Generations Selects (toyline)
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Debuting in 2019, Generations Selects is a series of exclusive figures sold mainly through online retailers, intersecting multiple thematic sublines of Generations. The line consists of special edition redecoes and retools of Generations figures, packaged in brown cardboard mailer boxes broadly similar to the late TFCC Figure Subscription Service.
As with other Transformers lines from 2018 onward, Hasbro and TakaraTomy attempt to make Generations Selects equally available to fans in each other's primary market. U.S. and Canadian fans (except in Québec) can purchase Takara Selects figures from Hasbro Pulse while Japanese fans can purchase some Hasbro Selects figures from TakaraTomy Mall.
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Toys
Hasbro
Hasbro announced the Generations Selects branding in late 2018, with Ricochet and Red Swoop as the nominal debut figures for the line (but with Siege Combat Megatron actually being the first to see release). Packaged in robot mode, Hasbro's Selects figures have no price markup compared to regular retail figures. Hasbro Pulse debuts Generations Selects figures for the U.S. and Canadian markets while fans in Hasbro's other markets must resort to various physical or online retailers, with the only exclusive being Decepticon Red Wing to the Target website (though he was eventually rereleased to other online retailers in 2020).
Power of the Primes
The nominal beginning of Generations Selects, the Power of the Primes tie-ins were explicitly labelled as such by their instructions and came in brown boxes featuring a Halo of Primus motif.
Before Selects, Hasbro had experimented with the concept of "special edition" toys in other parts of the Prime Wars Trilogy (see below).
War for Cybertron Trilogy
The War for Cybertron Trilogy saw Selects transition to a new standard packaging design featuring a prominent graffiti–styled Autobot (usually) insignia and the word "WAR" in Cybertronian language. Toys that tied into the War for Cybertron: Siege chapter of the trilogy were clearly labelled and marked as such, but categorisation of the Selects toys from 2020 onwards became pretty much based on vibes, with year of release and the design elements of each toy's instruction booklet being the main deciding factors.
Siege
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Contemporary to Earthrise
(Decepticon Wingthing, Decepticon Frenzy, Decepticon Skar & Autobot/Decepticon Knok) (Generation 2 deco) |
Contemporary to Kingdom
(Generation 2 deco) |
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- Related releases
The mailer box-style package evidently appealed to Hasbro, and saw use with several of its online retailer exclusives. For ease of reference, these Generations Selects-style releases are listed below. Despite common fan misconception stemming from the use of these boxes, none of these toys below are Selects products.
Earthrise exclusives
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Galactic Odyssey Collection
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TakaraTomy import
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- Notes
- ↑ The Spy Patrol 3rd Unit was presented at Toy Fair 2020 with the Earthrise logo.
- ↑ Hot House, unlike the rest of his contemporaries, actually made use of the Earthrise logo on his instructions.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Deep Cover and Ramjet, despite being released during Kingdom, made use of Earthrise design elements in their instruction booklets.
- ↑ Despite an ID number placing the set firmly in War for Cybertron: Kingdom, Tricranius Beast Power also features the Selects logo on the packaging's label.
- ↑ Like Tricranius, the Behold, Galvatron! Unicron Companion Pack also features the Selects logo on the packaging's label, despite otherwise being sold as a War for Cybertron Trilogy standalone.
- ↑ Soundblaster was one of Hasbro Pulse's U.S. imports of TakaraTomy products (see below). A regular (albeit exclusive) Siege release in Japan, the Hasbro Pulse Soundblaster simply added an outer packaging sleeve with Selects branding. In both markets, its release occurred contemporarily to Kingdom.
Legacy
For Selects tie-ins to the Legacy lines, the packaging was given a new look, keeping the brown card box, monochrome black printing, and seal sticker, but now giving each release a unique schematic line-art illustration of the toy within, in a similar style to Takara's previous Selects packaging (see below).
| Legacy | Legacy: Evolution
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Legacy: United
(Autobot Jazz, Sunstreaker, Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, Autobot Hound) (Go-Bot Pathfinder, Go-Bot Treds, Go-Bot Smallfoot) |
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Age of the Primes
Age of the Primes-branded Selects toys ditched the classy, monochrome-printed, label-sealed cardboard boxes in favor of a new style featuring line-art illustrations of the toy within overlaid with spraypaint-like splashes of color, with additional design elements unifying Generations Selects' look with Age of the Primes and the similarly-redesigned Studio Series.
- Trypticon
(with Full-Tilt and Necro) - G2 Universe Dinobot Snarl / G2 Universe Dinobot Slug
- G2 Dinobot Swoop / G2 Dinobot Sludge
TakaraTomy
TakaraTomy's Generation Selects [sic] figures succeed the niche of the previous 2014 to 2019 Legends and Unite Warriors series, featuring uniquely extensive retooling and higher-budget paint operations for accuracy to each character's era of origin in the Japanese Generation 1 cartoon continuity. Additionally, the Japanese version of Generations Selects features a heavy emphasis on combiner teams, a feature noticeably absent from the War for Cybertron Trilogy toyline. Due to the Transformers market in Japan being smaller and shrinking, Takara's turnout of Selects figures is smaller compared to Legends and Unite Warriors. As with those lines, Takara's figures are packaged in alternate mode.
