AFi #THUNDERWEEK #THUNDERCATS EXCLUSIVE – Bandai “The Lost Year” Day 4

Welcome back to Thunderweek on AFi. Thank you all for your patience with me having to split up the reveals.

We are looking at Bandai’s canceled second year of Thundercats products that would have been released in 2012 had the animated series gone forward with a second season.

If you missed any of the previous installments you can go back and check out the Day 0 Preview, the Day 1 reveals the Day 2 reveals and the Day 3 reveals. This will also help you get caught up with the story of what happened and why the line was canceled.

Bandai America had a 3 year plan for new and classic Thundercats collector items – figures, vehicles, role play and some die cast. A lot of that plan was pitched and a lot of it was approved in concept, but some Bandai top corporate execs missed the whole collector appeal of the line and when the show got canceled so did the team’s prospects of continuing it as a collector only line. We will discuss the year 3/2013 plans tomorrow.



Today we are going to look at ThunderCats Classics. When Bandai America picked up the license for ThunderCats they didn’t just get the rights to the new show they also had access to the classic animated series from the 80’s. When Bandai first launched the ThunderCats Classic like they launched it with Lion-O as a line of super-articulated 8″ collector figures. This was a strange scale and was upsetting to many fans who wanted their ThunderCats to work alongside the 6″ Masters of the Universe Classics line from Mattel. They released Lion-O (SDCC Exclusive and regular) and Tygra. The line sputtered a bit because of the scale and Bandai re-evaluated the scale to be more in-line with the 6″ versions of the modern animation.

The line relaunced as a 6″ line with a Lion-O and Mumm-Ra as well as a Singapore Toy, Games and Comic Convention (STGCC) 2012 Exclusive of Lion-O in red armor. The red armor Lion-O was based on a specific episode of the animated series that was actually Mumm-Ra in disguise. As mentioned last week there were plans to fast track Cheetara as the 2012 San Diego Comic Con exclusive, and now for the first time we get to reveal what would have been wave 2 of the 6″ Classics collector figures:

THUNDERCATS CLASSICS

Just a reminder- These images are of unreleased Bandai ThunderCats Classics figures and have NOTHING to do with the upcoming Mattel ThunderCats Classics action figure line sculpted by the Four Horsemen.

TYGRA – Lion-O’s second in command, Tygra, would have been a super articulated collector figure based on a similar buck as the Lion-O figure. He would have come with 2 pairs of hands and his bolo-whip.



PANTHRO – the mighty Panthro was a new sculpt based on a larger buck as he is a bigger character. He would have come with 2 pairs of hands as well as his cat-paw fighting sticks.



Come back tomorrow for the final reveals in our week-long exclusive feature on the “Lost Year” of Bandai Thundercats products on AFi’s THUNDERWEEK!