You Can Own Ironhide

Edmunds.com is reporting that GM is producing Ironhide version of the GMC TopKick 6500. Apparently the truck is being built with help from Monroe Truck Equipment and ok from Hasbro. Info from Seibertron.com via TF Live Message Boards.

The article:

MONROE, Wis. — All Transformers fans know that Ironhide is the slowest Autobot, but also the least vulnerable to attack. He transforms into a GMC TopKick 6500 pickup — and now a GM tuner has rolled out a production version.

Monroe Truck Equipment, in association with toymaker Hasbro, says the production version of Ironhide includes custom 20-inch aluminum painted black wheels fitted with monster 40-inch tires. The GMC TopKick normally comes equipped with dual rear wheels.

Other details include two chrome big-rig smokestacks, horizontal stainless steel step tubes, custom front and rear bumpers with textured powder-coat finish, and a 16,000-pound winch mounted on the front bumper.

As Ironhide would say, "High-tech circuitry is no replacement for guts."

What this means to you: Now you can look and feel like Ironhide.

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Jazz Robot Designs

The news drought, for now, has ended. TFW2005.com has posted a pic of a potential design for the robot mode of Jazz. White is apparently his favorite color. Actually I am liking the design, its not bad at all. Now if only tfw2005 would stop with the enormous watermarks that mess up the actual picture visuals. The images are not theirs anyway (technically they are Dreamworks) so to mark them up to ruin is overkill. Use a watermark, just stick it somewhere it doesn't cover a chunk of the pic visuals.

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Bumbleebee on Cover of Hot Rod

The Camaro that is the vehicle mode for Bumbleebee is the cover car for the November 2006 issue of Hot Rod Magazine. Almost no spoiler movie wise, but decent info about the car itself as provided from "rtype" on the Shoot for the Edit site and provided by tformers.com.

It's not really a camaro but a pontiac gto with fiberglass molds from the concept. Built by Saleen, it has faux wheel covers/rotors and anything else that is "billet aluminum" is also made of fiberglass. pretty cool stuff. they have pics of the chassis, camaro - fresh out of the paintbooth masking paper still on it, and prelim test fits of the white fiberglass molds.

The dash, and outer body panels are from the concept. the chassis, LS-2 V-8 engine, and suspension are GTO.

- Barricade (still referred to as Brawl in this article) is considered a Saleen, not Mustang, Ford not wanting the Pony touted as a villain. They alluded that this will make it easier for Hasbro to license it as a toy.

- Bumblebee's side windows are plexiglass and won't roll down.

-Even though Saleen modifies Mustangs, it was tapped due to it's expertise in building show vehicles.

- GM, not Saleen applied the final racing stripes, to closely resemble the '69 camaro stripes.

- "Old" Bumblebee was originally gonna be a '69, but ended up being 3 1976 camaros. the team was going for believability in terms of spike finding a crappier camaro as opposed to the more sought after '69.

- new movie camaro is automatic (Heard this is quite common for stunt driving purposes. -bwbm)

- the new camaro trunk fills up with smoke when doing burn outs, it's bare bones hollow and houses the fuel filler cap.

(image source)

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Bumblebee in a Truck

The leaks continue to not occur from the Transformers movie set. No news but here you go, a headless Bumblebee sitting in a truck from superherohype.com. Not really news but figure it would interest some.



(source)

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Ironhide and Ratchet Pics; Bumblebee Face Closeup

Seibertron.com has once again scored some more pics of the Transformers. One of the back side of Ironhide and one very nice pic of Ratchet. I am envious of the Autobot engraving on the back of the truck and that search and rescue logo on Ratchet is a nice touch. Also check out the closeup of Bumblebee's furby face with the outcroppings on his skull that are analogous to his horns from the cartoon days. Thanks to the TransformersLive blog reader for the vehicle tip in the comments and Joey Cagle for the Bumbleebee link.




Update: Additional pics of same things, only really big and great quality is here.

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Another Frontal Bumblebee Pic

seibertron.com has posted another image of Bumblebee robot used for filming that is one of the best pics taken of the yellow one so far. Thanks Julio M. for the link.

