As you may recall, Siege Crosshairs was releaed with no Targetmaster and one of Hasbro's main designers, Mark Maher, did not want that to repeat for Pointblank. At the same time, they wanted to also give fans a deluxe class figure of similar standards, so that's why below you will see a bunch of notes related tocost when designing a figure. It's interesting to see that the designer wanted to ensure a strong hinge for the clear plastic cockpit, so wrist articulation was removed in favour of that. Hasbro is sparing nosecrets from us here and you can see how everything was decided to bring you the toy you'll get.
One very interesting note is that the person who designed the transformation is Shogo Hasui, the same legendary designer who gave us MP-10, MP Sideswipe, CW Devastator, HFTD Starscream, Prime Starscream and even the classics seeker mold. It was his idea to give Pointblank his comic head rather than his Headmasters head. So if you don't like the final resulting headsculpt, you can blame Takara. The full post is after these images.
"Deluxe Legacy Pointblank and his Targetmaster Peacemaker are finally here to hop into your collection! . Had to break out my mint Crosshairs to showcase how both of these bots looked together.
I had the pleasure of doing the deco for Crosshairs and I was kinda bummed I wasn’t able to get Pinpointer in there. This time around since I lead the design of this guy I thought it was essential to add in Peacemaker. I soon realized how cost challenging it was to include a target master at a Deluxe scale and pricepoint. . The first image is my own redraw concept art of Pointblank and Peacemaker. Ive been really using alot of reference art that everyone already knows and loves, especially with tight schedules, they seem to be great for kicking off the project. You can see the reuse of the comics art alt mode here was perfect to use. I absolutely love this rendition of his cybertronian race car alt mode.
Hasui san took the reigns and made the great suggestion of doing the fin styled head that was never made in toyform. Anything that is in the g1 cartoon is a go for me even if its from the later seasons. . You can see an additional weapon engine accessory was costed out along with a bunch of other comments made to fine tune this guy. Hasui really had so many tweaks in order to fix up this guy, I just couldn’t find a way to showcase them all here. I added my comments to ensure we were aligned on trying to make this the best version of Pointblank ever.
You can see the targetmaster is blast effect compatible. There is elbow swivel on Pointblank for those that have been asking, but the articulation range on this guy really gives you a plethora of posing options and is really fun to tinker with. The arm transformation was a treat and I can’t wait for yall to get these guys!
Have a great weekend and thank you all for bringing your passion and support to the Transformers universe!"
