BW Media Spotlight

This one will be short. There’s only two videos.

Transformers Energon was the second toyline in the “Unicron Trilogy”. It’s unifying gimmick was based on the popular fuel supply of the Transformers. Except that the word “Energon” comes from “Energon cubes”, originally just a way to store captured energy in G1. Over time it became known as the actual source of energy for Transformers. For whatever reason, natural Energon in an ore form (throughout the Transformers multiverse Energon has existed as ore, crystals, or just plain old liquid) existed on Earth in this series, set ten years after Transformers Armada. A new group of Autobots known as the Omnicons came with weapons supposedly formed from Energon that could be used by the larger figures, as well as “Energon Stars” that attacked to the Transformers. The Decepticons had this as well through the Terrorcons. The Mini-Cons were still here but only a few Transformers in this line could interact with them and the Star Saber, the most powerful sword in the universe only ten years prior in-universe, was reduced to Kicker’s flying surfboard. More on…him…later.

Additionally each faction had their own separate gimmick. The Autobots became combiners in the same vein as the Multiforce from Japan’s Transformers Victory, just larger. Most of the Autobots could form either the top or bottom (“lovingly” referred to by fans as “shirt” and “pants” modes) half of a combined form, and the gimmick, like the Mini-Cons, was never really explored to their full potential. The reason for using this technique is not really explained well.  A few had separate units that they combined with, and Optimus had a scramble type combination gimmick with his four drone vehicles and could later combine with the new version of Omega Supreme (although I got the blue repaint, Omega Sentinel instead–I liked the colors better, he could be a unique character, and I got him dirt cheap–$2 at Walmart! True story!). The Decepticons on the other hand had “hyper modes” that used extra weapons, like the Armada toys before and the Cybertron toys that followed, but didn’t require anything external to activate them. The toys themselves are quite good but this plus a host of other issues brought the series down. The US intro didn’t help much.

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