TF Views

You know what, I haven't slept all night, I'm tired, and I have better things I could be doing. You win!

Tigermegatron wrote:

JediTricks wrote:I don't think you have enough understanding of this. This isn't about Hasbro/Takara's designs, this is about Michael Bay's production company and ILM's designs, Hasbro has approval over them but Bay's artists are the ones who come up with the visual cues of the movie bots - the grotesque faces and alien legs and whatever the hell Arcee was supposed to be. Hasbro and TakaraTomy only realize those designs as toys.

Then Hasbro/Takara needs to Understand what works in the movies doesn't work in the toy lines/stores. Hasbro needs to create slightly different/more beautiful movie toy designs,so they sell better in stores.

If they created movie product that didn't look like the giant blockbuster movie they tied into, they'd be throwing money away.

You are correct the 2007 Live action TF movie did have 7 new mold voyagers.

The ROTF movie had more than 7 new mold voyagers due to it branching off into so many sub-lines that were all tied to the movie-verse,like Nest Alliance,HFTD & the ever debattable RTS. Many debate RTS was part of the movie-verse,while others debate it was part of Classics. So to be fair well add in all the new molds minus RTS,Then well add in all the new mold plus RTS.

ROTF,NEST,HFTD had the following new mold voyagers: Bludgeon,Demolisher,Longhaul,Megatron,Mindwipe,Mixmaster,Starscream, Stratosphere,The fallen,new mold Optimus,Sea spray,Highbrow. This is 12 new mold voyagers.

The RTS Voyager only had one new mold Lugnut,With various recolors/retools like Solar Storm Grapple,Strafe,Deep Dive. Just to be fair we don't even need to add the RTS Voyagers in the count because there is only one new mold in the assortment anyways.

Personally I count all the $29.99 HA toys as voyagers,since they technically do have Voyager sized robot/Vehicle modes. these I consider higher priced/higher quality voyagers. I can understand some not wanting to count these in with the lower quality/priced Voyagers.

NEST, HTFD, and RTS weren't movie lines, they were offshoots "inspired" by the movies. Bludgeon, Mindwipe, Seaspray, and Highbrow. I'll give you the Battle Blades Optimus from HTFD line because it's clearly the movie character even though it's an off-year line in a different budget, so that brings the count to 8 new molds for ROTF, but 12 or more is no, they're not in the movie or even in the movie's toyline.

The idea that HA counts makes no sense, they're sold in a different assortment number at a different price with a different scale and a different gimmick under a different assortment name.

Sparky Prime wrote:

Tigermegatron wrote:Then Hasbro/Takara needs to Understand what works in the movies doesn't work in the toy lines/stores. Hasbro needs to create slightly different/more beautiful movie toy designs,so they sell better in stores.

Just because you didn't like the look of the Transformers from the movies doesn't mean they didn't work for the toy lines... The movie toy lines actually sold very well according to Hasbro's quarterly profit reports during those years. Especially the Revenge of the Fallen toy line in 2009.

Not DOTM, but my argument is that the poor performance there is due to the toy line's lack of quality.

JediTricks wrote:NEST, HTFD, and RTS weren't movie lines, they were offshoots "inspired" by the movies. Bludgeon, Mindwipe, Seaspray, and Highbrow. I'll give you the Battle Blades Optimus from HTFD line because it's clearly the movie character even though it's an off-year line in a different budget, so that brings the count to 8 new molds for ROTF, but 12 or more is no, they're not in the movie or even in the movie's toyline.

How about the toy box package character bio's stories linking the NEST & HFTD characters to the ROTF toy Characters by mentioning rival fueds & some back story on their grudges? Shouldn't the bio stories link Nest & HFTD as part of ROTF toy line?

