Kadokawa.co.jp have updated their stores listing for Transformers Animated: The Cool Special Edition which will come with a crystal Transformers Activator Optimus Prime so that they are now taking orders.

Following on from the images we bought to you yesterday from the Jan 2011 issue of Hyper Hobby, thanks to ModXToys.com, we can now bring you full image galleries of the January 2011 issues of Hyper Hobby and TVBoy.  TVBoy AKA TV-Kun contains only two pages of Transformers related figures, but if you are a fan of other Japanese shows its work a look through.

The images can be found both on Transformers At The Moon and on LuckyDrawTransformers.com.

Jim Sorenson has posted an update on his blog regarding the Ron Friedman auction that he won that contained the preliminary script for Transformers: The Movie (that's the 1986 film).

"Last month, a group of dedicated fans pooled their resources to attempt to purchase a piece of Transformers history; scripts and other documents from Transformers movie writer Ron Friedman.  Many scripts were won by our coalition, but perhaps the most anticipated among the many documents we purchased was an early draft of The Transformers: The Movie, dated 4/27/1985.  I've scanned it in and done a preliminary OCR pass, so without further ado, here it is for download!"

The script contains the dialogue for many scenes that did not make the final draft including Megatron's reference to his "Spark", action for Sunstreaker and Wheeljack and the how the fate of Earth was also going to hang in the balance.  Some of the information was already known about, like the Predacons originally being Autobots called Anibots, but what is new (at least to us) is that their names were finalised as Simba (Razorclaw), Pardo (Rampage), Shriek (Divebomb), Thump (Headstrong) and Clump (Tantrum).   Other new characters are Stripes and Stinger two other cassettes for Blaster.  Form the script its obvious that Streeljaw was to be called Cubbie, a Tiger was going to be called Stripes, a scorpion was going to be called Stinger and there was only going to be one robot, Bolts.  We had heard rumours of a scorpion cassette many years ago, but always put it down to the watch scorpion confusing people as we could find no further evidence.

Thanks to ModXToys I am able to bring you some scans from the Jan 2010 issue of Hyper Hobby Magazine.

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Allspark member G1son has uploaded photographs of the Ron Freeman auctions (original Generation One Transformers cartoon character designs) to his Photobucket account.

You can see the images by clicking on this link.

Whilst we were out at the Taste of Chaos convert, watching Halestorm, Buckcherry, Papa Roach and Disturbed, the Teaser Trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon was released.

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You can also d­ownload the trailer from the Apple Quicktime website

­Our thanks go to Minion for letting us know that the previously Asian exclusives have now been released within the UK at Tescos petrol stations for just £­1.99.­

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Weird Al Yankovic completed his first ever UK and European tour last night with a headline date at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town.  Al put on an awesome show, as always, for the sold out arena with possibly the biggest pop of the night coming when he played a clip of Transformers Animated showing Ratchet and then Wreck-Gar which was, of course, followed by Dare To Be Stupid.

Though a loose link to Transformers, I enjoyed the show so much I thought I'd mention it here.  If you could not see Al this time do not worry as he has stated his desire to return to the UK within the next three years to play more venues.

I have updated www.transformer-prime.com as well as its parent site www.transformertoys.co.uk with some new high-resolution stills from the first four episode of Transformers Prime.  This now means that you can find HD stills from all five parts of Darkness Rising on both websites.

You can find the image galleries easier on Transformers Prime here, here, here and here (for the sake of completeness, part 5 can be found here).

I have also updated the code behind Transformers-Prime.com so that when viewing the resource galleries, if there is more than one page of images as well as clicking on the "jump menu" to navigate between pages you can also press the CTRL key on your keyboard and then type in the number of the page you wish to view.  You have 1 second from pressing the CTRL key to complete the keystrokes though, so best not dawdle.  So to jump to the third page simply press CTRL then release that button and press the 3 key (it can be on the numeric keypad or the main keyboard it doesn't matter).

The UK's newest Transformers Convention, Transformations, have announced that tickets are now on sale.  Tickets for the convention cost £26­­ and if you buy them between now and January 3rd you get early entrance to the show which takes place on Saturday 16th April 2011 at the Fairfield Halls Croydon.

Transformations is run by Paul Cannon who use to run the UK Transformers Convention TransForce.

­Coming Soon.net have posted a description of the upcoming Transformers: Dark Of The Moon trailer.

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon, from the teaser, plays it on conspiracy theories related to the moon landing. The first part of the movie alternates images of the control room at NASA and of the astronauts on the moon. The landing is what we know well, as are the famous words about the "giant leap for mankind." But we did not know what is the journey of the astronauts on the dark side of the moon, until the control room do not tell them that "... then we are not alone." Then we see some Transformers: the camera comes close to the eye of one of them, which starts to flash. But the camera does not stop, and takes us inside the robot and its mechanisms, making us understand that it's coming back into action."