As per brand unification, Hasbro Pulse releases the TakaraTomy-made figures with no changes save for a black packaging sleeve labeled in English. This initiative also rolled in TakaraTomy's version of Soundblaster, which was released as part of Siege in Japan.
Around November 2025, TakaraTomy moved the Generations Selects line to the "Product Archive" section of its website, alongside other retired lines. The subsequent Hasbro Selects release, Trypticon, was numbered and solicited as part of TakaraTomy's Age of the Primes line.
| 2019 September 7[1] | 2019 September 28 | 2020 January 25 | 2020 February 29 |    | ||||
| 2020 March 28
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2020 October 31
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2021 February 27 | 2021 April 17 | |||||
| 2021 December 29 | 2022 June 25 | 2024 January 27 | 2025 January
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As with Hasbro and its War for Cybertron Trilogy adjacent releases, TakaraTomy also used the Selects packaging style with other collector products, including the Beast Wars Again and Dramatic Capture Series lines.
ID numbers
At the beginning of the series' release, TakaraTomy declined the usual trend of assigning ID numbers to their Selects releases. By contrast, Hasbro Pulse labels each Takara Selects release as distinct from Hasbro Selects figures on their product listings.
However, in Transformers Generations 2021, TakaraTomy gave Super Megatron the ID number TT-GS09 and assigned other numbers to subsequent items in order, thus making TakaraTomy's ID numbers different from Hasbro Pulse's. As for the numbers between TT-GS01 and TT-GS08, TakaraTomy does not specify which items correspond to each number.
The Hasbro Pulse releases of the Seacons also assigned them alternate identities as the Seacons.
- Star Convoy
- Star Convoy
- Seacons Turtler
- Turtler (Snaptrap)
- Seacons Gulf
- Gulf (Skalor)
- Seacons Kraken
- Kraken (Seawing)
- Seacons Lobclow [sic]
- Lobclaw (Nautilator)
- Seacons Overbite
- Overbite
- Seacons Tentakil
- Tentakil
- Super Megatron
- Super Megatron
- Godneptune [sic]
- God Neptune
- Volcanicus
- Volcanicus
- Soundblaster
- Soundblaster
- Abominus
- Abominus
| TakaraTomy ID | TakaraTomy name | Hasbro Pulse ID | Hasbro name |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | TT-GS01 | ||
| — | TT-GS03 | ||
| — | TT-GS04 | ||
| — | TT-GS02 | ||
| — | TT-GS06 | ||
| — | TT-GS07 | ||
| — | TT-GS08 | ||
| TT-GS09 | TT-GS09 | ||
| TT-GS10 | TT-GS10 | ||
| TT-GS11 | TT-GS11 | ||
| SG-EX (Siege) | TT-GS12 | ||
| TT-GS12 | TT-GS05 |
Notes
- Shortly before the inception of Generations Selects, Hasbro seems to have tested the concept of "special edition" Deluxe Class figures in boxed packaging with Titans Return Arcee and Grotusque, followed up by Prime Wars Trilogy Blast Off, Repugnus, and Punch-Counterpunch.
- Strangely, store listings for 2022 indicated that not only would Clampdown receive his Legacy figure but also a Generations Selects figure.[2] How this would have worked out is unknown, as no such Generations Selects figure ever manifested and Clampdown is not known for variant color schemes. It is worth noting, though, that in the previous year, Clampdown's brother Deep Cover received both a classically-styled Generations Selects figure as well as an arbitrary-deco War for Cybertron Trilogy figure at Walmart.
- A leaked listing from 2023 suggests that 2024's Legacy: United Windsweeper was meant to release much earlier as a Generations Selects figure alongside Antagony as an add-on for Legacy: Evolution.[3] For whatever reason, this plan didn't materialize, and the figure released a year later as an Amazon-exclusive Legacy: United figure.
Foreign names
- Japanese: Generation Selects (ジェネレーションセレクト Jenerēshon Serekuto)[4]
- Mandarin: Biànxíng Jīngāng Shìdài Jīngxuǎn Xìliè (變形金剛世代精選系列, "Transformers Generations Selects Series"), Biànxíng Jīngāng Shìdài Xìliè Jīngxuǎn (變形金剛世代系列精選, "Transformers Generations Series Selects")
References
- ↑ Tweet by TakaraTomy's official account
- ↑ https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/leaked-2022-ss-and-evolution-wave-composition.1220748/
- ↑ https://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/medix-confirmed-as-walgreens-exclusive-and-2023-selects-toys-will-include-antagony-and-windsweeper/47526/
- ↑ TakaraTomy does not use this Japanese spelling very often, instead straight-up inserting the untranslated all-caps English phrase "GENERATION SELECTS" into Japanese text.
External links
- Generations Selects at the TakaraTomy website
