I have added another Japanese Hobby Magazine gallery to the magazine section of the website.  Today's update is a gallery featuring scans from the latest issue of Hyper Hobby Magazine, the June 2011 issue.

The scans come courtesy of ­ModXToys.com

In a strange turn of events, which will no doubt turn out not to be true, Michael Bay's message board administrator Nelson posted the following comment on on ShootForTheEdit.com when asked about who the red robot in Transformers: Dark of the Moon was following on from a post by him that it was not Mirage. I have embolden Nelson's posts below to help distinguish them from the questions that prompted the answers.

"All I will say is that he speaks with an Italian accent and is named after a famous Italian."

This was followed by the posts

"That doesn't mean s**t. In the comic and novels the twins are still in it." in response to a post by Jason Gould where Jason posted "Come on guys it's Mirage, his name is already in the toys, books, and Novelization.".  Nelson then went on to quote Plague1980 wh posted "Are we talking about two different red robots here? In the children's books besides Sentinel, the only other red Autobot is the Ferrari which we all know is Mirage. Now if you are talking about another bot that we dont know about and trying to hint at it, the first famous Italian name that comes to mind is "COSIMO" as in Cosmos lol" following up with the response "Don't act dumb. You know I'm talking about the red Ferrari."

This mean that Paramount must have had to hired a new voice actor to record all of Mirage's lines and also have re-recorded any dialogue that names the character, though going by the first two movies this is also feasible.  It must have happened fairly recently as not only does the novelisation of the film refers to the character as Mirage but so does the toys and the prequel video game by Activision in which he speaks with an Arabian-based accent.  All of the other characters within the video game are voiced by the same voice actors as the Dark of the Moon movie.

We will keep you up-to-date on this story as it develops

Update:

When we posed the following over on ShootForTheEdit "This is very interesting . I know you won't want to give out the new name for the character but I was wondering when this change took place.", Nelson simply replied with "In the movie script, he was never called Mirage to begin with.".

I have since replied to clarify my question and I will let you all know if Nelson replies to that.

Update 2:

Nevermore complied a great lists of quotes that Nelson posted on TFW2005.com over on the ShootForTheEdit thread linked to that the start of this article that go some way to explain what went down with the character.

"Think about it.Mattel owns the toy merchandising rights to Ferrari. Why would Ferrari allow one of their flagship car to be named after a Hasbro property name (Mirage) in one of the biggest movies this year––thus undermining Mattel and possibly creating a huge clusterhug? And before you say "Well the toy is not named Mirage," look again, that's no Ferrari.

"In all the treatments and scripts all the way up to the post production of the DOTM movie, the Ferrari was never referred to as Mirage. He was referred to by other names such as Rush & Enzo, but never as Mirage.Capisce?"

So, as Nevermore himself put it over on ShootForTheEdit, Dark of the Moon is "a movie based on Hasbro's Transformers property includes a character as a Transformer who must not be named after one of Hasbro's Transformers characters. I guess that shows how little say Hasbro has in these movies."

Sources of the quotes:

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers...tml#post6103423

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers...tml#post6103518

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers...tml#post6103534

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers...tml#post6103650

We have updated theTransformers toys instruction sheets section of the website with some new PDF instructon sheets entries.

Of the updates, the following new entries were added into the database:

1. Transformers Crossovers SW At-Te Captain Rex 97567 Instructions

You can download copies of the instruction sheets from our Transformers toys instruction sheets section of the website.

A picture, and caption posted on Facebook has revealed that not only will Wheeljack be a recurring character later in Transformers Prime but also that Tony Todd, voice of The Fallen from Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, will also voice Dredwing in the Transformers Prime cartoon series.

"Tony Todd, Bob Orci, and me at a party in Hollywood 5/24 to celebrate the Daytime Emmy nominations for the animated series, TRANSFORMERS PRIME. I'm recurring as the voice of "Wheeljack", Tony is the voice of "Dreadwing", and Bob is exec. producing, along with partner Alex Kurtzman. This is the team that also gave us the newest TREK movie, and is currently working on the second!"

The titles for episoedes 18, 19 and 20 of Transformers Prime have now been annouced.

#18. Metal Attraction
#19. Rock Bottom
#20. Partners

As of yesterday (Friday 27th May 2011) two of Hasbro's trademarks have been cancelled under section 8 the 6-year license.  The trademarks that have expired were Tigertron and Ultra Jet

The latest edition of the Transformers Collectors Club Magazine has started arriving in US mail boxes, ours will take a long time to come via seafreight.

The magazine includes a picture of a Transformers Animated version of a popular Transformers character, from a popular Transformers range.

I won't say anymore, other than The Great Destroyer may want another Transformers Animated toy.

Or you could highlight this ....oh and we have some original artwork of the Transformers Animated character which we won in the Auto Assembly 2010 auction

Sideswipe

Following up from our report yesterday about the early release of Transformers: Vault our copy of the book arrived today and it was well worth picking up.  Though far from a "complete" the book covers the whole history of the line including some great looks at early prototypes, unreleased figures, concept artwork and much more.

We'll create a gallery and review of the book over the coming days, but I encourage you to pick up a copy whilst you can.

Michael Bay has posted two new Transformers: Dark of the Moon TV Spots over on YouTube.  The spots are titled "Everything" and "Secret" and can be viewed below.

Site member Omegastoopreme reports that "The Argos Website has a listing for the Human Alliance Basics from DOTM.

Not in stock yet but it shows that we are getting them despite some earlier comments to the contrary.

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Search?storeId=10001&catalogId=1500002701&langId=-1&searchTerms=3883523
"