First look at Transformers: Generation Legacy!

 Wow, for once I am going to be posting something in a timely fashion. I'm on my lunch break, excited for PulseCon on Friday/Saturday, and much like last fall, Hasbro has, via IGN, unveiled just a snippet of their new mainline. According to the press release, the line is called "Transformers: Generation Legacy." The rumor mill (and retail listings) have indicated that "Legacy" would be the title of the new trilogy and that the nascent subline would be called "Evolution," but we don't see that word being used here - maybe that will come during Friday's Transformers panel. 

Anyway, we have deluxe class Skids and voyager class Bulkhead for our (pre)viewing pleasure!

Skids:

Starting with the clean render of Skids's vehicle mode, he looks perfect. Obviously, we have the anomalous energon weapon on the roof, but Bulkhead also has an energon weapon, so we can surmise that these weapons are part of this trilogy's or subline's gimmick. As a big Unicron Trilogy (including Energon) fan, I appreciate that we are getting these types of accessories back. What especially nice is that, so far, these energon weapons do not seem to be included at the expense of the characters' traditional weapons! Skids has great-looking weapons based on the original toy. 

Here is his compact car mode sans weaponry. Again, it looks just as it should. I have always enjoyed Skids' unique car mode (compared to so many "deluxe" Autobots being sports cars or offroad vehicles), so it's great to see him with a faithful update. 

Here is the car with the roof-mounted energon axe/gun and the smaller single-barrel gun mounted on the left side.

And here is the right side, showing the twin-barreled weapon (rockets?). Clearly, Skids's otherwise unassuming little car mode can be equipped for some destruction.

He is the clean render for robot mode, again showing all the accessories, this time with the energon weapon stowed on the back (car roof). Terrific render!

Here we see Skids's two normal weapons combined together for a triple-barreled mode. Again, the energon weapon can be used as a gun. Amusingly, I was just looking over some of my Commemorative Series reissue boxes (still in my parents' basement) about a week ago, and while I opened Commemorative Skids many years in the past, a few of his weapons/missles are still tucked away in the original packaging. 

Finally, all three weapons can be combined! I do wish an image showing the energon weapon being used as an axe had been included, but that's alright.

Edit: it occurs to me that this will be my first Skids since the Alternators version (which I love; it's such a fun mold and car design). The reason for this is that I skipped out on Thrilling 30 Skids, which was released in 2014. This was a few years into the More Than Meets the Eye series from IDW, and I loved the idea of getting as many toys accurate to the comic as possible. Skids was selected, and hadn't received a normal scale neo-G1 figure yet, so I was pretty excited. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out looking too hot. This new Legacy release will resolve this gap in my collection.

Bulkhead:

This is the clean render for Bulkhead's truck mode. This looks really great! It looks realistic, and it leans toward the version of Bulkhead from Animated more than Prime, as in the latter he was an offroad SUV. I appreciate the fabric-like appearance of the truck bed covering. Interesting is the presence of extra wheels behind the cab.

Edit: not sure why I didn't think of this before, but clearly this truck mode draws on movie Hound as well, who for all intents and purposes is movie Bulkhead. Of course, this goes back full circle to the fact that, upon seeing the first images of the Animated core cast (sans names) in 2007, most of us assumed that Animated Bulkhead was the new version of Hound for that show.

Now we can see the truck with Bulkhead's enegon minigun attached. I'll admit this weapon looks a little dinky compared to its wielder, but that probably has to do with so much of the toy's mass going to the covering shield accessory. Not a tremendous problem. 

In this render, we have Bulkhead wielding his signature hand mace! It looks great, including multiple ports so that some blast effects can be attached (or maybe this can be attached to other weapons). The shield is still shown here with the fabric side showing, and the energon minigun looks pretty good in a shoulder-mounted position (I'm sure Kingdom Mirage is jealous 😉). What really grabs my attention here is how much this looks like what I envisioned a G1 Bulkhead to be! While the head is still very similar to the design from Prime, otherwise this body design is completely new and definitely fits in with the older Diaclone-based characters from seasons 1 and 2 of the original television show. When it was first leaked that "Prime" Bulkhead would be an upcoming toy, I expected a retread of the design we see in the Prime television show (which had already gotten two fairly different interpretations as voyager class toys back in 2012), so I'm quite pleasantly surprised to see something more up my alley here. Not that I dislike the SUV-based design from Prime, but that I was weary of already having it twice over and seeing a new interpretation of the character (that also homages the original Animated design) is really what I needed to see from this kind of release!

Now we can see that the shield has a more "typical" armored underside that can allow it to be more convincing as a shield. Again, notice the extra wheels behind the head, plus what is definitely intended to be a spare tire on the shield itself. I am a bit afraid that the shoulder wheels (which look great) will not end up being the actual cab wheels in vehicle mode, but we will see.

Lastly, we have the shield as backpack armor, which is nice in case you want one of the arms uncluttered; plus we see the minigun being hand-wielded. One other thing I should mention is that the rumors around Bulkhead included him sharing a base mold with an upcoming Prime-based Optimus toy. Now that we know that this Bulkhead is a truck rather than SUV, this makes much more sense; one can easily envision this toy being made into a new Optimus with even just a new head mold. If it is to become a new Prime Optimus, we will see much more remolding than that (hopefully not including faux windows for the chest), but already I can visualize how this will work. 

Ok, that is all for now! I did not include all of the images, but you can see them at: https://www.ign.com/articles/new-transformers-generations-legacy-figure-line-announced-by-hasbro or at other Transformers news sites (I grabbed these images from TFW2005).