There's information going about about the design of the Commander-class Motormaster toy for Legacy, and the specifics of how his transformation has been engineered.

Evidently, Motormaster's vehicle mode will be a cab and trailer, not just the cab as he was during Combiner Wars. The cab will transform into Motormaster's robot mode, while the trailer will open up into a battle station, similar to the Kingdom Rodimus Prime toy.

When combining into Menasor, the trailer will become the frame to which the other smaller Stunticons attach. It sounds like the small cars slide into existing clips that will essentially fill out the limbs.

Fans who have seen the design of the toy warn that it doesn't result in a particularly clean look, and is a departure from the look of Menasor as he appears in the G1 cartoon.

So, it definitely sounds like they're doing something entirely different from the established technology used for Combiner Wars. I remain curious, but skeptical. I'm sure we'll see images in the next few months or so.

Zob (kind of predicted this)

On Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 3:35:05 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> There's information going about about the design of the Commander-class Motormaster toy for Legacy, and the specifics of how his transformation has been engineered.
>
> Evidently, Motormaster's vehicle mode will be a cab and trailer, not just the cab as he was during Combiner Wars. The cab will transform into Motormaster's robot mode, while the trailer will open up into a battle station, similar to the Kingdom Rodimus Prime toy.
>
> When combining into Menasor, the trailer will become the frame to which the other smaller Stunticons attach. It sounds like the small cars slide into existing clips that will essentially fill out the limbs.
>
> Fans who have seen the design of the toy warn that it doesn't result in a particularly clean look, and is a departure from the look of Menasor as he appears in the G1 cartoon.
>
> So, it definitely sounds like they're doing something entirely different from the established technology used for Combiner Wars. I remain curious, but skeptical. I'm sure we'll see images in the next few months or so.
>
>
> Zob (kind of predicted this)

Thanks for this update, Zob. It will definitely be interesting to see how this reimagining plays out. (For me, part of the aggregate appeal of Motormaster is that, unlike Prime, his tractor trailer was not a subspace attachment to his "body"; i.e., his transformation encompassed both elements at once. But, if designers are looking to sort of create a "mirror" Prime, as Motormaster has always been shaped as, to a degree, perhaps this is just the next logical step in that path.

JB

On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 4:07:35 AM UTC-6, Joseph Bardsley wrote:

> For me, part of the aggregate appeal of Motormaster is that, unlike Prime, his tractor trailer was not a subspace attachment to his "body"; i.e., his transformation encompassed both elements at once. But, if designers are looking to sort of create a "mirror" Prime, as Motormaster has always been shaped as, to a degree, perhaps this is just the next logical step in that path.

The problem with Motormaster is that his 1986 toy was a totally different scale than the previous Diaclone toys. He was a tiny truck compared to the 1984 Optimus Prime. In the media, though, he's always been depicted as a full-sized tractor trailer and yet somehow his cab and trailer transform together into a normal-sized robot. That's basically impossible.

Even ignoring media depictions, if we're looking just at neo-G1, Motormaster really needs to be a Commander-class toy to do him justice, and yet a Commander-class would be way too huge to serve as the body of a combiner form if the other arms and legs are Deluxes. I agree with you that Motormaster's cab and trailer have always felt like they were one piece, but I'm willing to cut them some slack if it means Menasor's design and proportions are improved as a result.

I also kind of like that they're leaving behind the Scramble City aspect of the combiner teams, since that was an aborted Takara concept that was never incorporated into the U.S. media (and it never applied to Devastator or Predaking or Monstructor). It probably also means we're not going to see the new combiner teams endlessly recycled into other toys, since the lack of Scramble City modular interconnectivity would give the individual toys less redeco appeal. (We might get a G2 set of Stunticons, but that's just about the only way they could reuse the toys, I expect.)

