Zobovor
2024-12-06 04:06:03 UTC
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Permalinkone of the old Car Robo characters from the Diaclone days and giving us
a Masterpiece equivalent. But, it's been a while since we've gotten a
new one, and it's starting to look to me as if they may never finish off
the set.
It was announced earlier this year that Takara was ending the
Masterpiece line in favor of Masterpiece Gattai (gattai means
"combination"), starting over with a new numbering scheme (Shoki of the
Trainbots was MPG-01). Aside from the Trainbots (who combine into
Raiden, of course) another upcoming Masterpiece toy is Powermaster
Optimus Prime (whose cab and trailer combine into his large robot form).
He sort of straddles the line, since Optimus is MP-60 but his
accessory, God Bomber, is MPG-09. So does that mean that, going
forward, Takara is only planning to do characters who combin in some
fashion?
I was hoping that Masterpiece would simply continue to exist alongside
Masterpiece Gattai, but I think it's at least possible that one of the
things that's been holding them up, and the reason we haven't gotten
Jazz or Mirage yet, is an issue with licensing.
So far, every single Masterpiece toy has been required to be officially
licensed through the automotive or airplane manufacturers. Most fans
can identify the types of cars their favorite Transformers can turn
into. Bumblebee is a Volkswagen Beetle. Sideswipe is a Lamborghini
Countach. What's not immediately obvious is that Volkswagen is
currently the parent company that owns the rights to Lamborghini and
Porsche. So, if Takara has a friendly working relationship with
Volkswagen, it follows that they can do licensed versions of Lamborghini
and Porsche, right? Not necessarily.
A version of Masterpice Cliffjumper leaked a couple of years ago. The
engineering was clearly based on Masterpiece Bumblebee, so it's highly
unlikely it was a third party version. It got as far as the final color
scheme, but we never got an official announcement. I think what might
have happened was that Takara was developing the toy in anticipation of
its approval as an officially licensed Porsche toy, but something may
have happened that prevented that from coming to fruition. I've seen
other toy prototypes being revealed "pending licensing approval," which
basically means "this is what our sculptors came up with, but we don't
have the official go-ahead to mass produce it yet."
I'm given to understand that even though Porsche is owned by Volkswagen
Group, they continue to operate with an independent brand identity, and
may have their own licensing standards. What do Cliffjuper and Jazz
have in common? That's right, they're both Porsches.
Mirage is a Ligier JS11 race car, so the licensing rights would be owned
by Groupe Ligier in France. Mirage is the only character from
Transformers for whom that company would need to provide Takara with
their approval, so I strongly suspect there is some kind of licensing
situation that's holding up Mirage as well.
It's entirely possible Takara could simply elect to expand Masterpiece
to characters who don't require licensing approval at all. They've
already done a few of them. Hot Rod and Arcee, for example, are fantasy
designs with no real-life equivalents. So was Skyfire. There's nothing
to stop Takara from doing Masterpiece versions of the other
Transformers: the Movie characters (Kup, Blurr, Cyclonus, Scourge, etc.)
There's also nothing to stop them from coming up with Masterpiece
versions of characters who don't turn into vehicles at all, like the
rest of the Dinobots, or the Insecticons, or Reflector or Blaster or
Perceptor. However, one of the innately appealing things about the bulk
of the Masterpiece toys was that they were highly authentic and accurate
model cars, in addition to being great representations of the characters
in robot mode, and something would be lost if the entire line became
just robot bugs and dinosaurs.
Another possibility would be to modify the vehicle designs slightly for
Jazz and Mirage, giving us less-than-accurate versions of their car
modes. Hasbro was able to do this with Studio Series '86 Jazz, which
isn't a licensed vehicle. However, Takara might be a bit gunshy about
going this route. Some years ago, they attempted to produce a version
of Masterpiece Exhaust (the Diaclone toy formerly known as "Marlboor
Wheeljack") but their attempts at changing the Marlboro trade dress were
insufficient, and Phillip-Morris got their lawyers involved which
resulted in an injunction that prevented the sale of the toy. So,
Takara might understandably be less willing to skirt the legal lines of
licensing again when it comes to the Masterpiece toy line.
However, I have hope that Masterpiece Gattai is eventually going to give
us other combiners besides Raiden. Devastator seems like an obvious
choice, assuming they can secure licensing for those specific vehicle
types (Hitachi and such). It's quite possible they might attempt to
update Scramble City and give us large-scale versions of the Aerialbots
and Stunticons and... say, wasn't one of the Stunticons a Porsche? Hmm,
there's that stumbling block again. The toy line is called Masterpiece
Gattai, so clearly there's going to be a focus on combiners. They can't
do one Scramble City team but leave out the Stunticons. So, I think
it's a strong possibility that they're working towards figuring out what
to do with Dead End. And if they can secure licensing for Dead End,
that means there's finally hope for Jazz and Cliffjumper as well.
In fact, it's possible that, at this point, they're deliberately holding
off on a release for Jazz and Cliffjumper until the licensing for Dead
End is secured, because there's likely a limited release window
available until that license expires. This is just a wild guess on my
part, though, and may not mean anything at all.
Zob (got a missile for Action Master Sprocket in the mail today... yeah,
the rest of him is coming at some point)