WonderCon 2024 fan media event

On March 30 2024, Hasbro attended WonderCon in Anaheim, California, revealing a handful of new toys for the Studio Series and Collaborative toylines, as well as upcoming toys for their G.I. Joe, Marvel Comics, Star Wars, and Ghostbusters toylines. Following their panel, they had a fan-media event outside of the convention, with up-close looks at most of the toys shown off at the presentation.

MediaWiki had a representative there to take pictures, ask questions, and really go in on the complimentary food they had on-hand.

Q&A

Ben MacCrae and his amazing shirt.

Associate Brand Manager of Global Brand Development & Marketing Ben "Bmac" MacCrae was on hand to answer questions about the Transformers toys specifically revealed at the show... which we admittedly didn't really ask about, but we had some questions about the process of the current Transformers development cycle he was happy to answer.

• What's your favorite part of the process of designing a figure, from start to end?

Bmac: Ooh. I really like when we plan out the year, to make sure we're balancing things. So for us it's always like a balance, Autobots/Decepticons, different universes. Studio Series clearly has a broad thing, Legacy United for the whole year is celebrating forty years of fandom, with that tagline of "Every new Transformer was somebody's first Transformer", so we wanted to make sure we were celebrating the whole breadth. So I really like working with Mark [Maher] and Evan [Brooks] as we look at the whole line. Sometimes we land on characters who... could go in both lines, so we have to figure out where they make the most sense, in terms of like, you don't want five Bumblebees all out at the same time. I really like that puzzle part of the process of working with those guys, I give them all the credit. They are really the masterminds of figuring out what we need to make and when.

• When it comes to the capsules (Walmart and Target), how do you figure out the themes, the cast?

BMac: It's kind of like adding in... I'm trying to think of how best to word it... it's kind of more like, again, within Studio Series, we have those segments, so certain items just make sense at certain retailers. Anniversaries are a big part of it, clearly 40th anniversary, we had the 35th[sic] for Beast Wars recently, we kinda just try to make sure that we're celebrating those in a cohesive way, and making sure that consumers know how to find the products that they're looking for in a smaller section.

• In the livestreams you give out little hints to the characters, for the Infernac and such, has there been any talk into compiling all that onto a website or anything like that?

BMac: The livestreams are kind of our marketing effort, with Pulse and stuff, we always want to compile some information. There was the War for Cybertron artbook, we'd very much like to do something like that for Legacy at some point. It's just... bandwidth, more than anything. Teams are doing what they do and, hopefully someday?

• Is there any era of Transformers that you'd love to do in Legacy that you haven't quite been able to hit yet? Feasible or not, let's blue-sky this one.

BMac: That's a good question. It's funny, we joke about Machine Wars... I wouldn't say "joke", but we talk about Machine Wars a lot, Mark loves it, I know there's a lot of fandom that loves it. Another character I get asked a lot about is Sunstorm, which is funny... I think we've kind of nicely hit on everything in Legacy as best we could, with the limited release time, but I would very much... everything's on the table, there's a lot of toys that need updating, and it's kind of what we're trying to do. I absolutely love Machine Wars Soundwave, and I'd try to figure it out, clearly. I always say I want to make Seaspray, so he could get the Minibot upgrade to Deluxe. We all have our dream projects that we wanna get out there and do, and I've been very vocal about Seaspray as the guy I have to get done.

• In one of the Omega Prime livestreams, there was talk about there was a second team working on a lot of the HasLabs?

BMac: So we have our design team who works on it, Evan works very closely with Yuki-san on the TakaraTomy team. And then we have a bigger, broader HasLab team that also handles project management, the market, so actually Emily [Bader]'s helping out with that now, she's working on the Transformers HasLab with us. Just kind of a bigger, broader team that are trying to make sure all the HasLabs fit together throughout the year. They're more like the full project team.

Other notes

• Regarding Swoop's extra sword for Grimlock, Ben noted that they were trying to pack in as much as they could into the price points.
• Ben remarked that he wished he could have brought the gray-clay model of the HasLab Omega Prime, in order to get across the sheer BEEF of the toy. The two main components are each "Commander Class plus"-sized toys.
• Party Wallop has on-robot storage —not in-robot, on— for all four sets of weapons, thanks to a combination of 5 mm posts and specialized tabs. This way all of his weapons can be "on-hand" in robot mode at any moment. He's also very happy with the ease of the head-swap gimmick.
• The more media-based lines, like Rise of the Beasts and EarthSpark, as well as a few other items (like Crimsonflame), are handled by a different team, so Ben couldn't offer much on those lines' processes and status. He knows that Transformers fans are keen on hearing more from that side of the franchise on the streams and such online, but like with the "story" bits from Legacy, the company/staff's "bandwidth" plays a heavy hand in that.
• Transparent plastics versus painted plastics for windows are decided on a case-by-case basis, balancing intended media accuracy with structural needs.
• Roasted sweet corn is really good in chicken tacos, y'all.

Gallery

Unfortunately, one box got lost in transit from Hasbro HQ to WonderCon, thus completed samples of the Transformers Collaborative Party Wallop and the G.I. Joe Ferret ATV were not available.

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  Not the Ghostbusters
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  Voyager Bumblebee Shockwave, robot mode
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  Shockwave in vehicle mode
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  Double Shockwave
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  Shockwave with Studio Series Mohawk for size comparison
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  Shockwave's backside. Enjoy that detail.
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  Deluxe Studio Series Concept Art Sunstreaker
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  Sunstreaker robot mode
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  Sunstreaker vehicle mode
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  Sunstreaker with Mohawk for size comparison
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  Sunstreaker weapon close-up
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  Sunstreaker box-back
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  Deluxe Studio Series Gamer Edition Sideswipe (War for Cybertron)
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  Sideswipe robot mode, with fist folded out on his replaceable forearm
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  Sideswipe vehicle mode
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  Sideswipe top-down
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  Sideswipe with Mohawk for size comparison
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  Sideswipe, weapon-arm forward
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  Sideswipe box-back
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  Leader Studio Series Dinobot Swoop (The Transformers: The Movie)
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  Swoop robot mode, with extra sword for Studio Series Grimlock
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  Swoop beast mode mode
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  Swoop with Mohawk for sizin' up
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  Interior of Swoop's beast-mode mouth, with Fire Blast effect peg
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  Swoop's box, focusing on that pretty backdrop
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  The food table. Pulled pork BBQ and hamburger sliders, fish and chicken tacos, toppings. Mmmmm.
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  The cheese and dessert tables. The chocolate cheesecakes did not last long.