Zob (which, honestly, I'm fine with)

Joseph Bardsley <joe.bardsley@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, October 28, 2021 at 3:35:05 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
>> There's information going about about the design of the Commander-class
>> Motormaster toy for Legacy, and the specifics of how his transformation
>> has been engineered.
>>
>> Evidently, Motormaster's vehicle mode will be a cab and trailer, not
>> just the cab as he was during Combiner Wars. The cab will transform into
>> Motormaster's robot mode, while the trailer will open up into a battle
>> station, similar to the Kingdom Rodimus Prime toy.
>>
>> When combining into Menasor, the trailer will become the frame to which
>> the other smaller Stunticons attach. It sounds like the small cars slide
>> into existing clips that will essentially fill out the limbs.
>>
>> Fans who have seen the design of the toy warn that it doesn't result in
>> a particularly clean look, and is a departure from the look of Menasor
>> as he appears in the G1 cartoon.
>>
>> So, it definitely sounds like they're doing something entirely different
>> from the established technology used for Combiner Wars. I remain
>> curious, but skeptical. I'm sure we'll see images in the next few months or so.
>>
>>
>> Zob (kind of predicted this)
>
> Thanks for this update, Zob. It will definitely be interesting to see how
> this reimagining plays out. (For me, part of the aggregate appeal of
> Motormaster is that, unlike Prime, his tractor trailer was not a subspace
> attachment to his "body"; i.e., his transformation encompassed both elements at once.

For me too. The CW toy is lacking in part because of that.

>But, if designers are looking to sort of create a "mirror" Prime, as
> Motormaster has always been shaped as, to a degree, perhaps this is just
> the next logical step in that path.

Aren’t there enough “mirror” Primes without reducing Motormaster to that?
Nemesis and Shattered Glass are very explicitly that.

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 4:07:35 AM UTC-6, Joseph Bardsley wrote:
>
>> For me, part of the aggregate appeal of Motormaster is that, unlike
>> Prime, his tractor trailer was not a subspace attachment to his "body";
>> i.e., his transformation encompassed both elements at once. But, if
>> designers are looking to sort of create a "mirror" Prime, as Motormaster
>> has always been shaped as, to a degree, perhaps this is just the next
>> logical step in that path.
>
> The problem with Motormaster is that his 1986 toy was a totally different
> scale than the previous Diaclone toys. He was a tiny truck compared to
> the 1984 Optimus Prime. In the media, though, he's always been depicted
> as a full-sized tractor trailer and yet somehow his cab and trailer
> transform together into a normal-sized robot. That's basically impossible.

> Even ignoring media depictions, if we're looking just at neo-G1,
> Motormaster really needs to be a Commander-class toy to do him justice,
> and yet a Commander-class would be way too huge to serve as the body of a
> combiner form if the other arms and legs are Deluxes. I agree with you
> that Motormaster's cab and trailer have always felt like they were one
> piece, but I'm willing to cut them some slack if it means Menasor's
> design and proportions are improved as a result.

I’m not so sure.

Look at the Combiner Wars toy — he’s way out of scale with the rest of the
Stunticons. Cars and truck have roughly the same wheelbase since they all
travel down the same roads. Trucks are a little wider, but mostly taller
and longer.

Now look at the CW Protectobots — Hot Spot is too small in vehicle mode,
but only by about 25%. Leader size would get the core truck to be the right
size — the current Leader scale is a bit smaller than the massive CW
Leaders like Megatron.

To get to robot mode, the trailer would have to collapse a little bit (or
just be a shorter trailer) and the cab would need to flatten down a bit the
be the feet, but it’s nothing that they haven’t done before. Look how much
of Siege Ultra Magnus’s trailer folds around itself and his boots.

He would still be “too big” in robot mode, but a believable “too big”, and
a better compromise in my estimation. Capturing what made the original toy
interesting.

He might be a whole lot more plastic than a current Leader. So if they
needed to shove him in a commander scale box with all the feet and hands
carefully spaced out to try to fill the box…

Now, I’m not sure whether a CW scaled Deluxe would still be a deluxe now.
But that’s another matter.

