The obligatory backstory

What is Transformers?

In case you've somehow never heard of it, Transformers is a franchise of toy robots that can be converted into vehicles (and other items) and a collection of cartoons/comics/films/etc. created to advertise them.

If you want the full story, you can watch this.

If you would rather not, the short version is that in 1984 the American toy company Hasbro imported a selection of transforming robot toys from various Japanese toylines, combined them all into one toyline, and commissioned Marvel to make a cartoon and comic about them. Transformers was the result, and it was an immediate hit.

Most of the original Transformers toys were produced by a Japanese company named Takara, and they quickly realised how popular Transformers was, so they cancelled their own toylines that the toys had come from originally and partnered up with Hasbro to distribute the franchise in Japan as well.

The two companies have worked together ever since and virtually every iteration of Transformers since then has been the combined work of both Hasbro and Takara. For brevity, I will generally only be referring to Hasbro in this post, but remember that Takara is just as involved as well.

 

What is HasLab?

HasLab is Hasbro's fancy preordering crowd funding platform. It works much like any other crowd funding platform such as Kickstarter; Hasbro will announce some big fancy product that they don't think will sell at retail and set a time limit (typically about 45 days) and a target number of purchases (typically about 10,000). If the item receives at least that many preorders within that timeframe then it will go into production, if not then it won't. The item is also only available for purchase within that limited timeframe.

HasLab has had its own share of criticism, mainly of the "Why does a million dollar company need us to crowd fund their products?" variety, but also around lack of availability outside of certain countries, the forced Fear-Of-Missing-Out aspect of the limited preorder window, and the nature of a preorder meaning that it it impossible to tell the quality before it releases.

Despite this, HasLab has generally been highly successful and the items produced have been well receieved.

There have been five Transformers HasLabs projects to date. The first was Unicron back in 2019, but that's it's own story. Today, we're interested in the fourth.

 

What is Omega Prime?

Omega Prime is a character from the 2001 Transformers: Robots in Disguise cartoon.

Once again, for the full story you can watch these two videos, but the short version is as follows.

Robots in Disguise was originally a Japanese series named Car Robots, which Takara produced due to the declining sales of the Japanese release of the prior Beast Wars franchises. In Car Robots, the good guys (the Autobots) once again turned into vehicles and were mostly entirely new toys, while the bad guys (the Predacons) remained as beasts and were mostly recycled from previous toylines.

After Hasbro ended the Beast Wars franchises in their market as well, they needed something to fill the shelves while they worked on the next series, so they imported Car Robots as a low-cost, low-effort filler line and renamed it Robots in Disguise.

The leader of the Autobots in this series was, naturally, Optimus Prime, who transformed into a fire engine. Part way through, the series also introduced his brother, Ultra Magnus, who transformed into a car carrier. Ultra Magnus was incredibly jealous that Optimus had been chosen as leader of the Autobots instead of him and attempted to absorb his energy and take over his position, only for the two brothers to unexpectedly combine into a new robot, Omega Prime, who effortlessly defeats the Predacons.

The Robots in Disguise cartoon was highly popular among its target demographic and the Optimus Prime toy (and by extension, Omega Prime) was also very well received by collectors.

 

That's enough backstory, what about the drama?

The Drama, part 1: The Announcement

In January of 2024, Hasbro announced their latest Transformers HasLab release: A new version of Omega Prime with improved articulation, greater stability, new accessories, and a variety of other improvements. Of course, it wouldn't be Transformers if there weren't complaints, such as:

• A design that isn't from the 80s isn't popular enough

• Optimus Prime is too popular for HasLab, it should have been a retail release

• It's too similar to the original toy

• It's not similar enough to the original toy, due to the removal of the lights-and-sounds and spring-loaded gimmicks

• The robot modes are too big, due to Ultra Magnus being designed to carry a modern car-mode Transformer

• It's too expensive

• There was also some confusion since a Hasbro designer had previously suggested that they wouldn't sell an Optimus Prime as a HasLab, but it turned out this was just an incorrect assumption on the part of the designer, not an actual rule

But I guess these were just YouTube comments a vocal minority as Omega Prime funded faster than any prior Transformers HasLab and finished with over 28,000 backers, second only to Galactus as the most successful HasLab ever.

 

The Drama, part 2: The Release

Now we're at the main event.

Omega Prime was delivered to backers between March and June this year. It was incredible, it was magnificent, it was... wait why is it cracked?

