Power of the Primes


Power of the Primes is a toyline, multimedia and transmedia franchise created by Hasbro as part of the Transformers brand. It is the third and final installment in the '. It consists of the toy line, as well as the animated web series '.
Development of the franchise began in November 2016 with the announcement of an animated web series by Machinima, based on the upcoming toyline. In January 2017, Hasbro held a fan-vote to decide which character would become the next Prime in the franchise. In February, it was decided that Optimus Primal would become the next Prime.

Development

The franchise was first announced on November 29, 2016 as the third and final installment of the '. Hasbro announced that it would once again partner with Machinima—after having previously worked with them on the animated web series adaptation of '—to produce the adaptations for ' and '. Eric Calderon, showrunner of Combiner Wars, was confirmed to have returned for both Titans Return and Power of the Primes.
In January 2017, Hasbro created a poll allowing fans to vote which Transformer will become the next Prime. The vote occurred in two stages. During the first, fans voted for the leaders of three different personality factions; honor, order and chaos. Honor was represented by Arcee, Ultra Magnus and Hound; Order by Megatron, and Shockwave and Chaos by Thunderwing, Optimus Primal and an Unknown Evil. The winners of the first round were Ultra Magnus, Star Saber and Optimus Primal, advancing into the second round alongside the Unknown Evil as a wildcard. The poll ended a month later on February 18, and Optimus Primal was chosen as the next Prime.
At the 2017 San Diego Comic-Con on July 20, Hasbro revealed during their panel some of the figures of the toyline. The figures shown were those of Liege Maximo, Dreadwind, Blackwing, Starscream, Jazz and Rodimus Prime. During Hasbro's first HasCon fan convention in September, the new Combiner Volcanicus was revealed. The combiner is composed of the five Dinobots: Grimlock, Slug, Sludge, Snarl and Swoop.

Controversy

In November 2017, a fan noticed that a tiny print found on the vehicle mode of Jazz featured scribbles that, when translated from the Cybertronian alphabet, read out "MAGA", which is an abbreviation for "Make America Great Again", the slogan of President Donald Trump. Hasbro soon released a statement that the issue had been investigated and that a vendor had placed the acronym without authorization. The company also clarified that they are addressing the issue with the vendor and that they "do not intend for products to carry political messages, apologiz to anyone who was offended by this message".

Animated series

Comic book

According to John Barber, editor of IDW Publishing, the ongoing Transformers comics published by the company will not feature a crossover event based on Power of the Primes. IDW had previously published crossover events based on Combiner Wars and Titans Return.