> I also kind of like that they're leaving behind the Scramble City aspect
> of the combiner teams, since that was an aborted Takara concept that was
> never incorporated into the U.S. media (and it never applied to
> Devastator or Predaking or Monstructor). It probably also means we're
> not going to see the new combiner teams endlessly recycled into other
> toys, since the lack of Scramble City modular interconnectivity would
> give the individual toys less redeco appeal. (We might get a G2 set of
> Stunticons, but that's just about the only way they could reuse the toys, I expect.)

The Scramble City design was great fun. And since CW, they have gotten
better at reshelling toys, so if they did it again, I would think they
wouldn’t be as repetitive.

> Zob (which, honestly, I'm fine with)
>

On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 12:09:36 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Look at the Combiner Wars toy — he’s way out of scale with the rest of the
> Stunticons. Cars and truck have roughly the same wheelbase since they all
> travel down the same roads. Trucks are a little wider, but mostly taller
> and longer.

Don't make me take out my box of Combiner Wars toys and start taking measurements!

Maybe there's no real solution here that would satisfy everyone. The closer you get to the media depictions, the farther you stray from the G1 toy design. The closer you make it a G1 toy tribute, the less it looks like the media depiction. And there's no way to reconcile Optimus Prime's semi truck cab being x feet tall turning into a robot that's y feet tall, while Motormaster's cab is also x feet tall but his entire cab-and-trailer assembly somehow becomes a robot that's also y feet tall. It's impossible.

The only other solution I can think of is to give Motormaster a Voyager-sized cab that turns into the robot and also the Menasor body, while the trailer unfolds into a battle station or whatnot and isn't involved in the Menasor assembly at all. Which, honestly, would be extraordinarily unsatisfying.. It's like going back to the G1 days of having a great, big pile of Computron parts when Scattershot is in robot mode.

They won't be able to take this approach when and if they get around to redoing Superion or Bruticus or Defensor. Motormaster is unique because he's a two-piece cab-and-trailer vehicle. It's not like we're ever going to get a Silverbolt where the jet nose pops off and turns into the robot and the rest of the jet does something completely different.

> The Scramble City design was great fun. And since CW, they have gotten
> better at reshelling toys, so if they did it again, I would think they
> wouldn’t be as repetitive.

There were so many Scramble City characters who got woefully inadequate toys during Combiner Wars just because Hasbro was hellbent on recycling as many designs as possible. Obviously, characters like Dead End or Streetwise aren't super iconic for the Transformers brand as a whole, so maybe the thought process was "well, he's a car, so close enough." But a lot of the Combiner Wars attempts just didn't match the characters, and frankly I was hitting serious fatigue buying the same toys over and over in different colors. It never felt like that during G1, even when some toys shared engineering or transformation ideas (Dead End/Breakdown, Blast Off/Vortex, all the Aerialbots... okay, that was actually a little repetitive).

And none of the 1984-85 characters that they shoehorned into the mix, just to sell us the toys again, were really good versions. Mirage was probably the best of them (but only if you took the toy apart and put the fists on the wrong way and purposefully mistransformed him).

We were never able to mix-and-match Constructicons with Predacons, or Predacons with Pretender Monsters, so not every combiner followed the Scramble City design. And since it was never an aspect of the media, I don't know that it should be the focus. We got a mix-and-match play pattern during Combiner Wars, and that was great. Maybe it's time to eschew that if it results in better combiners. I mean, vestigial Diaclone cockpits was a feature of the G1 toy line, too, but we're not insisting on that...

Zob (also, neo-G1 Monstructor when?)

On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 11:44:46 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Aren’t there enough “mirror” Primes without reducing Motormaster to that?

Motormaster was always, always presented as a rival to Optimus Prime. It's in his toy tech specs, where he wants to beat Optimus to become King of the Road. He was pitted against Optimus in "The Key to Vector Sigma" and again in "Masquerade." Even after Optimus was dead, Motormaster continued to talk about him in "Five Faces of Darkness."
You're right that he was never simply an Optimus clone, or an evil version of Optimus, which is what we tend to get with the other "mirror" Primes you're referring to. That's more RiD Scourge's schtick. But I don't think it's "reducing" Motormaster to anything at all. The media consistently portrayed him as an opponent for Prime, and Motormaster always saw himself as that.

