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Worlds & Stories
Meet the characters behind the models. Explore their worlds, identities and interpretations.
Shockwave (Transformers One)
One eye, purple armour, no mouth to help with the expression. Shockwave gets recognised anyway. I started with that bright point in the Blokees Transformers One figure, then noticed how much of the body is arranged to keep bringing me back to it.
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Zero (Mega Man Zero)
Red armour, a pale-blue blade and a yellow ponytail that refuses to stay inside the outline. This is Zero from Mega Man Zero. I went looking at the game behind that name and found a tiny movement detail that made the still figure more interesting.
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Optimus Primal (Rise of the Beasts)
Optimus Primal and Optimus Prime share enough of a name to invite a small mistake. The gorilla makes the correction fairly quickly. With these Blokees kits, I wanted to look at what changes when the alternate form is a creature’s body rather than a vehicle with panels to rearrange.
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Starscream
Starscream usually arrives wings first. These two Blokees figures carry the familiar red, grey and blue, but their labels point in different directions: an animated origin film and a newer comics universe where even the Decepticon leadership is up for a fight.
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Megatron
Big shoulders, angry face, enormous weapon. Megatron is not usually difficult to read. Transformers One makes the earlier shape worth a second look, though: D-16 does not begin with the finished villain’s body. The design changes as the character does.
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Optimus Prime
A huge red chest, heavy blue legs, a weapon in hand. Optimus Prime hardly needs help looking strong. The interesting part is what Peter Cullen was told before the audition: “Be strong enough to be gentle.” His brother Larry had given the robot a direction before it had a voice.
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Bumblebee
Bumblebee’s face looks full of little mechanical pieces. The surprising discovery was that the director wanted fewer distractions there. Travis Knight asked his designers to simplify it, then drew on Hailee Steinfeld’s performance to help the animators work out how the robot should respond.
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Soundwave
Open the cassette door and the supporting cast comes out. That was the trick with the original Soundwave toy: the player became a robot, and the tapes had identities of their own. A very ordinary place to keep a cassette turned into a very good place to hide another character.
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Transformers
Two factions. Countless identities. Discover the world behind the robots, then find its many interpretations in miniature.
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