Radio Free Cybertron - All of our Transformers podcasts!

There was a lot of activity over the weekend, mostly involving retail system datamining that has pulled some interesting info for us. Mr.Chaos from TFW has shared information on the first wave of next product-year's Studio Series figures. We hope you like either the 86 movie, or the Bumblebee Movie...! Deluxe: Tra Gen Studio series Deluxe TF6 Brawn UPC: 195166158518 Tra Gen Studio series deluxe TF6 Ratchet UPC: 195166158532 Tra Gen studio series deluxe 86 Perceptor UPC: 195166158556 Tra Gen studio series deluxe TF6 Wheeljack UPC: 195166160016 Voyagers: Tra Gen Studio series voyager TF6 Soundwave UPC: 195166153438 Tra Gen Studio series voyager 86 Junkyard (Wreck Gar Re-tool) UPC: 195166158525 Leader: Tra Gen studio series leader 86 King Starscream cape UPC: 195166153421 LivingRangerKey, and UncagedOtaku came up with some Target system finds. Anticipated Kingdom Tracks retool Road Rage is confirmed to be a Target exclusive, much lime Runabout during Earthrise. Right now it seems the product listing doesn't tie Road Rage to Target's Red Card, which will probably be some small relief, but only until you realize that it's still a Target exclusive and that experience is rarely fun no matter what. Buzzworthy Bumblebee is somehow still a thing that's happening. Power Charge Bumblebee is being rereleased from the Bumblebee Movie line in Buzzworthy packaging, and a Generations Deluxe Origin Bumblebee is listed, but we don't have any solid indication of what that name might actually mean. Could Hasbro be further retooling the Earthrise Cliffjumper body to resemble Bumblebee's G1 Cybertronian form? There's also some mystery listings. An Optimus Prime and Megatron at $49.99 each, but without a line name attached. And a new assortment price point at $39.99 that also doesn't seem to be connected to anything specific. Jtprime found some official art for a new BotBots series, the Ruckus Rally. On the art you can see BotBot vehicles made from a slice of pizza, and a game controller. We don't know anything else about this series currently, including when or where it might show up. But it looks like BotBots is continuing to survive, and we're very glad to see it! Finally, another Collaborative figure has been uncovered: Project Jam. Nobody has stepped up to give any real hints about what this might be. Common conjecture is a Space Jam crossover, which isn't a huge leap. One supposed insider has been reported second hand as attributing this to a Blaster in collaboration with a band that wasn't specifically identified. With the Jam listing having a price equal to X-Spanse, that points to a leader-size figure. If the band thing is true, Titans Return Blaster sounds like a possible jumping off point, if its base mode were repurposed as a stage, and figures added to represent the band in question. But none of this should be taken as anything more than speculative. Thanks to all of our Patrons who are making this possible! Join our Patreon and let's make awesome stuff happen! Please support RFC by using our Amazon referral link. Canadian fans: please use this Amazon.ca referral link. UK fans: Please use this

This week: News. Stuff. Glass Shattering. Price hikes. Toys. NFTs. The usual.   News RFC News Desk 140 – Shattered Glass Megatron And Rising Prices

Hasbro managed to reveal the Megatron for their Shattered Glass subline before anyone could leak it! Amazing! SG Megatron is a redeco of Siege Megatron (because of course it is) with new parts to permit making a "spaceship" alternate mode. Megatron is up for preorder on Hasbro Pulse for $36.99, and is due to ship in October. In other news, Hasbro's about to raise prices on toys and games again, as a resulting of rising costs in materials and transportation. The increases reportedly could come as early as the second half of this year. No details are available about the specific impact this will have on any individual line, but my guess is, get ready for $25 Deluxes still at the current $15 level of overall quality. Original article at Reuters. Thanks to all of our Patrons who are making this possible! Join our Patreon and let's make awesome stuff happen! Please support RFC by using our Amazon referral link. Canadian fans: please use this Amazon.ca referral link. UK fans: Please use this Amazon.co.uk referral link

