Hasbro spent the summer telling collectors that the HasLab Unicron is not coming back, and in June it said on its own brand livestream what it means to sell them instead. That figure has been on American shelves since the first week of August, and until this afternoon the online shops were all still taking pre-orders on it. Transformers: Age of the Primes Leader Class Herald of Unicron is now in stock at BigBadToyStore at $59.99, with Add to Cart in place of the pre-order button. Amazon has the same figure in stock and shipping at $55.00.

Hasbro’s own copy puts the figure at 7.5 inches, converting from robot to tank in twenty-two steps, and its box contents run to the figure and a blaster. Everything else in the photography, the sword included, folds out of the mould. It is orange from the feet up, with grey horns crowding the helmet, and a framed panel on the chest carrying the Unicron sigil. Subtle it is not!

The sigil on the chest is Unicron’s, and the name on the box is not. On the June livestream, Hasbro’s team described Herald of Unicron as a combination of different Unicron incarnations, naming the Cybertron and the Marvel versions, and its own words for the character were an avatar and an acolyte version. The reasoning it gave was plain: it knows people want Unicron and Primus. The same session ruled out a HasLab re-release and said the Unicron logo is going on any Unicron-affiliated character from here on [1].

Somebody who backed the HasLab campaign is not in the market for a stand-in, and somebody who missed it has now been told by Hasbro itself that no second chance is coming. But the design never pretends to be a scaled-down planet-eater. The tank mode is a low orange wedge, the horns folded flat along the hull and the blaster riding the turret; nothing about it is trying to look like a planet. It is a good tank.

Herald of Unicron in tank mode, a low orange and grey vehicle with the horned armour folded flat along the hull.

The listing has been catching up with the shelves rather than the other way round. TFW2005 had Age of the Primes Wave 5 Leader Class out at US retail on 7 August, off in-hand images that had surfaced two days earlier, so anyone walking a toy aisle has had a shot at this since summer while the pre-order sat open online. Megazarak came out of the same Wave 5, and he is in stock at BigBadToyStore at the same money.

Most of the Leader Class row is orderable at once, which does not happen often this far into a line. Big Convoy and Liege Maximo are both in stock at $59.99, and Razorclaw is cut fifteen percent to $50.99. G2 Universe Grimlock, who arrives with Autobot Wheelie, carries a $54.99 list and is cut to $46.74. Two are gone: Onyx Prime is waitlist only, and Megatronus the Fallen is sold out. Two Dinobot pairings are not, if the shelf has room for them [2]. Optimal Optimus came back to the Primes shelf on a Throne of the Primes reissue in August and would sit beside all of it happily enough.

The HasLab Unicron was a statement piece, and Hasbro has closed the door on it. The big-ticket slot now belongs to Icons, where Megatron opened for pre-order at the start of September. What is left down here is an orange figure with Unicron’s sigil on its chest at $59.99. It is not the Unicron anybody campaigned for, but it is the only one going in a cart tonight.

Sources

[1] Other notes out of the same June session: Armada Cyclonus and Demolishor are still to come, more Mini-Cons are coming beyond the Red Alert pack, and Armada Starscream was a partial of the Reactivate mould.

[2] The Generations Selects G2 Dinobot Swoop and Sludge two-pack is $109.99, and the G2 Universe Dinobot Snarl and Slug two-pack is $114.99. Both in stock.