Transtech
From Transformers Wiki
| The name or term "Transtech" refers to more than one character or idea. For a list of other meanings, see Transtech (disambiguation). |
Transtech was originally planned as the follow-up to the Beast Machines franchise. It would have begun in summer 2001, but was instead replaced by Robots in Disguise while Hasbro geared up for Armada.
In 2008, the Transformers Collectors' Club used the Transtech designs as inspiration for the TransTech universe.
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Toys
As the next step in Hasbro's internal direction, from organic beasts, through Transmetals, through the beastlike Vehicons, Transtech would have featured characters that transformed into futuristic vehicles with loose animalistic design cues in their features or coloration. Cheetor was a dragster with a cheetah-like paint job, for instance, and Optimus Prime was a truck with a front end resembling an ape's face. Robot modes were also fairly experimental (Cheetor had large hoop "wheels" for shoulders and feet, for instance), often departing significantly from previous designs for the characters. The line-wide gimmick was for some of the toys to contain electronic lights, with clear plastic allowing for light-piping through the toy's body.[1]
The concept art for the line was produced by Draxhall Jump, and first publicly shown at BotCon 2002 (apparently without Hasbro's permission, as they were pulled from the booth halfway through the show), before subsequently being made available online.
Online retailer BigBadToyStore posted a preliminary retailer list of early 2001 Transformers product in December 2000.[2] In addition to revealing several unproduced and delayed Beast Machines toys, the listing indicated the intent of releasing Transtech in the summer of 2001, launching with four Deluxe Class toys (Shockwave, Starscream, Cheetor and Silverbolt) alongside two unspecified Mega Class figures and two Ultra Class figures (the traditional Optimus and Megatron). A second wave consisting of a Deluxe Rattrap and another unnamed Deluxe was due shortly after this initial wave.
The line would have included Maximals carried over from Beast Machines:
A returning Beast Wars character:
Returning Generation 1 characters:
Two characters of uncertain identity:
And at least one new character:
The toyline got to the early hardcopy prototype stage, with the known prototypes including Cheetor, Starscream, and Optimus Prime. The line was canned before any molds were made for mass-production.
When Draxhall Jump made their design sketches for Transtech available, they also included a number of designs from other lines (such as G.I. Joe), but put them all under the Transtech header for their web page, causing a bit of confusion. This artwork included a work-up sketch of Soundwave as a souped-up blue boom-box, which is often mistaken to be a member of the Transtech line.
 Proceed on your way to oblivion. |
Fiction
Had production for Transtech gone ahead, the designs likely would have been passed to Mainframe Entertainment (as with previous shows) to be developed into an animated series,[3] and presumably the storyline would have picked up on technorganic Cybertron following the events of Beast Machines. Story editor Bob Skir had never heard of Transtech until 2013.[4]
Cancellation
In a 2021 interview, designer Aaron Archer said Transtech's was cancelled because Beast Machines was performing worse than Beast Wars, which Hasbro felt was due to the darker story and how stylised the beast and vehicle modes looked. Hasbro was undergoing a changing of the guard, with Brian Goldner coming in as CEO and wanting to focus more heavily on Hasbro's own brands over licensed ones, with a more "back to basics" approach.[5] At the time Hasbro was in severe financial distress: staff layoffs, big debts, and falling revenues for various reasons—most notably overestimating the continuing sales of Pokémon cards—so a change in approach was sorely needed.[6][7]
The cancellation of Transtech led to the Japanese Car Robots cartoon and toyline being imported as a stopgap measure while Hasbro and Takara began to work together to jointly create and launch the Armada line.
Notes
- Armada designer Aaron Archer wasn't keen on the Transtech designs from a toymaker perspective, and has repeatedly refuted rumors that they formed the basis of any Armada toys; similarities in the likes of Armada Megatron and Armada Scavenger are only superficial.[8]
- Meanwhile, the creative staff of Transformers Animated evidently had a higher opinion of the concepts; they stated at BotCon 2008 that Animated Blurr's design is partially inspired by Transtech Cheetor, most notably with the hubless wheels for heels.
