Hasbro Answers to TFviews Questions #11

Our readers came up with these 2 questions to send in on June 28th, and Hasbro has supplied us the  answers. Who is Optimus’ best friend, Dion or Jazz? And what’s up with Thundercracker? Click in to read ‘em.

TFviews.com: Jazz’s Hall of Fame nomination profile mentions that he was Orion Pax’s best friend. Orion Pax has only ever had one best friend, and that was Dion, a character from the G1 cartoon episode “War Dawn,” who gets shot alongside Orion Pax and Ariel, who (obviously) became Optimus Prime and Elita-One. Some people have taken this new piece of information to indicate Dion was rebuilt into Jazz, which is a departure from some fans’ assumption that Dion gets rebuilt into Ironhide or Ultra Magnus. So what is Hasbro’s stance now? Does Dion get rebuilt into Jazz? Ultra Magnus? Ironhide? Or does he just die?

Hasbro: Over the past 25 years there have been various interpretations of Transformers lore. In the original animated series, Orion Pax was best friends with Dion who subsequently dies at the hands of Megatron. In our mind Dion died during the war for Cybertron. Dion was never rebuilt into any other character. Jazz¹s Hall of Fame profile was based off the War for Cybertron/Exodus continuity, which Hasbro is going forward with as our new aligned continuity. We believe Orion Pax had many friends during the War for Cybertron.

TFviews.com: After what some fans have dubbed “Thundergate” – the 2007 Botcon boxed set that had the very limited, oft-requested Classics versions of  Seekers Dirge, Thrust, and Thundercracker – we’ve finally started to move past the pain with the non-exclusive, mass-retail releases and planned releases for Thrust and now Dirge. With those two and Starscream, Skywarp, and Ramjet already produced in mass-release lines, that leaves just Thundercracker to complete the main Seekers. Will you be releasing a Classics mold of Thundercracker to mass-retail? Not Action Master or Shattered Glass or some other background Seeker instead, but regular Thundercracker?

Hasbro: That is a very good point and one that we are aware of. Of course since he is the last seeker that needs to be released, it makes a lot of sense for us to develop him/release him down the road. No promises on timing, but we certainly are aware of this.

– Well, that’s it for this round. This is a bi-monthly Q&A series so we’ll have more great questions ready to go on August 9th. Thanks to all the readers who participated by coming up with these questions, and thanks to Hasbro for making this Q&A possible.

If you’d like to discuss these answers with other fans, or you’d like to submit a question of your own, join us in the Transformers Q&A thread in our forums!