OK, this is quite a bit later than intended, but I ended up watching Hasbro PulseCon Day 1, live, and almost in its entirety... And, as a TransFormers fan, I can honestly say that I was excited by the Power Rangers reveals (John Warden's new gig). And the Ghostbusters reveals, to be fair.
The TransFormers segment - which lasted about 50 minutes - kicked off with a brief lead-in from Anthony Ramos, star of the forthcoming Rise of the Beasts movie, who turns out to be a Beast Wars fan himself. As an aside, it always makes me feel so old whenever I learn of people who discovered TransFormers via Beast Wars... but Ramos' enthusiasm at least seemed pretty genuine. I'm a little concerned that the film is going to be an absolute mess, but will reserve judgement till the trailers arrive, so I can make a decision over whether or not to bother seeing it.
The first proper announcement was of TransFormers: The Live Experience - a touring, interactive exhibit which will, naturally, be limited to the US. This led into an at-home 'VR Experience' called TransFormers: Beyond Reality. Looking like the Human Alliance arcade game, but with a Cyberverse slant to the aesthetics, the story is pretty generic - something about the Decepticons developing a synthetic Energon which they're using to both take over Cybertron and strip Earth of its resources..? After this, and sticking with the digital, Beast Wars characters are coming to the Earth Wars mobile game, and there's going to be a mash-up/collaboration with the online game Smite... So, essentially, lots of stuff that's absolutely not aimed at or relevant to the likes of me.
Before getting into the toys, there was a brief musical interlude from Vince DiCola and a Blurr-speed recap of War for Cybertron by veteran actor John Moschitta Jr... Which was cool, except that (a) summarising showed how poorly-planned the WfC Trilogy really was, and (b) it seems as though John isn't quite so swift-talking as he used to be...
Legacy Wave 1:
Deluxe class
Skids - nothing really to add here... it looks too square and hollow, and even worse since I've seen the excellent concept art by Robby Musso. With such a strong design, it's disappointing to see such a bland end result.
Drag Strip - not as bad as it could have been but, if the shown paint job is anywhere near final, it's way too much unbroken yellow. They have since confirmed that he's the first of a new set of combiner Stunticons, but it sounds as though Hasbro are ripping off the Third Parties once again. Motormaster will split into truck/robot and trailer/gestalt framework, to which the four limb-bots simply plug in, much like the awful G1 animation model.
Arcee (TFP) - ugly, hollow-legged, and with an even bigger, saggier backpack than previous versions... Though the figure on display may have been slightly mistransformed. Her torso looks really weird and the wheel halves hanging off the legs look plain wrong... Worse still, the head looks far too generic and, coupled with the misshapen torso, very little about this toy indicates that it is a Femme-Bot. Not one of the best Hasbro have ever produced.
Kickback - actually not awful, but the Insecticons were only recently redone... albeit split over several toylines in a smaller size class, and all of them looked better than this.
Voyager class
Bulkhead - still looks crap and, again, the concept art revealed after the stream looks substantially better and more like Bulkhead, even if it was clearly designed with a super-simplistic transformation in mind. They described him as a "Military Caravan". Personally, I'd tend to say that if they don't know what that type of vehicle is really called, they probably shouldn't use it to make a toy... They also seemed incredibly pleased with themselves over the fact that Bulkhead's signature wrecking ball can be stored in the back of vehicle mode, and that his undisguised feet can fold out in vehicle mode, supposedly to represent the opening truck bed door...
Leader class
G2/Laser Optimus Prime - comes with a battle station, like the original, but no attempt has been made to streamline the robot's design, even to the minimal extent of the Generations Deluxe class mold. Also, it's another Voyager+ rather than a true Leader class toy. My main concern is that it looks very much as though the shoulder mass only moves for transformation, and that there's a small panel on the front of the shoulder to allow the arms to swing forward independently... The fact that this is not demonstrated in the publicity shots (or when they showed the figure off in the stream) suggests it's going to look pretty ugly. A Nemesis Prime/Scourge repaint is inevitable.
