Kreon

I Am Empire

Kreons are a form of brick-made beings, coming in both Transformer and human varieties.^[1] This difference seems to be largely superficial in nature.

Generally, Kreons are mischievous, eccentric troublemakers given to acting ridiculous. Thanks to their brick-made nature, they can be taken apart and put back together pretty easily, with no real harm done. (Well, physically, at least. Mentally? Probably not so much either, given the Kreons' general disposition.)

Fiction

Kre-O cartoon

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Kre-O online comic

Kreons hail from two different brick-based worlds; Transformer Kreons come from Cybertron, and humans from Earth. The Autobots left Cybertron in the hopes of finding energy blocks that would feed them, with the Decepticons in hot pursuit. They crash-landed on Earth and woke up millions of years later in search of blocks! Kreon Story While the Autobots work alongside the human Kreons peacefully, naturally the Decepticons have no such intentions.

Both sides of Transformer Kreons have displayed the ability to manipulate the block-based world, turning ordinary vehicles into "Mega" versions of themselves via their "Block-Transform" power.^[2][3] These larger robots appear to have very limited intelligence, mostly obeying the commands of their creators.

Toys

• For a complete listing of all Kreons and the sets they come with, see here.

Standard Kreons

Parts is parts.

Kreons are miniature figures roughly 1¾ inches tall. They follow the nominal parts list of the industry standard, the LEGO Minifigure: head, torso, left & right arms, hands, waist, left & right legs. The head has a single hollowed top-stud to add a helmet/hat/hairpiece to. However, the Kreons feature some very key design differences from the Minifigure, many of which really come into play with the Micro-Changer series (see below).

• The waist is connected to the torso with a single large post, which is the same length and width as the neck post, itself the width of a standard connector stud. This not only gives the figure a swivel-waist, but allows "backpack" pieces to be attached at the waist, and for normal bricks to be attached to the waist-post.
• The arms and legs are connected to the torso and waist by a ball-and-socket connection, and both use exactly the same size. This not only increases the Kreons' posability, but enables arms and legs to be swapped. There are other pieces designed to be attached to these connectors.
• Kreon arms have a thin "bicep" that is the same size as a standard accessory post, enabling c-clip pieces to be attached to them. At first this was mainly used to add ornamental accessories to the Kreons, like smokestacks to Optimus Prime and arm-blasters to Megatron and Starscream, but since then has become a valuable tool in alt-mode construction. Unfortunately, many early Kreons suffer from this arm-clip connections being too loose.
• The wrist part of the arm is the same width at the "cuff" as a standard brick stud. While there are some tolerance issues with earlier sets that can cause stress markings, this enables you to plug bricks onto the Kreon wrists once you remove their hands. Unfortunately, the wrist socket is just a hair too wide to snugly fit an accessory-width post. There are, however, a few different accessories that can be firmly plugged in there, including a blaster, a blade, and a claw. In 2014, the cuff was retooled to be less "soft edged", with sharper angles and a flat 90-degree cut at the cuff socket, making it a better post.
• Each leg has an accessory-post hole on the outer face, largely for use in adding wheel pieces as decoration; later Star Trek sets would use this peg to "holster" phasers and other accessories that have a short peg on the side. The holes for the feet also have a thinner "trench" deeper inside that is accessory-post width.

Almost every Kre-O set comes with at least one Kreon. Sets with large robot/vehicle builds typically include a Kreon version of that character, as well as a human companion.

Among the older fandom, the Kreons were the real highlights of the line. Lucky for them, in the second year of Kre-O Transformers, the line shifted to a heavier focus on Kreon-scaled play, rather than gigantic robot/vehicle builds. Subsequent sets featured Kreon-compatible mini-playsets and vehicles, including a few "army-builder" sets without large-robot builds at all.

In 2013, Hasbro released two Kreon Ultimate Collection packs that each contain five different Kreon characters, all of which have been featured in various previous sets. These Kreons come with nothing but their own weapons. Later that year, Hasbro introduced the Custom Kreons, a line of individually-boxed Kreons that come with numerous extra accessories and body parts, and a buildable "parts rack" to put all the extra stuff on. Many of these pieces are chromed or translucent, and the tampographs a bit more elaborate than previous versions of the characters.

2015 Revision

For the 2015 line and beyond, the Kreon body was extensively retooled; only the head seems to have gone unaltered. Much of the tooling is not immediately noticeable and done for structural stability, but the end result is a major changeup:

