>>7887140To be fair, Jetpower Prime is a retool of their Ginrai mold. The trailer armor is entirely new tooling but the base figure is the bulk of the work and they didn't really have much they had to do there. It's ultimately a lower effort figure aiming to capitalize on the recent rise of movie interest by homaging it with a fairly easy retool. They were hoping for a response of "I didn't even know I wanted this" and to an extent, they did get it from what I saw on the initial reveal.
As for ignoring the success of their beast Prime and Megs figures, I think they weren't really expecting as much interest in BW shit and just wanted to knock out the characters that people know the names of (as well as be the first to step into that market), which would be Leo, Optimal, and Megatron. I'm a little surprised they didn't try for Big Convoy as well to really finish out the beast "essentials" (every Prime/Convoy they can think of and a Megatron). If JX's Tigerhawk does well, it could convince them to branch out into more big Transmetals and try to hit back with their own Tigerhawk.
IF might do it if their own T2s do well and just because it seems fun.