Tigermegatron wrote:

JediTricks wrote:NEST, HTFD, and RTS weren't movie lines, they were offshoots "inspired" by the movies. Bludgeon, Mindwipe, Seaspray, and Highbrow. I'll give you the Battle Blades Optimus from HTFD line because it's clearly the movie character even though it's an off-year line in a different budget, so that brings the count to 8 new molds for ROTF, but 12 or more is no, they're not in the movie or even in the movie's toyline.

How about the toy box package character bio's stories linking the NEST & HFTD characters to the ROTF toy Characters by mentioning rival fueds & some back story on their grudges? Shouldn't the bio stories link Nest & HFTD as part of ROTF toy line?

Are they in the movie? No. Does their packaging say Revenge of the Fallen on it? No. Did it come out within the movie's release window? No. Then it's related, but it's not the movie line. And then you have to rectify how Reveal the Shield is in that movie line yet it's clearly Generations product. Is Power Core Combiners part of Generations? No. Yet it uses its packaging style and its lower and higher pricepoints, while its bios connect it to Movie AND to G1.

JediTricks wrote:

Tigermegatron wrote:

JediTricks wrote:NEST, HTFD, and RTS weren't movie lines, they were offshoots "inspired" by the movies. Bludgeon, Mindwipe, Seaspray, and Highbrow. I'll give you the Battle Blades Optimus from HTFD line because it's clearly the movie character even though it's an off-year line in a different budget, so that brings the count to 8 new molds for ROTF, but 12 or more is no, they're not in the movie or even in the movie's toyline.

How about the toy box package character bio's stories linking the NEST & HFTD characters to the ROTF toy Characters by mentioning rival fueds & some back story on their grudges? Shouldn't the bio stories link Nest & HFTD as part of ROTF toy line?

Are they in the movie? No. Does their packaging say Revenge of the Fallen on it? No. Did it come out within the movie's release window? No. Then it's related, but it's not the movie line. And then you have to rectify how Reveal the Shield is in that movie line yet it's clearly Generations product. Is Power Core Combiners part of Generations? No. Yet it uses its packaging style and its lower and higher pricepoints, while its bios connect it to Movie AND to G1.

The window is not 6 months nor 1 year,Hasbro has said at some Botcons & on-line Interviews that sometimes a TF line has a typical 18 month time frame. It all depends on how well or badly the toys sell in stores. Past previous TF toy lines from AEC,all were 18 months apart each. Armada was 18 months,Energon was 18 months,Cybertron was 18 months. Beastmachines was a 18 month toy line.
ROTF,Nest & HFTD all combined had a 15 month newer products getting stocked time frame on USA store shelves/pegs

There were plenty of 2007 movie toys that didn't appear in the 2007 movie. most fans count these as 2007 movie toys.

There were plenty of DOTM movie toys that never appeared in the movie,most fans count these as DOTM Movie toys.

Nest & HFTD toy package character bio's link the toys to ROTF by mentioning rivals & grude match fueds. So based off all this I said in this reply I consider those nest & HFTD toys as part of the ROTF toy line. Nest & HFTD were secondary banner added to ROTF similar to Beastmachines battle for the allspark secondary banner,Armada Unicron battles,TFP Beast hunters,RID & FE secondary banners added to the toy packages.

JediTricks wrote:Not DOTM, but my argument is that the poor performance there is due to the toy line's lack of quality.

Well DOTM's toy sales started out strong according to Hasbro's [url=htt://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/transfor ... ond-212430]2011 2nd Quarter Profits report[/url]. Obviously by the end of the year, it didn't preform as well as they expected. And I don't disagree with your argument, I was just telling Tigermegatron that the movie toys sold pretty good in general (and extremely well for RotF), despite his own personal opinion that they didn't because he doesn't like how they look.

Tigermegatron wrote:Nest & HFTD toy package character bio's link the toys to ROTF by mentioning rivals & grude match fueds. So based off all this I said in this reply I consider those nest & HFTD toys as part of the ROTF toy line. Nest & HFTD were secondary banner added to ROTF similar to Beastmachines battle for the allspark secondary banner,Armada Unicron battles,TFP Beast hunters,RID & FE secondary banners added to the toy packages.

