User:Locoman/Sandbox/Homage
What is a homage?
[edit]Internal homages
[edit]Toys
[edit]
In the past, one of the most common forms of homage was to design a toy so that it would, at least at first blush, resemble a pre-existing character. This practice was very common during the early days of the Unicron Trilogy, though what exactly this entailed varies from one instance to the next. A homage could be as simple as a similar paint scheme, or as elaborate as a similar head or body-type so that this new toy or character would better resemble the subject of the homage. Armada Scavenger, for instance, sports a purple-and-green livery that's identical to the paintjobs worn by the Generation 1Constructicons.
The Transformers: Energon franchise, released during the 25th anniversary of the brand, was notable for having a particularly high number of homages, who existed along more direct transplants of Generation 1 characters. An example of a homage would be Downshift, who was very heavily based on Generation 1 Wheeljack—so much so that he was renamed "Wheeljack" at the eleventh hour in the Japanese dub.
Additionally, both Hasbro and Takara have been known to redeco or retool pre-existing molds into new homages; for instance, Jazz would go on to receive a redeco of his original Deluxe-scale toy that featured the white, blue, and red colour scheme of his Generation 1 counterpart. In recent years, this trend has fallen off some, due in part to Hasbro's changing attitudes towards characters, toys, the Transformers brand as a whole, and the company's decision to focus ongoing fiction primarily on the "tentpole" characters from the early Generation 1 mythos.
While the vast majority of these past homages do homage these early Generation 1 characters—Wheeljack, Jazz, the Constructicons, etc.—some toys have been known to reference less-trodden corners of the Transformers multiverse. Several 2007 movie and Revenge of the Fallen toys, for instance, would feature inexplicable homages to Tonka's defunct GoBots franchise.