TF:P's main launch has made no sense

[Dominic]

If that were true, what happened during G2 that led to the drought leading up to BW?

The early 90s were a time of great change for the toy industry as a whole. Remember, capes and tights were in, and most everything else (especially what Hasbro happened to specialize in), aside from Hot Wheels, was out.

G2's primary media support was comics, which (as we all know) were going through their second implosion in less than a decade. The G2 cartoon was an absolute failure as media support. Even putting aside the choppy/sloppy re-editing, there was little correspondence between which characters were on shelves and on the show. (And, even if a kid found a toy of their favourite character, it was probably the wrong colour.)

"Beast Machines", as we have discussed, suffered for the best toys not being based on show characters and the toys based on show characters being some of the worst toys.

so it seems like right now all they have is their market dominance based on brand recognition from the heritage and recent entertainment, if they lose that momentum AND the industry continues the downturn that it's currently on, what's to stop the line from imploding the way it did during G2 aside from Hasbro's desire to make money off it as licensed material?

This I do agree with. But, the real problem is that Hasbro is getting sloppy. This is a case study in "moral hazard", (folly caused by confidence that there will be no real consequence for bad behavior).

And, the downside to brand recognition is that if something goes wrong, the perception damage can linger for *years*.

It saddens me to think of future generations not having dozens, hundreds even of unique characters from a brand - having a ton of Star Wars or GI Joe guys to guide imaginative play.

Keep in mind, when we were kids, people bemoaned the fact that the popular toy lines had that many specific characters. ("Bawwwww, the toy companies are telling you how to play!") Kids will come up with stuff. As a kid, I, like most kids, adapted to what I had on hand. (Large scale air battles were out of the question for my Joes because I did not have many air craft. My Joes never managed to storm the Terror Drome, because I did not have it. But, there were many open air battles on the wind swept plateau that was the living room couch. That couch also doubled as an energon refinery when I played with my TFs.)

Modern toy lines are generally designed to encourage what is commonly called a play pattern. (This basically means "how a kid is likely to play with the toy and how playing with one toy will encourage a kid to seek more toys".)

Of course, this all falls apart when a kid cannot find the damned toys. The Vehicon character bio lends itself to kids getting multiple and even naming them. But, if the kid cannot find a single Vehicon, then they cannot get in to the hobby as much as an adult collector already is.

And, if adult collectors cannot get the toys, then....well, that is why we are having this conversation isn't it?

Hasbro has helped me greatly in saving money these last few years. One of the reasons I skipped so many Joes is that I could not find anything from after the movie reliably. The Marvel figures are badly distributed, and often not worth hunting for.

And, even if I were not trying to cut back on toys this year, the cancellation of the First Edition figures may have been enough to push me away.

Plus, I was trying to give it a chance when folks were telling me it's better,

Read Costa's run of comics and Barber's current run.


Dom
-and, maybe tomorrow's children will be saving their money.

[JediTricks]

and, maybe tomorrow's children will be saving their money.

But at the costs of their imaginations.

[Dominic]

No.

You are wrong.

But at the costs of their imaginations.

Children's imaginations did not kick start in the late 70s.

Kids had imaginations and played before packaged action figures.

Look, I like action figures as much as anybody else here. (Remember how made I got about tail end "Cybertron" figures being hard to find? How giddy was I about PCC? I am trying to make a game based on it for the love of Primus!) I have a Minicon in my backpack right now. It rides in my insulin kit, just in case I need to fiddle with something to clear my head!

But, as much as I love action figures, they are not vital to imagination and creativity. Kids are *very* adept at playing. There used to be a little girl that lived down stairs from me. She had toys in her room that she would play with only grudgingly, when she *had* to be inside. She found ways to amuse herself (and often adults who were lucky enough to know her). She was a smart and creative little thing.