• The hands are no longer centered vertically on the wrist-socket, giving them a raised side that can be used as a standard stud like LEGO Minifigures have had since forever and is extremely useful and why wasn't this part of Kreon construction from the beginning aaaarrrrrrrgh. The new wrists have a smaller locking ring than the older ones.
• The waist connection now uses a "peg-in-post" method, with a hollow stud-width post on the waist, and a thin post inside the torso that slides inside. This makes the joined parts much stronger, seemingly in response to the extra weight of the larger Battle Changer builds (see below), but also means you can mount accessories on the waist-post, which can probably be useful in some manner.
• Where the prior torso was designed to attach at the bottom to a normal stud in the center, with notches in the sides to allow for the studs to either side, the new torso now sits centered on two studs, just like LEGO figures have since forever. (Much more useful for "building up" Kreons.)
• The waist is now symmetrical front-to-back, lacking the recessed -ahem- groin and tiny "belt buckle" indent indicating the front of the waist.
• The neck-post is similarly hollow, and can be used as an accessory-mount.
• The arm and leg ball-and-socket joints are smaller than the prior Kreon connections. The sockets also have extra slots cut into them to minimize plastic stressing.
• The problem of items clipped to the biceps having loose, floppy connections has been eliminated completely, if not taken to juuuust a hair too tight a grip.
• The cuffs are even more sharply-defined than the 2014 retooling.
• The soles of the feet now feature a deeper post-hole inside, rather than the shallow trench in the prior build. This makes it a lot easier to plug accessories into the feet (a feature not used often in Transformers kits, but one the later China-only Armor Hero Captor sets would use to interesting effect).

All of these changes make the new-style Kreons almost totally incompatible with the prior four years' Kreon parts. You can swap heads freely, you can put a new lower body onto an older-style Kreon's torso, but not the other way around, and that's about it as far as cross-compatibility goes. On the other hand, the relative scarcity of 2015 Kre-O product, especially in the US, means this might not be an issue for most fans in the first place.

Micro-Changer Kreons

Arcee, a fairly standard robot/car Micro-Changer.

Introduced in 2012, the Micro-Changers sub-line adds a new element to Kreon figures; extra parts allow each figure to "transform" into a vehicle or beast (or whatever) by being taken apart and rebuilt, a feature that takes full advantage of the Kreons' unique construction as described above. These alt-forms are very simple, and none of them have actual rolling wheels or anything, but for the size, it's pretty slick. Cars, tanks, jets, beasts... a lot of variety of form for such tiny builds. These Kreons also have slightly different hands than non-Micro-Changers; these have much straighter wrists, so hand-held wheels aren't all wonky in ground-vehicle mode and such.

The majority of these figures come as blind-bagged individual figures in waves of twelve. Individual code numbers were printed on each bag, so you can get the specific one you want if you have the code/bot listing on-hand, or at least avoid the unintentional purchase of doubles if you don't. By late 2014 however, the bag codes vanished from new runs of these figures -distributed primarily through drug stores and "dollar" stores- apparently due to gambling laws. (No, we don't know how, but that's what Hasbro told us. All blindbagged figures from every toymaker similarly dropped ID codes about then, so yeah, very likely true.)

There are also Micro-Changer Combiners, boxed sets of four Kreons and extra parts that enable them to not only be rebuilt into individual vehicles/beasts/whatevers, but also combine into a larger single robot, a little under the size of a contemporary Deluxe-class Transformer. As most of these sets are based on pre-existing combiner teams with at least five members, the missing fifth (and sometimes sixth) member typically ends up in a concurrent wave of the blindbagged figures. Integrating them into the combined mode is a puzzle for you to figure out on your own.

• For a list of all Micro-Changer Kreons, see Micro-Changer.

Notes

• The first year and change of the line had quite a few tolerance issues with the Kreons, especially the arms. The wrist/cuff connectors often had stress marks right out of the package, and the biceps could oftentimes be just a teeeeeeeny bit too thin, resulting in clip-on guns and such just flopping around. Later runs largely fixed these issues, though you still might wanna exercise caution with the wrist/cuff thing.
• Also, be very careful with certain Kreon helmets, like those belonging to Optimus Prime and Soundwave. These tend to be a little tight on a Kreon head (even moreso on a LEGO Minifigure head), and getting the head out of the helmet can be tricky. The simplest way is to pull the head sideways (so that you're increasing the friction against the neck post) while also pulling up. That should create enough friction to let the helmet pop loose. If that doesn't work try stuffing a thin eraser into the hole in the head, something that will push outward and find purchase without stressing the part.
• In Kre-O's second year, human Kreons were given a new arm type with rounded-off shoulders rather than the blocky-angular ones still employed by the Transformers characters, a design move concurrent with the human-centric Kre-O Battleship line. So far only one Transformer intentionally uses this shoulder type, Nautilator. Your Ironhide may or may not accidentally use this, as there is a red-armed human Construction Worker in the same set, and, well, misassembly errors happen.
• Another jump-over from the Battleship series into Transformers are the arms used by the alien Kreons. So far, this piece has only appeared in the Custom Kreon sets as bonus parts. The wrist/cuff connector has been overhauled, making it a normal hollowed-stud that is easier to use with standard pieces. It also snugly fits both the standard Kreon wrist-accessories and the normal accessory posts. Pity it's all weird techy-organicy-looking and longer than a normal Kreon arm, limiting its usefulness somewhat.
• In 2015, the Kreons had screw-holes added to their waist joints and neck posts, while smaller posts for the waist were added inside the torso, and the arms's and legs's ball-and-socket joints became slightly smaller.

References

1. ↑ Okay, with the introduction of the Cityville line there are monster Kreons too. But so far there's been no fictional crossover between Transformers and Cityville so we're discounting that for now. Carry on.
2. ↑ "Defend the Blocks! Autobots, Dispatch!"
3. ↑ "Bumblebee! The Gentle-Hearted Autobot Warrior"