Zob ( ♪ ♫ These wheels are made for crushing, and that's just what I'll do! One of these days these wheels are gonna roll right over you! ♬)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 12:09:36 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of
> the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
>> Look at the Combiner Wars toy — he’s way out of scale with the rest of the
>> Stunticons. Cars and truck have roughly the same wheelbase since they all
>> travel down the same roads. Trucks are a little wider, but mostly taller
>> and longer.
>
> Don't make me take out my box of Combiner Wars toys and start taking measurements!
>
> Maybe there's no real solution here that would satisfy everyone. The
> closer you get to the media depictions, the farther you stray from the G1
> toy design. The closer you make it a G1 toy tribute, the less it looks
> like the media depiction. And there's no way to reconcile Optimus
> Prime's semi truck cab being x feet tall turning into a robot that's y
> feet tall, while Motormaster's cab is also x feet tall but his entire
> cab-and-trailer assembly somehow becomes a robot that's also y feet tall.
> It's impossible.
>
> The only other solution I can think of is to give Motormaster a
> Voyager-sized cab that turns into the robot and also the Menasor body,
> while the trailer unfolds into a battle station or whatnot and isn't
> involved in the Menasor assembly at all. Which, honestly, would be
> extraordinarily unsatisfying. It's like going back to the G1 days of
> having a great, big pile of Computron parts when Scattershot is in robot mode.
>
> They won't be able to take this approach when and if they get around to
> redoing Superion or Bruticus or Defensor. Motormaster is unique because
> he's a two-piece cab-and-trailer vehicle. It's not like we're ever going
> to get a Silverbolt where the jet nose pops off and turns into the robot
> and the rest of the jet does something completely different.
>
>> The Scramble City design was great fun. And since CW, they have gotten
>> better at reshelling toys, so if they did it again, I would think they
>> wouldn’t be as repetitive.
>
> There were so many Scramble City characters who got woefully inadequate
> toys during Combiner Wars just because Hasbro was hellbent on recycling
> as many designs as possible. Obviously, characters like Dead End or
> Streetwise aren't super iconic for the Transformers brand as a whole, so
> maybe the thought process was "well, he's a car, so close enough." But a
> lot of the Combiner Wars attempts just didn't match the characters, and
> frankly I was hitting serious fatigue buying the same toys over and over
> in different colors. It never felt like that during G1, even when some
> toys shared engineering or transformation ideas (Dead End/Breakdown,
> Blast Off/Vortex, all the Aerialbots... okay, that was actually a little repetitive).
>
> And none of the 1984-85 characters that they shoehorned into the mix,
> just to sell us the toys again, were really good versions. Mirage was
> probably the best of them (but only if you took the toy apart and put the
> fists on the wrong way and purposefully mistransformed him).

And they’ve gotten better at it since then. Earthrise Sideswipe has a
completely remolded car, ecto-1 is somehow onslaught, Misfire and the nice
blue plane whose name escapes me, Blot and Rippersnapper, but Brainstorm
and Scourge… they’ve put more budget into remolding to make toys distinct.

> We were never able to mix-and-match Constructicons with Predacons, or
> Predacons with Pretender Monsters, so not every combiner followed the
> Scramble City design. And since it was never an aspect of the media, I
> don't know that it should be the focus. We got a mix-and-match play
> pattern during Combiner Wars, and that was great. Maybe it's time to
> eschew that if it results in better combiners. I mean, vestigial
> Diaclone cockpits was a feature of the G1 toy line, too, but we're not insisting on that...
>
>
> Zob (also, neo-G1 Monstructor when?)
>

But I want vestigial díaclone cockpits on the Dinobots and Insecticons! And
then the PrimeMasters and TitanMasters can come back into the play pattern.