This week: The pains of retailer exclusives, Diecast's Unicron update, discussion of our Hasbro Q&A, and more! News RFC News Desk 139 – Hasbro Roundtable Interview Highlights

Last week, we were invited to join a roundtable interview with Ran Sun and Lenny Panzica from the Transformers team, along with representatives from several other sites. Over the course of about half an hour, we had the chance to pose questions related to the Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest reveals, and talk and give direct feedback about the brand. With big thanks to our buddy Anthony at TFU.info, we're able to bring you audio clips from the conference call, highlighting some interesting segments of the interview. There are also text format versions of these questions and answers below for easier reference, though in this case both the questions and answers will be paraphrased to some degree for clarity without losing the original meaning of the answer. We also had a couple of points come up that won't be included with the audio clips, but are worth documenting: Ben Yee (BWTF.com) asked about plans for Hasbro Pulse Premium, for bringing more incentives and exclusive perks for the paid members. Ran could not give any specific details on this, but did say that this is something that they also have on their minds and they're continuing to look for new ways to keep the value for the subscribers. In commenting on the current packaging styles, I specifically noted how impressed we were by the Shattered Glass subline's box design. In answering this, Lenny seemed to indirectly confirm that the Shattered Glass lineup would be online-only. He compared the Shattered Glass packages to other "e-commerce" packaging designs, which would seem to refer to things like Amazon's windowless-box exclusives. This does not say whether Shattered Glass will be specific solely to Pulse in the US, but it doesn't sound like it's headed for store shelves in any case. Anthony (Roarbots): How did it feel to develop the first new Titan ever since G1? Lenny: Necessary. As kids growing up, and now as fans as adults, it's one of the things in the Transformers world, where you expect everything to transform. We thought one thing we could bring to the universe which never really happened was, the Ark never transformed. The Ark isn't as big as the other Titans, but comes with more stuff, like Teletraan with three modes, and accessories and a lot of deco work. Anthony (TFU.info): Will designs from the Kingdom promo poster that haven't made it out as toys during Kingdom be considered for use in future lines? And along that line, is the Weaponizer and Fossilizer play pattern here to stay, or is it done after Kingdom? Lenny: For the play pattern, it depends on the story we're telling and how the pattern fits, so if it makes sense to include, we will! Anthony (TFU.info): One question I did have - Dracodon, what went behind the choice of green for that figure? Lenny: Mark and I were riffing on what we could do to update [Vertebreak]. ...you see, the whole [photography] set is like a lava field, right? We were like, you know how in deep Russia there's these acid pits by the volcanic fields? What if he was fossilized and scanned a ...what is it... a Stygimoloch skeleton in one of those pits? And it came out and is literally like acid bones? Which is metal... it's a heavy metal acid bone thing. Rad. Phil (ASMZine): Pulse Fan fest, the Toy Fair presentation live stream, you've made a great effort to bring convention events for people when we can't really get to...

This week: Slag. Skids. A self-transforming Optimus Prime!?! Has the world gone mad?! News RFC News Desk 138 – MP Skids And Reboost Preorders, And Studio Series Slag Pictures Leaked Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest Transformers Reveals Ben Yee's translation of the Takara-Tomy Super Megatron comic

Preorders are live for both MP-53 Skids and MP-54 Reboost. The pair of Honda City Masterpieces have a Japanese SRP of ¥9,800 (or 10,780 including 10% sales tax in Japan), though it's not hard to find reputable retailers knocking the price down below that a bit. Preorders are also available officially from some US-based retailers, coming in at $90, which is roughly equivalent to the Japanese SRP. Both Masterpieces are set to be released simultaneously in late November. Between the two, Reboost seems the slightly better value, with additional weapons, the Diaclone-based scooter accessory, and a "holomatter avatar" mini figure to ride it. But compared to many Masterpieces of late, $90 almost feels like a bargain either way. Apparently by way of 4chan, we've had our first picture leak of Studio Series Slag over the last couple of days. The second Leader Class Dinobot is looking every bit as big and chunky as Grimlock, and carries on the same style of being heavily influenced by the G1 toy, but mixing in cartoon elements like the red head and light color thighs. Fans have been quick to point out this also makes it resemble the Canadian variant of G1 Slag, though this outcome is almost certainly coincidental. Slag comes with an exosuited Daniel Witwicky accessory figure, which much like Wheelie is a sit-on-the-shoulder display piece rather than being a useful partner action figure in its own right. We expect to learn about Slag officially next month, during a Fan First Friday announced for May during the recent Fan Fest stream. Thanks to all of our Patrons who are making this possible! Join our Patreon and let's make awesome stuf...

