Transformers: Reveal the Shield Special Ops Jazz

Here’s another figure I never saw in stores, and wound up tracking down on eBay.

Reveal the Shield was an effort to restart the Generations or Universe 2.0 line after the Revenge of the Fallen toyline, releasing Classics styled toys with the ol’ Generation 1 rubsigns. The line overall was comprised of a number of smaller toys, Legends essentially but pretty simple and cheap. A few of these toys were clearly Classics versions of characters, and so we got excellent toys like Tracks.

Transformers Universe: Stormcloud

 The repaint is an integral part of most major toylines. Here’s the boring reason: each toy is made through an expensive process of design and steel molds and boredom, apparently. The repaint is the companies’ opportunity to make extra profit on the existing mold(s) by reusing them. Since the initial investment has been made, theoretically all the money made on repaints should be profit. Repaints are usually different characters of similar type to the original. The Transformers brand has counted the repaint as part of its backbone dating all the way back to 1984 and the first wave of toys. The Seekers, the Autobot Datsuns, Ironhide and Ratchet, Soundwave’s cassettes. Later waves would bring the Coneheads, and retools like Hoist and Grapple, modified versions of the existing Trailbreaker and Inferno.