While each new trailer or snippet I see of Transformers: The Last Knight heightens the foreboding I feel for the upcoming film, some of the toys Hasbro is releasing to go with the movie aren’t half-bad. Officially announced yesterday, converting Cybertron is coming to light our darkest hour.
Converting Cybertron, which seems to be the name Hasbro is currently going with for this $US149.99 ($202) Toys’R’Us exclusive, should look familiar to long-time Transformers fans. That’s because he’s a redeco of one of my favourite figures, 2006’s Transformers: Cybertron Primus.
Cybertron Primus — via the good ol’ TFWiki.
Primus is Cybertron, and all Cybertron is Primus, or at least that’s how it went in the Unicron Trilogy, a series of three CG Transformers cartoons that ran in the mid ’00s. Moulded long before Hasbro started pumping out toys like last year’s nearly two-foot tall Fortress Maximus remake, 28cm Primus was a beast that turned into a ball.
Converting Cybertron (but secretly Primus) is a bit of light retooling and some colour-swapping of that glorious 2006 toy. Hasbro’s decked out the figure in orange, purple and black, with a wealth of translucent details making a cool toy that much cooler.
Converting Cybertron features lights, sounds and firing weapons unlocked via a special key, which you can see sticking out of the planet’s pole below.
See the blue clear plastic sticking out of the side of the key? One of the major gimmicks for the original Cybertron toy line was that each toy came with a planet key that made special things happen. Looks like Hasbro’s stuck to the plan for the redeco.
I probably won’t see the movies, but at least the toys have gotten me curious about the underlying fiction. For instance, the $US49.99 ($67) leader class Dragonstorm figure features two robots, Cybertronian knights Dragonicus and Stormreign.
The two both transform into dragons, but can also be combined to form one triple-headed beast, which they should have called Tripredicus or something but instead named Dragonstorm.
Pretty nifty, huh? Maybe there’s hope for the movie lines after all — but can even Primus save us from the simmering menace of Skullitron?
Skullitron, Primus and Dragonstorm will be available this summer.
Comments
6 responses to “Even If The Last Knight Is Horrible, We’re Still Getting A Transforming Cybertron”
Foreboding? Mr Fahey, if I may paraphrase the words of a videogame character quoting the (probably apocryphal) words of a genius physicist:
The definition of insanity is watching the same garbage movies over and over and expecting different results.
Skullitron was it? It looks like one of Darkseid’s parademons. I’ve never heard of Cyberton being an actual transformer, glad to find out it was a new addition to me completely missing something in g1 and g2.
Cybertron is Primus; he is indeed a Transformer, but his power is/was dormant. Unicron is his opposite (It wasn’t originally — at least not in the cartoon (1984) universe; it was a retcon that applies to both G1 and the awfulawful Unicron Trilogy).
Since Fahey doesn’t mention it… Cybertron and Skulitron (Amongst others) are slated to be Toys R Us exclusives as part of their ‘Mission to Cybertron’ minibrand.
Odds are slated heavily that Australia will not receive these unless other chains such as Myer receive them instead, if history is any proof.
Don’t know why you wouldn’t see the movie, brainless enjoyable (if occasionally too long) schlock.