First Impressions: Transformers War for Cybertron: Earthrise

With the current news coming from New York Comic Con coming out a few days ago, I figure I might as well cover it as a lot of the Transformers news relates to the 2020 line, Earthrise. The second chapter in the War for Cybertron trilogy. My thoughts, views, and opinions based on what we've seen. If you care about that, read on.

I'll start with the objective stuff first. Like with Siege, the toys, on the whole, look good, and all of them look like fun to play with. It's nice to see Grapel and Hoist get new toys, and they probably mean an Inferno and Trailbreaker are coming (please don't lock those behind Hasbro Pulse unless you're planning on making them available to the rest of the world). It's also nice to see the continuing focus on Micromasters, though, by the looks of it, the forced weapons will continue (more on that when I eventually review the Micromasters in 2022 if they continue into year 3. As a mild spoiler, they were going to be the first Mystery box review, but that change means it's going to be something else).

Going into more subjective stuff, I love the ideas going into Ironworks, Micromaster facilities are going to be a thing, and I hope this continues going forward because I'd love to see all of the Micromaster structures be made. I also like the fact that these are next years Weaponizers, though for this I'll call them Armorizers... not as catchy, I know, due to the fact that instead of weapons, these look to be turning into armour for other robots. One problem I do have with it though comes back to the name, Earthrise.

If I have to choose between Earth vehicles and Space vehicles, I'll always pick space vehicles, I just find them more interesting, especially when there is a clear technological gap between the setting of the story and our current reality. In fact, a lot of my issues with Siege can be traced back to that mindset, where I feel like they could have gone further with many of the designs (Prowl, Ironhide, Mirage, Hound, Sideswipe and all their repaints coming to mind in that regard). That being said, with the designs they had, it was a nice balance that did help please the G1 purists, because even with radically different designs like Ultra Magnus (when compared to his G1 look), he still had a Generation 1 looking robot mode. There was enough there where I was fine looking past the "We're doing G1 again suckers! You'll never really get more generation representation other than the odd design choice, and the possible repaint", but with the jump to Earth, it feels mundane, especially when you look at the one toy announced that I honestly hate, mainly because of what it represents.

I don't like the look of Earthrise Starscream. Most people will probably hate me for it, but the reason why is the reason I hate it. It's the Classics Seeker mould again. To those who don't know, the Classics Seeker mould is a toy released in the Classics line back in 2006, sold as modern reinterpretations of Generation 1 characters, with Starscream being one of the most faithful in terms of design. With the exception of the massive cannons for the sake of firing missiles, the mould is good, a nice representation of the character... Remember how I said a while ago that if Hasbro finds a Seeker Mold fans like, they will milk it for everything it's worth? This mould is the biggest offender of that, as the mould was used for:

• Classics Starscream
• Classics Skywarp
• Timelines Thundercracker
• Universe Acid Storm
• Universe Starscream
• Henkei! Starscream
• Henkei! Thundercracker
• Henkei! Skywarp
• Henkei! Ghost Starscream
• Timelines Shattered Glass Thundercracker
• Generations Thundercracker
• United Starscream
• United Thundercracker
• United Skywarp
• Timelines Sunstorm
• Timelines Bitstream
• Timelines Hotlink
• Timelines G2 Starscream
• Classics Ramjet
• Timelines Dirge
• Henkei! Ramjet
• Timelines G2 Ramjet
• United Ramjet
• Timelines Thrust
• Gentei! Thrust
• Generations Thrust
• United Thrust
• Gentei! Dirge
• Generations Dirge
• United Dirge
• Timeline Nacelle

Granted, these are split between Hasbro, Fun Publications and Takara, but as you can see, there are a lot of versions of this out in the wild. I myself have two of them, Bitstream and Generations Thundercracker, but with all of that in mind, I'm sick of the Classics mould, and while this new one isn't it exactly, it's clearly borrowing engineering from it, and combined with the fact that many believe we're overdue for a set of Coneheads, Slipstreams increasing popularity, and other desires for a Seeker squad, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the mould they use to bring even more Seekers out of retirement. I would have been happy to get a Seeker squad using the Tetrajet mould from Siege because that is a unique looking ship, and a unique mould, but this? I can't get excited for an upscaled Deluxe figure from over a decade ago with ankles, sorry.

As for the new Optimus Prime? I'm mixed about him at the moment, some parts look a bit ugly, though I think the overall package looks good for a Leader-class toy, and for those not wanting to spend a lot of money on the Masterpiece 3.0 Prime, this looks to be a good representation without all the added fluff. On the whole though, while there are parts I like, a lot of them in fact, I'm not as onboard with this as I was with Siege. I wish they kept the Cybertronian theme going, but who knows, there could be some really exciting things to be revealed later.