not happy with TF of late

[138 Scourge]

I want to write up a longer post that discusses more of what's going on in this thread, but I'll have to do that later. For now, I'll just say I'm hoping New Warpath is the chest armor/weapon/whatever for Defensor. Because it'd be kind of a hilarious mismatch and at the same time it would justify why this guy again.

[andersonh1]

Because they're good episodes worth watching over and over and over and over again.

Just to add to this, there are many times when I have watched an episode of some tv series, or read a book, or read a comic, then put it on the shelf and not come back to it for years. When I do finally put the DVD in, or pick up that book again, I often get something completely different out of the experience and enjoy it in a different way, because I have changed. My perspective is different. Don't think that just because you've read something once, years ago, that you've gotten all you're ever going to out of it.

[Dominic]

Seriously, I really do not understand your logic here. By this standard, why do you even waste your money on anything. Ever? Seriously, if you're just going to be a "once and done" consumer, then why waste your money on owning comics when you could just as easily and for MUCH cheaper check them out from the library?

"Star Trek" stands out because that show was kept on the air by organized campaigns to never let it go off the air. "Keep this show on the air, even though nothing has happened with it for years...."

That always struck me as being out of order.


I might reread something from time to time. But, normally, I am trying to read the stuff I have yet to get to. (My "too read" pile is shamefully high. It is a literal pile.)

Unfavorable new content doesn't (or rather, shouldn't) negate or eliminate previous good content. The thing you enoyed before doesn't go away just because new stuff comes out.

True. I am not a fan of modern DC. But, I still rate stuff like "Crisis on Infinite Earths" or the higher points of Waid's run on "the Flash" highly. But, if I am specifically reading a long-running property, I will be less selective than what I buy and keep. And, if I am done with something, it is often easier to make a clean sweep. (For example, I am done with "Earth 2". As good as the first year or so of that series was, I plan to dispose of the whole run when I pass it along.)

Gears and Jetfire and Warpath aren't fucking up TF; Optimus Prime and fucking Bumblebee are! Why aren't you complaining about the literally DOZEN toys of each released EVERY year for the past EIGHT years?!

Prowl does complain about Optimus and Bumblebee.

[Shockwave]

Seriously, I really do not understand your logic here. By this standard, why do you even waste your money on anything. Ever? Seriously, if you're just going to be a "once and done" consumer, then why waste your money on owning comics when you could just as easily and for MUCH cheaper check them out from the library?

"Star Trek" stands out because that show was kept on the air by organized campaigns to never let it go off the air. "Keep this show on the air, even though nothing has happened with it for years...."

That always struck me as being out of order.

No, see, you got that wrong. People didn't write in to NBC after it was cancelled. People wrote in to KEEP it from getting cancelled. They were basically saying "Don't stop making that thing we like." There's nothing backwards about that. NBC decided to cancel it anyway, but it was kept on air in reruns through syndication because there was obviously still money to be made.

I might reread something from time to time. But, normally, I am trying to read the stuff I have yet to get to. (My "too read" pile is shamefully high. It is a literal pile.)

This still doesn't answer the question. Your Star Wars comment is the one example that's probably the best one to address here because that's what stikes me as being out of order. Or at least illogical. At one point, you liked SW. You even had figures of characters you liked. Then, just because nothing new struck your fancy you got rid of everything that you liked before? I mean, I'm no fan of the prequels, but I'm not about to throw out my AT-AT and my imperial Snowtroopers and what have you just because they're from something that came before. I still like the original trilogy and nothing is ever going to change that. And I'll still enjoy the toys I have representing that. So I guess the concept of just completely walking away from a fandom/franchise just seems... I guess I just don't understand how something new can make you stop liking something you did like before to the point that you'd want nothing to do with it anymore.

Unfavorable new content doesn't (or rather, shouldn't) negate or eliminate previous good content. The thing you enoyed before doesn't go away just because new stuff comes out.

True. I am not a fan of modern DC. But, I still rate stuff like "Crisis on Infinite Earths" or the higher points of Waid's run on "the Flash" highly. But, if I am specifically reading a long-running property, I will be less selective than what I buy and keep. And, if I am done with something, it is often easier to make a clean sweep. (For example, I am done with "Earth 2". As good as the first year or so of that series was, I plan to dispose of the whole run when I pass it along.)