We're back to discuss what went down during the Hasbro Pulse Fan Fest, as well as Brian's experience in being part of the event.

We have news! Galvatron, the Ark, a charming Australian kid! What a week!   News RFC News Desk 137 – Amazon Australia Leaks IGN Previews Kingdom Galvatron, Scorponok, And The Ark

Can't have a scheduled event without leaks! Amazon Australia has presumably stepped all over the Transformers portion of this Friday's Pulse Fest by posting a bunch of new product listings which we're guessing covers everything intended to be revealed - and probably more. All of the listings are effectively text placeholders with no pictures yet, but we do have names and rough ideas of the prices, though in Australian Dollars where Deluxes are around $30, Voyagers $45-50, and Leaders somewhere in the neighborhood of $90. Thanks to a further accidental posting by Hasbro Pulse, we have support for the idea that some of these are representing a Shattered Glass subline, as Pulse had an out of stock (and unpriced) listing for Shattered Glass Blurr appear this morning. It's believed that the listings on Amazon for Goldbug, Jetfire, and Megatron are part of the same group. "Figure Packs" are also a thing here, including listings for Sideswipe and Nightprowler, and "Galvatron Unicron". The Sideswipe pair is thought to be the long-awaited Earth-mode Sideswipe retool, coming with a redeco of Kingdom Cheetor as a cancelled Universe toy from 2004. Meanwhile, the Galvatron may be the rumored "reformatting scene" Galvatron redeco that was supposedly coming in addition to the toy-based Selects Galvatron. The Golden Disk collection adds Deluxe Jackpot, and Voyager Tigatron. Action Master Jackpot could be a reuse of Studio Series 86 Jazz, or potentially even the Earthrise or Siege Datsun-style body depending on what's available to use. Tigatron is a separate listing from Kingdom Tigatron, with the best guess being an orange redeco as a regular tiger, matching the early working deco for the original Beast Wars toy. Studio Series 86 comes along with a big mislead in the form of an entry for "King Starscream". Based on insider info, though, the Voyager coronation Starscream concept was replaced by Bumblebee Movie Thrust a while ago, so Amazon Australia's information is a little out of date. We do see listing for Gnaw, Wreck-Gar, and the Sweep reuse of Scourge's mold, though. Regular Kingdom only contributes a listing for an Autobot-aligned Core Class Fossilizer, which is supposedly to be a redeco of Vertebreak. But there is a listing for "Generations Prime Optimus Prime" which we don't really know what to make of. The immediate implication would seem to be something Transformers Prime, but other than that it's priced like a Leader, there's nothing to go on.

This week: Black Zarak, not an April Fool's joke. Also: Masterpiece Skyfire. Yes, Skyfire. Not Jetfire. Also not an April Fool's joke. Someone pinch us. Wait, Black Zarak can do that. Excellent. News RFC News Desk 136 – Red Skids, Golden Disks, And Black Zarak! Optimus Prime Replica Helmet

