I've been theorizing about something from the RID 2001 toyline lately.
As we all know, the Hasbro line was greatly expanded to have way more toys than those released in the original Car Robots line. While most of these extra releases were mere redecos of preexisting molds from G1, G2, Beast Wars, Machine Wars, and Beast Machines (including some that were made for those lines but not first released until this line), there were four completely brand new molds made for this line that were an anomaly among all the other preexisting molds. Said four new molds were the Basic class Spychanger-styled toys of Scourge, X-Brawn, Optimus Prime, and Ultra Magnus.
By all appearances, these four new figures stand out as completely random in their existence as all-new molds created specifically for the Hasbro version of the line, when not a single other figure released in this line was a new mold made specifically for the Hasbro line. Yet, following the third Basic Class wave that consisted of the four G1-molded Decepticon combiners, these four unique cases came along as the line's fourth Basic Class wave, released in January 2002.
As of late, I've been thinking about why these four figures were made at all, why Hasbro spent the money and effort into having these four made, instead of just releasing more redecos of existing Basic Class molds from Beast Wars or Beast Machines to create more non-show toyline-original characters (after all, the very next Basic Class wave, Wave 5, saw the release of a brown redeco of Beast Machines Obsidian).
At the time of this wave's release, January 2002, the cartoon was on a sort of hiatus on Fox Kids, airing reruns until new episodes resumed later in February. And the first of these new episodes to air that year was none other than Episode 33, "Maximus Emerges", the episode that finally saw the long-awaited debut of Fortress Maximus's robot mode. And later in May,
Transfandom.com started reporting preorders for Hasbro release of the Car Robots Brave Maximus toy as Robots in Disguise Fortress Maximus, which was to have been exclusive to FAO Schwartz stores and certain online retailers like Action Figure Express and Big Bad Toy Store.
The product description from
Action Figure Express even specified that it was going to be released in the original Car Robots packaging (suggesting that Hasbro had simply acquired overstock from Takara) and would see release later in August 2002. However, this release did not happen because the G1 Fortress Maximus toy mold (which the Car Robots/RID figure was made from) failed to pass Hasbro's drop tests, and thus did not meet their safety standards at the time.
But, that does not change the fact that Hasbro did originally have every intention of bringing the set over to release in the Robots in Disguise line. And seeing as how the Spychanger toys scaled the best with Maximus's city mode in order to get the most playability out of it...
...I feel like Hasbro may have wanted some size-appropriate smaller toys of some of the more major characters from the show. Namely, Scourge actually went inside Maximus's shoulder compartment in the show, so a Spychanger-sized toy of him made sense to let kids recreate that scene in toy form.
And if there was going to be a Scourge, it'd then make sense to have an Optimus for him to face off against. Though, the length of his fire truck mode probably made it more practical for his toy to be bigger than the average Spychanger and thus turn into his super robot mode instead of his cab-only normal robot mode. And if Optimus was gonna get a (larger-than-normal) Spychanger-esque toy, why not also Ultra Magnus?
That then just left Scourge's 2-pack companion needing to be figured out, since his toy was normal Spychanger-sized and all normal Spychangers were sold as 2-packs in the mass retail Basic Class at the time (as this was before the single-packed "Spy Changer" releases that would come later as store exclusives). Ultimately, Scourge's companion ended up being X-Brawn, and I think I may have figured out why.
The first wave of Basic Class toys consisted of three 2-packs featuring the six cartoon-character Spychangers from the Car Robots line, but the second wave (preceding the Wave 3 Decepticon Combiner limbs) consisted of two 2-packs featuring four more non-cartoon Spychangers made from molds that had originally been created for the Generation 2 line's assortments of Go-Bots, but were never released until Robots in Disguise in 2001. These four were Daytonus, Side Burn, Prowl 2, and Side Swipe.
Since two of these were Spychanger versions of non-Spychanger Autobot Brothers Side Burn and Prowl (I'm not gonna get into the can of worms that is "Prowl 2"; it was likely that Hasbro simply viewed the toy as just Prowl and didn't give a rat's head about anomalous "2" in his name), it would logically stand to reason that a Spychanger version of X-Brawn would be just the thing needed to go with them to complete the trio. Thus, X-Brawn became Scourge's companion piece, fitting the bill for their 2-pack release while simultaneously completing the three Autobot Brothers in Spychanger form.
...
...But then, as mentioned above, the Brave Maximus import release got canceled. So, this wave of Basic class figures that had been made with the anticipation of interacting with the big city playset toy suddenly no longer had said playset to go with them, and just released as they were anyway since Hasbro had already put the effort into having them made in the first place.
But hey! That's just a theory!
A TOY theory!
Aaaaaaaaaand cut!
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