Courtesy of Hasbro Toy Designer Evan Brooks, we can share for you another “Behind The Scenes” gallery and development info of the popular Transformers Studio Series 86 figures.
Mr. Brooks is the person who primarily works on Studio Series 86 figures and he has updated his Instagram account with images of the concept art, sketches, CAD files, prototypes and samples of Studio Series 86 Blurr and Hot Shot. To make things even more interesting, he has also shared amazing information and trivia about the creative process of each figure like the Takara Tomy designers he worked with, references, changes during the development and more. Did you know that Hot Rod was originally planned to be magenta? This and much more secrets of the development process on this post.
See all the images as well as Evan Brooks comments about each figure after the jump. If you missed our first round up of images and info, you can find it HERE. Sound off your impressions on the 2005 Boards and stay tuned for more updates.
Studio Series SS 86-03 Blurr
Next up, the fastest talking bot,(that always makes me want to dig up my micro machines..) Studio Series 86 Blurr!
There isn’t too much tea to spill on Blurr’s development. I worked with the ever amazing Ejima san on this one at the same time the SS86 Kup was being created.
It was decided at the beginning to make sure he came with his blaster rifle and the welding hand that he’s seen using to repair the Autobot shuttle after they’ve crashed on the planet of Junk. I’m sure some of you want to know about why those accessories ended up being that white color when in the movie they were different metallic grays and the like.
A Transformer figure is made up of several different types of plastics.
The main two that we use are ABS and PA. ABS is your standard hard plastic that we can paint while PA is a softer/flexible material we use in joints/high friction areas and can’t really be painted. Most joints, swivels, hinges will have PA parts sandwiched between the ABS parts. (You can usually see it as PA colors always come in just slightly off when right next to ABS colors.) This is to extend the life of the figure as, obviously, transformer figures need to convert and that can put quite a bit more strain on their bodies than just posing a standard action figure.
Usually a Transformer figure has a few molds dedicated to the PA parts so if you’ve ever wondered ” Why didn’t they paint this part?” or ” why did this part end up this color?” (which will come up when I get to talking about SS86 Hotrod.) or even ” Why don’t these colors match?” that’s usually the reason.
So in this case, the Rifle blaster and Welding hand were in the same tools as his feet, hands and a few other internal parts. This basically locked those parts into only being that color. This is also why the tips of his thrusters weren’t painted the darker blue. They’re PA parts.
Trust me, we want to paint those parts! Just we didn’t have space in other molds or they needed to be made out of that material for safety reasons.
But yes, I think this figure came out amazing, what do you all think?
Studio Series SS 86-04 Hot Rod
I hope you all enjoyed the livestream yesterday! Mark, Rachel and Isabella showing off some fantastic upcoming product!
So next up we have SS86 Hotrod! I will admit that this figure was pretty much completely designed by the time I joined the team so all praise goes to Yuya Onishi for really setting a new standard for transformers figures. I find this figure absolutely brilliant and bumping him up to a VOY scale allowed for the extra engineering and accessories to really make him stand out.
So, those yellow pieces on top! Yes, they hurt. They needed to be PA plastic due to the flexibility of those hinges and that isn’t a type of plastic we can paint. His giant wing spoiler was in the same mold so we were locked to that color. We didn’t have room to move pieces to different molds because of the type of material they needed to be.
The other thing I’m sure you’re all wondering about is the rest of his colors and I can certainly talk to that!
Before we move to final production, we have a big team meeting where we all come together and look at the figures and deco before approving them. While presenting this item and the first wave of kingdom, there was some rumbling from upper management. The original colors presented were pure magenta and that came as a bit of a shock to a few folks. The reaction is understandable, every toy of classic Hotrod has been some variation of red. There was some back and forth, references shown on both sides as to what colors he should be and this is how he ended up.
I was still so new to the team that my voice didn’t carry that much weight even while showing clips of the 86 movie. I think there was still some confusion as to what this SS86 line was supposed to be but I’m happy to say that this was the only time this sort of thing has ever happened. Granted, Kingdom Cheetor and Megatron also had their colors shifted in this meeting…which was just strange…but that’s corporate life.
Anyway, as I said before this figure is just amazing and really brought the engineering of a Transformer to the next level. Takara Tomy outdid themselves, but what do you all think? Let me know and I’ll drop some more SS86 behind the scenes for you!
Chadderbug
I mean, it's basically just Twincast but blue chest. Wouldn't be too hard to do?
TargetmasterJoe
So did he just say "hey, if you want, you can swap heads between Percy and Magnificus so Percy can have his toy-accurate head" or not really?
Dinobot Swoop
Still wondering if they'll do a Micro Man-colored Blaster repaint and name it "Bluster" just to cement that piece of canon?
Chadderbug
Or randomly do what the Creatures Collide set did and just pack in the extra head cause why not
Ramberk Magnus
I heard that both heads get produced but obviously only one is used. The extra head’s plastic simply gets recycled. It’s more cost effective to make one mold with multiple heads and simply recycle the extra head. That’s what I read somewhere.
MeGrimlock78
Every time they mention alt head sculpts being produced, it makes me wonder what happens to them?
I imagine a bunch of Perceptor heads being thrown in a smelting pot like the Unicron scene in the movie.
Creepy!
ClearAsChristal
Oh, yea. I had forgotten.
Rodibotimus84
The SS Dinobots got some BTS but not by Evan glaub ich
ClearAsChristal
I think Wildrider already happened. I'm not sure, bit isn't Perceptor the first SS86 figure to have a BTS?
WinstoBot
I really do like this Perceptor figure a lot, but I can’t understand why they couldn’t add just one more parts count and included a panel to cover the huge whole on the back.
JT-bob
The budget kept them from using a second panel to close the hole, but we're seeing in this BTS entry that the design choice was having the head flip out from the front where a panel naturally covers the hole in robot mode or the back where nothing covers it, and because they didn't want to see the back of the head in alt mode they chose to just leave it gaping in bot mode. Of course you're right that adding a simple cheap part, a friction-fit hinged plate, would have solved both issues, but that's the brand we're stuck with.
Chadderbug
Well, they waited this long to do a Perceptor, so it'll probably happen with Wild Rider? Unless he already happened.
Chadderbug
I'd assume it was the budget that got in the way of not including a back panel to conceal the head better. He is a pretty tall and dense figure by what I hear, so yea.
JT-bob
… so, to avoid seeing the back of the robot head in microscope mode, they left a gaping hole in the robot mode's back? That does not seem like a good tradeoff to me, I would not care diddlysquat about seeing the back of the robot head in alt mode, but I'd even take squaring off the back of the head to fold it flush there rather than look at the hollow back of the figure in robot mode. This is such an odd thing that they seem to be doing more and more lately, that's a big compromise to robot mode just to achieve something minor in an alt mode.
Megatronwp38
He's one of my favorite studio series figures.
Vector Oracle
It broke down. Very tragic.
Sol Fury
It's also "sorta" in Marvel UK
G1 Grimlock
Great design
Girl Pants
Nice to see a hint of a Toy-Perceptor possibly happening too. I'm also a huge fan of that multi-color sketch of the basic parts breakdown of the mold. It's cool to see how the basic shapes come into being.
Also interesting to see the whole part about the head storage. After some of the more dour ones (….yeah, Pointblank), it's nice to see a change made for appearance and not purely for budget.
pokemonsdoom
Its ok Evan. We all pretend Carnage in C minor didn't happen either.