So then this again begs the question that if your consumerism is so temporary, why buy anything? There are certainly WAY cheaper alternatives that are also less time consuming when it comes time to eventually get rid of said things. DVDs can be rented. You watch them once and take them back. It's cheaper than buying one (usually) and then you don't have the hassle of finding someone to resell it to. Same with comic books. Anderson frequently posts on here about checking out comics and graphic novels from his library. Here in CA, checking something out from a library is free and again, you don't have to find the right comics fan to resell it to when you're done. Or take it back to the store for half credit or something like that. It just seems like you're doing an awful lot of work and spending an awful lot of money for something you're not even guaranteed to like that you're just going to get rid of anyway.

[BWprowl]

The Combiners are terrible. I agree with JT about the exposed combination plugs on the jets. Would it have killed Hasbro to cover those up? (G1 Slingshot had a fold-down chest plate that could have been duplicated on the modern figures.)

Well, folded-down pegs on the chests have always been part of the *look* of the classic Combiners. Slingshot is, I think, the only one with a plate like that, and he’s notably the one Aerialbot not getting a new toy. I don’t see how they’re so offensive, TFs always have folded-around bits and kibble and parts on them, it’s a key part of the ‘look’ of those robots, and when they’re folded down like that, they just look like techy transform-y details anyway. A plastic plate folded up would look just as incongruous as a plastic peg folded down.

No, I can and I will. Hasbro delivered on that for nearly a decade before cutting back. They set the standard, they need to live up to it.

They really didn’t though. TF articulation has, by necessity, always been pretty varied across the board. We’ve always gotten some TFs with some articulation points, and others without. God, ROTF Leader Prime, one of the most intricately-engineered TFs of all time, doesn’t have wrist joints. He’s no lesser because of it.

Warpath: The 2011 figure is going to be hard to beat. It has room for improvement (maybe articulated wrists and such). But, it will be hard to beat. (Which is why I almost want to see Hasbro try.) And, like O6 pointed out, there is call to have all of the 84-86 Minibots in one scale.

Jetfire: The 2006 figure has plenty of flaws to be improved on. The helmet is clunky. The figure is stiff and can only be stably posed so many ways. The jet has blocky under-carriage. I do not hate the mould. But, it really could be better. And, I want a better Jetfire figure. The problem with the 2014 figure is that it is arguably a downgrade.

Would you be happy with anything though, really? The fact that you even have complaints or see ‘room for improvement’ in a figure like Warpath makes me wonder, even if Hasbro did put out a newer one with articulated wrists, would you then just find some other ‘shortcoming’ to fixate on and demand that they make ANOTHER new one to fix that problem? Then repeat the process when the next one came out?

Literally nothing can ever be 100% perfect. Hasbro managed a ‘damn good’ with Warpath, and I don’t see why they need to expend time, money, resources, and effort trying to replace it so soon. It’s a waste. They feel the need to get a Warpath with articulated wrists out there? Then just *retool the existing Warpath to have wrists and re-release it*. At least that way they don’t waste all this time engineering a new figure for a guy who doesn’t need one, and never will again.

What is wrong with main characters? There is a reason people tend to like them, specifically the main character doing the important stuff.

It’s just like…they’re always *there*, you know? I gain absolutely nothing from a story by fixating and developing a fondness for one of the main characters, since they will always BE the main characters and they’re going to be there, being important and driving the story regardless of why I’m there or not. They ARE the story itself, rather than a particular, specific component that I can enjoy by themselves.

Like, I read a lot of Manga, right? They do character-popularity contests regularly and publish the results, and every time I’m like “Of the bajillionty people who read Bleach, the majority of them liked Ichigo and Rukia the best? Really? Of the hundreds of unique and interesting and particular characters in this series, you like the two who are around all the time, who are just the main, stock, anchor characters around which the story and other characters (the ones who actually make it interesting) orbit? Who does that?

The number of fictional series where the ‘main’ characters were my favorites are very few, and generally depends on the main characters being truly exceptional and outstanding.

The franchise has gone a year without really flooring me. And, before that, it was much more hit or miss than it should have been. I am only going to look back at old stuff so much. The UK comics are functionally "new" to me because I have not read most of them. But, after I finish up with those, Hasbro and IDW need to start impressing me in the present tense.

