Botcon 2016 figures

Ancillary, non-main-line stuff. Star Wars TF, Speed Stars, Titanium Series, Robot Heroes, that sort of thing. They're kinda neat, but we all know they're not really that important. Admit it, you know it's true.
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Onslaught Six
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Onslaught Six »

I think JT's point is that the new piece (the drill) is a digibashed piece, so it doesn't really lend any credibility to whether or not the mould has a pre-tool of Nosecone in it. I'm not sure I agree (with either statement) but y'know.

The backwards vehicle mode doesn't bother me--in fact, I do think it's a decent way to make it seem like he's not just a Brawl remould, the same way Onslaught is obviously backwards from Hot Spot.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:I think JT's point is that the new piece (the drill) is a digibashed piece, so it doesn't really lend any credibility to whether or not the mould has a pre-tool of Nosecone in it. I'm not sure I agree (with either statement) but y'know.
Botcon figures are generally lucky to get any new moldings though, normally in the form of a few figures getting a new head to better represent a particular character. Frankly, I'm surprised they already announced five of these figures will be getting new heads as it is. I think that's the most they've done in a given year. So I can't really see Botcon changing out the cannon for a drill when they generally don't do something like that. And as it happens, that modification would make for a good representation of Nosecone. Not to mention, seems like every other Combiner Wars mold has been re-purposed to represent another character.

Anyway... The next figure in the set has been revealed today. General Cicadacon, using the Combiner Wars Skydive mold. It appears this will be the mold of the set that won't have a new head, so Sea Clamp and the Predacus gestalt form must be the remaining 2. I can see why they chose Skydive. I think the head resembles Cicadacon from the cartoon the most out of the existing molds, but I would have liked to see him as the torso because of the original Tripredacus figure. If not the torso then, as overused as the Alpha Bravo mold is, I think a helicopter would have been more fitting for him than a jet.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Sparky Prime »

Botcon has revealed the full comic book teaser showing Generals Ramhorn, Cicadacon and gives us the first look at Sea Clamp. His figure should be revealed tomorrow, but in the meantime, this teaser reveals they'll be using the Combiner Wars Silverbolt (or possibly the Scattershot variant) mold for him.

Edit: General Sea Clamp has officially been revealed, showing that it is using the Scattorshot version of the mold.
Last edited by Sparky Prime on Thu Oct 29, 2015 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Onslaught Six »

I'll admit on some level that making a "Tripredacus" combiner (with two more limbs; so, uh, Quinpredacus?) is a decent enough idea, but the fact that all of the characters are BW characters in non-BW bodies (a concept I generally dislike, especially when they're just reused from other toys) is a kick in the nuts. (Ironically enough, it would be easy enough to assemble a "Magnaboss" to combat him, using CW Silverbolt, Prowl, Ironhide, and two others.) It won't look nearly as cool as these guys, and the fact that they're just shoehorning them into "G1" era bodies makes their mysteriousness super lame.

The BW show was a masterful piece of showing the viewer just enough to get them interested without ever pulling back the curtain too much. There were a great many mysteries and plot threads in that show that were never fully followed up on, but also didn't need to be addressed to enjoy the show. Given the time period, I think some of this was inspired by X-Files, Twin Peaks and Star Trek: TNG, arguably the three biggest shows of the time period. I never once cared to know more about what the Vok were, or how the Allspark was supposed to work, or who the Tripredacus Council "really was." They had a role in the show and it played out as it needed to be played out--no more, no less--and injecting more fiction onto them is lazy and mining material that isn't fucking there, and that kind of bullshit is what has always, always pissed me off about the fanfiction-level writing of the club. (For fuck's sake, will you believe all the bullshit that's been added to the Wiki lately from "Ask Vector Prime," apparently a shitty Facebook page that is "semi-canonical?" It intrudes on every single article of the entire Wiki. It's scum. Bottomfeeding, incestuous, lowest-common-denominator fanfiction wankery trash.)
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Dominic »

No question, "Beast Wars" (or any property) is diminished by that sort of thing.

HoneyBear had a really good point about this (years ago). The problem that many fans (GeeWunners and others) have with things like "Beast Wars" is that it was fairly consistent and tightly plotted. There were some errors and sloppiness. But, for the most part, it did not have much wiggle room. Contrast that with G1, which all but obligates a certain amount of fanon. (Even somebody like me, who tries to avoid fanon, has to concede that G1 makes it necessary.)

Some fans want it to be "theirs". Yes, they are self-indulgent assholes. But, they are what they are.


The other problem is that the fans of the 80s (and early 90s) grew up reading comics in an era when writers were spending time cleaning up and fixing mistakes. Marvel's annuals used to have back-up content that moved pieces and papered over sloppy errors. Ditto for the sourcebooks. (DC was also guilty of it, but "Crisis on Infinite Earths" made it less of a thing in the 80s.)

Some of us recognized it for what it was, back-writing. (I did not realize quite how much of it was covering mistakes at the time. But, I knew that Marvel was trying to "fill-in" gaps and such.) The problem is that some people saw it as a goal unto itself.

1950s Captain America is a good example, as it was a necessary (it blunt) back-write. As a kid, I thought that Marvel was just trying to cover a mistake they made.

(Clearly, Marvel forgot about those "Captain America" comics they published after WWII ended, and had to cover that by saying there was more than one Captain America. The insane amounts of detail about 1950s Captain America were to cover the specific use of Steve Rogers' name. I was partly right about this. But, Marvel was deliberately trying to ignore the 50s Captain America for reasons I only came to understand later.)