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More Bumblebee Pics

Or at least a view of Bumblebee's tires. As he sits in a truck. Hey he is big though. And yellow. OK not terribly exciting but something to look at while debating whether you like those Optimus Prime pics.


(source)

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Two Video of Transformers Set Footage Released

Two new videos have hit the web showing some of the filming for Transformers being done in Los Angeles. One piece of footage from TMZ.com (found by AICN.com) mostly shows the vehicles for Jazz and Ratchet being driven around and prepped for a scene. The other video,found by TFormers.com shows a little filming being done as a caravan of cars go down the street with Bumblebee.

The videos are here and here.

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Bumblebee's Face is Revealed

The face of Bumblebee has reached the web. Its very Furby/Ewok like to me. Its also the final nail in the coffin that the Tranformers heads will not have human faces we grew up with. Since the movie is aiming for internal logic, it does make sense that alien robots wouldn't have human faces. Still, no horns on Bumblebee is a sad thing. (source)


Update: Roberto Orci, one of the writers of the script, commented on TF faces, "without confirming or denying anything, all faces will have CG elements augmenting them."

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On Set Video and Pictures including Jazz and Ratchet

LatinoReview.com has posted some new pictures and video from the on location shoot for Transformers in downtown Los Angeles. The pictures including shots of the set, cast, extras and the vehicles being used including a nice shot of Ratchet and Jazz.

The pics are here and the video here.

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Full Frontal Bumblebee and other Vehicle Pics

Today has been a good day for Transformers movie news. First the full cast announcement and now we have a view of robot mode of Bumblebee from the front along with some alt modes of various Autobots.

The first pic is an image of Bumblebee in robot mode with helpful human to help with scale. I have to admit, I can't decide if I like it or not. The detail looks slick, but I don't see the Camaro in there anywhere. Where is the hood? The car doors? Should be intriguing to see how this works not only in CGI but also with the toy line Hasbro will be releasing.

The weird gray spikey thing is theorized to be Megatron. I think its based mostly on the color but since they are still building whatever it is, the color could just be the result of the molding process. Its to early to tell what its is.



Here are the pics of the various Autobots. The black truck in the top left is Ironhide, whose backside with slick Autobot symbol engraving can be seen here. The yellow car in the bottom left is the Bumblebee. The truck in the middle is Optimus Prime, and the green Hummerish car on the right is Ratchet.

And finally a close up of Optimus Prime. I have to admit not loving the color scheme or the flames but I can live with it (not like have a choice anyway).

- The pic sources could have been posted here, here, and here in the Talkback section. Who came first? Beats me. As for why they are so small, its because they have all been posted that way and so far the original larger size pics haven't been posted.

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Ironhide Pics?

Jalopnik.com has posted some pics that just may be of the vehicle mode of Ironhide. If not, its still a very sleek custom job that I wouldn't mind on my car.

"...it is a GMC Top Kick C4500 4WD Crew Cab (not a K4500 anymore, now they're C4500 4WD, so confusing!) with a Monroe upfitters' bed and from what we can see a whole lot of custom work too. The badass tires that Seth L commented about are the Nitto Mud Grappler...Fun fact, the bed on Ironhide there is all-composite..."

Click here and here for pics and details about the vehicle, but unrelated to how it may or may not be in the movie.

(source)

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25ft Bumblebee Pic - sorta

Update: Picture removed at request of Paramount. Click here for details.

As you can see from the above pic, the rumored 25 foot Bumbleebee robot was true and the detail is fantastic. Sadly its just the top but gives you an indication of just how sweet it probably would look from the front.

Thanks to Jim B. for grabbing a pic before AICN yanked it and sending to me.
Also Lucas sent in a heads up of a trailer description here. I will give my 2 cents later but right now I am off to see Superman Returns.

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More TF Vehicle Pics

Thanks to "Slimebucket" for sending me this link that had a second series of pics that I don't recall seeing on the AICN site. The yellow car is Bumblebee, the police car is Brawl and the plane is an Osprey used in the opening sequence against Skorponok. I think the oversized Hummer thing is Bonecrusher and the Abrams is Devastastor. The last two pics are for giggles as one looks like the original Optimus Prime but was just the truck used to deliver the cars and the last could be Vortex, but that round ball on the front is probably a camera so its more likely being used for filming. Keep scrolling down to see pics, for some reason blogger adds about 6 lines of space before starting a table of data.