This is one point where being a toy-focused guy has the advantage. It’s practically impossible to buy every single TF toy ever made, but I can damn try for as long as I’m a fan (which as we’ve established, will basically be forever). Reading every single TF comic has…a lot more plausibility to it.

Years ago, (decades actually), I promised myself something. I would never be the backwards looking fan. I never got the appeal of it, and (truth be told), always thought it was kind of sad. ("Sad" as in "pathetic", not "sad" as in "wallowing in despair".) When I was a kid, I gave up on "Star Wars" when new stuff stopped coming out. I went back to it, but gave up again when it stopped impressing me.

I never understood "Star Trek" fans who watched the same episodes over and over and over and over and over. I do not understand comics fans that are stuck on runs from 20+ years ago. I can see the value of Michelinie's run on "Iron Man". But, I cannot see never moving on from it. (Been there, read it. What else have they got for me?)

How many times have you re-read “Man of Iron”? How many times have you PAID MONEY for “Man of Iron”, in one form or another?

Anyway. It was nice a few years ago when we were getting new updated figures that had good articulation of characters we hadn't seen a bajillion times, like skullgrin and Straxus and... um... that other guy... Thunderwing. And I think we even got a few new guys. Who was the Thunderwing repaint? That guy I'm pretty sure was new.

That was Black Shadow, the guy G1 Thunderwing was remolded into and released in Japan during Victory, so no, he wasn’t new. Though it WAS the first time the character had gotten a toy released in the West, so. (Hasbro’s been kinda cool about doing this sort of thing these days. It’s insane to think that we get new toys of SOUNDBLASTER on the reg.)

Nothing! The only real problem with Generations Warpath is that it's a Deluxe toy of a character traditionally portrayed as being small. You can make arguments that a tiny tank makes about as much sense as a tiny Volkswagen but it is what it is. It seems Hasbro is very much trying to complete the Minibot lineup in the Legends scale, and to do literally every other Minibot except Warpath would be weird...and the amount of people going "When are we getting Legends Warpath?" Will likely outweigh the amount of people going, "Ugh, Warpath again?"

But that’s my point, when does it stop? Are we really expected to believe that once all the Mini-Bots are out in this New Legends scale, they’ll finally be ‘done’ remaking dudes and we’ll be able to move on? Because the track record says no, they’ll retool things again and start over and we’ll be doing this *again*. Like, they already half-assed the Huffer for the line, so now people’ll be whining for a ‘proper’ Huffer (why, I dunno. Who actually gives a fuck about Huffer?), so they’ll get around to making one in the next iteration at whatever its equivalent scale is, and then people’ll want to rest of the Mini-Bots to go with HIM, and we’ll start all over again and get ANOTHER new Warpath, new Cosmos, etc. Jesus, can’t they at least invent some new ‘small’ characters with unique gimmicks and altmodes and throw them in there as long as they’re doing this?

And here's something else. Like, okay, you like MovieScream. You've professed this many times, and basically no matter how many times or in how many different scales and designs Hasbro makes one in, you will buy it. Like, that's just a given. The same way Scourge will buy literally any Grimlock or Shocktrek will buy literally any Shockwave or I'll buy pretty much any Onslaught (if it fits my narrow scope of what Onslaught should be, naturally) or 86 will buy literally any Prime, even that shitty Voyager up scaled from a Commander mould. For us, those characters or designs capture us in a way that others don't, and we will gladly and stupidly buy Another MovieScream or Another Grimlock.

Well, what about that guy who really likes Warpath? You can have your huge MovieScream shrine but WarpathBamKaboom69 has to deal with only getting three or four toys of his favourite character? GearsHead85 has to settle for the handful of Gears toys released in the last 30 years?

Here’s the several things: My enjoyment of buying lots of MovieScream toys has a lot to do with the fact that there ARE a lot of MovieScream toys. He’s a Movie character, and one of the Big Four (Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream) so that’s just a thing that’s going to happen. The fact that a character I ended up really liking (admittedly mostly because of one really good comic mini-series, plus he has a cool design) ended up being one to get a shitload of different toys was a happy situation for me. But I never ASKED for all those MovieScreams to be made. I didn’t get Leader Starscream and go “Uuuugh this toy is really awesome but it’s not perfect therefore it sucks Hasbro make a new one for me!”. I would’ve been perfectly happy had that just been the last or even only MovieScream toy ever made! I can be perfectly happy knowing that we’re probably never getting any new MovieScream toys ever again! (there WAS going to be a lil’ Construct-Bots version in the AoE line, but it’s looking like that one may not come out). Getting them is fun, yeah, but we sure as hell don’t need any more.

