Toy News: Botcon Toy Reveals

A lot of new toys were shown and announced at Botcon including the Club Subscription Service 3.0 toys.  There are some good toys coming up, but honestly I was completely unimpressed overall.  There was really nothing to wow me, no big announcement, and not all that much.  It almost feels like they aren’t bothering to announce any toys that they will just cancel in the spring when the stores are ordering toys for the new cartoon (you know, that thing that happens almost every spring it seems).  So I suppose that’s a good thing.  I’m only including pictures of the significant ones.

Age of Extinction

For Age of Extinction they announced Wave 4 and 5 of One Step Changers and Wave 3 and 4 Power Battlers.  One Step Changer Stinger is not among them as all Stinger toys will apparently be Walmart exclusives.  By my count based on the original press releases there are a couple more one step changers (maybe only one plus Stringer) and 1 more Power Battler (might very well be Stinger also).  Could be my numbers are off though.  I like most of these toys, but I was really hoping we might get a few more deluxes and voyagers added to the original number announced.  There should be, I believe, one more Leader (Bumblebee is the third and isn’t out yet) that was not announced to make four, but again I could be mistaken.  We also got confirmation on the last wave of deluxes that include new Camaro Bumblebee, Snarl, and Crosshairs repainted in blue as Hot Shot.

One Step Changers
Bumblebee (High Octane) (Wave 4)
Drift (Helicopter) (Wave 4)
Galvatron (Wave 4)
Slug (Wave 4)
Steeljaw (Wave 4)
Megatron (RotF) (Wave 5)
Prowl (Wave 5)
Rollbar (Wave 5)
Stinger

Power Battlers
Optimus Prime (Wave 2.5)
Galvatron (Wave 3)
Grimlock (Wave 3)
Lockdown (Wave 3)
Slug (Wave 3)
Snarl (Wave 3)
Junkheap (Wave 4)
Vehicon (Wave 4)

Deluxe
Snarl (Wave 3)
Hot Shot (Wave 3)
Bumblebee (Wave 3)

We also found out about three Age of Extinction Platinum Edition sets (not sure if they are exclusives, but I assume they will be).  Pics included on these.  They are really nice looking sets.  Autobots United includes all five Autobots with apparently improved and more accurate paint jobs.  The Breakout Battle 3-Pack includes the Rusted Optimus Prime (the Japanese version looks better), Vehicon (from DotM Crankcase), and Rollbar (from Generations Skids).  Lastly there is a Leader two pack with repaints of Optimus Prime and Grimlock.

Autobots United 5-Pack

Breakout Battle 3-Pack

Leader 2-Pack

Generations

For Generations we got our first pics of deluxe Arcee and Chromia.  Finally a G1 Arcee.  We are getting two different (from the same mold) Leader Class Megatrons, and Voyager Brainstorm and Optimus Prime, the latter of which is an all new mold.  They also announced a whole mess of Legends, Powerglide looks particularly good.  They also were able to get back the Bombshell trademark.

Legends
Cliffjumper with Supressor (Wave 8)
Nemesis with Spinster (Wave 8)
Powerglide with ? (2015 Wave 1)
Thundercracker with ? (2015 Wave 1)
Windcharger with ? (2015 Wave 1)
Bombshell with ? (2015 Wave 1)

Deluxe
Arcee (Wave 5)
Chromia (Wave 5)

Voyager
Brainstorm (Wave 4)
Optimus Prime (2015 Wave 1)

Leader
Megatron (G1) (2015 Wave 1)
Megatron (Armada) (2015 Wave 1)

Kre-O

Not much Kre-O news.  The 3rd wave of Customizable Kreons will be four Dinobots.  Also, the Kreon 4-Pack that showed up on Facebook a couple weeks back is a Universal Studios exclusive (I don’t remember hearing about that previously).  There is alos a previously announced Kreon 5-Pack

Customizable Kreons Wave 3
Grimlock (Wave 3)
Scorn (Wave 3)
Slug (Wave 3)
Strafe (Wave 3)

Masterpiece

All we got for Masterpiece announcements was that Sideswipe and Bluestreak will be released in the USA (I presume through Toys R Us.)  I don’t think pics or toys were shown of these, but I assume we will get the black and gray version of Bluestreak, though Hasbro has generally stuck to the toy coloring for Masterpiece (Soundwave’s yellow eyes), so it could be the silver one.

And that was it.  Everything else they showed we already knew about.  Just not much at all, really.  Some really nice stuff like the Arcee, Brainstorm, and Megatron, but nothing that really wowed me, no big news.  What was more interesting to me is what we didn’t hear.  There was no announcement of any further Constructbots past what has already been announced.  I kind of thought we’d get a few more Dinobots.  Two more riders, Galvatron and Starscream were announced prior to Botcon.  At very least I hoped to learn the fate of the Beast Hunters Constructbots.  I figure they were all canceled, but I would have thought we’d hear about that for sure at some point.  Usually lines get cancelled in the middle, and none of those toys came out at all.  (I don’t believe we’ve had official word of their cancellation.)  Kre-O had very little announced, not even the Elite Optimus Prime and Stinger Replicator Chamber sets that were seen in overseas catalogs.  Could be they are holding some of this stuff for SDCC.  There were also no new Hero Mashers announced, they just showed ones that were already announced.

The only other announcement was the Club Subscription Service 3.0, an overall disappointing group of toys.

There will again be free toy, but they didn’t say what that one is.  My money is on Redwing, as that mold is being used twice, so one more use would make sense.  The six announced toys are:

Krok (Generations Megatron Mold with New Head) with Gatoraider (Arms Micron crocodile)

G2 Starscream (Classics Starscream Mold)

Nacelle (New Character) (Classics Starscream Mold with Botcon Thrust Wings)

Serpent O.R. (Generations Ratbat Mold)

Zap (Generations Bumblebee Mold) with Kreon G.B. Blackrock (Some reports say it also comes with a Kre-O fuel pump.)

Dawn of Futures Past Tarantulas (Generations Wreck-Gar Mold, not sure which head, I don’t think it’s a new head) with Two Partners (Arms Micron spider)

G2 Starscream is awesome, and just to get an actual new character, Nacelle is great.  I like the mold choice for Tarantulas, but it’s not really wowing me.  Zap, Krok, and Serpent O.R. do nothing for me.  The Arms Microns are a joke since they have no stickers.  They really are crap.  I saw a post on a site, not sure which one, where someone showed a canceled set of stickers for one of the Botcon Microns.  I really wish they would just stop using them if they aren’t going to do stickers for them.

Just kind of disappointing all around.  The lack of new molding (just one new head it looks like) is lousy.  They could have at least given Nacelle a new face.  Just not impressive, nothing to wow me.  But if they can just start shipping them on time, then that will wow me, so we’ll se how that goes.

What really pisses me off is that they should have done the Autobot clones from the Vehicon and Air Vehicon molds with a new head used on both.  While I like Pounce and Wingspan it would have made more sense to make the Autobot Clones Fastlane and Cloudraker, and I assumed they would do that in the Subscription Service.  It’s just such an obvious choice.

Well, hopefully we’ll get some big news at SDCC.  I’m not going to hold my breath.

Thanks for reading!