Fit For Natalie

Man, that Prime is beer goggles ugly with his Pat-Lee based design. It seems Australia has once again become a dumping ground for things american fans want - TRUs here can't seem to get rid of G1 Soundwave.

Astrotrain's gun has always been purple, and his toy eyes are yellow - Classics doesn't strictly follow cartoon colours, that's why Grimlock has red eyes like in every other incarnation of him (except the original cartoon, since the cartoon version of him sucks). Purple flows better with the rest of his purple, as he doesn't have much black. Give Bumbles RID Prime's gun - perfect. MP Prime isn't even in the same scale, and isn't a part of the line. Alt Prime wasn't Hasbro's intention, they wanted him to be a different character, but Takara insisted.

Bugbite rules in concept, since he's an official Gobots crossover character.

I was joking, because you know, that big robot guy who blows up such planes while assuming their form...

Hmm... that Raptor has an orange canopy.... ZOMG *kablam*

Hey, even I can't tell the difference at a glance. Personally I was concentrating on Josh Bucham's great colouring on Starscream's laser cannon glow.

Yeah, price, and I presume that since we have a small military (and thus) a small military budget, we'd want something that would last us quite a long time like the F-111s did.

I recognise the angle of the fighter in one of the panels. I think Don just went on google and found an old photo and used that as a basis. Of course there was no crash in 2003. The government lied to us!

Interesting, in the final issue of IDW Movie Prequel comic, it seems Starscream 'interrupted' a test flight of the F-22 Raptor. Did any crash in real life in 2003? Check out the preview pages here Get those TFs off the near bottom shelf, you jerk!

I actually like Dreadwing's flame missiles. Yeah, Starscream's missile thing is rubbish. I hope the rumoured Deluxe-class Starscream looks better and actually looks like a Raptor. We know Hasbro/Takara can do it.

All the parts are different, and he has a different transformation and structure. Its like a Energon Starscream vs G2 Smokescreen - based upon heavily, but not exactly the same.

I'm not sure if this is the right thread, but given the recent news that the US may export the Raptor to Japan and possibly Isreal, military advocates and the opposition party here are questioning why isn't Australia in line for the Raptors given our long-standing loyalty to the US. From what I understand, the F-35 will not be capable of fulfilling the role of the F-111 it is slated to replace due to the former's lack of range and a rather steep price tag. Additionally, our F-111 fleet is to be retired in 2010, and the F-18s in 2012, but the F-35s (should we go through with them) won't be delivered until 2014 at the earliest, which would leave a gap in our airforce for a couple of years. Naturally, the current government is dismissing any suggestions of pressuring the US to sell us Raptors, even though the F-35 would be late and very expensive, not significantly cheaper than what it would cost us to procure the Raptor (assuming we bought a shedload). As a stop-gap measure, we bought two dozen (or so) Super Hornets to plug up the gap, so to speak, until the F-35 is delivered. What do you guys think we should do?

Dreadwing isn't in the movie, and wasn't designed by ILM. I believe it originated from the video game, and, this being a cross media event, is also in the prequel comic and toyline. He's both an individual (at least one is named) and a drone (there are many identical ones). I do like the fighter mode, though.

Hasbro does not allow conventions to release toys that may interfere with any similar releases they may do in the near future. That is why official convention exclusive toys rarely have well-known characters using toolings that Hasbro are likely to make themselves. Since they weren't likely to release the remaining seekers anyway (at least any time soon), they allowed the convention to do them. Well, Classics was developed to fill the gap between Cybertron and the movie line, remember how the movie was originally scheduled for release in November 2006? I doubt they had any long-term plans for Classics when it was developed. I doubt we'll see more Alternators, given that it didn't do as well as hoped, and Binaltech did fairly badly in Japan (too expensive for such regular releases). Given the cost of the line, I don't think TakaraTomy will be keen on continuing it with new toolings, though they can easily just continue KP with repaints of existing toolings. Yeah, American retailers didn't want to carry the last two Alt toys. In other news, Hasbro accidently uploaded photos of Movie Dreadwing. He appears to turn into a MiG 29 - yeah I hope that's badly mistranformed, too. Those flames are missiles:

EDIT: Ahh frack, I hate it when I answer alot of posts and it ends up being the last post on a page, so nobody will read it Cheapest to most expensive Legends - tiny transforming, simplistic Scout/Basic - Small carded toys. Deluxe - the most common carded toys in any TF line Voyager - beginning of the boxed toys Ultra - not in the movie line Leader - Second most expensive sizeclass Supreme - Most expensive size class, replaced this year by Ultimate Bumblebee. There are two major Prime toys. His big Leader class toy with rubber tires and a more accurate (though still inaccurate) transformation sequence, has the most accurate vehicle mode. Smaller Voyager class toy with a small, non-removable Peter Cullen driver figure inside the cabin. Has a more CG accurate robot mode, but kinda wears the hood of the truck like a backpack. There's a Target-exclusive Robot Vision version of the Voyager toy where most of the silver plastic is painted metallic silver paint, and his red and blue plastic are of a higher contrast, to make him look more G1-ish, I imagine.

The Degenki Hobby article doesn't seem to say anything about die-cast, though. Gold wheels - more colour on an otherwise boring colour scheme. Too bad, its part of G1 Prime canon. He had teeth (sometimes) in the comic. Sometimes he had a speaker. Its an easter egg thrown in for fans by the designers. I wouldn't say 'we' dislike the idea and just ignore it. That's more the people who hate the idea of any Prime having a mouth at all. Hasbro wasn't going to release Dirge, Thundercracker and Thrust in the retail market, anyway, since Classics is over. This way, at least they are out there somehow. They are meant to be teeth. He had a speaker in some of the G1 comics, teeth in some of the G2 comics.

Its not an MP toy, so its not supposed in scale with MPs or Alts. Speaking of which, MPs and Alts were never meant to be in scale with each other, either. TF stuff is almost never in scale.

He said on 2005 he only was able to audition for Ironhide, Ratchet and Jazz. Here's another pic of Thundercracker http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=130910

That might be Daniel Ross, aka Mouth04 of the Allspark boards. He managed to get an audition after creating a fan comic with contributions from various artists and fellow fans, sent them to Michael Bay, Don Murphy and Steven Spielberg. Hopefully he did get the part, and it will be another milestone in TF fans getting involved in official Transformers productions.

Why don't one of you mods just edit the guy's post to remove the pics instead of just telling him? You have The Power To Do So Isn't that because they can't do metallic colours in 2D animation? Silver and gold are always shades of grey and yellow, respectively.

Dude, its not cool to directly imagelink the pics off their server. Because its a lazy, uninteresting thing to do. Its something Takara keeps doing because they lack original ideas. The only reason people in the west care if that most of those gold chromed toys are ultra-rare lucky draws.

That Skywarp is bloody awful. I also don't see why they didn't spruce up his fighter mode. Its just a chuck of near solid black, unless this is just another one of the Lazy Japanese Black Repaints that japanese toy companies so love to make. Skywarp - the Big Book of British Smiles!

In US continuity, Skywarp is a bully and a prankster. And kind of an idiot. So I guess Starscream's face would have worked equally well for him. Maybe the inevitable Thundercracker release will have a conflicted, apathetic face.

yes. Jazz is usually one of the friendlier Autobots.

It has to do with stress and how much it can take during play and transformation (kids toys are supposed to take a hell of a beating). The process of vacuum-metalisation substantially weakens the plastic, making it more brittle. When vac-metal plastic snaps, its EXTREMELY SHARP, which is why Hasbro has been avoiding it on toys with thin parts, such as the smokestacks on 20th Anniversary Prime. Obviously then its a pressure switch because people might forget to shut it off if it was a regular switch. Probably also to prevent it being accidently turned on while being assembled or packed in the factory.