And a lot of those MovieScream toys exist for particular novelties, rather than being straight-up remade Starscream action figures. There’s the kids’ meal toy, the Robot Replica, the clicky little Activator, the RPM with all the pop-out weapons, that sort of stuff. If that were this case, we were just getting Kre-O Warpath or 1-Step Changer Warpath or something fun like that, fine. Hell yeah all the Warpath fans (wherever they may be) should be able to get that sort of stuff. But why do we need to keep revising and updating and taking the time to replace what everyone seemed to agree was a pretty terrific toy?

What does the guy who designed Generations Warpath think of this? (I really do wonder about this. If I put a lot of my time and effort into designing a damn-near-perfect Warpath like the Generations version, and then my bosses turned around just a couple years later and went “Nope, that one sucks now, make a new one!” I’d probably be a little put out.)

Gears and Jetfire and Warpath aren't fucking up TF; Optimus Prime and fucking Bumblebee are! Why aren't you complaining about the literally DOZEN toys of each released EVERY year for the past EIGHT years?!

I do think the overabundance of Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, and Starscream are the ‘root’ of this problem I have with TF, and I have touched on that before. Part of it is that I’ve just had to finally accept it after being bombarded with it for so long. The fact that TF is being run as such is a HUGE problem, but the fact remains that you can’t complain about a Batman toyline having too many Batmans in it. I’d love to see us get away from that eventually, believe me, but one step at a time, and the first step is easing off of making so many of one-note douchenozzles like Warpath and Cosmos. You can make an argument for so many Optimus Prime toys because Optimus Prime Is Important. It’s a fallacy to say someone like, I dunno, Springer, is on that level.

Also, as you said, we haven't even seen the new Warpath yet. It's entirely possible that he's an example of Retool Released First, which is becoming increasingly common. It's possible Warpath is a half-assed repaint/remould of a different tank guy, released first because Warpath is more likely to sell just because he's Warpath. We dunno yet.

I will admit, if we get a decent new Treadshot or Gutcruncher or Armorhide or Demolishor or BRAND NEW GUY out of this deal, I’ll likely complain less.

[Shockwave]

As for Warpath, I think it's kind of hard to compare legends and deluxe figures because they're different scales and have a different appeal. I for example essentially have two separate TF collections, one in each scale. The deluxe/voyager/ultra/etc... "full size" scale vs. the much smaller legends scale. So for me, the upcoming Warpath is essentially replacing the legends figure from ~5 years ago. Which was so impossible to find that it still goes for through the roof money on ebay. And that's another thing to consider, availability. The last legends Warpath was so unavailable that Hasbro should either reissue the last or give us a new one. So for me, the new one isn't going to replace the deluxe one. Case in point: I have Generations Metroplex. I will not be putting my Generations Warpath on Metroplex in city mode. I would put a legends scale one if I had one, if I'd ever been able to get one. Also, getting this new legends Warpath doesn't suddenly make me hate the Generations one.

So maybe WP isn't the best example of what Prowl is talking about, buuuuuuuuut... it happens often enough with enough other figures that even I am starting to see the problem he's talking about. Again, figures like Jetfire are really the perfect stand out example. God knows I really wanted to want that figure. But, seeing that it's an inferior product to it's predecessor just makes me wonder why they bothered. As Prowl says, we could have had a new character instead and that would have been much more exciting.

[Dominic]

Your Star Wars comment is the one example that's probably the best one to address here because that's what stikes me as being out of order. Or at least illogical. At one point, you liked SW. You even had figures of characters you liked. Then, just because nothing new struck your fancy you got rid of everything that you liked before?

As far as the toys go, you woefully underestimate how many I had and how poorly organized they were. The less interested I was, the less I wanted to keep them. The less I wanted to keep, the less I wanted to sort them. The less I wanted to sort them, the longer I waited. The longer I waited, the more my interest decreased. By 2010, I was ready to be done with all of them.


I do keep some stuff. (I am not a fan of DC in general at the moment. But, I have plenty of DC comics in my collection.) But, it is a question of percentages.

