If this were Tumblr, he’d be sodomizing Knock Out in all these photographs.
on July 20, 2012 at 9:54 pm
Aligned-universe Decepticons, assemble!
So, hey, seems like we’re not getting Breakdown! But Japan did! And so I got one.
With stickers applied and hammer attached.
Apparently it went like this: Hasbro and Tomy were working on this Voyager Class Breakdown toy, and while it was in the early stages, Hasbro was all, uh, dude, he’s kind of suddenly dead now, and this toy won’t hit stores until like a year after that at this point, and what kid wants a dead third-string villain? And Tomy was all “yoink!” ‘cuz they were just starting to air Transformers Prime over there and so he’d hit shelves in Japan in a timely manner, and finished up the tooling themselves. As a result, Hasbro can’t release the toy later if they decide they want to, because Tomy finished up the mold in a way that it doesn’t fit well into any of the American size classes.
(Signs of him starting out as a domestic release are hidden throughout him. His forearms and his stomach are translucent plastic, for example, which point to him being developed to work with the light-up weaponry that other PRID Voyagers come with.)
TL;DR: Enjoy your $60 Breakdown.
Breakdown before stickers
The silver lining is… he’s not a crappy toy? I mean, if I’m gonna overpay for a toy, I don’t want it to be a piece of shit. So.
That’s not to say he’s perfect! He’s still a Japanese Transformers Prime toy, which has its ups and downs. The downs are pretty apparent. Tomy’s not been having a good time with Transformers, and so they’ve been half-painting these things and then putting the rest of the deco on sticker sheets. This keeps the price down and also keys into the “build and/or customize it yourself” model toy culture over there. Needless to say, I’d prefer paint. I’d also prefer stickers that were close in quality to the stickers I buy from Reprolabels. These feel not so good, in comparison. I mean, they’re not terrible stickers. They’re just not collector-grade stuff, for obvious reasons. And I’m never a big fan of applying stickers over molded detail, but that’s the kind of thing you have to do if you’re trading paint for stickers.
Before stickers and before Mini-Con assembly
But more silver lining! … at least Breakdown’s show model isn’t very complex, color-wise? And so he doesn’t look very bare even without the stickers, and the fewer stickers the better. Because, again, the stickers tend to look like crap.
Stickered vehicle mode.
On the other side of the coin of Breakdown being a Tomy release is that he comes with a Mini-Con! It’s a rhino that transforms into his hammer and also a roof-mounted cannon. Like the other Prime Mini-Cons, it comes unassembled on the sprue, and you put it together yourself. So bonus Mini-Con! And fun assembly, if you like that sort of thing.
As I said, he’s a good toy. He’s not grossly partsformery, nor is he a bitch to get in and out of each mode. He rides that perfect line between simple and complex, and looks accurate in both modes with a minimum of fake kibble (if any). And he’s a Voyager, so he feels just the right size and scale compared to the other toys.
If only everyone could easily buy one for $20, he’d be perfect.
I’m still hopeful. Not just because I don’t have the resources to buy a Voyager-class figure for roughly 3X the normal price, but also because Skyquake’s still getting HIS Voyager-class toy done by Hasbro, and he had waaaaaay less presence.
Not to mention whatever’s going to happen to ol’ BD after the events of the “Nemesis Prime” episode.
I think you missed the part where I mentioned Hasbro can’t release him because he doesn’t fit into our price points. This was said at SDCC last week.
Oh. Right, I guess I did miss that part. :C Well, I guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with trying to find the Cyberverse version for now. It still feels off, having a prominent character NOT get a toy bigger than a Legion-class here.
Well, there’s always some hope he’ll be some sort of store or online exclusive or something. (Dammit Willis, don’t kill ALL our hopes!)
Because I am a jackass, I might also note that it’s possible parts of Breakdown don’t pass United States-specific safety guidelines.
I have no doubt things have gotten much stricter in the last 10-15 years, but we have Nemesis Prime, Magmatron, and my local GameStop carried LioConvoy, Galvatron, Shadow Panther, and Japanese Tigatron back in 1999, probably ordered off Hasbro Toy Shop. And of course there’s Jetwing Prime on Amazon, who count.
Improbable? No question. Impossible? I’m giving it a year before I come to that conclusion.
Guh, I camped out for the SDCC exclusives for so long, I mixed up Hasbro Toy Shop with hasbrocollector.com
Mah brain, it has gone to poop.
I just got my box from BBTS with the Japanese Breakdown and Knockout in it. Haven’t opened them yet, though.
I’ll get my hopes up and say he’s gonna get released eventually as a Toys ‘r’ us exclusive in a multipack with either a Commander or if we are lucky, a deluxe. I’ll give it 8 months to 1 year aproximately for that to happen.
Interesting, this is the first I’ve heard of Hasbro’s explanation as to why, most news sites simply said “Hasbro said no release planned.” This whole dang Prime line has been so screwy, I don’t know why they released the show if they were way behind on the design process or had no significant retailer commitments to carry it (The First Edition fiasco.) It’s a shame, I definitely would have picked this guy up, but since I’m not an avid Prime collector I don’t think I’ll bother given the import price. Despite Hasbro’s current stance I’ll hold out hope for an club/retailer exclusive release or something since I would imagine that might not be limited a rigid pricing structure. I wish they’d consider throwing in a large accessory or something and moving it into the weaponizer scale, if Silas does start parading around in Breakdown’s old body I find it hard to believe they’d just let this design go to waste.
