Everything we expected and slightly more(?)

Hasbro had a quick live stream this morning, giving us our second Transformers-focused Fan First Friday. The stream went pretty quick, coming in at about 35 minutes out of its 30 minute scheduled runtime, and a lot of product announcements were included. Unfortunately the majority of it was things we already had at least some awareness of.

At the start of the broadcast was an update about Rotorstorm, which they had first debuted on the previous Fan First Friday. Rotorstorm was originally seen using Spinister’s head, all the while the product copy and the representatives on the first stream went out of their way to describe how it had a great IDW-inspired new headsculpt. According to the update this morning, that was an error with the previous sample, which was an early engineering pass. The mistake was corrected, and they showed off pictures of the correct new head. Along with this, a small amount of attention was paid to Maverick, which was revealed earlier this week, but no new information was revealed.

A lot of the time was spent talking about the second wave of Walmart exclusive Netflix War For Cybertron figures. We’re getting a complete second wave, with all price points. Including a second spoiler pack, because nobody learned the lesson fast enough the first time to be able to stop it. We don’t know who will be in the new spoiler blind box, but it does appear to be a Decepticon, and the toy is noted as transforming in 34 steps. The detective work is, of course, ongoing.

Voyagers include Soundwave, which is the “clean” Earthmode Soundwave we saw leaked several weeks ago. It comes with a Ravage and a remolded Laserbeak, each of which have more detailed cassette deco.

The other Voyager is Optimus Prime, which will be the Earthrise robot with no trailer. Coming with it are redecoed Pteraxadon as Enerax, and Soundbarrier as Sheeldon. The two Battlemasters are meant to resemble Prime’s energon axe, and an energon shield, respectively.

Five more Deluxes are on the way, included redecos of Red Alert, Impactor, and Wheeljack. The assortment is also going to include an Elita-1 retool of Earthrise Arcee, featuring a robot mode with a fair degree of modifications, but a vehicle mode that’s virtually identical. Finally there will be a Bumblebee retool of Cliffjumper. Bumblebee’s vehicle mode is very Volkswagen, so don’t be surprised to see licensing acknowledgements on the packaging when these hit. Bumblebee was also shown with the very same accessory loadout as Cliffjumper, dashing the hopes of anyone looking forward to the possibility of alternate equipment.


According to Walmart’s website, the figures are supposed to ship in mid-October, though we must point out that the estimated ship date for the first wave came and went at least two times with nothing actually being shipped.

On the Generations Selects front, Exhaust and Greasepit were finally acknowledged. And surprisingly, they even acknowledged that a lot of people had already gotten hold of them. An interesting change from the previous stance of complete denial for possession of anything in advance of the planned on-sale timeframe. Along with them came the official reveal of Hubcap, who we’d seen through leak sources already. Unlike the leaked samples, the Hubcap shown on the stream used all the correct Cliffjumper weapon parts; the leaks omitted one booster gun, swapping it out for a piece from Brunt. Exhaust and Greasepit are on sale now, and Hubcap is due next month.

As the stream wound down, we got to finally hear about the Amazon exclusive multipacks. Autobot Alliance is the Prowl and Ironhide two pack whose existence we analyzed based on international Amazon product pages. Prowl, as expected, is a variation of Earthrise Smokescreen. Ironhide is potentially more interesting though, as it’s the skeleton of Siege Ironhide with a new van skin, essentially. Ironhide gets a new roof top piece that is removed for transformation to serve either as a shield, or as a sled, calling back to the similar vehicle-leftovers unit on the G1 toy.

The other set is Seeker Elite, which comprises Ramjet and Dirge. Both of these sets leaked in the middle of the night with very low-res images, so we didn’t go in entirely unprepared for this reveal. Seeker Elite seems to be the updated name for Elite Hunters, which had previously been referenced in the product copy for Autobot Alliance. Seeker Elite is scheduled to ship August 15th, while Autobot Alliance ships in early November.

They capped off the stream talking about the Quintesson Pit of Judgement set that was shown by comicbook.com yesterday. One bit of new information shared reveals to us that the deco of the Sharkticon in the set was inspired by Floro Dery’s concept art. No mention was made of the fan-colored character model that seems to have inspired the Bailiff figure, though. Preorders did not begin for this set today, nor were any promised. They did reinforce that it would be available in September, with more details to come. While they didn’t come out and say that this was planned to be an SDCC item, all the indications are there to point to it anyway.


Today’s event most likely takes the place of what we would have gotten as an SDCC fan media breakfast or similar event in a normal year. But there’s still a lot of stuff out there waiting for official word, as well as other kinds of brand previews that can happen. We may or may not get a Fan First Friday again soon, but this might not be the only SDCC replacement presentation we see from Hasbro revolving around Transformers.

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