Also featuring RED Collection and Galactic Odyssey!
This morning during the second day of PulseCon we finally got the full official reveal for Kingdom, the third line of the War For Cybertron Trilogy, with the full first wave of product shown.
Cheetor, Rattrap, Blackarachnia, Warpath, and Fossilizer Paleotrex all got some screentime, though we’ve of course seen a lot of those toys already from unofficial sources while awaiting the reveals. Some new looks at this week’s IGN preview reveals, Cyclonus and Beast Megatron gave us some new details. John Warden wanted everyone to pay particular attention to how clean Cyclonus was in both robot and vehicle mode, with each mode showing little or no junk from the other and having a very clean appearance.
Megatron was explained as being large for its pricepoint, with Warden at one point saying that it almost felt like a Commander Class despite being a Leader. He also talked briefly about how one of the motivations in designing the new Beast Wars toys was to try to go for a new degree of realism in the beast modes. In Megatron’s case, beyond the styling that motive involves the use of softer plastic elements, seemingly to convey more of a feeling of skin to the dinosaur parts.
New Core Class toys were revealed, including a small Optimus Prime, and Vertebreak. Vertebreak is a dinosaur fossil, but doesn’t seem to be a Fossilizer in the same way as Paleotrex; no indication was given of being able to take it apart or equip it on other toys as weapons or armor. The general inspiration behind the Fossilizers and similarly-styled toys in this line was to capture the feeling of seeing dinosaur skeletons in museums.
The stream brought us our first look at Voyager Class Optimus Primal. Lenny Panzica made sure to call special attention to the fact that the transformation design allowed them to add some extra articulation to the toy in strategic places. At least one result of this is the ability for the ape mode to stand upright, as Primal did in the TV show. While very obvious visually, one thing that was not acknowledged was the extra panel in the ape mode that makes it look like it’s wearing furry shorts. Various design features were recreated, including the forearm guns, shoulder cannons, and the swords that can store on the sides of the backpack.
They debuted the new line’s packaging mockups next. Notable on these in particular is the smaller front windows for the Deluxe and Voyager price points. This would seem to be a move toward Hasbro’s goal of reducing plastic content in their packaging. It’s hard to tell if this is a consequence of these being mockups, but it also gave the impression that there aren’t plastic trays inside the boxes anymore, with the figures being tied down to cardboard inserts. Rattrap’s packaging still looks traditional with no obvious reduction in plastic use, but it would be hard to cut back plastic on blister-carded price points. They also explained the new pack-in Golden Disk cards. There will be 16 cards in total for the line, and they have a peel-off layer on the front to reveal one of multiple possible futures for the pictured character.
After Kingdom, they revealed two more RED Collection figures: The Prime Arcee and Beast Wars Cheetor that we’d learned about some time back from inventory datamining.
For these figures, they took a little bit different approach in the design from the G1-based initial figures. Both feature layered construction to make them look more complex, and some of the layered parts are intended to be removable. In particular both Cheetor and Arcee can have their chest panels removed to reveal sculpted detail underneath.
Finally, the third Galactic Odyssey set was revealed. Yes, the third. No, you didn’t miss the second. Through some unspecified issues, they weren’t able to follow through on their original reveal plan for today. So they skipped ahead to number three, which is the set for planet Biosfera: The Autobot Clones. Unlike the Decepticon Clones which were identical to the TakaraTomy releases of those molds, this release of Fastlane and Cloudraker is said to have a unique new deco as compared to both the very pink Takara versions and the original Hasbro releases.
Preorders for the Kingdom toys are due to go up at 5pm Eastern today at various online retailers. The new RED Collection figures are still exclusive to Walmart in the US, and also have preorders going up at 5 today. For whatever that’s worth, since the original round of preorders is yet to be fulfilled after the arrival dates having been pushed back a couple times already.
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