EDIT: Several sites are reporting this animation is from a scraped movie 2 years ago. We’ll update when we know more.

Bandai and Warner Bros are hard at work on a Thundercats reboot. We’ve already seen the toys. Now take a look at the cartoon show expected to accompany them.

The clip features a young, inexperienced Lion-O training on his own until he is confronted by Slithe. Its very clear these are different characters than what we might be used to. Lion-O especially is completely re-written. What do you think of the animation?
(via Flixist)

We have some more news about the upcoming Thundercats product lines coming from Bandai. Among the pictures included with the release are photos of Panthro and Tigra figures from the new show. We haven’t seen those before now. Just Lion-O and Cheetara. We also get our first look at some of the Thundercats Classics line. Not too bad. Hoping we get a classic Thunder Tank for that line as well. The new one is just missing that influence of the original design’s simplicity. Note that you can see Snarf’s head poking up from the cockpit. Also, Panthro’s head on the 4 inch figures looks pretty terrible, but these probably aren’t the final product anyway.

Press release after the jump, along with many more pictures!

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Rob Pratt, an animator with Disney credits, has created a pretty brilliant little Superman cartoon. Its very short (about a minute) and the above video includes a message from Pratt about the production of the animation.

This is definitely worth watching, to see what one man can do with a little music for inspiration and little more than a pencil and a computer to do awesome hand drawn animation.

As in “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”.

Since the alphabet is the building block of our language, the Powet Alphabet is the building block of what makes us geeks.

Who would have thought a My Little Pony show could be good? Well probably a bunch of little girls, but I’ll tell you who didn’t expect it was this 32 year old man who was already into more girl shows than he should, but in 2010 Hasbro’s new channel The Hub put a new twist on My Little Pony with the new Friendship is Magic series. After playing only 14 episodes the show has gained quite a following from viewers far outside of it’s target demographic of 5 year old girls.

It’s hard to describe just what makes this show so great, but it is instantly recognised when watched. The visuals are top notch. The show is animated in flash, but unlike what many have come to expect from flash animation, it does not do so to render cheap looking visuals, but has top notch animators putting a great deal of work into making it look great.

[Read the rest of this entry…]

When Transformers Prime finally premieres on February 11 at 6:30PM on The Hub, it appears we will be meeting a new character named Skyquake. Of course all characters in Transformers Prime are new characters with this being the start of a new continuity possibly involving the events from the Transformers Exodus novel and War For Cybertron game (despite numerous contradictions in story). Skyquake isn’t a new name in Transformers history though. The most significant role of Skyquake was leader of the Predators, a faction of Decepticons. He made a brief cameo in IDW’s Last Stand of the Wreckers before being killed by Overlord.

His one-line bio reads: “Entombed in stasis on Earth until exhumed by Starscream; however, pledges allegiance to only his ‘one true master,’ Megatron.”

I’m glad to see more actual characters being added to the cast. I’m not sure how many more scenes of mute Decepticlones I can take.

TVShowsonDVD is reporting that the tv series Challenge of the Gobots is being worked on as a future release from the Warner Archive group. According to the site, a fan named Nick Simmons asked some pretty direct questions on the Warner Archive Collection (WAC) fan page on Facebook. Here is what was said:

Nick – Do you own the rights to Hanna-Barbera’s Challenge of the GoBots cartoon series or its movie GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords? I’d really like to see both on DVD some day.
WAC – The GoBots are heading your way soon!
Nick – Sweet, both the series and the movie then?
WAC – At this point, just the series…..

So why is this significant? This is the main series that went head to head with Hasbro’s Transformers in the 80’s. While Transformers was first with their Marvel comic, GoBots managed to premiere its animated series before the Transformers. Several years ago Hasbro acquired Tonka, the company who brought Bandai’s Machine Robo toys stateside and developed the line into the GoBots brand. It was believed that acquisition included the rights to the animated series, but in recent times that has been brought into question with the possibility that Warner Bros. might actually own those rights since they acquired Hanna-Barbera, the animation house who developed the cartoon itself. No details regarding time frame, pricing or really anything else are known, but the news is sure to please fans.

Following yesterday’s leaked images from UK Toy Fair, one of the writers for the new Thundercats show, Todd Casey, revealed the first official image on his twitter account. See above. He also has mentioned that Snarf’s role in the new show would be revealed in time. Reports from UK Toy Fair indicate that Wily Kit and Wily Kat were indeed on display and that they received heavier overhauls that many of the other characters, while Mumm-ra, the main villain of the series, looked pretty true to classic form. No images of the twins nor Mumm-ra have surfaced as of yet.

We’ve got our ears to the ground and will bring you more as it is available!

The internet is a buzz over the newly revealed Thundercats action figures from Bandai. Photography was strictly forbidden at the event, but strangely video was not, so these stills come from someone’s video of the event. The pictures appear to have originally surfaced here. We get our first look at the new logo, new 3 3/4 inch figures, new vehicles and more. It looks like there will be both a 3 3/4 inch line and a larger 7 to 8 inch line aimed more toward collectors, similar to MOTU Classics. Only images of the smaller scale surfaced though, but I’m sure we will be seeing quite a lot more soon at New York Toy Fair. It also might be safe to say that a lot of the hype from Toy Fair will be centering around the relaunch of this franchise.

From the data sheets, it looks like product will be hitting retail around Autumn 2011. Gotta say that Thunder Tank is looking pretty good from the blurry image. The new character art isn’t bad at all either, except those sideburns on Panthro, but thats easily overlooked. Mmm…Cheetara. Yes, Cheetara evokes the same response the old always did. No word if Snarf will be snarfing it up in this series or not.