A Headmaster Grimlock who uses the Diaclone cockpit? That would be great.
Does it match any media depiction? No, but you already have a Studio Series
Grimlock in his flat, dull cartoon colors…

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 11:44:46 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of
> the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
>> Aren’t there enough “mirror” Primes without reducing Motormaster to that?
>
> Motormaster was always, always presented as a rival to Optimus Prime.
> It's in his toy tech specs, where he wants to beat Optimus to become King
> of the Road. He was pitted against Optimus in "The Key to Vector Sigma"
> and again in "Masquerade." Even after Optimus was dead, Motormaster
> continued to talk about him in "Five Faces of Darkness."

> You're right that he was never simply an Optimus clone, or an evil
> version of Optimus, which is what we tend to get with the other "mirror"
> Primes you're referring to. That's more RiD Scourge's schtick. But I
> don't think it's "reducing" Motormaster to anything at all. The media
> consistently portrayed him as an opponent for Prime, and Motormaster
> always saw himself as that.

Did Optimus ever even *know* that Motormaster considered him a rival? It
always seemed like Optimus didn’t think of Motormaster if he wasn’t right
in front of him. He wasn’t a “mirror” prime, he just thought he was. It
made him a more interesting character.

> Zob ( ♪ ♫ These wheels are made for crushing, and that's just what I'll
> do! One of these days these wheels are gonna roll right over you! ♬)
>

On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 7:40:07 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> A Headmaster Grimlock who uses the Diaclone cockpit? That would be great.

I honestly would have been in full support of that if we'd gotten one during Titans Return.

Zob (Legacy Kickback actually *does* look like he's got an opening chest...)

On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 7:40:07 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> Did Optimus ever even *know* that Motormaster considered him a rival? It
> always seemed like Optimus didn’t think of Motormaster if he wasn’t right
> in front of him.

Optimus never really used any of his usual playful quips with Motormaster. So we can probably infer from this that, unlike Decepticons that Prime didn't really take seriously ("I'm sorry there are only three of you! Clobbering less than four Decepticons at a time is boring!") he probably considered Motormaster a legitimate threat.

I mean, he was named Motormaster. Not Motor-amateur or even Motor-intermediate. He had a black belt in fan belts. He was the ace of the alternators.. He wasn't just a semi-truck; he was an ENTIRE truck.

Now, stop it. You're making him feel bad.

Zob (that's about all the truck jokes I had in me tonight)

Zobovor <zmfts@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 4:07:35 AM UTC-6, Joseph Bardsley wrote:
>

>
> I also kind of like that they're leaving behind the Scramble City aspect
> of the combiner teams, since that was an aborted Takara concept that was
> never incorporated into the U.S. media (and it never applied to
> Devastator or Predaking or Monstructor).

I think making Predaking a Titan, rather than just another combiner set was
a mistake.

Devastator has a very different design that wouldn’t have worked for the CW
Scrambler pattern, but Predaking would have worked well. Perhaps if he
turned out better I would think differently, but he didn’t. And I never saw
him as being larger than the other combiners anyway.

And Power of the Primes should have had Primus as the Titan. Loosely based
on the TF:Cybertron design, with spots to plug in the PrimeMasters. He
transforms from the core of Cybertron to a robot, to a battle station or
something — bonus points if that something can replace the cardboard
“Throne of the Primes”.

>It probably also means we're not going to see the new combiner teams
> endlessly recycled into other toys, since the lack of Scramble City modular
> interconnectivity would give the individual toys less redeco appeal. (We
> might get a G2 set of Stunticons, but that's just about the only way they
> could reuse the toys, I expect.)

I don’t feel the deep need to revisit the Stunticons. Monstructor would be
better, because we don’t have him. Seasons that were designed as Seacons
would be better. Energon Optimus Prime would be better. Something new (or
in the case of the Seacons, new to retail… I really think those Seacons
basically suck)

Sure, release a new Dragstrip with extra wheels, and a few other redone
toys, and just squirrel them into assortments. The technobot drill tank.
Motormaster since he wasn’t a full truck. A Swindle who is a jeep. A good
Blastoff. There, one set, a full combiner, fills in the gaps of poor toys
from CW, and maybe sell reissues of the rest of those combiners as Selects.