- In 2005, Draxhall Jump went on to do design work for Toy Biz's Marvel Megamorphs transforming superhero toyline. There's some natural stylistic similarity to Transtech in the designs, with fans drawing comparisons between Hulk and Immorticon, and between Iron Man and Starscream—but it must be stressed that there's nothing in the way of direct reference in the visuals of the toys themselves.
- "Style study boards"—i.e., early concept explorations—of Optimus and Megatron made use of custom model kits of Gundam's Rick Dom and Neue Ziel, respectively. The Neue Ziel is a heavily customised (mostly likely a garage kit or scratchbuilt) model taken from Hobby Japan magazine issue No.345 (1998).
References
- ↑ "[...] They worked with Takara to the point where I know they made a Cheetor and a Starscream model, and they both lit up. So the underwriting feature that I remember was something they would have built into the show, which is some sort of inner power, or inner Energon glow, right? That's what the toy would have given you."—Aaron Archer, The Toy Armada, "The REAL ORIGIN of Transformers Transtech", 2023/01/09
- ↑ Retailer listing at BigBadToyStore (archived)
- ↑ "All of this would have been developed in Kenner, Hasbro, in Cincinnati, so that when it went to Mainframe it was delivered to Mainframe. So this stuff would have been all still held mostly internally, so that management approved of everything, Takara costing was what's going to be figured out, and then it would have been transitioned to—assuming—Mainframe, to then know exactly what they were dealing with, maybe have actual scans of models, things like that. Unlike a normal animation partnership where they would be involved earlier in story and character design, certainly when we worked with Mainframe, Hasbro, Kenner led the character design. All that is to say there's not really a Transtech story bible or first script or pilot idea; there's very loose story content out there on Transtech because Mainframe really wasn't connected yet, this was all done internally with Takara at the Kenner office in Cincinnati. [...] My impression was that it likely would have continued with [Mainframe] or that was just the plan, sometimes that's how these things go, but I gotta admit I wasn't the lead on this or directly involved, so there could be a level of detail there I'm just unaware of. But I'm pretty sure it was being developed for that that same process that we had been using for Beast Wars through Beast Machines."—Aaron Archer, The Toy Armada, "The REAL ORIGIN of Transformers Transtech", 2023/01/09
- ↑ Moonbase 2 interview with Bob Skir, 1:33:20 to 1:33:44
- ↑ "For a long time, it had been sequential, so there was Beast Wars, and then Beast Machines came along—that wasn't performing as well, it was a little more... odd vehicle forms, or even beast forms. Beast Wars was great, you could tell what things were, even when they were hybrid or Fuzors, you could kind of tell what they were. If you look at Beast Machines, it's kind of like 'a truck thing' or 'a flying thing' or- so that alienated a certain amount of audience, so sales were going down. It got a little dark in the storyline at that same time. They were developing Transtech, but that was very short-lived. [...] That would have been the successor but because it was going down this dark road of Beast Machines and that wasn't working, obviously the sequel to that wasn't going to happen. So that was also a transition time of leadership, and Brian Goldner came on, and he kind of wanted to reinvest in Hasbro's brands [...] versus always relying on the big licenses [...] so why not develop our in-house things a little stronger with a little more directness? So that doomed Beast Machines and Transtech because that whole plan wanted to get back to basics, then. And that's really where this story starts: how do we get back to basics? And what were basics to us then [...] was getting back to vehicles that looked like vehicles [...] and get back to a more traditional Autobot/Decepticon type of storyline."—Aaron Archer, The Toy Armada, "Transformers Armada Part 1 Behind The Scenes!", 2021/12/14
- ↑ CNN: "Hasbro warns on 4Q", 2000/12/06
- ↑ Fitch Ratings: "Fitch Lowers Hasbro's Sr Debt; Revises Outlook To Negative", 2000/12/07
- ↑ "As I said at Bot-con NOTHING FROM TRANSTECH WAS USED IN ARMADA. I personally dont like that stuff very much for toys. I designed Megatron from scratch I looked at the Gen 2 megatron for some insperation but not TT. Most of Armada hasnt even been released, please look forward to that first and then what will come after."—Aaron Archer, TFW2005, circa 2002
External links
- Transtech concept art gallery from TFarchive.com
- Transtech concept art and prototype from Transformers Omniverse
