers will be paraphrased to some degree for clarity without losing the original meaning of the answer.

We also had a couple of points come up that won't be included with the audio clips, but are worth documenting:

Ben Yee (BWTF.com) asked about plans for Hasbro Pulse Premium, for bringing more incentives and exclusive perks for the paid members.

Ran could not give any specific details on this, but did say that this is something that they also have on their minds and they're continuing to look for new ways to keep the value for the subscribers.

In commenting on the current packaging styles, I specifically noted how impressed we were by the Shattered Glass subline's box design.

In answering this, Lenny seemed to indirectly confirm that the Shattered Glass lineup would be online-only. He compared the Shattered Glass packages to other "e-commerce" packaging designs, which would seem to refer to things like Amazon's windowless-box exclusives. This does not say whether Shattered Glass will be specific solely to Pulse in the US, but it doesn't sound like it's headed for store shelves in any case.

Anthony (Roarbots): How did it feel to develop the first new Titan ever since G1?

Lenny: Necessary. As kids growing up, and now as fans as adults, it's one of the things in the Transformers world, where you expect everything to transform. We thought one thing we could bring to the universe which never really happened was, the Ark never transformed. The Ark isn't as big as the other Titans, but comes with more stuff, like Teletraan with three modes, and accessories and a lot of deco work.

Anthony (TFU.info): Will designs from the Kingdom promo poster that haven't made it out as toys during Kingdom be considered for use in future lines? And along that line, is the Weaponizer and Fossilizer play pattern here to stay, or is it done after Kingdom?

Lenny: For the play pattern, it depends on the story we're telling and how the pattern fits, so if it makes sense to include, we will!

Anthony (TFU.info): One question I did have - Dracodon, what went behind the choice of green for that figure?

Lenny: Mark and I were riffing on what we could do to update [Vertebreak]. ...you see, the whole [photography] set is like a lava field, right? We were like, you know how in deep Russia there's these acid pits by the volcanic fields? What if he was fossilized and scanned a ...what is it... a Stygimoloch skeleton in one of those pits? And it came out and is literally like acid bones? Which is metal... it's a heavy metal acid bone thing. Rad.

Phil (ASMZine): Pulse Fan fest, the Toy Fair presentation live stream, you've made a great effort to bring convention events for people when we can't really get to...

This week: Slag. Skids. A self-transforming Optimus Prime!?! Has the world gone mad?!

News

RFC News Desk 138 – MP Skids And Reboost Preorders, And Studio Series Slag Pictures Leaked

Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest Transformers Reveals

Ben Yee's translation of the Takara-Tomy Super Megatron comic