Looking back on the year, Hasbro's Studio Series have come very far from its inception at the start of 2018. Within a year we have seen enough of the future of the line to know that this is the ultimate movie line for the Transformers franchise, with 2019 appearing to completely wipe the floor with 2018's great showing. There have been many things I am honestly surprised we are getting, some things that I wanted and didn't think would happen, and some things that I wonder why they are happening. While I will sing the praises of this line till the day it ends, there are figures in this line that deserve those praises, and others that don't. So with 2018 wrapping up, and a lot of 2019 already revealed to us, let's look at the most unexpected and surprising figures so far in the Transformers Studio Series line.
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Cogman
Because, well, why? I have heard the actual reason, being that the initial figure did not hit mass retail in the U.S. very well...but still, come on. The Last Knight Bumblebee figure was included as an exclusive two pack, so it didn't take up a real spot in the line, but this repainted Cogman figure is going to be in one of the real waves and clog a spot that someone else could have easily used! The figure looks nice, and the paint is applied well, but was there really enough demand for this figure to be released as a Studio Series slot?
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KSI Sentry
Technically, this is just a repaint of Stinger and not the new mold that the Sentry drones from Age of Extinction required, but I guess they look similar enough and this is how Hasbro is delivering a Sentry drone. Like many other Decepticons in that film, the standard drone got shafted when it came to figure and nary one was released to represent it. That is where Studio Series' promise to make previously unmade characters came into play and the lineless, previously nameless drone has entered the figure realm. Even for a repaint, I do think it looks very nice, and I do have to admit I was surprised that background grunt fodder from one of the least liked films in the franchise got released so early in the line.
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Crankcase
This one hurts me. I expected him to be in the line after Crowbar, I twiddled my thumbs and sat around waiting for the inevitable announcement of Crankcase who could easily be a repainted Berserker figure from Last Knight's toyline. I was okay with that, Berserker looked exactly like Crankcase and was an honestly good interpretation of the character in plastic form. Then we got the Crankcase announcement...and it wasn't a repaint of Berserker, it was a repaint of Crowbar...which is just...awful. What would have been an easy repaint they boshed, repainting the wrong figure, and now a line that prides itself on screen accuracy has a super inaccurate representation of a figure whose box even uses Crowbar's CGI. Hasbro must have known they couldn't actually use Crankcase's image since the figure inside looked nothing like him. Now I have to go search for a Berserker figure for my Studio Series display.
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Scrapmetal
I LOVE the movieverse Constructicons and all of their crazy, alien, monster designs. Scrapmetal though was one I didn't expect the toyline to touch, even though he does get a prominent and noticeable moment in the film in which he is torn apart in order to rebuild Megatron. In the film, the character just reuses Scrapper's CGI model instead of the concept art that exists for him, so I figured that Scrapper would get released and that would also function for Scrapmetal eliminating the need for an actual 'Scrapmetal' figure. However, Hasbro chose a very bold and awesome choice to use Scrapmetal's concept art and make an entirely new design and toy that represents what the character was intended to look like. I think he looks great, and for certain I didn't expect Hasbro to use concept art and make an admittedly minor character, though I'm glad they did.
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Shadow Raider
What was I saying earlier about background grunt fodder in one of the least liked entries in the franchise? The villains in the fourth film have surprisingly gotten a lot of coverage in the line, but since barely any of them initially got figures I guess that makes sense. Still, getting Lockdown's goons were a surprise to me because they didn't transform in the film, I don't think they did much besides stand in the background, and their designs didn't offer up any ideas that they transformed or were even Transformers to begin with. Hasbro made use of their similarities to Lockdown's design and repainted his figure to give us his goons, who I wouldn't have even suspected as coming to the line.
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Combining Devastator
This is a concept Hasbro is doing with Studio Series that I absolutely love. The Constructicons have some of my favorite movie designs, with Devastator himself being a cool looking bot in my opinion who was severely underused. I previously made a post about the Hasbrolab kickstarter projects I wanted Hasbro to try next and in it I included a movieverse Devastator figure because I believed that they would never give it to us in Studio Series. I hardly believed that we would get every single Constructicon, that they would all transform independently but then combine as well, or that it would be anywhere close to in scale if they did try it out. Hasbro blew me away though when they revealed Scrapmetal, Rampage, and Long Haul, then proceeded to reveal their full plans of a massive combining Devastator with eight figures in total! The best part is that the individuals characters so far look great and uninhibited by the combining gimmick, with the prototype for Devastator looking very accurate, and the reveal also confirming several other Constructicon characters I was unsure whether or not we'd see in the line. Throughout the rest of Studio Series' run, no matter what characters get revealed, this is the thing that I never expected Hasbro to do, but they did it and they managed to do it well from the looks of it.
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