I know a little boy who does not seem to have much interest in action figures. But, he loves wrestling. He is truly happy jumping around in a wrestling ring like a pint sized lunatic. He is pretending/imagining to be a wrestler. (I will let you all ponder the question of "pretending to be actor playing a role".)

Is Hasbro's failure to distribute toys going to hurt their business? Yes. No question. Our biggest debate on this front is generally focused on how much it is going to hurt them.

Will it hurt the hobby? Yes. It makes the hobby harder to get in to and harder to enjoy once you are in.

Does it hurt us? Not in any meaningful way, but it does make the hobby less fun.

And, if the hobby retreats, will kids be deprived of playing with "Transformers"? Possibly. Hell, it might even be likely.

But, ya know what? That is not really so bad. I am just young enough to have missed "He-Man" and "Super Powers". I remember them, but I was just a week bit too young for action figures. I did not get my first GI Joes until mid '84, after much lobbying of my parents. Most of my pre-86 figures were late finds at yard sales. (Remember, I grew up in the days before eBay.)

I largely missed "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" as well as "Super Powers" because the lines were largely dead by the time I was making regular trips to the toy aisle.

But, I got "Transformers".

Several of my cousins have little boys. They may well miss TF, even if they end up liking sci-fi and robots and space ships and the very things that we like. But, I can bet they will have something that we did not. (There is, of course, no point in guessing exactly what it will be.)

Maybe they will discover "Star Trek". For them, the DS 9 episodes that I watched will be "that old thing that is still kind of cool". I have spend much time over the years thinking and arguing about various iterations of'Trek. But, I do not recall ever having owned a single "Star Trek" figure.

I am too *old* to have played with other toy lines. Oh, I collected "Exo-Squad". But, I never *played* with the toys. (There is a huge difference between displaying and occassionally fiddling and actually *playing* with the toys.)

Honey Bear and I used to work big box retail. More than once, we found outselves griping about some of the better toys kids in the late 90s had that we (children of the late 70s whose playing years were the early 80s) did not have.

Hell, nearly every kid who got in to TF in the US was deprived of the Microman lines. And, there was plenty that we did not get from Japan at the time. Have you seen old Microman/Micronauts toys? Dude, I saw Space Ranger and Membros when I was 25. I can only imagine the fun my cousin and I would have had with those as kids. (I can even imagine us running around a living room or maybe a back porch, with Space Ranger chasing Acryear.) We never got those. But, we got "GI Joe" and "Transformers".

And, that assumes that action figures are the only way to go.

For various reasons, I never got in to D&D, a hobby which many people enjoy. And, you know what? I am no worse off for it. That hobby involves all sorts of creativity, and does not necessitate any action figures (even if some players like to have a miniature of their character on hand.

Toys are a fuel for imagination and creativity. But, they are not the only fuel for it. Kids played and were creative, at times growing in to creative adults, long before action figures. And, they will continue to do so long after.

Yes, Habro is blowing an opportunity to cultivate a brand and expand their customer based. (And, here we are, in a thread where we are using business terms to talk about a hobby of all things.)

And, yes, Hasbro is kind of shitting on our hobby. If they do enough damage, the fandom could be reduced to what Trekkies were in the 1970s, chasing and grubbing after the occassional trickle of official content/product while becoming steadily more backward looking and maybe even going down the dark path of reading and writing fanfic. (I will leave long before that happens.)

Yes, kids are missing out on something fun. But, they will probably find something else. They might even find something better.

I like to complain about how Hasbro is ruining the hobby as much as anyone else here. Hell, I *really* like to complain. But, lets not blow it out of proportion.


Dom
-really kind of scared by the "late 70s Trekkie" image.

[Ursus mellifera]

I love and completely agree with everything Dom has written in the post above.

I have never agreed with him more, and these new feelings bring me conflict.

*insert inappropriate joke here*

[Shockwave]

Dom
-really kind of scared by the "late 70s Trekkie" image.

That's it, I'm going to find the pic of me, at the age of 4, in my Mr. Spock costume from '79.