If I am a fan of a property, the property has to have a favourable "win:loss" ratio, weighted towards more recent stuff. The lower that ratio goes, the less interested I am in the property. (Look at "Earth 2". A year and a half ago, it was topping my pull list. But, after about a year of deterioration, my interest dropped enough that I was not going to read it any more. And, it is not likely to impress me ever again. Hence, I no longer care about it.)

Once I am done with a property, I keep the parts of it I like. But, that has to hold up in a given category (comics, movies, whatever). "Good enough for Star Wars" is not the same as "good enough for my comics". In the case of SW, the good stuff was scattered across multiple compilations, and mixed with stuff that I was less interested in. For the sake of space, I chucked all of it.

I will probably do a similar purge with TF (though most of the compilations are more even than the SW stuff).

Well, folded-down pegs on the chests have always been part of the *look* of the classic Combiners. Slingshot is, I think, the only one with a plate like that, and he’s notably the one Aerialbot not getting a new toy. I don’t see how they’re so offensive, TFs always have folded-around bits and kibble and parts on them, it’s a key part of the ‘look’ of those robots, and when they’re folded down like that, they just look like techy transform-y details anyway. A plastic plate folded up would look just as incongruous as a plastic peg folded down.

Precedent for bad design is not an excuse. There is an easy fix. Hasbro did not take it.

They feel the need to get a Warpath with articulated wrists out there? Then just *retool the existing Warpath to have wrists and re-release it*. At least that way they don’t waste all this time engineering a new figure for a guy who doesn’t need one, and never will again.

At this point, releasing a toy from 5 years ago would probably make current Hasbro product look bad. So, they might not want to do that.

It’s just like…they’re always *there*, you know? I gain absolutely nothing from a story by fixating and developing a fondness for one of the main characters, since they will always BE the main characters and they’re going to be there, being important and driving the story regardless of why I’m there or not. They ARE the story itself, rather than a particular, specific component that I can enjoy by themselves.

That is kind of the point of the main characters though. They are the thing that is important, (or they represent the thing that is important).

I used to like some of the tertiary SW stuff. But, I would never argue that ARC Trooper Alpha was even close to as important as Darth Vader. (And, much of Alpha's importance would be in the fact that he was likely meant to be Commander Cody at the draft level. Interesting minutia, but not terribly important.)

Like, they already half-assed the Huffer for the line, so now people’ll be whining for a ‘proper’ Huffer (why, I dunno. Who actually gives a fuck about Huffer?),

This from the guy who wants more obscure characters to get a push?

I can see the appeal of getting modern toys based on old designs. (Shrapnel/Skrapnel is a good example.) And, by extension, I can see the appeal of getting the 84-86 Minicars to a modern standard. Stuff like Huffer kills that appeal. (And, by extension, makes me less likely to buy stuff like Cliffjumper. I *might* buy Windcharger just for joke value. But, even then, there are plenty more Minicars that I will skip now that I am no longer in for a complete set.)

If that were this case, we were just getting Kre-O Warpath or 1-Step Changer Warpath or something fun like that, fine. Hell yeah all the Warpath fans (wherever they may be) should be able to get that sort of stuff. But why do we need to keep revising and updating and taking the time to replace what everyone seemed to agree was a pretty terrific toy?

Because those are all piss-poor options for somebody who just wants a good toy of a character they like.

Think of it this way. The Marvel "Hero Mashers" line includes Iron Man wearing the armour from "Believe" (one of my favourite parts of one of my favourite runs of comics in decades). I cannot bring myself to be terribly excited by it because it is not a very good toy.

What does the guy who designed Generations Warpath think of this? (I really do wonder about this. If I put a lot of my time and effort into designing a damn-near-perfect Warpath like the Generations version, and then my bosses turned around just a couple years later and went “Nope, that one sucks now, make a new one!” I’d probably be a little put out.)

He probably understands that Hasbro wants to make another toy of a popular character and gets on with his life, possibly designing a new figure of another popular character.

Reading every single TF comic has…a lot more plausibility to it.

And, even so, getting every piece of content stopped appealing about a decade ago. After IDW got the license, and there was consistent content available, there was less incentive to track down international content. Japanese stuff does not much appeal to begin with. (I have seen/read enough of it to know that the execution is going to annoy me, particularly with the comics.) But, by '05, there were three US vectors for content (IDW, the cartoon and Fun Publications, along with the packaging). That was more than enough.

