Japan Equivalent: Henkei! Henkei!
With the loss of Alternators and the close of the Cybertron toyline rapidly approaching, a stopgap measure was needed to round out Hasbro’ss offerings until the delayed Movie and its toyline could debut. Rather than develop an offbeat concept to reuse old characters or a new fiction, Hasbro and TakaraTomy elected to revisit classic Generation 1 characters in new designs with no new accompanying fiction. Thus, Transformers: Classics kicked off a trend that would continue in some form to date.
Classics reimagined popular G1 characters in a similar design style as recent series like Cybertron, without the series-wide gimmicks. The toys were largely classed into Deluxe and Voyager price points, and featured detailed casting and far more articulation than their predecessors. The line was rounded out by several Mini-Con teams that missed the boat for Cybertron release, as well as a handful of redecoed Legends class Cybertron figures in homage of older characters.
Many older fans were jubilant at the smattering of characters released until the 2007 Movie toys, and their cries for more were answered in the 2008 Universe 2 (2008) toyline, Generations in 2010, and several toys included in the line simply dubbed Transformers the same year, particularly those inhe “Reveal the Shield” subline. Though Classics only offered a little over a dozen Generation 1 reimaginings, the series it sparked off have made re-creations of scores of original Transformers characters.