On Saturday at New York Comic Con, I had the opportunity to speak with Evan Brooks, a product designer for Hasbro’s Transformers brand, to go over some of their newer releases, some plans for next year, and their new Transformers Timelines figures that were announced at NYCC.
Julian Lytle: At the Hasbro Action Brands panel, you revealed some stuff you’ve already had out for the past few months and also the stuff that you’re announcing for the fall into early next year. Can we start with Nemesis Prime?
Evan Brooks: Oh yeah, sure. So our see-now-buy-now at New York Comic Con is our Nemesis Prime, along with the Minicon Air Defense Force team. They combine to form the Star Saber. We know that a lot of people are very passionate about the Minicons, so we’re doing what we can to make sure that we get more of them out there. It’s also available online; it’s on Hasbro Pulse right now if you want to pre-order it, and then it will just ship to your home.
Lytle: Yesterday, you talked about more Age of the Primes toys that are still to be released, specifically Quintus Prime. What was it like coming up with such a different type of Transformer? It’s a mix of a ship, a squid, and a Lovecraftian creature at the same time.
Brooks: I’m going to have to speak for Mark [Maher] on this one because he was a designer in a lot of the Age of the Primes items. But he based a lot of his initial sketches on the works of The Covenant of Primus, which was a book that came out that had a lot of drawings done by Aaron Archer and others. And he had depicted Quintus as very tentacle-y, so Mark really wanted to embody that. He worked with Kunihiro-san over at Takara Tomy, and really just tried to make this something special and unique.
Lytle: What about Amalgamous Prime, who you say was pretty hard to figure out, and was supposed to be able to transform into a million alt modes?
Brooks: Yeah, exactly. So what do you do with that? How do you make that into a toy? Well, we decided to make him into a Weaponizer. So you can literally rearrange him, pop off all his limbs, turn him into a variety of different things, and just kind of have fun. And you get to pick the alt mode that he has.
Lytle: A big one for me was the new Transformers Studio Series Voyager 86 Thundercracker. It perfectly captures the look of the Seekers in the original cartoon.
Brooks: So I had the pleasure of working on that with Yuki-san over at Takara Tomy. Yuki pretty much works on Masterpiece items. So he’s so used to nailing down perfect aesthetics, matching that G1 cartoon. So he made this happen, and it is just phenomenal. And everybody has been giving us their flavors that they would love to see this secret mold in, and we’re going to try to do all of them, capture every color we can. We’re starting with Thundercracker, and I’m going to promise you, Thundercracker, Skywarp, and Starscream will all be available next year, all in the same year. But we wanted to make sure that we started with Thundercracker and Skywarp, because the last time we did them, they were locked as an exclusive, so some people had trouble getting them. So that’s why we’re trying to do this.
Lytle: In the panel, you also made time to focus on Windcharger and his magnetic powers.
Brooks: He’s a deluxe Minibot. So we’ve been taking a lot of the Minibots and bumping them up to deluxe scale. A lot of people have really been enjoying that. He’s from the G1 cast, obviously. He was a fan-favorite character.
This is, I think, the first time that we’ve ever done one in his animation-accurate blue-gray body, so [we were] really excited to get him out there. He does have that blast effect part because he has magnetism powers that they only use twice in the entirety of the G1 continuity. But we wanted to make sure to get that in there, because I think it’s important to his character and his fans.
Lytle: The big reveal was the new Transformers Timelines Optimus Prime and Starscream. Can you tell us more about these new takes on the classic G1 characters in feudal Japan?
Brooks: It is fun, kind of working back and kind of envisioning these G1 characters as animals. And also, like, the idea behind their aesthetic was looking at how the G1 cartoon handled a lot of the animal transformers. Like the Dinobots, right? Like, obviously, they’re very geometric. They’re very boxy. So that’s something that we wanted to embody while we were doing those designs.
Working with Takara Tomy…obviously, in Japan, this is their history, their culture. So we wanted to make sure that we got it right. They were very charmed that we were working on this. And they had a lot of suggestions and had a lot of influence. And that’s kind of how we landed where we landed. And I think they turned out fantastic. It’s literally one of my favorite Optimus Primes that I’ve gotten to work on.
Lytle: What went into the dining of the box, the packaging art? It’s very striking.
Brooks: It is. So our packaging designer, Amy [Bence], actually studied Japanese art in college. And she kind of decided to flex that muscle while she was working on this, and basing it on a Japanese sword box, which usually has a motif of an animal on it, like a gold filament. And so she really wanted to capture that. And we also bounced this back and forth with TakaraTomy to make sure that we were getting everything right. So we thought it looked spectacular, and we’re glad that everybody else seems to be finding it just as spectacular. I want a t-shirt with that front. Like, it’s so cool.
Lytle: This year seemed to be an excellent year for fans of Combiners. You released all of Devastator/Constructicons and all the Aerobots/Superion. While also starting Bruticus/Combaticons. Are there plans to complete all the combiners from the G1 Cartoon?
Brooks: We completed the Stunticons/Menasor back in 2023 through 2024. We know that people had issues getting Breakdown, so we’re going to get Breakdown back out into stores. Our goal is to do at least one combiner a year, so that we will go through all the G1 combiners, and we’ll get them out there for folks. People have been coming into the booth telling me their most desired Combiner that they’re waiting to see. And all I can say is, yes, we’re going to work on them. We’re going to get them out there eventually.
Lytle: And thank you for taking the time for the interview.
Brooks: Yeah, of course, man. Happy to talk.
TRANSFORMERS STUDIO SERIES THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE VOYAGER CLASS THUNDERCRACKER and TRANSFORMERS STUDIO SERIES THE TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE DELUXE CLASS WINDCHARGER are currently available for Pre-Order at Hasbro Pulse and other retailers.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from NYCC ’25.