How many times have you re-read “Man of Iron”? How many times have you PAID MONEY for “Man of Iron”, in one form or another?

"Man of Iron" is not good TF comics. It is good *comics*. In terms of buying it.... Lessee....,

-once as a kid (maybe once or twice more to replace damaged copies and/or to ensure I had a back-up).
-an original British copy (albeit in terrible condition).
-one of the themed Titan reprint volumes has it (I think?).
-IDW G1 reprint.
-IDW UK G1.

Most of those are compilations where I had to get it to get other content. (Which hardly bothered me, as I try to get consistent and/or best formats.)

[Shockwave]

Your Star Wars comment is the one example that's probably the best one to address here because that's what stikes me as being out of order. Or at least illogical. At one point, you liked SW. You even had figures of characters you liked. Then, just because nothing new struck your fancy you got rid of everything that you liked before?

As far as the toys go, you woefully underestimate how many I had and how poorly organized they were. The less interested I was, the less I wanted to keep them. The less I wanted to keep, the less I wanted to sort them. The less I wanted to sort them, the longer I waited. The longer I waited, the more my interest decreased. By 2010, I was ready to be done with all of them.

Or maybe we're just different types of collectors. I guess the follow up question to this would be that, in the end, those figures represented characters that you liked (or at least liked enough to spend money on), so why would you stop liking them just because new content sucks? I currently have a pretty sizeable SW collection. Some of it does include figures of characters I don't care about, mostly new trilogy stuff. If I were going to purge, I would not want to purge the figures of old trilogy stuff because my dislike of the new trilogy does not negate my like for the original trilogy. Same with dvds. Sometimes I just feel like watching Star Wars, so I pop in the dvds. That desire to go back and enjoy again something I enjoyed before doesn't mean that I'm stuck in the past or can't move on to other parts of a franchise (to use an example of this from SW, I am currently enjoying Rebels).

I get the need to purge sometimes. For all intents and purposes, I am mostly out of MOTU at this point. I have three figures and I only get the comics because I am at the comic shop to get TF comics anyway. Otherwise I would not be bothered. Most of the figures I'd want to own are so cost prohibitive that unless I get a massive pay raise or win the lottery, I'm out. That doesn't mean that I don't still like to go back and watch the cartoons though. I can still enjoy what I did even if my enjoyment of the franchise as a whole in minimal.

I do keep some stuff. (I am not a fan of DC in general at the moment. But, I have plenty of DC comics in my collection.) But, it is a question of percentages.

But, you are still paying owning money up front for stuff that you don't know if you will like. Would it still not be better to read it first and then buy it if you like it enough to go back to it again? I can't help but think that you would have WAY more available space if you did. In my case, I buy TF comics because I know that even if they are bad, I will go back and read them again. I have read IDW's Beast Wars comics more than once and will probably read them again at some point. And most of us here almost unanimously agree that they are the worst IDW has offered in their TF comics. I will buy other comics if it's a property that I know I will enjoy on the same level as Transformers. But, those titles are far and few between. I think movies/tv are probably better examples of this because you can go see a movie once and know whether or not you'd want to watch it again, or enough times to own it. I rented the Lego Movie on cable about 4 months ago. In that one 2 day period I had watched it like, 4 times. Since it's been on HBO, that number is considerably higher. So I know I should just own because my desire to watch it over and over again means that I'm going to get good use out of the dvd. But, that's still a try before you buy system. It allows me to know that I'll want and use something before I buy it. With comics, I'll usually read a portion of it in the store and then buy it if I decide I like it enough to finish reading the rest of it. An example from toys would be Leader Jetfire. Online pics made it something I was interested in, but seeing it in store killed that interest. That's $45 I now have to spend on something else.

I dunno. I guess I just see you with such a high volume of comic titles that you get every month only to have you then turn around and complain about their quality on one level or another and I can't help thinking that it's a lot of money that you're shelling out retail money for something that you're getting so little enjoyment out of, even the first time around, not to mention continued enjoyment later on. It just seems like you could save a lot of money and time and space by switching to some kind of system where you would know in advance if you like something enough to keep rather than buy and resell.