[JediTricks]

No.

You are wrong.

But at the costs of their imaginations.

Children's imaginations did not kick start in the late 70s.

Kids had imaginations and played before packaged action figures.

Look, I like action figures as much as anybody else here. (Remember how made I got about tail end "Cybertron" figures being hard to find? How giddy was I about PCC? I am trying to make a game based on it for the love of Primus!) I have a Minicon in my backpack right now. It rides in my insulin kit, just in case I need to fiddle with something to clear my head!

But, as much as I love action figures, they are not vital to imagination and creativity. Kids are *very* adept at playing. There used to be a little girl that lived down stairs from me. She had toys in her room that she would play with only grudgingly, when she *had* to be inside. She found ways to amuse herself (and often adults who were lucky enough to know her). She was a smart and creative little thing.

Oh, planning to put TV, video games, and internet back in their boxes, Pandora? No? Those are never going away, and they're both imagination-stealers? You cannot discuss this in a vacuum, our society has changed since the toy industry became a dominant concept in the world. Lincoln Logs and listening to Little Orphan Annie on the radio ain't going to cut it for kids anymore. Toys are now a primary outlet for developing children's imaginations, you take them away and they will gravitate towards TV and video games which are imagination-thieves, and to the internet which requires guidance and understanding to use to further one's imagination.

That's it, I'm going to find the pic of me, at the age of 4, in my Mr. Spock costume from '79.

And I will either praise you for it or mock you depending on how good/bad it was.

[Dominic]

Oh, planning to put TV, video games, and internet back in their boxes, Pandora? No?

Socrates said that written language was the end of human cognition.

Dude, put down your cane, and stop yelling at those cute little kids who are playing on your lawn.

Toys are now a primary outlet for developing children's imaginations, you take them away and they will gravitate towards TV and video games which are imagination-thieves, and to the internet which requires guidance and understanding to use to further one's imagination.

Televisions is not inherently poisonous, even if it is the most passive of all entertainments. If a parent sits with a kid and talks to them about what is on TV, that can trigger thinking and imagination. How many times did you and your friends/cousins/siblings replay old TV shows after the fact?

Like many kids, my cousin a friend or two and I would half-ass LARP scenes from "Star Wars" and "GI Joe". (We tried doing that with TF a few times, but could never figure out how to make ourselves transform without being seriously injured.)

Video games can require a player to form strategies for problem solving.

Guiding a child on the internet is like reading to kids. It is a good idea, and arguably necessary for advanced development. But, how many parents do either? (Hint: Not as many as we might hope.)

Some people would argue that the toys of the 80s, with their fancy moulding and paint (so that you could tell who the specific characters were and what they had on) and their characterization on packaging and in other media were imagination killers.

I have heard people praise Lego or blocks for fostering imagination. But, when I was a kid, they killed it for me. Oh, yeah, I could pretend that anything I built from them looked like something other than a stiff pile of multi-coloured dung. But, that did not change the fact that the only probable results of any of my building projects was going to bear a strong resemblance to a stiff pile of multi-coloured dung. The inevitably poor results discouraged me from every trying to do anything with them, even as a week tyke. (My parents having no way to explain quality or how to achieve it did not much help.)

You know what TV, video games and internet have in common? A lack of tangible product. Even TV requires a certain engagement with content and ideas, rather than some kind of solid object. Some people might argue that action figures, (especially those intended to represent specific characters or types of characters) are a base form of idolatry that keep people from understanding higher concepts or otherwise distract us from more important priorities and understanding.

Play is important, for kids and adults. But, there is more than one way to play. For me, play is reading and talking about comics. Play also includes reviewing action figures. For a kid, play would be playing with the damned toys. But, for other kids, play involves something else entirely.


Dom
-likes toys as much as anyone else here, but...

[JediTricks]

Socrates said that written language was the end of human cognition.

