New York Toy Fair 2018: Hasbro Fails The World
Saying “Hasbro fails the world” might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but I can’t recall a Toy Fair this disappointing since I’ve been paying attention to Toy Fair. I wasn’t there, but I’ve been reading the reports. Kind of wish I didn’t.
Let’s start with the biggest news of all. On Friday, morning I was seeing Black Panther (which was awesome by the way), when I received a text saying that Hasbro was rebooting the Transformers movie series. I haven’t been so pissed off since a deranged bag of racist dog shit was elected president. We were promised Unicron in the 6th movie. I cannot even fathom leaving the story hanging like that.
However, that news was false, or at least, not entirely true. Transformers 6 has been for the moment, removed from the schedule. While open to interpretation, it sounds like they are waiting to see how Bumblebee does this December and after that they will decide how to proceed. We can only hope that sanity prevails and they don’t reboot the movie series. Some have theorized that they could decide that Bumblebee is the first movie in the rebooted series and just ignore the rest of the movies. This would be moronic. If you are rebooting, then reboot. Create new character models and start from scratch. You can’t do a new continuity with the same character designs. That is way too confusing.
As of now, Hasbro has three other movies planned, GI Joe and Micronauts for 2020 and Dungeons and Dragons and another unannounced movie for 2021. I would assume the unannounced movie could be Transformers if they don’t reboot, but only time will tell.
Studio Series
With the Bumblebee movie coming out in December, it was expected that we would find out something about a toyline for the movie. We were told that the Studio Series will serve as the toyline for the Bumblebee movie. However, I’m not sure that is completely true. Listings in Toys R Us computers (and elsewhere) suggest a separate series of toys aimed at younger kids for the Bumblebee movie (Action Attackers, Energon Igniters, others). This is far from confirmed, but it sounds to me like the Studio Series is the Generations component of the Bumblebee toyline. They may be holding back on the other toys until later in the year since the movie doesn’t come out until December. I expect we’ll hear more about this at San Diego Comic Con.
There was some really good news about the Studio Series. With the exception of exclusives, it will be all new molds. Apparently they have learned something from the epic cluster fuck that was The Last Knight toyline. Studio Series Wave 1 was already known and is supposed to come out in April, but Wave 2 was announced and official photos of both waves were released. Also announced was a repaint of The Last Knight Nitro Zeus as Thundercracker as a Toys R Us Exclusive.
Deluxe Wave 1
Bumblebee
Crowbar
Ratchet
Stinger
Deluxe Wave 2
Jazz
Lockdown
Voyager Wave 1
Optimus Prime
Starscream
Voyager Wave 2
Brawl
Megatron
Voyager Exclusive
Thundercracker (Repaint of TLK Nitro Zeus.)
Leader Wave 1
Blackout
Leader Wave 2
Grimlock
Generations
Past the news of a possible reboot of the movies, the other piece of awful news was the premature end of Power of the Primes. Combiner Wars was six waves. Titans Return was five waves and a single deluxe in wave 6. Power of the Primes will only be three waves, with a single additional toy, Novastar, a remold of Moonracer, to be wave four. I don’t understand how Hasbro could have planned this out so badly.
Elita-1 and Starscream do not even have full combiner teams yet and Inferno doesn’t have any limbs (unless you count Jazz for him instead of Elita-1). Elita-1’s combiner name is Elita-Intin1te (yes, that last “i” is a number 1, I just threw up in my mouth). Starscream’s combiner name was not revealed, which was said to be intentional. Neither was Inferno’s. Supposedly there are exclusives yet to be announced, but I am doubtful that we will get these full teams. We still need seven deluxes, and that seems a lot to be exclusives. Of course, they could be going back to combiner box sets for them, which would suck as we already have some of the toys they are likely to include.
There were supposed to be 13 Primes and we assumed, 13 Prime Masters. There are only eight being released on card, and Onyx Prime was announced as coming with Predaking, which I assume means he won’t have Pretender armor. I don’t really care about the Primes, but I really wanted all the Pretender armor. Still, after the boneheaded crap they pulled with the trading cards was based on 13 primes, and now we aren’t even getting them all? They may throw them in with exclusives, but that doesn’t give us the missing pretenders. I know we weren’t going to get them all, further evidence of their inability to plan out a toyline, but this is beyond stupid. The Primes are faceless cubes, but those Pretender shells made them worth it.
As to incompetently applied stickers, Hasbro “claims” to have heard the fans. They say they are going in a different direction with the next trilogy, War for Cybertron, which will not be based on the video game. I am dubious of them really understanding the problem. I’m fine with stickers. I’m not fine with throwing them on toys that aren’t designed for them. POTP Starscream’s feet are a perfect example. If they were meant to have stickers, then they should have been designed with a recessed area for the sticker to fit in, not stuck onto plastic that isn’t flat.
Lastly, Hasbro is doing fan voting for one of three 2-packs of deluxe toys. The choices are:
1) Needlenose VS Tracks
2) Spinister VS Wheeljack
3) Impactor VS Mirage
These will not be old molds. They will be made from War for Cybertron toys. This is interesting, as we can infer from these what toys we are getting toys that can be repurposed as these characters.
Hasbro released official Photos of Novastar, Wave 3 Prime Masters, Optimus Primal (though we’ve seen him before), and Predaking. They also released official photos of wave two, which is already out, so I didn’t bother including them. Not sure why Hasbro did.
Cyberverse
Not much to say about this. This is the replacement line for Robots in Disguise. There are only to be eight characters (I assume they mean on the cartoon), Bumblebee, Grimlock, Optimus Prime, Windblade, Megatron, Shadow Striker (new female character), Shockwave, and Starscream.
There is a change to the toy classes. They will be Scout Class, Warrior Class, Ultra Class, and Ultimate Class. Pricing is interesting. Scout Class is $8, Warrior Class is $15, Ultra Class is $20, and Ultimate Class is $30. Kind of hard to quantify those. Is Ultimate Class Voyager sized? Maybe a little bigger? Not sure. Guess time will tell. Some of the toys look okay, but there is nothing exciting here.
Rescue Bots
Some new Rescue Bots toys were announced. I didn’t bother with most of the photos. There are two large figures, Knight Watch Optimus Prime and Rescue Guard Bumblebee. Both comes with two Mini-Cons. There are some new Flip Racers with pull back and release motors and small playsets. There were a couple more Flip Racers 3-Packs. Nothing particularly exciting, but there was one interesting one pictured below. There is a new Megabots toy, Hot Shot.
That’s about it. Nothing really exciting. I am glad we got confirmation that Studio Series will be new molds, and I guess there is some hope that Power of the Primes exclusives will fill out the remaining combiners.
Thanks for reading!