In today's Xevoz Tomb Wraith review, I said that all the Xevoz toys are must-owns. But truly, more than "all" of them are must-owns! After Hasbro axed the line, the design team gave us some hints of what the future might have held, including a nice list of what figures were on-deck:
- Arcaster
- Biomecha
- Machete Mech
- Sledge Trooper 2.0
- Terra Crawler*
- Hyperfuries
- Helios Archer**
Rocka Huna
- Meta Beast
- Neo Sapiens
Reptosaur
- Sectoid
- Unnatural
- Gore Goyle
Several of the potential releases were given alternate names: Terra Crawler was originally identified as "Earth Mover," a bulldozer robot; Glacier Scout was called "Arctic Tracker"; Rollercop was renamed "Street Patrol"; Ursa Khan was mistakenly identified as "Ursa Major," and was believed to be a Meta Beast until the art was revealed.
Sledge Trooper 2.0 was first mentioned in the bio for the Series 1 Omega Guard. Hypothetically, "Sledge Trooper 2.0" and "Machete Mech" could be different names for the same character.
Given the large number of characters, it's likely this is more than one series' worth of characters. In that case, the ones who have fully painted prototypes were probably bumped from Series 4, the ones with art from Series 5, and those with even less info from Series 6. We just refer to them as "Series 5" as a convenient shorthand.
O how I wish these had actually been released!!!
* Terra Crawler and Attaknid were available in pieces with various other figures - it's possible other characters were going to be released the same way, but it's not known who those might have been.
** Rumored to be a light/air elemental.
*** A Batman-type hero to go along with Hyper Guardian's Superman.
This piece makes me so sad. I wish someone could kickstart these without the game side to keep costs down.
I don't think the game bits made a lot of difference in the cost - they're all the same mold, so dropping them would have been negligible at best. The game was never the series' strong point, but getting rid of it wouldn't save a ton of money...
I'd like to imagine that Hasbro actually spent some money on the rule system, so dropping it would mean not needing to develop the rules engine anymore. Same with pulling the stickers, no need for those either!
But it's already developed - useless as it is, it's not like they had to pay for it again every time another toy came out. And stickers are super cheap, especially when they're applied to something square and flat...
Gosh... these guys were the bomb! I really miss them, but at least the fans are still keeping them alive. There's emummy and his fantastic xevos designs and there's this guy from México who's designed his own Xevoz which are actually pretty cool:
http://venatortundra.deviantart.com/
You should see his designs, Shocka, give out your opinion. Let people know Xevoz aren't dead yet.
I think these totally passed me by -- must have come out in my jaded, cynical teen years. While I don't think I would have bought them all, there are definitely a couple I would have liked to have picked up. Who knows -- perhaps Hasbro will revive them under their Wizards of the Coast license one day, as a way of hooking kids into D&D? Unlikely, perhaps, but you never know.
FRAK!
Need.
Need bad.
So, so bad.
Who is punishing us?
Aside from Transformers, Xevoz are - by far - my fave.
The Verse grows darker still.
I'm... In the process of trying to kit bash/actually sculpt a couple of the cancelled ones.
I've got a really good plan for mech shell so far.
Only problem is that I cannot find any pictures of the back side of the shell/figure to get a clearer picture of what it looked like.
That's fine, it just means the new version will be partially your own creation and not just what existed before, and that makes it even cooler!