Animated Review Thread

[onslaught86]

Well, Dom hasn't seen the show, so I doubt he would, as I'm unsure if Snarlag's appeared in the comics yet.

I'm sure there'd have been grumblings over a lack of weapon, mind you.

[Dominic]

ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

BTW Dom, they included the club because he has it in the show. Had he not come with it, I guarantee that you would've complained that the lack of a club was a "Huge strike against the toy" since it didn't match the fictional context.

Would it have killed them to engineer the club to fit on/in the toy? Look at "Classics" Grimlock's sword. It may look awkward clipped to the beast-mode back, but at least it goes somewhere. For nearly 15 years, integrated parts have been more and more common, being all but standard, until the last few years when we again started seeing toys with non-integrated parts.

Dom

[Onslaught Six]

It's not even the last few years, it's Animated exclusively. CD Scattorshot excluded--at least his gun can clip onto him somewhere.

[Misanthrope Prime]

This is probably a product of hasbro's team basing the toys off of ANIMATED designs, rather than the animation being based off the toys. The toys are based off of control art, most likely, and how much you wanna bet the control art did not include the dinobots' weapons. When they found out, they hastily scrambled to include something. All I'm saying is that the reason Animated is so anomalous with its non-integrated parts is because the design system is all fakakte.

[onslaught86]

I don't buy that. Hasbro included the bitchin' birdguitar with Soundwave and managed to have it mount on the vehicle mode's roof, why couldn't Grimlock and Snarlag have their weapons work as flame breath? Grims' package even advertises it, I'm just puzzled as to why they'd not take it all the way.

Now, while I do get annoyed with parts not integrating, I have a bigger pet peeve - significant chunks of alt. modes becoming weapons as part of transformation. Take Cybertron Ransack. Can't transform him without the back coming off to be the gun. That reeks of lazy designwork far more than "Here, have an extra accessory."

[Dominic]

All it would take for Snarl's club to be nicely hidden in beast mode would be a slightly larger and hollowed out tail.

I so not mind weapons becoming integral parts of the alternate mode. As long as the intergral part is not something that is likely to launch off in either form, I am okay with it. (For exampe, Cheetor's tuchus cannon is okay, but Tarantulus' leg missiles or Scorponok's bee missile less so.) But even so, in all of those cases, each part has a place in both modes, making display and storage easier.

Might as well review Soundwave:

TFA Soundwave:
Yet another "Animated" toy that I felt the need to get. The line is growing on me, but I suspect some of this is due to the lack of "Universe" Deluxes.

The bio-note is show accurate, discussing Soundwave's origins on the show and his obsession with sound.

The toy's design is definetely character-centric, as a scion and guitar team is not something that makes inherent sense. Normally, I would be bothered by the relative scale, but in this case it makes sense as Laserbeak is intended to turn into a guitar for Soundwave, not as a human-scale guitar. (Laserbeak's bird/guitar transform is evocative of an old "Silverhawks" toy.)

In both modes, Soundwave has a speaker motif, both in painted and molded detail. Again, this is consistent with the show's character. Of course, this show accuracy comes at a price, namely the toy being ugly to look at. The panels require a bit more fiddling than I would like to do to line them up in vehicle mode.

The obvious recolor for this toy is black, with Laserbeak being replaced as Buzzsaw. And, I have heard rumours of additional instruments for Soundwave.

Grade: B/C

Dom
-is *not* collecting this line.

[Misanthrope Prime]

I don't buy that. Hasbro included the bitchin' birdguitar with Soundwave and managed to have it mount on the vehicle mode's roof, why couldn't Grimlock and Snarlag have their weapons work as flame breath? Grims' package even advertises it, I'm just puzzled as to why they'd not take it all the way.

Now, while I do get annoyed with parts not integrating, I have a bigger pet peeve - significant chunks of alt. modes becoming weapons as part of transformation. Take Cybertron Ransack. Can't transform him without the back coming off to be the gun. That reeks of lazy designwork far more than "Here, have an extra accessory."

They added Laserbeak independantly of the show's team- they didn't know about it, same thing with Oil-Slick. Actually, same thing with Lugnut's mace, they scrambled to get it in on time with Garbage In, Garbage Out. There's a large degree of separation and plenty of communication errors between hasbro and the show. They probably added Laserbeak to Soundwave because, when they got the designs, he lacked some kind of weapon or action feature. I guess, for them, on Grimlock, the biting was enough to warrant a $20 toy, likewise, Snarl's automorphing was enough without the club, and they only added it after they were shown an episode or two, probably. Packaging is made much later in the design cycle than the toy itself, hence why the sword can have a callout.

[CrossRook]

A box came today. From Mechanicsburg PA. Site of HTS's warehouse. In it contained Blitzwing. A quicky review:
-Loose joints, probably just mine.
-Big robot mode
-Teensy tank mode (IRL mass shifting)
Overall I'd say an 8/10. Not perfect but it does a lot of things well.

[JediTricks]

This is probably a product of hasbro's team basing the toys off of ANIMATED designs, rather than the animation being based off the toys. The toys are based off of control art, most likely, and how much you wanna bet the control art did not include the dinobots' weapons. When they found out, they hastily scrambled to include something. All I'm saying is that the reason Animated is so anomalous with its non-integrated parts is because the design system is all fakakte.

Actually, Hasbro said the toy designs come first, and the show is based on those toy designs.

Now, while I do get annoyed with parts not integrating, I have a bigger pet peeve - significant chunks of alt. modes becoming weapons as part of transformation. Take Cybertron Ransack. Can't transform him without the back coming off to be the gun. That reeks of lazy designwork far more than "Here, have an extra accessory."

What about Transmetal Megatron, or a lot of BW figs really? I would say Ransack's not too bad really, you can take that thing off and he's still mostly a bike. It's when the accessory becomes vital to the alt mode that I think it goes too far.

[Misanthrope Prime]

A box came today. From Mechanicsburg PA. Site of HTS's warehouse. In it contained Blitzwing. A quicky review:
-Loose joints, probably just mine.
-Big robot mode
-Teensy tank mode (IRL mass shifting)
Overall I'd say an 8/10. Not perfect but it does a lot of things well.

I've been thinking of doing a large order from HTS, is Blitzwing out or on preorder and you just got him first for some reason?