If I am a fan of a property, the property has to have a favourable "win:loss" ratio, weighted towards more recent stuff. The lower that ratio goes, the less interested I am in the property. (Look at "Earth 2". A year and a half ago, it was topping my pull list. But, after about a year of deterioration, my interest dropped enough that I was not going to read it any more. And, it is not likely to impress me ever again. Hence, I no longer care about it.)

Why does new stuff have more wheight? Star Wars is Star Wars. It's either going to kick ass or it's going to suck. previous stuff will either have kicked ass or it will have sucked. But in the end it's all part of the same franchise and something new shouldn't carry any more wheight than something old. It should be based on quality, not age.

[Onslaught Six]

No, see, you got that wrong. People didn't write in to NBC after it was cancelled. People wrote in to KEEP it from getting cancelled. They were basically saying "Don't stop making that thing we like." There's nothing backwards about that. NBC decided to cancel it anyway, but it was kept on air in reruns through syndication because there was obviously still money to be made.

To the point that, when literally no networks wanted to pick up the first season of TNG, Paramount went straight to syndication and said, "The only way you can get TOS reruns is to buy the new TNG show, too, and fuck you if you don't like it." And that worked! Imagine the fucking balls on them to say that; imagine ANYBODY doing that kind of thing in today's TV environment. It's unthinkable.

Slingshot is, I think, the only one with a plate like that

Brawl also sorta has it going on.

God, ROTF Leader Prime, one of the most intricately-engineered TFs of all time, doesn’t have wrist joints. He’s no lesser because of it.

The fuck you talking about? He absolutely does. I literally just got up and checked, too, and I am shocked that no one else has called you on that shit yet.

Hey, did you get my package yet?

Hasbro managed a ‘damn good’ with Warpath, and I don’t see why they need to expend time, money, resources, and effort trying to replace it so soon. It’s a waste. They feel the need to get a Warpath with articulated wrists out there? Then just *retool the existing Warpath to have wrists and re-release it*. At least that way they don’t waste all this time engineering a new figure for a guy who doesn’t need one, and never will again.

I MUST reiterate the issue of scale, especially in Warpath's case. The new Warpath is a Legends dude, he's gonna be so small that I think it might be impossible to get wrists on him properly. This isn't, "Here's a new Warpath to replace your other one!" it's "Here's a tiny Warpath if you didn't like the big one!" Which, I can see! The only reason I even own Warpath in the first place is because I bought the entire fucking revision case at the time because it also had Thundercracker and Wheeljack, and it was only slightly more expensive than buying each individually from BBTS. If I had found all three on a peg somewhere, I would likely have just bought Thundy and Wheeljack, because if you asked me in 2011 if I wanted a Legends or a Deluxe Warpath, I would have said Legends. (All that being said, I love Generations Warpath and will likely not be buying the new one, even if I understand its usefulness, mostly because I already have a variety of Minibots in different scales and thus, trying to make them uniform is an exercise in futility.)

The number of fictional series where the ‘main’ characters were my favorites are very few, and generally depends on the main characters being truly exceptional and outstanding.

My favourite DBZ character is Tien. I feel like that says a lot about me. "I like that big weird looking dude who never really does anything important." Shit, man.

What does the guy who designed Generations Warpath think of this? (I really do wonder about this. If I put a lot of my time and effort into designing a damn-near-perfect Warpath like the Generations version, and then my bosses turned around just a couple years later and went “Nope, that one sucks now, make a new one!” I’d probably be a little put out.)

Except I don't think anyone ever said, "This one sucks now, make a new one!" for Warpath in particular. I really think the focus on him right now is a moot point, since the scale differential is so different that they might as well be different things. Tiny Warpath and Regular Warpath fit into different markets--there's people who want a Tiny Warpath and even if Regular Warpath is absolutely 100% perfect, it will never be what they want. On the other hand, there are people who are ambivalent about the size of their Warpath toys, or people who are ambivalent about Warpath as a character in general, and this last toy is fine for them. Or there's people who want a toy of Warpath but don't want to spend the time, money and effort to track down a 2011 example. (You could argue that they could just rerelease or repaint 2011 Deluxe Warpath in that case, but that will only serve that specific market. It won't serve Warpath enthusiasts, people who want tiny Minibots, or people who had a problem with 2011 toy for some reason.)

Think of it this way. The Marvel "Hero Mashers" line includes Iron Man wearing the armour from "Believe" (one of my favourite parts of one of my favourite runs of comics in decades). I cannot bring myself to be terribly excited by it because it is not a very good toy.