For some fans, the better reason was to tell a drawn-out and back-written story.....rather than moving on and doing something good.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Sparky Prime »

I like the idea of the BW characters having a pre-beast Cybertronian form at least, but I'm not really a fan of them using another character's toy for it. I mean, it's understandable that the conventions would be limited to existing molds to use, and sometimes they pick a mold that I think works for a character. But more often, I have to say I wonder why they chose a particular mold for a character, or why they chose to use a particular character. Like Ravage in this set. I think he looks completely out of place being an Earth-car, not to mention we saw his Cybertronian form in the Beast Wars cartoon. And why is he a combiner? Obviously they needed 5 figures to complete the gestalt and Ravage was they only other agent of the Tripredacus Council we saw in the show, but I feel he works better as simply an agent for the Council, not sort of a part of it. While with Tarantulas, given his comment about how both he and the Council had 'different origins' from the Autobots and Decepticons, I can see using that to shoehorn him into the gestalt.
Onslaught Six wrote:The BW show was a masterful piece of showing the viewer just enough to get them interested without ever pulling back the curtain too much. There were a great many mysteries and plot threads in that show that were never fully followed up on, but also didn't need to be addressed to enjoy the show. Given the time period, I think some of this was inspired by X-Files, Twin Peaks and Star Trek: TNG, arguably the three biggest shows of the time period. I never once cared to know more about what the Vok were, or how the Allspark was supposed to work, or who the Tripredacus Council "really was." They had a role in the show and it played out as it needed to be played out--no more, no less--and injecting more fiction onto them is lazy and mining material that isn't fucking there, and that kind of bullshit is what has always, always pissed me off about the fanfiction-level writing of the club.
I'd agree with you about the Vok and the Allspark. I think they work best with a level of mystery maintained to them. But not so much with the Tripredacus Council. The 'not decedents from Autobot and Decepticon' comment from Tarantulas I think deserves a little bit of an explanation. I don't see how that would be lazy or mining for material when the show introduced that idea with out explaining it further. It begs to question, where did they come from? Having Tarantulas as a creation of Unicron just because Megatron called him 'Unicron's spawn' as an insult on the other hand... That's pretty fan-fictiony.
For fuck's sake, will you believe all the bullshit that's been added to the Wiki lately from "Ask Vector Prime," apparently a shitty Facebook page that is "semi-canonical?" It intrudes on every single article of the entire Wiki.
Yeah, I really don't like that they're considering that canonical just because it's 'Hasbro approved' or whatever when it's clear much of those so called 'answers' are just meant to be silly BS.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Onslaught Six »

I'd agree with you about the Vok and the Allspark. I think they work best with a level of mystery maintained to them. But not so much with the Tripredacus Council. The 'not decedents from Autobot and Decepticon' comment from Tarantulas I think deserves a little bit of an explanation. I don't see how that would be lazy or mining for material when the show introduced that idea with out explaining it further. It begs to question, where did they come from? Having Tarantulas as a creation of Unicron just because Megatron called him 'Unicron's spawn' as an insult on the other hand... That's pretty fan-fictiony.
I never put much thought into that line, and in fact, if you re-watch Nemesis Part 2, the Tripredacus dudes very subtly retcon that bullshit out of the way and immediately imply that they are, in fact, descended from Decepticons.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:I never put much thought into that line, and in fact, if you re-watch Nemesis Part 2, the Tripredacus dudes very subtly retcon that bullshit out of the way and immediately imply that they are, in fact, descended from Decepticons.
Say what? The Tripredacus Council doesn't appear in "Nemesis Part 2", nor are they mentioned.

I think you mean "The Agenda part 1", where Ramhorn says: "Generals, ever since the Autobots defeated our Decepticon ancestors, we Predacons have worked secretly towards the day we might rise up and take what is rightfully ours." Which given the context, doesn't necessarily refer to their own origins, but to the overall Predacon faction. The last thing we learn about the Council is Tarantulas saying that they aren't descendants from the Autobots or Decepticons in "Other Victories".
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Onslaught Six »

My bad. I read some Wiki entries that were confusingly worded. In that case, I'll return to the original argument I typed up before I went to the Wiki to check my bullshit: The last few episodes of BWS3 were notably written very hastily and not everything is as fleshed out as it was intended. Mainframe were unsure if Tigerhawk was going to receive a toy or not (which is precisely why he's introduced in one episode and killed two episodes later), the cut scenes of Megatron's spark being restored and Optimal Optimus stealing a Transwarp cell from the Nemesis, Dinobot's mysterious change of heart (that entirely relies on a deleted episode for it to make even a bit of sense), plus all the stuff cut from the scripts like the Conehead Seekers emerging from the Nemesis to shoot down the Ark, which was originally going to lift off! They barely had enough time to do anything, so introducing such a plotline was probably meant to be resolved or explained quickly, but never was because of the rushed production schedule. (S3 was notably rushed for lots of other reasons too--Hasbro was also known to be meddling quite a bit more than they had in the previous 2 seasons, especially because BW was now a hot property.)
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Re: Botcon 2016 figures

Post by Sparky Prime »

Yeah, I know there was a lot they'd planned to do in season 3, but had to cut or change things for various reasons. Although a fan had asked Larry DiTillio about the origins of Tarantulas and the Tripredacus Council and posted his reply on ATT... DiTillio said that Bob Forward regretted the "Unicron's Spawn" line given the way some fans took it literally. He also speculated they may have been from Jhiaxus' brand of Decepticons from the comics.
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