does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Ancillary, non-main-line stuff. Star Wars TF, Speed Stars, Titanium Series, Robot Heroes, that sort of thing. They're kinda neat, but we all know they're not really that important. Admit it, you know it's true.
User avatar
BWprowl
Supreme-Class
Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:15 pm
Location: Shelfwarming, because of Shellforming
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by BWprowl »

Dominic wrote:Yeah, Rachel the tribadial lion was friggin' awesome, if only for the wrong reasons.
Man, like I say every time this comes up and you try to make a big silly deal out of it: it makes perfect sense in the context of the series. The kids just hijack some DNA and effectively temporarily trade out their old body for a new one based on a separate individual. Their choice in morphs has nothing to do with who they are, just whatever's handy at the time. They cross-gender morphed *all the time* in the books and it wasn't a big deal because that's just how it worked out (granted, Rachel never actually morphed a lion in the books, but that's beside the point. Pretty sure her trademark Grizzly and Elephant morphs were male though.) Hell, Tobias once morphed into a human girl.

I liked the toys at the time if for no other reason than because I happened to be super-into the books (still have some fondness for them, I actually went back and finally finished reading the series a couple years ago), so toys of the series were a natural draw. Plus, they were fun, decently-engineered toys, even if they weren't much to look at in Angsty Teen mode (Marco/Gorilla was okay, and I heard Cassie/Wolf was rather good, though I never got it). The Andalite figures were definitely the better of the bunch, though. Hell, even discounting the transformation, Ax made for a really solid, super-posable Andalite toy, the scorpion morph was just kind of a bonus.

In short, they weren't bad if you were a fan of the series, but I can see why anyone else would be turned off by them. Made solid custom fodder though.
Image
User avatar
Gomess
Supreme-Class
Posts: 2767
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:10 am
Location: Eng-er-land

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Gomess »

Tigermegatron wrote:
138 Scourge wrote:About half of Beast Wars' cast must've freaked TigerMegs right out, huh?
I didn't care for the Beastwars season one CGI designs as it reminded me of the claymation.

I liked the CGI designs better for beastwars season 2 & 3.
Scourge was referring to the fact that many of the BW characters' altmodes were the opposite gender to their robot modes. You silly billy.
COME TO TFVIEWS oh you already did
User avatar
Onslaught Six
Supreme-Class
Posts: 7023
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am
Location: In front of my computer.
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Onslaught Six »

Gomess wrote:
Tigermegatron wrote:
138 Scourge wrote:About half of Beast Wars' cast must've freaked TigerMegs right out, huh?
I didn't care for the Beastwars season one CGI designs as it reminded me of the claymation.

I liked the CGI designs better for beastwars season 2 & 3.
Scourge was referring to the fact that many of the BW characters' altmodes were the opposite gender to their robot modes. You silly billy.
Tigatron I'll give you, but "many?" And even Tigatron is based on the fact that he has the same model as Snowstalker or whoever--which was probably done to save costs, not indicate they were the same gender. Surprise! It's BW fans taking things way too fucking far again.
BWprowl wrote:
Dominic wrote:Yeah, Rachel the tribadial lion was friggin' awesome, if only for the wrong reasons.
Man, like I say every time this comes up and you try to make a big silly deal out of it: it makes perfect sense in the context of the series. The kids just hijack some DNA and effectively temporarily trade out their old body for a new one based on a separate individual. Their choice in morphs has nothing to do with who they are, just whatever's handy at the time. They cross-gender morphed *all the time* in the books and it wasn't a big deal because that's just how it worked out (granted, Rachel never actually morphed a lion in the books, but that's beside the point. Pretty sure her trademark Grizzly and Elephant morphs were male though.)
This. A thousand times! It's like, they just grabbed an animal and turned into it. Gender wasn't important. The same with how the Yeerk enemies didn't give a damn if they infiltrated a man or a woman, regardless of their own actual "gender," which I'm not even sure they had. I seem to remember at least one female being in Visser Three's list of hosts.

Dom, do you have something against transgender/transexual people?
Hell, Tobias once morphed into a human girl.
Was that in the main series? I can't remember. I didn't actually get to read most of the main series, and when I did I didn't like it as much because every book was always in the perspective of just one character--I much preferred the spinoffs (like the badass dinosaur one) where they tended to be narrated by all five (six?) of the main cast. Except the ones that weren't.