Dude, put down your cane, and stop yelling at those cute little kids who are playing on your lawn.

Bullshit, you are ignoring the truth for a quip. Television removes all imagination from the entertainment process. Radio and books let the audience imagine everything that's going on, they have to put together those worlds in their minds to engage with the material. TV does not, it does all the thinking for you, you hear and see everything at the click of a remote, no thinking needed, no imagination whatsoever required. Studies have shown clearly that children + tv = mindrot for just that reason.

Televisions is not inherently poisonous, even if it is the most passive of all entertainments. If a parent sits with a kid and talks to them about what is on TV, that can trigger thinking and imagination. How many times did you and your friends/cousins/siblings replay old TV shows after the fact?

That is ridiculous, that's not the TV doing any of that work, that's the parent triggering it. They simply have memory of what they saw and can extrapolate from there, but without outside influences beyond the relationship of the television and the child audience member, there's no imagination whatsoever going on. Television being so instantly accessible is not like a movie either, it's always there, and it's generally cheaper programming, so it's low-grade and it's all the time - TV is the McDonalds of entertainment-as-nutrition, it'll fill you up, but only with low-grade garbage, you won't get much positive out of it.

Video games can require a player to form strategies for problem solving.

That's not imagination, that's creativity, they aren't the same thing, and many games require no great skill set to solve their problems.

Guiding a child on the internet is like reading to kids. It is a good idea, and arguably necessary for advanced development. But, how many parents do either? (Hint: Not as many as we might hope.)

Right, you are playing in the world of fantasy there, it doesn't happen enough to be statistically-relevant to our discussion.

Some people would argue that the toys of the 80s, with their fancy moulding and paint (so that you could tell who the specific characters were and what they had on) and their characterization on packaging and in other media were imagination killers.

I've never heard that. I've heard that they were blatantly marketing to children and that they were subverting outdoors interpersonal play (both absolutely true), but I've never heard the complaint that they were imagination-killers or that their bio texts were anything remotely like that. Anybody who claims as much is just a head-up-ass type who says things like "comic books are making children illiterate" (that was a real thing from when my parents were kids, this despite comic books having those crazy WORD things on every page and brought about more reading to kids who were otherwise turned off by books in general).

I have heard people praise Lego or blocks for fostering imagination. But, when I was a kid, they killed it for me. Oh, yeah, I could pretend that anything I built from them looked like something other than a stiff pile of multi-coloured dung. But, that did not change the fact that the only probable results of any of my building projects was going to bear a strong resemblance to a stiff pile of multi-coloured dung. The inevitably poor results discouraged me from every trying to do anything with them, even as a week tyke. (My parents having no way to explain quality or how to achieve it did not much help.)

Weird, I still have some of my custom Lego vehicles from the past few decades, and they're pretty damned cool, lots of imagination in them. Sounds like you were too young for them, or didn't have any sets with idea books in them - those idea books are crucial for younger builders because it helps bridge the gap between building towers and turning bricks into shapes.

You know what TV, video games and internet have in common? A lack of tangible product. Even TV requires a certain engagement with content and ideas, rather than some kind of solid object. Some people might argue that action figures, (especially those intended to represent specific characters or types of characters) are a base form of idolatry that keep people from understanding higher concepts or otherwise distract us from more important priorities and understanding.

Minus the video games with their fancy "disks". Anyway, your larger point is not working for me, the idea that children WORSHIP their toys because of the characters they represent rings hollow, if that were true kids wouldn't play with them, they wouldn't smash them into each other and have them kill each other, they wouldn't buy competing toys. This smacks of an argument for argument's sake, nothing more.


Toys are an integral part of kids' imaginations, it's not the ONLY part, but it is a significant one. Children's toys have existed for thousands of years, beyond "civilized" man according to recent archaeological discoveries, they are a major outlet for developing minds.

[Onslaught Six]

Socrates said that written language was the end of human cognition.

