A year ago, Hasbro revealed a massive 27-inch tall Unicron figure that, despite an equally gigantic $575 price tag, still managed to find 8,000 backers to help officially put it into production. The figure is impressively detailed, but in a recent blog post sharing the progress on Unicron’s development, it was revealed the figure takes almost an hour to completely transform.
The post, which can be found over on the Hasbro Pulse website, reveals the enormous packaging the figure will eventually ship in, but it also shares a handful of questions and answers with Mark, a Senior Graphic Designer at Hasbro, who explains the process of creating the instruction manual for the toy—which in this case turned out to be a 32-page instruction book. Compare that to a standard figure’s more typical double sided little sheet of paper, and you might get an imagining of just how bonkers that is.
When asked how long it actually takes to transform Unicron, Mark reveals it’s going to be an arduous process. “If I follow the instructions I can convert Unicron in about 50 minutes to an hour. If I try to freestyle I can get a good ways there and inevitably run into something that slows me down or have to undo a bunch of steps because I forgot to rotate something. And it usually ends up taking me longer.” That sounds more like a part-time job to me.
As a child of the ‘80s, I grew up with the original Transformers G1 toy line. In the accompanying animated series, the Autobots and Decepticons could go from robots to their alternate modes in less than a second, but the toys took a little longer, maybe a minute or two, if you were really playing it safe. (Busted arms and lost legs weren’t uncommon if you were in a rush.) It was still a process, but re-arranging limbs, flipping wings around, and rotating torsos (while quietly making that “CHK CHR CHA CHK CHEE” sound effect to yourself) was a big part of the fun, and rarely did the transformation process require you to glance at the included manual—those were included to assist your parents or that cool uncle who wanted to join in on the fun....
Article: Remember When Toys Were Fun? Hasbro's $575 Unicron Figure Takes Almost an Entire Hour to Transform
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5-things-we-liked-and-3-we-didnt-about-netflixs-trans-1844588679
The post, which can be found over on the Hasbro Pulse website, reveals the enormous packaging the figure will eventually ship in, but it also shares a handful of questions and answers with Mark, a Senior Graphic Designer at Hasbro, who explains the process of creating the instruction manual for the toy—which in this case turned out to be a 32-page instruction book. Compare that to a standard figure’s more typical double sided little sheet of paper, and you might get an imagining of just how bonkers that is.
When asked how long it actually takes to transform Unicron, Mark reveals it’s going to be an arduous process. “If I follow the instructions I can convert Unicron in about 50 minutes to an hour. If I try to freestyle I can get a good ways there and inevitably run into something that slows me down or have to undo a bunch of steps because I forgot to rotate something. And it usually ends up taking me longer.” That sounds more like a part-time job to me.
As a child of the ‘80s, I grew up with the original Transformers G1 toy line. In the accompanying animated series, the Autobots and Decepticons could go from robots to their alternate modes in less than a second, but the toys took a little longer, maybe a minute or two, if you were really playing it safe. (Busted arms and lost legs weren’t uncommon if you were in a rush.) It was still a process, but re-arranging limbs, flipping wings around, and rotating torsos (while quietly making that “CHK CHR CHA CHK CHEE” sound effect to yourself) was a big part of the fun, and rarely did the transformation process require you to glance at the included manual—those were included to assist your parents or that cool uncle who wanted to join in on the fun....
Article: Remember When Toys Were Fun? Hasbro's $575 Unicron Figure Takes Almost an Entire Hour to Transform
https://io9.gizmodo.com/5-things-we-liked-and-3-we-didnt-about-netflixs-trans-1844588679