Oh wait yeah it was in the main series! That one where he met his sister that turned out to be Visser Three. (And it was impossible for him to have a sister because it was totally the dude that gave them the alien powers.)
In short, they weren't bad if you were a fan of the series, but I can see why anyone else would be turned off by them. Made solid custom fodder though.
Who remembers 86's BW Shockwave?
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Image
User avatar
Dominic
Supreme-Class
Posts: 9331
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:55 pm
Location: Boston
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Dominic »

Made solid custom fodder though.
"Custom fodder" is the only nice thing I can say about the toys.

Cassie was a terrible toy, like the rest.

The Tri-Rex was so bad is was.....awful.
Surprise! It's BW fans taking things way too fucking far again.
*sigh*

Inferno and Waspinator are obviously female. (Most of the drone ants we see outside of hives are female. And, Waspinator's scan-target was acting like a female of a sub-species of wasp. The stinger also makes it pretty blatant.)

Depending on how you read animation models, Megatron and Tarantulas are female.

Of course, that did not make them biologically female. And, Tigatron being a sissy-nancy had nothing to do with his beast mode.

So, yeah.....

Dom, do you have something against transgender/transexual people?
No, but I take sophmoric pleasure in the idea of that Rachel/lion toy. Hell, I actually bought one all those years ago.


Dom
-actually managed to forget about Animorphs for a bit.
User avatar
BWprowl
Supreme-Class
Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:15 pm
Location: Shelfwarming, because of Shellforming
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by BWprowl »

Onslaught Six wrote:
Hell, Tobias once morphed into a human girl.
Was that in the main series? I can't remember. I didn't actually get to read most of the main series, and when I did I didn't like it as much because every book was always in the perspective of just one character--I much preferred the spinoffs (like the badass dinosaur one) where they tended to be narrated by all five (six?) of the main cast. Except the ones that weren't.

Oh wait yeah it was in the main series! That one where he met his sister that turned out to be Visser Three. (And it was impossible for him to have a sister because it was totally the dude that gave them the alien powers.)
Technically Visser Three was pretending to be his cousin, but that wasn't the book where it happened anyway. It was the second one with Taylor, the psychotic Yeerk girl with the burns and the bionic arm who tortured Tobias that one time. Tobias got a grab at her DNA, then morphed her in public to A)meet with her about some secret team-up, and B)mess with her head.

Say one thing for the Animorphs toys: a lot of the beast modes were light-years ahead of what BW had put out, in terms of articulation and detailing.
Image
User avatar
Dominic
Supreme-Class
Posts: 9331
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:55 pm
Location: Boston
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Dominic »

No. Just no. Animorphs toys had middling beast modes and terrible kid modes.
User avatar
BWprowl
Supreme-Class
Posts: 4145
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:15 pm
Location: Shelfwarming, because of Shellforming
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by BWprowl »

Dominic wrote:No. Just no. Animorphs toys had middling beast modes and terrible kid modes.
Hey, I'm just saying:

Image

They weren't perfect, but they still beat most of what BW put out.
Image
User avatar
Onslaught Six
Supreme-Class
Posts: 7023
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am
Location: In front of my computer.
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Onslaught Six »

To be fair: The Animorphs toys started hitting in 1999, a good three years after all three of the moulds you posted. Later organic BW altmodes like Torca were already much better; and that's not even bringing up the TM2s.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
Image
User avatar
Dominic
Supreme-Class
Posts: 9331
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:55 pm
Location: Boston
Contact:

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Dominic »

Yeah, and the beast modes on "Animorphs" were far from perfect, and it was all down hill once you started fiddling with them. In contrast, most TFs got better once you got them out of alt mode.


Dom
-figures you might as well buy animal PVC figures.
User avatar
Tigermegatron
Supreme-Class
Posts: 2106
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2011 7:28 am

Re: does anyone love the animorph toys & think their awesome

Post by Tigermegatron »

I actually thought the alien animorph toys were the worse ones. as they didn't look like anything. it seemed kinda easy from a design stand point to create something in toy form like the alien animorphs because they didn't look like anything to begin with.

while i didn't care for the human's that transformed in animorphs toys neither. at the very least the toy designers had to work a but to create animal alt modes that looked like real animals.
Post Reply