Dude, put down your cane, and stop yelling at those cute little kids who are playing on your lawn.

Bullshit, you are ignoring the truth for a quip. Television removes all imagination from the entertainment process. Radio and books let the audience imagine everything that's going on, they have to put together those worlds in their minds to engage with the material. TV does not, it does all the thinking for you, you hear and see everything at the click of a remote, no thinking needed, no imagination whatsoever required. Studies have shown clearly that children + tv = mindrot for just that reason.

Fuck your studies--I *am* the television generation. I grew up with television on literally every single waking moment. And very little of it was educational TV, because any time something seemed like it was teaching me something, I would 90% of the time switch the channel to Power Rangers or whatever else was on. (Rare exceptions to this are children's science shows, which I had a particular affinity for. Beakman's World and Bill Nye were some of my favourite shows.) And I'd like to think that I turned out at least relatively intelligent, if socially inept.

My imagination didn't suffer any, clearly, given that I'm nearly 23 and still imagining things, writing them down and turning them into music. Hell, I still occasionally have ideas for video games, or novels, or comic books; I just never follow up on those because I don't have the drive to see those things pan out since they take a fair amount of time and effort that would take away from some of my other projects.

That is ridiculous, that's not the TV doing any of that work, that's the parent triggering it. They simply have memory of what they saw and can extrapolate from there, but without outside influences beyond the relationship of the television and the child audience member, there's no imagination whatsoever going on. Television being so instantly accessible is not like a movie either, it's always there, and it's generally cheaper programming, so it's low-grade and it's all the time - TV is the McDonalds of entertainment-as-nutrition, it'll fill you up, but only with low-grade garbage, you won't get much positive out of it.

You can't condemn an entire medium based on reality TV (which sounds like what you're describing). There are plenty of shows that are engaging and entertaining through the television medium, and that isn't even getting into stuff like the History Channel or A&E documentaries. With television, in most cases, you get out what you put in. If you just sit there and blankly stare at it, of course you're not going to get anything further out of it. However, if you actually pay attention and think about and process what you're seeing, you can get stuff out of it.

That's not imagination, that's creativity, they aren't the same thing, and many games require no great skill set to solve their problems.

Maybe a decade ago, but since the 3D jump there's a fair amount of people who have serious problems getting past a certain barrier. I played through the Mass Effect trilogy with little issue, but my girlfriend recently started it from the beginning, and she has a problem with knowing where she's going and telling different parts of the environment apart. I'd say that's a skill set.

Some people would argue that the toys of the 80s, with their fancy moulding and paint (so that you could tell who the specific characters were and what they had on) and their characterization on packaging and in other media were imagination killers.

I've never heard that.

I have, from 12" GI Joe collectors, who hated the '82 series and the toyline. Probably for some superficial reasons ("They don't even have removable clothes!") but also because they felt that, by giving each character a distinct name and personality and creating specific "good guys" and "bad guys," they were stunting children's imaginations.

And on some level I can almost kind of understand that, because with 12" GI Joe you had...a guy. I once was listening to What's On Joe Mind, a pretty good GI Joe podcast, and they had some notable GI Joe 12" historian or other on the show, and they basically asked him about this, and he sat there and described what he liked about 12" GI Joe--he had several and he had given them all 'his own' names, and created their own personalities and backstories and invented his own scenarios and adventures. And then the other guys (who are all primarily 3 3/4" Joe fans) were talking about how they all had 'similar experiences.'

Just because a toy has "Optimus Prime" or "Bumblebee" written on the box doesn't necessarily mean the kid is going to use the toy that way. In just another recent thread, I was talking about how I received Ultra Primal as a random Christmas gift in '96 from my grandmother, and how I didn't even know Beast Wars was a thing for years. I just had this monkey who, I guess, could turn into the dude, and at that point I was way more interested in the monkey part. Somewhere on a tape in my mother's house is a very bad attempt at a stop-motion film "adaptation" of King Kong that stars Ultra Primal as Kong. I used Thunderbirds figures because they were the only other toyline I had a bunch of (My father had bought all of the 90s toyline thinking they were going to be worth loads of money down the road--I still don't know if they actually are), and they were relatively small in scale compared to Ultra Primal, and it had a scientist guy I could use. In other words, it didn't matter that these guys all had names and personalities and stuff in their own toyline and TV show--I used them for what I wanted, because I had an imagination.