They then went on to show off the packaging, which will be largely enclosed (fewer plastic windows to cut costs and improve recyclability), absolutely garish in its colourscheme (bordering on G2 neon), and is a rather weird shape. I have to say that I really hate the Legacy logo, and can't help but see the 'GA' part as being derived from one of the older DeviantArt logos. One feature that almost made me happy - but not quite - was the implication that they will be creating Tech Specs, to be accessed online via QR codes printed on the box. This seems like an overly complicated solution to a fundamentally non-existent problem. If they're only varying the black plate on the print, they could just as easily have put a small text box on the packaging with the bio information. That wouldn't have been ideal, but at least it'd be something worthwhile for collectors to cut out and keep. This QR code system is still under development, but they provided a link to a demo page as proof of concept.
2021 Hall of Fame Inductees:
Kingdom Toy of the Year - somehow this was Tigatron, despite the toy not being out yet (due mid-January), which led to cries of "rigged" from the chat. It does seem like a peculiar choice, given that Dinobot was the obvious contender from what's currently available.
Beast Wars Character - Inferno, a good choice... but would have been better if they'd announced a Kingdom Inferno toy along with it.
Actor - Award-winning actor John Maschita Jr. - Blurr's voice actor from the animated movie and TF Animated. I feel as though I should look up some of his other work...
Artist - Guido Guidi, a long overdue honour for a fantastic artist. In his pre-recorded acceptance speech, he had some great toys on his shelves - a mix of different continuities, but the majority were G1.
Pulse Exclusives:
Galvatron/Unicron 'Companion Pack' - This is the partly translucent purple version already revealed... Not something I'm interested in, but a popular format of toy. The accessory pack includes a whole bunch of (unpainted grey?) mini-figures to be installed on the stand provided with Haslab Unicron (and/or possibly on the bridge of the Kingdom Ark toy), including the Dinobots, as well as the Junkion ship, Quintesson cruiser and Galvatron's ship from the animated movie.
Covert Agent Ravage and 'Micromaster' Decepticons Forever Ravage confirmed for UK release, and with a sub £50 pricepoint... I'm still not sure if I really want it or not... I think I want a version... but this doesn't seem to be significantly better than the original Takara Beast Wars toy. On the other hand it will be, for the moment at least, significantly easier and cheaper to buy....
Throughout the stream, there was an overall sense of disappointment in the chat - those who had tuned in had been expecting to see more stuff that hadn't already been revealed. This kind of shows how Hasbro's marketing department are really falling down. It's great that something like Hasbro Pulse and PulseCon exists, even if it is only an online, streamed 'event' for the time being... but either too much of what they're planning to show gets 'leaked' ahead of time, or they're not showing off enough of the future products. Sure, they might have demonstrated the full Wave 1 of Legacy, but that's a paltry six figures across three size classes, and one of them is cheating its size class. It's also baffling to me, personally, that so much time and effort goes into things like the online games, videogame crossovers and 'live experiences', which have limited appeal when compared with the core product: toys.
Having a single, unified style for a new batch of TransFormers toys is not, in and of itself, a bad idea. Most of the non-G1 toylines have been exactly that, after all. What I object to is the simplification of the larger size classes (Voyagers and Leaders should be more complex than Deluxes - Legacy Bulkhead could have been done just as well at Scout class), and this lowest-common-denominator G1-ification. With Bulkhead specifically, they could have bulked out and shortened his legs by folding them back on themselves for robot mode, and then broken up the truck cab similar to either TF Prime First Edition Bulkhead or RotF Leader class Optimus Prime, rather than leaving the entire box shell completely untouched, with the arms and pelvis folding out from behind it and the head folding out from within.
In the aftermath of the stream, it's been interesting to see how some folks are doing the usual Hasbro apologist thing of saying "they're kids' toys, what do you expect?", while others insist this forced G1-ification in Legacy is all in service of the older, Collector demographic, who are supposed to be completely G1-focussed. It can't be both, so which is it?
As far as I can see, it's neither. It's cost-cutting, pure and simple.
For me, I think, 2022 is going to be a nice, lean year in terms of official TransFormers toy purchases.
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