BotCon 2015 and Tokyo Toy Show Reactions Part One - The Hasbro Effect

There's been a lot of new reveals popping up on the inter-webs from both Hasbro and TakaraTomy thanks to BotCon and the Tokyo Toy Show.  Sadly, I was unable to attend either one due to prior commitments hanging out with James Hetfield and Jeff Walker and working on forming a metal supergroup of epic proportions.  Hopefully my touring schedule will allow me to attend one or noth next year.  Thankfully, all of the online Transformer sites had news and pictures!  I'll give my thoughts on what I thought were important items from BotCon today and tomorrow I'll go over the Takara stuff.  Maybe a few items that aren't that important.  All of these pics were pulled from TFW2005.com.

Let's start with a figure that I'm both excited for and really don't care for at the same time - Sky Lynx.  Sky Lynx will be a Voyager-class figure, which is okay, I suppose.  I'd really prefer for this to be a Leader-class figure.  This looks like a really good design.  I just think that if Sky Lynx was made a Leader-class, we'd get the separation into two figures that I feel we need.  Then again, Sky Lynx in media nowadays is depicted in the combined form, so I can kind of understand where Hasbro is coming from.  Know what I really don't like?  The fact that Sky Lynx is not part of a freaking combiner team now.  Ugh.

Again.  Ugh.

Sky Reign, I think is the name that Hasbro is going with.  First off, that's a horrible name.  Second, what?  Is every G1 figure going to combine now?  Sky Reign is made up of Sky Lynx, Wheeljack, Hound,  Smokescreen, and Trailbreaker.  I guess this is good news as this means that Trailbreaker might not be dead in the comic anymore, and Hound is getting a new figure, but it's still a bit odd to have every single Autobot combine. It takes the uniqueness and power away from what gestalts are - rare super warriors.  It's beginning to feel like when everyone was all of a sudden a mutant in the Marvel books.  It's becoming freaking ubiquitous.  Speaking of Sky Reign's limbs, the only one I'm mildly interested in is Hound.

Even then, he doesn't look spectacular.  He is an improvement on the Universe figure, but like every other Combiner Wars limb, he's a retool of one of four base molds.  Ugh.  The rest of the team are just as uninspired.  Here's a look at Wheeljack.

Where's the inspiration?  The innovation?  The Breakdown mold gets used again for Sunstreaker.  Look, I understand that most of the original Scramble City combiner limbs had the exact same transformation scheme regardless of alt mode, but that was during a time of limited engineering.  There just isn't any real excuse for this anymore.  Sure, there are some changes to the figures, but they all look pretty much the same.  It's just laziness.  Swap heads and chest pieces on Breakdown, Sunstreaker, and Wheeljack, and you still have the exact same figure.  And this new iteration of Wheeljack is so much worse than the figure released five years ago.  Just look at the older figure.

Ok, this pic isn't from TFW2005, it's from TFWiki.net

Is the original Generations figure, perfect?  No, but it is by and large, to me at least, a much better looking figure than the Combiner Wars figure.  It seems as though we're headed towards a point where figures are losing certain aspects and after awhile, we'll be back to having bricks for figures again.  Just ugh.  Speaking of ugh...

This is one ugly Sunstreaker.  Gah.

Bruticus looks pretty good for a figure made up almost entirely of retooled figures.  Brawl looks like a new mold, so there's that.  Freaking fists and feet still look horrible.  And Blast Off is a straight repaint of Slingshot, from the looks of it.

So Sky Lynx is a definite buy and Hound is a maybe. The rest, maybe if someone gave them to me.  Bruticus would look better with proportioned feet, so he's a possibility, what with the proliferation of third party upgrade parts.  Still, after spending close to $100 on a figure, I can't imagine having to spend about $30 bucks for feet.  Besides, not purchasing these figures gives me more money for vintage figures and what was released from the Tokyo Toy Show.!  We'll go over that on my next post.