A fan restoration group has found working D1 master tapes for Beast Wars and Beast Machines, and some Beast Machines masters are widescreen. Hasbro’s Age of the Primes first looks bring Powerglide, Swerve, Animated Ratchet and Prime Smokescreen, and Powerglide’s two-tone face plate sparks a long debate. The 40th anniversary Studio Series 86 Hot Rod arrives in magenta, and the crew admits they will buy him again. In What We Got This Week, Diecast cleans out a Target sale, Rob lands Titan Class Star Optimus Prime for about $81, and Don calls Brawl one of the best Brawls yet.

News

Beast Wars and Beast Machines D1 Master Tapes Found by ReBoot Restoration Team

Chris brought the story, with thanks to Blade Raider for the tip. A fan group restoring ReBoot from Mainframe’s D1 master tapes says it also holds working masters for Beast Wars and Beast Machines. D1 is a standard-definition digital tape format, so the tapes are a bit-for-bit copy of Mainframe’s render output. Chris says some Beast Machines masters are widescreen, which hints the show was rendered wide and cropped for TV. The group’s main hurdle is finding the right contact at Hasbro to approve the work. The current DVDs come from interlaced broadcast masters, so even a Hasbro-controlled release could be the best Beast Wars ever looked. The crew counts archival finds like this among their favorite kinds of fandom news. [Source: TFW2005]

Age of the Primes First Looks: Powerglide, Swerve, Animated Ratchet and Prime Smokescreen

Matt is not a fan of Animated Ratchet, while Brian and Rob think it looks okay. The figure is built off the Trailbreaker mold, and one host calls it an extensive partial retool that gets a lot of character details right. One host was disappointed that Animated Optimus Prime and Bumblebee got new molds while Ratchet and Wreck-Gar did not. Swerve wears his G1 cartoon look, and the crew noted online grumbling that he isn’t IDW Swerve. Don likes Powerglide but finds his darker face plate odd, like a gas mask. Rob checked TFWiki screenshots from “The Girl Who Loved Powerglide” and found a subtle white face with a gray mask. One host thinks the contrast is far too stark, and the face plate may be unpainted plastic. One host thinks Powerglide looks more like the Sea Duck than an A-10 Warthog. Nobody had Transformers: Prime Smokescreen on their bingo card, though the crew loves his deco. [Source: TFW2005]

Studio Series 86 40th Anniversary Hot Rod Rolls Out in Magenta

The 40th anniversary Studio Series 86 Hot Rod is a magenta redeco of the original Voyager. The yellow car-mode roof now matches the rest of the car, though the yellow knees remain. Brian and others plan to rebuy it, calling it pretty much the perfect Hot Rod toy. New accessories include a shield, a lightsaber-style blade and an unpainted translucent blue Matrix. One host notes that JT Prime’s leak list also includes a 40th anniversary Studio Series Megatron. The crew also looks ahead to Studio Series 86 Cyclonus in 2026. [Source: TFW2005]

RFC Fans’ Choice Awards 2025

Chris says the RFC Fans’ Choice Awards 2025 ballot stays open through at least New Year’s Day. The Google Form link is in the RFC Discord at tfradio.net/discord and in this episode’s show notes. The awards results stream live on the first Wednesday night in January. The podcast version of the year in review episode adds a separately recorded news recap.

What We Got This Week

Brian

Brian got his box of Blokees Wheels, which he has yet to open.

Matt

Matt did not get any Transformers this week. Hasbro Pulse shipped his Studio Series Soundwave by DHL, so it won’t arrive until after the new year.

Diecast

Diecast built the Blokees Optimus Prime trailer set, which includes a cab with both G1 smokestacks and an IDW spoiler. A Target sale landed him Studio Series Soundwave at 40% off the old $55 leader price. From the new deluxe wave he grabbed Blast Off and Junkion Jalopy for $15 each, plus another Bonecrusher for a second Devastator. He also bought another set of the Hot Wheels crossovers and the War for Cybertron game Optimus Prime and Megatron reissues. Brian sent him a 100-pack of figure stands. Finally, he got Fans Toys Doc, a Masterpiece-style Ratchet, and says Fans Toys is killing it.

Rob

Brian sent Rob Cyberworld Skybyte, a shark car Rob calls a sweet spot for simple Transformers. Shopping AliExpress out of spite, he ordered the Blokees Unicron head. Thanks to Don’s Target sale tip, he got Titan Class Star Optimus Prime for about $80.90. Rob calls it big, chunky and clicky, and he loves the tiny blue bullet that clips onto the rifle.

Don

Don picked up his third Devcon, his favorite toy of the year, plus another set of the Hot Wheels crossovers. Target’s sale gave him the EarthSpark Optimus Prime with trailer for $11. He also found Quintus Prime and Blast Off, and grabbed Wreck-Gar at Walmart before an expected drought. He left Amalgamous Prime on the shelf to wait for a Hasbro sale. Brawl won him over with a solid tank mode and a unique transformation, though the cannons pop off their hinges easily. He also got the second set of third-party Legends-class Raiden figures and the last Toy Easy warship, a support frigate for a combiner that may stand near 22 inches.

Chris

A Target $25-off-$100 sale got Chris an Alpha Trion, a Boneshaker and Cyberworld Skybyte. He loves seeing a middle-aged Alpha Trion and calls Skybyte’s shark car an accidental Robots in Disguise nod. At Anime Weekend Atlanta he bought Junkion Jalopy for $25, the most traditional Junkion colors on that mold. A huge HobbyTown in Kennesaw, Georgia, sold him three blind boxes of Blokees Galaxy Version Series 8, the wave with Unicron’s head. He nearly bought a loose Beast Wars Metals Ravage at Steel Collectibles for about $100, but it was missing its gun barrels and the price didn’t come down enough.

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