Hasbro,Thinks kids dont need poseable TF toys.are they right

[Tigermegatron]

Hasbro thinks the much younger kids don't need or desire fully poseable robot Transformers toys. As is the proof with "Rescue Bots", Bot shots & all of those one step flip changers that seems to now be overly dominating the AOE TF 4 toy lines.

Is Hasbro right or wrong? this is the discussion,I am looking for others to discuss in this thread.

My comments: I think young kids these days want to pose the heck out of there newer Transformers toys. Because kids these days still love buying those 3 & 1/3 poseable super hero toys & similar stuff. I can't imagine any kids these days being overly please with the AOE TF4 One step flip changers that have no poseabilty in the legs,head & other key areas on the robot mode.

Granted, I can understand the need to tone down the super complicated TF movie verse toys Transformations. Personally I enjoyed the super easy transformations that the average AOE & TFA toy had.

Why couldn't Hasbro just overly simply the newer TF toys Transformations but leave the super poseable robots modes intact.

Sorry, I just think this removal of super poseable robot modes on TF toys is CRUEL & MAKES NO SENSE. Clearly it's main motivation was to save Hasbro tons of money. As Hasbro loves to cut corners to maximize profits.

I don't get how Hasbro overly praises kids intelligence on one side of the coin. Yet on the otherside of the same coin, Hasbro says kids are not bright enough to transform those super complicated TF toys. Hasbro on one side of the coin no longer wants to mix & match different TF toy lines into a existing newer TF toy line because they say kids are too smart to notice the different toys aesthetics. like putting those Takara TF GO toys in the Generations toy lines as 1980's homage recolors or putting Alternity in the movie verse or generations toy lines. Then on the other side of the same coin, Hasbro blatantly says kids these days are not bright enough to figure out the overly complex movie verse & other TF toy lines complicated toys transformations. Hence the newer simplified transformations in rescue bots, bot shots & the AOE one step flip changers.

[Almighty Unicron]

As a kid, I hated when my figures had limited articulation. More specifically, I hated when my toys were sculpted into poses. I remember getting a Wolverine figure when I was about six or so, realizing that he was permanently molded in a squatting pose, and then took my dad's soldering iron to his knees in an attempt to five him articulation.

[JediTricks]

Kids can be stymied by too much articulation, but this is younger kids, like 6-year-olds. Transformers runs the gamut of ages, the Generations line now focuses on 8 and up. Articulation was king when I was a kid, I loved my GI Joe:ARAH figures far more than their Star Wars 5 POA counterparts because they were more expressive. That said, Transformers need to have clear-cut articulation joints that don't get confounded by transformation joints. But to brand to the 4-year-olds and 6-year-olds, Hasbro is probably right that a simpler figure is more appropriate for little hands with less coordination and simpler play-patterns.

[andersonh1]

We got by with very little articulation when it came to G1 figures, but even as a kid I remember wishing for more. Hot Rod in particular was a figure that could only bend at his elbows, and I always wished he could do more.

[Shockwave]

The seekers were the ones I always thought needed more articulation. And, I also recall thinking that of my Star Wars figures back in the late 70's/early 80's. I was always annoyed that they could only take certain poses and that was it. I honestly think that's why I've liked so many of the modern figures is because they are the toys I wish I they'd made back then. And this was when I was about 4/5. The other thing that contributed to my disappointment, for me at least, is probably the fact that before Star Wars, I was playing with Mego's Star Trek figures. And those things were crazy articulated. So to go from that to SW and He-Man was.... a big ?

[Dominic]

I know one person who likes less articulation on figures. He is a super toyhack though.

As a kid, I hated when my figures had limited articulation. More specifically, I hated when my toys were sculpted into poses. I remember getting a Wolverine figure when I was about six or so, realizing that he was permanently molded in a squatting pose, and then took my dad's soldering iron to his knees in an attempt to five him articulation.

I gotta ask, how did this end? (I would expect.....terribly.)

The more pre-posed a figure is, the better the post has to be.


As much as I liked articulation growing up, I was "trained" not to expect it on anything other than "GI Joe" figures. (For exaple, I was happy with the elbows on Hot Rod. I too those two points of articulation and liked them dammit. I was just glad that the figure itself looked good.) I wanted a Spider-Man figure that I could post like the comics. Similarly, I appreciated PVC figures for looking more like the comics despite not having moving parts.

[BWprowl]

As a kid, I was generally pretty unconcerned with articulation as a standard. I wanted toys that were, you know, cool toys. My general interest in toys came from what they 'did' rather than how much articulation they had or how much they looked like a particular comic character (I loved Spider-Man growing up, but my favorite Spider-Man toy I had was the 'Radioactive Armor' one, which honestly looked more like an Iron Man with a Spider-Man head on it, just because the armor-up gimmick was fun as hell). For this reason, stuff like TF was my inevitable favorite, though I also got a kick out of the TMNT toys with the pop-up heads or the backflipping gimmick (I had a Donatello that couldn't pose for shit, but he could pull a mean cartwheel, loved that toy). Articulation as a 'gimmick' was fine if it was implemented on a toy/character that it made sense for (I pined after that 'Super Posable Spider-Man' figure that was the precursor to Marvel Legends), but it wasn't even close to the primary metric for a toy. I got some GI Joes handed down to me from a cousin, and quickly tired of them because they were 'boring'. Even when I was imagining toylines based on series I liked at the time, I would imagine what 'gimmicks' the toys would have that might be appropriate to the characters and story.

Hell even these days, I'll grab things if I think they have enough amusement value. I just bought 1-Step Changer Drift because I'd heard how fun his butterfly-knife-transformation was, and indeed, I could hardly put the thing down last night.

As for kids today, I can't speak since I know everyone's different, but anecdotally, I know I hear a lot more kids and parents looking at toys in the aisle and asking "What does it do?". Not so many are questioning how articulated the things are.

[Almighty Unicron]

I know one person who likes less articulation on figures. He is a super toyhack though.

As a kid, I hated when my figures had limited articulation. More specifically, I hated when my toys were sculpted into poses. I remember getting a Wolverine figure when I was about six or so, realizing that he was permanently molded in a squatting pose, and then took my dad's soldering iron to his knees in an attempt to five him articulation.

I gotta ask, how did this end? (I would expect.....terribly.)

The more pre-posed a figure is, the better the post has to be.


As much as I liked articulation growing up, I was "trained" not to expect it on anything other than "GI Joe" figures. (For exaple, I was happy with the elbows on Hot Rod. I too those two points of articulation and liked them dammit. I was just glad that the figure itself looked good.) I wanted a Spider-Man figure that I could post like the comics. Similarly, I appreciated PVC figures for looking more like the comics despite not having moving parts.

I'm pretty sure I burned all the way through his leg.