Unless a question is exceptionally good, I think our cutoff date has to be tonight around midnight because I won't have power tomorrow to email them to Maradona, the guy who will be at the con asking them for us. (No power because they're changing a transformer!
)
With the 10th Anniversary of Beast Wars, will we see an increased amount of homages and callbacks to other series besides Generation 1 going forward? When Armada is 10 years old, can we expect to see Masterpiece Hot Shot?
Almost got me with that one, it's the
20th anniversary of Beast Wars, and Armada is 13 years old.
- Are the comic storylines, such as Combiner Wars, solely dictated by Hasbro and the toyline they want to promote, or do the IDW writers get a say in the process?
Pretty sure this was covered at Botcon as it being a planned thing between them, Hasbro and IDW threw out ideas around a table at a planning meeting.
So here's what I've thrown together so far:
Recently, Hasbro's GI Joe and Transformers divisions worked together to produce cross-brand packs through the official fan club for Marissa Faireborn and Old Snake as GI Joe figures, characters that have direct connections in one form or another to both the Transformers cartoon and the GI Joe cartoon. Have you considered also tackling Hector Ramirez, the cartoon's version of Geraldo Rivera, for this line? He crossed over on Hasbro cartoons for GI Joe, Transformers, Jem, and Inhumanoids, and would make a great addition.
Combiner Wars seems to have marked a change in Transformers Generations production facilities from China to Vietnam. Why the change, and what benefits and challenges have you had from changing manufacturing to a different country?
With the current "Transformers: Robots in Disguise" line and the "Transformers: Generations: Combiner Wars" line, there seems like a significant difference in design and aesthetic, with "Robots in Disguise" having simpler product aiming more for a kid style. Will this trend continue into the future, splitting how the brands are developed?
Will future collector-focused lines like Generations have unified themes the way we've had with Combiner Wars this year?
With the 20th anniversary of Beast Wars coming up next year and Takara suggesting they will do a Beast Wars Masterpiece figure from Optimus Primal, will Hasbro be tackling the anniversary in any way as well?
Similarly, will we see more homage and celebrations of other series beyond Generation 1 in the future? For example, when Transformers Armada is 15 years old in 2017, might we see something like Masterpiece Hot Shot?
Might Hasbro develop Combiner Wars beyond just modern-day vehicles? The Technobots forming Computron from futuristic vehicles or the Terrorcons (the monster-bots forming Abominus) who could perhaps be remolded into the Predacons (forming Predaking) would be prime examples.
On the Combiner Wars Deluxe figures, the IDW comic book pack-in issues are taken from the IDW Transformers book before the Combiner Wars crossover, so they don't correspond to the characters they come with, some don't even have combiners in them at all. So how are the comic books chosen for the pack-ins?
Considering the relatively small size of the comic book reading audience (around 10,000 a month) compared to a television series (a couple million an episode) or certainly the live action movies (hundreds of millions of people), has packing in comics with the deluxe figures produced higher sales for either or both figures and comics?
Does Hasbro view the IDW comics as an idea-generator for the toy brand, an entity that produces new designs and updated takes on existing characters that can then be used to produce a new version of a toy -- such as Ultra Magnus coming with the Minimus Ambus mini-figure, or creating demand for Swerve?
With Devastator, why did the design for Mixmaster change so the vehicle is essentially backwards to traditional cement mixers and thus the G1 original?
Why does Devastator not have 5mm holes in his hands to hold other Transformers weapons? He's the only Combiner Wars figure who doesn't have them in one way or another.