In this month's issue of Figure King magazine, there appears to be an article mentioning the similarity of Power of The Primes between its Hasbro and TakaraTomy iterations. Autobase Aichi has reported on this, though not in depth, and based on the web-translation of the blog post, it sounds like this is the start of a stronger push towards bringing the Transformers brand closer together between its main markets. Unfortunately this would serve to confirm that, as the photos showed, we probably shouldn't expect any real changes to the toys for their Japanese release. Keep reading!
Though this is a less subtle expression of the concept, it's far from the first sign of such a move happening. Already the Movie Masterpiece figures have been co-branded between Hasbro and TakaraTomy. Via leaks, we've also seen a similar thing on the upcoming Studio Series movie figures. And of course the Transformers The Last Knight line on both sides of the Pacific have been known to be nigh-identical to each other in terms of deco. The only variance from this is Movie The Best which, in 2018, will start featuring The Last Knight molds in comparatively enhanced releases.
This raises the question of what will happen going forward, such as if the days of especially distinct releases or being able to count on TakaraTomy to have unique redecos, remolds, or even more "complete" decos may be over with. We can't say with absolute certainty, but one interpretation may be that for the near-future, major lines in the brand may be directly shared between both markets, but that this does not also preclude either company from doing additional sub-branding tailored to a specific concept or market segment. It's probably not time to panic yet. There's a lot of 2018 still to be revealed, especially on the Takara side of things. Hopefully for those who count on those releases for something they like better, good news will be coming.
