Real Gear Robot
From Transformers Wiki
- Real Gear Robots are AllSpark Mutations from the Movie continuity family.
Real Gear Robots are a subgroup of AllSpark Mutations—machinery brought to life as Transformers by the AllSpark.
Uncover one of the most closely held secrets on Earth, known only to very few humans. The power of the Allspark[sic] has been unleashed, and machines all over the world have come alive. Unlock their secrets and join the battle!Real Gear Robots toyline summary
Contents |
Fiction
Toy packaging
Very few humans are actually aware of it, but the unleashing of the power of the AllSpark has given life to machines world-wide. By purchasing a Real Gear ROBOTS product, you too now know this secret. Congratulations! Now, join the battle![1]
After coming to life, each Real Gear Robot chose sides, joining either the Autobots or Decepticons. They each seemed to find a niche to fill within their respective factions and simply joined in the regular ranks.[2]
Toys
| Object | Autobots | Decepticons |
|---|---|---|
| Binoculars | ||
| Cell phone | ||
| Digital camera | ||
| Digital watch | ||
| MP3 player | ||
| Portable game system | ||
| Video camera | ||
| Video game controller |
Notes
- The Real Gear Robots toyline is the long-in-coming return of "mechanical device" Transformers along the lines of the original Soundwave, Perceptor and Reflector, whose altmodes are all common hand-held electric devices.
- For some bizarre reason, despite being a movie tie-in line, some of the earlier Real Gear Robots have stickers for displays showing characters from Transformers: Cybertron. Later redecoes of those molds received different stickers with movie characters on them, while the Japanese versions released by TakaraTomy all had stickers showing movie characters from the get-go. There are two conflicting accounts of the conception of the Real Gear Robots line, which shed light on this oddity:
- According to a user of this wiki at the time, a Hasbro representative at BotCon 2007 claimed that the Real Gear Robots toys were created in line with the designs of the Cybertron toyline, only for their release to be held back—which resulted in serendipity with the movie's marketing blitz, since cell phones and other electronic devices become Transformers in the film. For years, this was the accepted story behind the line's creation. Coverage of this convention's panels from the time is spotty, but in the two extant comprehensive recaps of the relevant panel, no mention is made of this titbit, with both instead supporting the idea that development of these toys only kicked off after inspiration from the movie itself.[3][4] Another wiki user who attended the convention explicitly stated that they heard no such comment.
- In 2023, Hasbro designer Aaron Archer would give the contradictory account that the Real Gear Robots were conceived from the very start as an opportunistic movie tie-in assortment inspired by Frenzy, which were never part of the Cybertron toyline.[5]
Foreign names
- French: Techno-Robots (Canada)
- Spanish: Robots Aparatos (America)
References
- ↑ Real Gear Robots packaging blurb.
- ↑ Real Gear Robot toy bios.
- ↑ "Asked what heritage characters they would have put in the movie, Hasbro sidestepped and said they had been focused on developing toy concepts using the G1-type models before the movie went into production. Once word was received about the movie, the company started working on Robot Heroes, CyberStompers, and Real Gear to see how broad they could make the brand once they received the green light."—BaCon, TFormers, "BotCon Hasbro and Paramount Parnership Panel", 2007/07/01
- ↑ "Real gear subline is great!
In doing the movie in a realistic setting, a great opportunity to bring the connection home, bring the robots in disguise to a personal level with technology... lots of fun to work on, new characters, new asthetic
Design team was working before movie got off the ground, if you were in full creative control, who else would you have put in the movie?
Weren't thinking about the movie until it started to happen - don't know about other characters, just thrilled that the right people were making the movie; were not developing new designs for the movie, but were designing robot heroes, real gear, the helmet-- to figure out how broad we could get the brand"—ams, TFW2005, "BOTCON 2007 - PANEL: HASBRO TRANSFORMERS MOVIE PARTNERSHIP", 2007/06/30 - ↑ ""'I've been wondering what the original intent for the Real Gear Robots toyline was. Were they meant for Transformers Cybertron? How could they have fit in the toyline's ecosystem?' So when you do a movie, you have an opportunity to sell to more retailers, because you're going to get the buzz, the lift of the movie, and the marketing campaign is going to lift that property up over one that doesn't have it—or just has basic TV animation or something—so a wider group of buyers across the wider spectrum of stores are going to buy product. So in order for you not to get overrun with the same stuff everywhere, or maybe making bigger molds in doubling them up than you want to, you're going to offer different assortments, different types of assortments different price points. So Real Gear gave us an opportunity to quote-unquote make a "movie" assortment, take the Frenzy concept of gear and kind of blow that out, like, what if there was more of that in the film? And we can offer a low price point that the movie otherwise didn't really have, and take that as permission to do a whole line of game controllers and watches and all that stuff. So that's really what Real Gear was, it was not part of Cybertron, it was an opportunistic assortment to put more stuff out into the market, and that's what it was. And it was in the movie vernacular, but also we were able to say, Soundwave and Megatron and Perceptor and Blaster and characters before that had this... it's an element of Transformers the the "gear" bots, if you look at the car bots and the army bots or whatever, gear was also an element of the G1 experience, so we wanted to blow that out. Simple as that, it was an opportunity."—Aaron Archer, The Toy Armada, "Toy Armada Friday night LIVE: Toy Talk Q&A", 2023/05/12