But mostly, don’t retread ground so recently trod.

> Zob (which, honestly, I'm fine with)

Apropos of nothing, I would also like a Sharkticon Titan, if they claimed
it was a 1:1 scale baby Sharkticon.

On Sunday, October 31, 2021 at 3:20:22 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> I think making Predaking a Titan, rather than just another combiner set was
> a mistake.

Well, I think the only time we saw Predaking with another combiner was when he and Devastator were ganging up on Broadside at the beginning of "The Burden Hardest to Bear," and both combiners were the same height. So, maybe they were going off of that?

There's a real visceral appeal to all the individual Predacons being Voyager-sized, since all of the G1 Predacon toys were much bigger than a tiny Scramble City mini-vehicle. Not just Razorclaw, but all of them. Doing modern, tiny Predacons would have felt wrong.

But, I'll agree that Predaking could have turned out better. Those awful Predaking legs.
> And Power of the Primes should have had Primus as the Titan.

Now that we know the Titans are continuing for the forseeable future, I'm basically expecting this. And maybe we'll get a $160 Unicron as well, so the folks who balked at the price of the HasLab version can still get one.

> I don’t feel the deep need to revisit the Stunticons. Monstructor would be
> better, because we don’t have him. Seasons that were designed as Seacons
> would be better. Energon Optimus Prime would be better. Something new (or
> in the case of the Seacons, new to retail… I really think those Seacons
> basically suck)

I'm largely in agreement here. I'm surprised that they're doing Stunticons again so soon. Maybe Menasor is like Astrotrain, where people kept complaining and complaining so Hasbro finally felt the need to give him another go. I feel like I'm pretty good at reading the room, and I haven't perceived a large percentage of the fandom (or, really, any percentage) talking about Menasor. The main complaints about Combiner Wars that I saw were the endless mold recycling.

Some of the Seacons were okay. I think we were all expecting at least some of them to be gussied-up Terrorcons. We knew Rippersnapper was probably going to get recycled. Turning Moonracer into Tentakil was something I don't think anybody expected, but it worked out pretty well.

Snaptrap is a shitty toy, though, and he bogs down the entire team as a whole. He's so awful. I think he's the least favorite toy I actually own right now.
> Sure, release a new Dragstrip with extra wheels, and a few other redone
> toys, and just squirrel them into assortments. The technobot drill tank.
> Motormaster since he wasn’t a full truck. A Swindle who is a jeep.. A good
> Blastoff. There, one set, a full combiner, fills in the gaps of poor toys
> from CW, and maybe sell reissues of the rest of those combiners as Selects.

If they had gone down the path of replacement combiner members, I would want to see First Aid added to the do-overs somewhere. I like your idea of addressing the characters individually. This wouldn't have been a bad move. But, replacing entire combiner teams will net them more money over the long run.

I get the impression that they might be looking at the third-party toys inspired by Scramble City, which are super accurate to the cartoon, and which fans are willing to pay many hundreds of dollars to own (seems like a single Stunticon will cost you about $70-80). I'm sure they want a piece of that pie. Also, if you take a step back, it's kind of sad that the third party guys are getting some of these characters right when Hasbro can't even get them right. There's really no excuse for Combiner Wars Swindle.

But, the focus on Sunbow accuracy is a relatively new thing. Combiner Wars was the first time Hasbro dialed in and addressed these poor, forgotten characters so it was a bit of a shock. That must have been when John Warden first took the reins. That was when they really raised the bar regarding what to expect from them going forward. Now that the standards have been raised yet again, I guess it makes sense to bring everybody up to code, so to speak.

> Apropos of nothing, I would also like a Sharkticon Titan, if they claimed
> it was a 1:1 scale baby Sharkticon.

I would support that HasLab campaign!

Zob (baby Sharkticon, doot doo doo doot do doo, baby Sharkticon, doot doo doo doot do doo...)