I’m glad I ordered my Breakdown pretty early on, the signs did seem to be pointing towards him not getting a Hasbro release. In New Zealand we pay $50 NZD (roughly $35-40 USD, it varies) for Voyagers, so he was only 1.7 times the regular price for me!
I’ve heard Hasbro isn’t releasing Unicron either, probably for similar reasons to Breakdown. (mostly the price-point thing I’d say) Do we have any word on Jet Vehicon though? He should fit the price-point fine.
Wait, so Hasbro passed on finishing the Breakdown mold because the character died half way through season 2, but they’re not shy at all about putting out three different Cliffjumper molds (FE, RID, and Cyberverse) when his character died five minutes into the premiere episode of the series, which debuted a year before the first toys even got to retail? What?
Cliffjumper is a) a good guy red car, b) a Deluxe, and c) let’s re-emphasize the good guy part.
Also d) voiced by The Rock.
Not releasing a toy ’cause the character is dead makes a certain level of sense… until I remember that they release toys that are all new molds of characters that are never in the show. How does that make a lick of sense?
Aren’t they releasing Skyquake? Who was introduced and killed off in the same episode?
Man! I want the Takara-Tomy Breakdown SO MUCH! The stickers on him looked fine in the review that Peaugh posted on youtube. But if you’re saying the stickers don’t feel that great… then they don’t feel as good as the stickers that Takara put out back when they were doing the Transformers Collection reissues back in the early 2000s? I picked up the Takara releases of Prowl, Jazz, and Skids, and I loved how glossy and plastic-like the stickers were, and how they didn’t feel like the kind of paper that would suck up any and all moisture in the air of a room like all my 1980s G1 transformers! If Takara-Tomy is now using lower quality stickers, that’s kinda sad. But at the same time, I’m willing to bet that Reprolabels will do a set for the Takara-Tomy release of Breakdown at some point! I just gotta get myself un-broke so I can order one! He looks like such a great toy!
Also, I frigging love your “Assemble!” photo!
Man what BS, they are still releasing the big Jeetwing Prime mold over here even though it’s a giant that doesn’t fit into any size class. And Breakdown has dual use, he could be Breakdown OR “Mech rebuilt Silas”
It’d be too expensive to make the 1 eyed peg-legged pirate Breakdown I had envisioned now.
Optimus Prime’s, y’know, Optimus Prime. Breakdown doesn’t really have that clout.
Oh dang, if I had knew that he wouldn’t get a Hasbro release, I might had pre-ordered him when he showed up on Hobby Search. Breakdown looks really cool, and he would be a perfect choice for a Decepticon Voyager alongside Megatron (because the Autobots got already two Voyagers).
But now, he’s not worth the effort (and the money) that I would get him like Bulk and Optimus (I bought the FEs of both at ebay, though Optimus was a birthday present).
I’ll start crossing my fingers for some sort of crazy awesome exclusive special release which might also get a release in europe.
But for now, I’ll cross my fingers that the TRU exclusives (like MP Optimus and the re-release of the First Edition) make it to German TRUs as well.
Wait what’s this about him not fitting into a size-class? He’s plainly voyager size, you said so yourself.
Honestly I think it was a bad idea for Hasbro to pull the plug on this one. What kid isn’t going to want Bulkhead’s main rival in the show? Or depending on what kind of fusion MECH makes with Silas in Breakdown’s body, what kid isn’t going to want the big bad? Seems like faulty logic to me. Whatever. I’ve got a Takara one arranged as a birthday present since Hasbro doesn’t want my money. Except they’ll totally get my money for Skyquake, Dreadwing, Ultra Magnus, Thundertron, and Grimlock anyway. I’m bad at this. orz
Just because something is Voyager-sized doesn’t mean he’s budgeted to sell at Voyager Class prices. Things can cost too much to produce at a certain cost despite their size.
Kinda like if Leobreaker had been released in Japan with the added fingers and shoulder claws and what have you?
Makes sense.
Yeah, Breakdown likely has things in his engineering that would have been costed out before production were he to have been produced for America as well.
What kind of things? You don’t seem to mention any in your review, and other reviews I’ve seen don’t make him look more complex than any other Prime RID Voyager. So please, shed some light on this.
Urgh. That came out a bit ruder-sounding than I intended. What I’m getting at is, you’re the only one I’ve heard say anything about greater complexity, so I’d like to know more about those details since maybe nobody else noticed them.
I don’t know what things. All I know is what Aaron Archer has said. (This news was reported everywhere, so it’s not just me that’s saying it!)
I attributed that to the cost of adding in some clear parts in the arms and removing the micron ports. Maybe I’m wrong.
The arms already have clear parts. The entire forearms (and stomach) are translucent plastic. I mention this in the review above.
I caught the bit about the stomach, must’ve magically overlooked the bit about the forearms. But looking at the picture, the only clear parts I see in the arms are the front windows. I mean, yes, the whole rotational assembly is molded in trans-plastic and painted over, but that’s standard practice for producing clear windows. It doesn’t seem as though it would lend itself to a Powerizer gimmick readily. Far be it from me to say you’re wrong about a figure you have that I don’t, but either you’re talking about something I’m not seeing, or I’m misunderstanding your statements.
Ha ha. Tumblr is a fun place.