Sounds like you were too young for them, or didn't have any sets with idea books in them - those idea books are crucial for younger builders because it helps bridge the gap between building towers and turning bricks into shapes.

When I was a kid, I had the classic Lego Bucket. And pretty much the only thing you could actually make with The Bucket was a house. I made that house fifty different ways, though. (I always ran out of bricks before I got to the roof though.) That didn't stop me from making other things. I think Dom just doesn't see the appeal of Lego because, no matter what you do, it's still going to look like Lego. (To some degree, I can understand this. It's probably why I was never huge into Lego.)

Toys are an integral part of kids' imaginations, it's not the ONLY part, but it is a significant one. Children's toys have existed for thousands of years, beyond "civilized" man according to recent archaeological discoveries, they are a major outlet for developing minds.

What are we arguing about?

[Dominic]

TV does not, it does all the thinking for you, you hear and see everything at the click of a remote, no thinking needed, no imagination whatsoever required.

People still choose what they watch, or even if they watch. TV pitching low, (which it tends to), is more a reflection of people's tastes than anything else.

Using TV as a baby-sitter is on the parents. Toys will do little enough to off set that.

Studies have shown clearly that children + tv = mindrot for just that reason.

I think that those studies are calling it wrong. Is it the TV that brings the kids down, or other environmental factors like parenting. There are also studies that indicate how parents who are illiterate and inarticulate to start with tend to produce children of similar capacity. That would probably coincide with large amounts of TV watching.

In other words, the TV watching may be another symptom of the problems that are causing the mind rot that you mention.

Minus the video games with their fancy "disks".

Counting the disk as a solid product is like counting the pages of a book. The deliver media is there strictly to carry content. It is not something that you would pick up and fiddle with in any way. Playing a game does not require manipulating an action figure. Actually, the Wii does require object manipulation. But, that is also more interaction than most other games involved.

Children's toys have existed for thousands of years, beyond "civilized" man according to recent archaeological discoveries, they are a major outlet for developing minds.

In that case, they are likely to persist in some way shape or form.

I have, from 12" GI Joe collectors, who hated the '82 series and the toyline. Probably for some superficial reasons ("They don't even have removable clothes!") but also because they felt that, by giving each character a distinct name and personality and creating specific "good guys" and "bad guys," they were stunting children's imaginations.

I have not heard it from Joe collectors specifically, but that is the general arguement.

Part of me wonders if the (for lack of a better term) fan fic names for nameless toys with no character is part of why action figures as a hobby used to be so fragmented. There were limited common points of reference, even in the hobby. And, the common points of reference were fairly trivial. ("This figure has ____, ______ and _______. After that, you are on your own.")

I think Dom just doesn't see the appeal of Lego because, no matter what you do, it's still going to look like Lego.

This. If I was going to spend that kind of time, I wanted something good for my effort, not shit bricks.

Legos and such actually discouraged me. When I was a kid, the lesson I drew from Lego was "I cannot make anything that looks good", so I stopped trying (Remember, even Lego box art cheats by making the toys looks just a little better, and I could not even match that.) It took me years to finally shake that. And, the learning curve in my teen years was very stiff. (At that point, I kind of knew that I could learn to build or paint well, given the right tools and resources. But, I still had to learn how, which was expensive.)

What are we arguing about?

JT is arguing that if the toy market bottoms out completely, there could be real consequences for the development of the next generation of children.


Dom
-still bitter of childhood Lego.