Thanks to Hasbro and the folks at Hunter PR, here’s the latest edition of Transformers Q&A. As always, if you have a question you’d like asked, leave a comment, drop me an email or hit me up on twitter. Now continue on to the Question/Answer goodness. And special thanks to my twitter friends RAC2750 and ExVeeBrawn for providing question #2.
1) Is there an alt mode that the design team’s been chomping at the bit to incorporate into the line, but haven’t found the right spot or character for yet?
We would of course love to do a Deluxe version of Megatron’s original Lugar design. However, due to laws governing toy safety, we would have to make the end of the gun bright orange for safety reasons. Needless to say, we would not want to do this as it would take away from the uniqueness of what Megatron was in the 80’s. Additionally, there are a lot of cool beast modes, but since we are not focusing on that story line right now, it just doesn’t make sense to really spend time and investment behind recreating these items.
2) It was mentioned at Botcon that the War For Cybertron toys were developed in about half the normal length of time it takes to bring a toy from concept to finished product. Have any other toys been successfully developed in such a short time, and what takes the record for the quickest completed toy concept?
While we are not sure who stated it took half the development time to produce the new War for Cybertron figures, we want to first set the record straight that this was not the case for these guys. It is true that we pushed through the development process to get these incorporated into the line, but it certainly was not half the time! As for your specific question, since movie 1, much of our product line has been developed under a lot of pressure and tough timelines. This is often the case with entertainment properties where you are partnering with the studio, director and writers. In some cases, changes are made to make the story better and we then need to be able to react to those changes/updates to make sure that we are creating a unified story to our fans. Needless to say, when it came time to develop the War for Cybertron toys, it was a well oiled process that helped us get these into our fans’ hands. It was a pleasure teaming up with Activision for these figures and we’re really glad they were well received by the fans.
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