San Diego Comic Con has come and gone, for the first time in person since 2019! Hasbro had a presence at the event, which was announced only a brief several weeks ahead of time. We had speculated that the decision to be there happened somewhat last minute, and that premise seemed to bear out in practice. Hasbro only had two convention season exclusives offered, and only for preorder. no actual sales at-show took place. Hasbro did reveal the Transformers exclusive, a two pack of Orion Pax and Alpha Trion.

This set is retools of Studio Series 86 Kup and Scourge, respectively, and includes a Vector Sigma and Circuit Key accessories. Trion can hold the Key to Vector Sigma, or it can be plugged in Vector Sigma. Vector Sigma comes with a stand to simulate it mysteriously floating in the depths of Cybertron. The set will be $66.99 and is due to release November 1st. We don’t know exactly when preorders will begin, but just before SDCC we did find out Pulsecon would be returning this year, on September 30th, and October 1st. Odds are good that exclusives such as the Trion and Pax two pack will have preorders open by then.

Hasbro did a barebones reveal for Legacy wave 3, giving us first looks at several toys, but in fact showing us very little of them.

In all, we saw seven toys, including first looks at Deluxes Dead End, Crankcase, Pointblank, now called Blanker for trademark purposes, and Skullgrin.

Crankcase is a retool or partial from Legacy Skids, but the other figures are all new. Pointblank will include a Targetmaster partner figure, which the Hasbro reps reportedly referred to as a Mini-Con, and Skullgrin continues what Iguanus started by trying to fuse Pretender Shell and Inner Robot for this series of Pretender updates.

We saw Leader class Transmetal II Megatron for the first time, which seems to be trying to cherry pick elements from both the TV show model and the original toy to get the best overall representation. Unfortunately they got the robot head completely wrong; some are hoping it was an accidental use of a pretooled alternate and a more correct Beast Wars Megatron face will be on the final released toy.

Voyagers Inferno and Armada Starscream were also officially revealed, though we’d seen those already through stock photos shared early by In Demand Toys.

The reveals for these figures was rather quick though, as all that was shown at the panel were single photos of each toy in robot mode. The alternate modes and accessories are planned to be highlighted during a followup Transformers Tuesday stream, scheduled for the middle of August. Subsequently, the wave 3 toys were not even added to the display cases at Hasbro’s booth. We did manage to get peeks at Skullgrin and Megatron’s alternate modes though, thanks to unsourced leaks of the back of Skullgrin’s box, and Megatron’s packaging actually being shown off at the Hasbro panel. Looks like the others will have to wait until Transformers Tuesday, or further unplanned leaks.

Hasbro also officially revealed Shattered Glass Flamewar, and it went up for preorder on Pulse Friday afternoon. Flamewar is priced at $41.99, which many found to be surprisingly high for the pair of a Legacy Deluxe mold and a Siege Battlemaster. The comic book included would skew the price some, but Slicer and the redeco Fasttrack two pack runs just $7 more. Flamewar is currently scheduled for release on November 1st.

Haslab Victory Saber was shown off prominently, evening having its own short presentation to talk about the packaging design.

The box will have a slip cover that has special Legacy design and branding, but can also be turned inside out to reveal a design based on the original Japanese Transformers Victory box style. They specifically called out having taken steps to ensure that the packaging would keep the toys inside very stable and secure for shipping, and that beyond that they wanted to deliver a different experience than Unicron’s printed plain brown shipper. Different samples of Star Saber and Victory Leo were displayed, including some in seemingly finalized plastic colors. While still being called Engineering Pilots, or what we would have called testshots in the old days, it looks like Victory Saber is getting very close to completion now.

Our first real look at Earthspark came during an additional panel. Along with a 5 minute clip of the first episode of the cartoon, the initial wave of the toyline was shown off, encompassing several price points and play patterns.

Tacticons are the smallest and promise one step transformations that require only one finger.

Similarly a one-step flip change assortment will come in with larger fast-change toys as we’ve seen in many previous lines.

Warrior Class is essentially the same as Cyberverse’s Warrior Class toys, and in fact it looks like at least the Cyberverse Seeker mold is making the jump over to Earthspark in the form of Skywarp.

Deluxes again follow suit from Cyberverse being a little closer to Generations toys in concept, and like the original assortments of Cyberverse Deluxes, each includes a build a figure part.

The large toys are Spin Changers, which use included figurines of the show’s human characters to activate movement features as part of the transformations.

An interesting note that came up after the Earthspark reveal was that the show’s Megatron design was directly inspired by the Megatron model kit in the Flame Toys Furai Model line. That Megatron kit based on IDW Autobot Megatron, as originally drawn by Alex Milne in More Than Meets The Eye, as revealed on Twitter by Earthspark staff member Angelo Vilar.

Studio Series didn’t seem to get any attention during the showings, though it wouldn’t be the first time it went ignored during a live event. But we’ll probably hear more about what’s coming on that front on or before the Transformers Tuesday stream in mid-August.

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