Unfortunately, a large number of the figures came with a prominent crack in Optimus's abdomen. Even copies that weren't cracked would often become cracked after the first transformation.

Industrious fans disassembled the toy and soon realised what the cause was. A vertical sliding mechanism within the abdomen was too wide for its channel, the excess pressure causing the abdomen to crack and fins inside the channel to get sheared off. It seemed to be caused by poor tolerances, as not everyone's toys had the issue, though it was very widespread. Fans quickly devised a preventative fix for copies of the toy that were affected that involved sanding down the offending slider and numerous video guides were published.

Some fans were happy enough with this, regarding the issue as irritating but ultimately straightforward to fix. For other fans the mere possibility of this fault was enough that they wanted to cancel their order before it arrived. (It's worth remembering that the issue, while widespread, wasn't ubiquitous).

Naturally these two sides, the people advocating the DIY repair and those who wanted to return the whole figure, started arguing about which option was better, or at least they did on certain particularly argument-prone forums. And none of this was any help for the people whose toys arrived already cracked!

Reports began to trickle in of other issues as well, though these are less common and mostly less catastrophic:

• Ultra Magnus's wings are extremely hard to lock into position, due to an unnecessarily large ridge on the sliding post, resulting in at least one person having the wing break off

• Stress marks developing in Ultra Magnus's legs, due to a ridge on a joint

• Broken ratchets in Optimus Prime's hips

• Discolouration of some of the white plastic parts, due to a fluorescent whitening agent not being applied to them

But all hope was not yet lost! A previous Transformers HasLab, Victory Saber, also had issues on some copies, such as scratched chrome or a mould error that blocked a peg hole. In that case, Hasbro had sent replacement figures out to anyone that had these issues, even altering the figure's packaging to better protect the chrome parts. As such, many fans were confident that Hasbro would come to the rescue again with corrected Omega Primes if enough people contacted them to report the issue.

Hasbro initially just followed their standard procedure when someone contacts them about a fault, they would ask the person to return the figures and then send out a new set. But these replacements were from the same production run as the initial release and still had the same issues (though, if you had a cracked chest, you at least had a good chance of getting an uncracked replacement that you could perform the sanding fix on).

As replacement requests continued to pile in, Hasbro seemed to switch approaches and instead told those who contacted them that a replacement figure was on backorder and would be delivered in the autumn (fall) of that year. You also no longer had to return your current set to be eligible for a replacement, just send in a photo of the fault.

How wonderful! Everything was solved and there was no further drama... right?

 

The Drama, part 3: The Replacement

Replacements started arriving in early October and fans were very curious as to what exactly Hasbro had done to fix it. As it turns out, they had... simply sanded down the offending slider. They hadn't done a very consistent job of it either, as while many people reported that the slider now worked without excessive friction, others reported that the slider was still too tight and needed further sanding to avoid the risk of breakage. But on the bright side, at least none have arrived pre-cracked... yet.

So what about the other issues that were discovered? Were any of those fixed? Well, the discolouration / inconsistent UV treatment issue seems to have been fixed... and that's it. All the other defects are still present.

But don't worry, it can always get worse! You remember how I mentioned earlier that Hasbro initially asked people to return the whole set before later changing their minds and telling people not to return anything? Well because of this, this batch of replacements only includes the core Optimus Prime figure, without any of its accessories and without Ultra Magnus (unless you specifically mentioned issues with that figure as well).

Normally that would be fine since the accessories aren't faulty, except it seems that some people, either through bad timing or internal miscommunication, were told to return their whole set but then only received the core Optimus as a replacement, leaving them with an incomplete figure.

 

Aftermath

People who sent back their entire set and received only a partial replacement have since received full replacements.

This whole fiasco has caused some people to swear off any future HasLab, or sometimes even any future Hasbro product, while other people are just pleased to be able to display multiple copies of the toy at once. As one user put it, the general response "seems split between people annoyed that they now have 2 broken copies and people excited that they now have 2 broken copies".

With no official statement from Hasbro on the matter and with most people who wanted a replacement having received one, the drama seems to have died down.

The fifth Transformers HasLab project was announced in February of this year and finished funding in March, so at the time the issues with Omega Prime weren't known. It is not scheduled to be released until late 2026, so fans are waiting anxiously to see if it has a similar level of defects as Omega Prime.

The sixth Transformers HasLab project won't be announced until March next year if the pattern holds (and assuming there is another one), so it is yet to be seen if the problems with Omega Prime will have caused any reduction in interest, but I personally doubt it.