We had our first look at the Masterpiece Skids testshot in provisional color. Which just means it's handpainted samples, so the exact details and finish may not be identical on a production unit later. But besides Skids looking nice, we got to see the first redeco of this Masterpiece, the brand new character Reboost. This is based on a Diaclone toy previously not utilized as a Transformers character. We presume Crosscut will probably follow along a little later, but at this point, we wouldn't mind seeing the whole Honda City robo assortment get some time in the Masterpiece spotlight! Along that same line, the Figure King article that showed us the color samples here contained references to other Masterpiece projects in development. This confirms that Raiden lives, after going radio silent since the end of 2019. Plus, an unexpected name has been thrown in the ring, as TakaraTomy seems to be working on a Masterpiece Skyfire! How big and expensive must that turn out to be if they try to get it in scale? The Golden Disk Collection appears to be one of the Kingdom sublines coming to Amazon this year. Listings were found on at least one international Amazon site referencing toys in this assortment. The simpler to understand is Terrorsaur, who had previously been conspicuously absent among the Kingdom Beast Wars updates. There's no indication at all about what mold or engineering this might be based on, or if indeed it is somehow a brand new Deluxe mold entirely. The other listing found was for "Ranger Puffer". To make a long story short...er... this appears to be a two pack of what we believe to be Road Ranger, a GoBots character represented in Transformers by a black and orange Huffer, and Puffer. Puffer is best described as "Mexican Pipes", which was in fact just a physically unchanged Huffer in Pipes-based deco, varying between forms of light or dark blue on white, depending if European origin or Mexican, or a third variant of dark blue on dark blue. By the nature of the characters, we're presuming this to be a two pack of the unmodified Kingdom Huffer mold, with a real Pipes retool coming in a regular Deluxe assortment later this year. Finally, the most shocking news is Hasbro adding a Titan Class toy to Generations Selects, in the form of Black Zarak! Moderately retooled from Scorponok (obviously), Black Zarak features modifications to the Headmaster units to make the larger head accurate to the Masterforce redesign, and giving the smaller head an eyepatch. This isn't entirely accurate to Masterforce, since Black Zarak's head no longer transformed, but this one of course will remain a functional jumbo Headmaster. The larger head robot's chest also has a prominent scar sculpted in. And of course Black Zarak comes with a huge spear for further accuracy. Now please just don't include gold plastic decay to push the accuracy any furth...

This week: Unicron is shipping and Don has scored! Congrats! Also: Brian decrees that Core Class Starscream is the best itty bitty little Transformer ever. News Twitter - New Soundwave May the force be with you Abominus slipped Amazon Shipping Kingdom Seacons before Unicron

This week: Walmart Collector Con was a dud. But, hey, Galvatron looks awesome. News * RFC News Desk 134 – Beast Wars Reissues Revealed * RFC News Desk 135 – First Look At Netflix Voyagers Wave 3 * Transformers WFC Kingdom Galvatron First ‘Official’ Look * Unicron.com interview with Ben Montano

Jtprime17 on TFW has dug up the first stock photos for Netflix WFC Voyager wave 3, featuring Optimus Primal and the Sparkless Seeker. Sparkless Seeker is based on the dead or sometimes undead generic seeker bodies seen during the Siege cartoon. Which yes, does mean it's the Siege seeker mold again, rather than the Earthrise redeco many had been expecting. Ironically, it seems like this one that is specifically a wrecked corpse appears the least damaged of any use of this mold to date! The seeker comes with redecos of Battlemasters Singe and Caliburst. Caliburst is a tiny bit more accurate to the G1 Targetmaster color layout than its previous release, but Singe has if anything only diverged farther. Meanwhile, Optimus Primal's differences are very hard to discern. The colors may be kind of metallic now? Maybe? or maybe the colors are just more saturated? Rattrap may also be redecoed in some way, but that's also unclear because some of the shots look just like the individual release version, while others are blatantly digitally recolored over, making some of the colors look darker. But it's impossible to tell if that's intentional or simply the result of a bad photoshop job. These two, plus several other Netflix wave 3 toys should go up for preorder on Monday the 15th during Walmart's collector con product launch event, to be fulfilled at a later, currently unspecified date. Or not. We all know how Walmart preorders go by now, right? Thanks to all of our Patrons who are making this possible! Join our Patreon and let's make awesome stuff happen! Please support RFC by using our Amazon referral link. Canadian fans: please use this Amazon.ca referral link. UK fans: Please use this Amazon.co.uk referral link