Boom. Throughout the several recent Spiderman toylines in the last couple years (and there have been many) there have been a LOT of Ben Reily Spiderman outfit toys. Not the red suit/blue hoodie version, but the actual Spiderman outfit one, with the external webshooters and the half-and-half legs and shit. The problem with these toys is that they are almost exclusively in the shitty Spiderman lines which charge $7-10 for 5 POA figures. I am not buying a 5 POA Spiderman toy for $10, Ben Reily be damned.

I dunno. I guess I just see you with such a high volume of comic titles that you get every month only to have you then turn around and complain about their quality on one level or another and I can't help thinking that it's a lot of money that you're shelling out retail money for something that you're getting so little enjoyment out of, even the first time around, not to mention continued enjoyment later on. It just seems like you could save a lot of money and time and space by switching to some kind of system where you would know in advance if you like something enough to keep rather than buy and resell.

I have seen Dom repeatedly buy comics that he knows will be terrible well in advance enough to wonder if he legitimately has a problem. "This is a new book where Rob Liefeld is doing the artwork. I hate Rob Liefeld. This is why I bought it." [/example] I think part of it is that Dom likes to participate in discussion of current (comic) events. He literally *has* to read Age of Ultron, or the new Secret Wars, or whatever idiotic crossover event thing Marvel is pushing this summer, because it has ramifications on the larger universe and on the current state of comics, even if he knows well in advance that it'll suck and be vapid and have nothing to say and that anything that happens is going to get erased in a year or two and "some stuff happens, it isn't important, [writer] is just moving pieces around, blah blah blah. Grade: D" (Almost verbatim a Dom comic event review.)

Now, someone like me or you or Prowl for example, we are perfectly content to literally ignore whatever is happening "over there" and remain blissfully unaware of it. We read the comics we read and that's about it. I have a friend who every few weeks, we call and talk about stuff and he ends up bringing up whatever is happening in the mainstream comics; my response is 90% of the time "That's fucking stupid and I'm glad I'm not paying money for it." (His response is, "Oh, I'm not either, I pirated it." Which gleefully solves most of that problem, but Dom can't into digital comics and doesn't like reading at a computer or tablet, so it is what it is.)

Also keep in mind that none of the above should be perceived as an attack. More like an observation. (I can also recognize that, on some level, Dom enjoys watching a trainwreck. I just wonder how long you can watch a trainwreck before it stops being fun and starts being horrific.)

[Dominic]

But, you are still paying owning money up front for stuff that you don't know if you will like.

That is generally how it works. You buy something and read it.

I flip through comics a bit. But, the more I flop through them, the more likely I am to end up buying them.

I have read IDW's Beast Wars comics more than once and will probably read them again at some point. And most of us here almost unanimously agree that they are the worst IDW has offered in their TF comics. I will buy other comics if it's a property that I know I will enjoy on the same level as Transformers.

I never understood this. Those BW comics sucked. I read them once and flipped through them to make sure they were that bad. Then, I purged 'em about 5 years back. (That said, "Beast Wars" beats anything Scioli has ever done.)

But, being a "Transformers" comic does not mitigate it being bad.

Why does new stuff have more wheight?

Because it is the stuff I would be buying/reading now. Why keep buying something just because it was good?

He literally *has* to read Age of Ultron, or the new Secret Wars, or whatever idiotic crossover event thing Marvel is pushing this summer, because it has ramifications on the larger universe and on the current state of comics, even if he knows well in advance that it'll suck and be vapid and have nothing to say and that anything that happens is going to get erased in a year or two and "some stuff happens, it isn't important, [writer] is just moving pieces around, blah blah blah. Grade: D" (Almost verbatim a Dom comic event review.)

Pretty much.

"Age of Ultron" has turned out to be pretty important in terms of Marvel's over-all direction. (It leads directly into the current run of "New Avengers", which I am pretty well over the moon about.) "Secret Wars" might actually be....good. Marvel's whole schtick for the last year has been "Doing what DC does, but better". The closest thing I can think of to a failure on that front is "Spider-Verse". And, that is still more readable than most of what DC is publishing and is thematically consistent (if a bit redundant in places). Of course, given the type of comics "Spider-Verse" is riffing on, it can only be so good.

And, sometimes, as is the case with Gillen's "Iron Man", I find something truly good.