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AICN TF Vehicle Pics - updated

Apparently AICN took down the pics due to studio pressure. If known that would happen would have saved a copy of them. I did check my temporary internet cache and recycle bin and as a result only found the above pic of Bumblebee before "Sam" fixes him up and they become best buddies so sadly not able to reproduce the entire series.

Also based on the comments, people think this site is affiliated with the studio but its not. It use to be but they abandoned it for tranformerslive.com so I was able to lay claim to it. If I was really with the studio, I would be a source of information rather then linking to everyone else under the sun when information is leaked. If anyone does have any good info though feel free to send it to canowupass at yahoo dot com.

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AICN TF Pics

Ain't It Cool News has posted a bunch of pics of the real world vehicles modes that will be used by the TFs in the movie. This includes the yellow Camaro Bumblebee, the Mustang police car Brawn complete with Decepticon logo and "to punish and enslave..." tag. Also shown was the Abrams tank that will be the alt mode of Devastator who I am starting to suspect will be Megatron in the movie. Also the Osprey pic saw in a few posts below, that is the alt mode of Vortex. The post also basically confirms that the described opening sequences of the leaked draft are pretty much accurate, further confirming previous reports.

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TF Names are Aliases

Michael Bay provided a bit of information over on his board:

It is a bit tiresome to watch all the supposed script leaks on Don Murphy's site. There has been a lot of chatter about character names and what 'things' may be called in the script. I'm going to let everyone in on a little secret. Something that the writer's don't know, nor my crew, or Steven Speilberg, or the president's of Paramount or Dreamworks. Not even Don Murphy who is not involved on the day to day with this movie. Many of the names in the script are aliases. The only people that know the real names of many of these characters are the COO of Hasbro, their corporate lawyer and myself. I think this is two less people that knew the secret recipe for coca-cola. On my directing contract I had to sign all these non disclosure agreements just on this character name point. These names will not be revealed until the toy boxes are printed. The writer's had to construct the script where no actor needed to verbally refer to a character by name other then the main few. So rest assured AKA Devastator, is really not Devastator.

Michael

This is good news for those that want the naming to be faithful where possible (like me) and it adds on the mystery of the movie. Let the guessing of the "Transformer cast" begin.


Also click here for a quick TF related interview with Jon Voight. The only "news" from the interview is he's seen the script.

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3 Decepticons Named?

A rumor over at the TF producer Don Murphy's message board is that the names of three Decepticons that will be in the movie.

As many have speculated, the Decepticons do in fact outnumber the Autobots in the script.

It had me scratching my head when I learned who they are, and what their alt modes are.

Brawl--a police car (for a chase scene)
Devastator--M1 Abrams tank (and a single bot)
Bonecrusher--Mine clearing vehicle

It just seems like a bunch of random names slapped on random alt modes.
If they want to use a Decepticon car, I think the names Runamuck or Runabout would be more suitable.
The tank should be Brawl, since he was a tank in G1.
Not sure how I feel about Bonecrusher. He was a bulldozer in G1 and there are mine clearing vehicles that look like bulldozers, but I think they should just stick with Combaticon names and go with Swindle or Onslaught.

Hmm, got to admit, little concerned. Getting the names "right" should be easy and basic. It would take all of three seconds to come up with a Decepticon name that is valid. More likely this information is either flat out wrong or a bit off intentionlly.

Brawl is probably really an Autobot. I am betting for at least the first movie they are going to stick with the Autobots = automobiles, Decepticons = other war equipment. The M1 Abrams is more likely Megatron as they cannot use the gun form from the cartoons do to legalities with making gun toys. Megatron was a tank in the G2 iteration and several after that. Also, really Megs is a supposed to be a big evil SOB that carries a big stick. That sounds like a tank to me. I think they should hold Devastator in reserve for a possible sequel. He is a known Transformer and having a gestalt Transformation would THE teaser trailer moment of a sequel.

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