United Stepper (2011)

It's Halloween, but the most I'm going to make of any connection to this toy and that holiday is this fairly dark and ominous bit of packaging art. Let's face it. I've been doing this for a long time now, and there's really only so many ways to connect a new Transformer with each given holiday every year. Most years, I don't even try.

BotCon 2016 Reflector

It is well-known in the Transformers fandom that Hasbro likes to get as much use out of each new mold they create as possible. This not only means that molds are redecoed and retooled as different characters, but that Hasbro, in fact, plans some of the different characters into the molds even as they are being created. This is sometimes done on a "just in case" basis, without a firm commitment to releasing this pre-planned character as a toy, and absent the occasional clue (an "incorrect" head being used in line art for instructions, for example), those of us who do not work within the industry itself often never know what toys had been so considered, but which were never actually produced.

Combiner Wars Shockwave (2016)

It is well-understood by now that the current team at Hasbro really enjoys paying homage to characters from the early days of Transformers history. The recently-completed "Prime Wars" trilogy was chock-full of classic characters, many of whom were given the most faithful updates to their original "Generation One" selves ever seen to-date. While this was definitely a welcome development (at least to me), I have no doubt that it also posed some challenges.