NEST was indeed the 'secondary banner' for ROTF (a point in the line I was absolutely in love with, by the way), but HFTD isn't even actually a line name. 'Hunt For The Decepticons' was just the name of the online game advertised on the packaging for the 2010 yellow-box line that was simply called 'Transformers', which indeed featured several Movie characters, but was not strictly tied to them, with many characters being more nebulous (Sea Spray being a good example). Most fans refer to this line as HFTD (based on the game-ad-sticker) or 'yellow-box' for easy reference purposes, but it was not a 'secondary banner' of the ROTF line by any means, it was a brand new line that replaced ROTF (JT can probably confirm the change in SKU numbers, since he's into that sort of thing). That yellow-box line got its own 'secondary banner' in Reveal the Shield, which definitively obliterated any pretense the line had of being tied to a specific continuity, as you had G1/Classics-style guys sharing space with Movie guys, and weird nebulous shit like Mindset.

What you or your top-5 TransFormers fansites consider anything is irrelevant, as far as marketing and retail is concerned, 'HFTD' and its secondary banner of RTS was a completely new, seperate line.

Tigermegatron wrote:The window is not 6 months nor 1 year,Hasbro has said at some Botcons & on-line Interviews that sometimes a TF line has a typical 18 month time frame. It all depends on how well or badly the toys sell in stores. Past previous TF toy lines from AEC,all were 18 months apart each. Armada was 18 months,Energon was 18 months,Cybertron was 18 months. Beastmachines was a 18 month toy line.
ROTF,Nest & HFTD all combined had a 15 month newer products getting stocked time frame on USA store shelves/pegs

You are mixing up a development window with a market release window; there is no set time for a market release window.

There were plenty of 2007 movie toys that didn't appear in the 2007 movie. most fans count these as 2007 movie toys.

There were plenty of DOTM movie toys that never appeared in the movie,most fans count these as DOTM Movie toys.

We're talking about product lines, not toys inspired by or spawning from specific material.

Nest & HFTD toy package character bio's link the toys to ROTF by mentioning rivals & grude match fueds. So based off all this I said in this reply I consider those nest & HFTD toys as part of the ROTF toy line. Nest & HFTD were secondary banner added to ROTF similar to Beastmachines battle for the allspark secondary banner,Armada Unicron battles,TFP Beast hunters,RID & FE secondary banners added to the toy packages.

By that logic, G1 Optimus Prime and Megatron are the stars of Beast Wars, according to their bios in the BW Optimus vs. Megatron bat vs. gator 2-pack; The Fallen is in the movie and G1 and everywhere else all at once according to Hasbro packaging.

Sparky Prime wrote:

JediTricks wrote:Not DOTM, but my argument is that the poor performance there is due to the toy line's lack of quality.

Well DOTM's toy sales started out strong according to Hasbro's [url=htt://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/transfor ... ond-212430]2011 2nd Quarter Profits report[/url]. Obviously by the end of the year, it didn't preform as well as they expected. And I don't disagree with your argument, I was just telling Tigermegatron that the movie toys sold pretty good in general (and extremely well for RotF), despite his own personal opinion that they didn't because he doesn't like how they look.

Profits reports are about retailer orders, not market takeaway (aka consumer purchases). All those early reports for DOTM tell us is that retailers ordered early and hard, it doesn't reflect consumer purchases from said retailers. The end-of-year report reflects that retailers didn't order much additional product because consumers didn't buy up a lot of the original product they had on shelves.

BWprowl wrote:NEST was indeed the 'secondary banner' for ROTF (a point in the line I was absolutely in love with, by the way), but HFTD isn't even actually a line name. 'Hunt For The Decepticons' was just the name of the online game advertised on the packaging for the 2010 yellow-box line that was simply called 'Transformers', which indeed featured several Movie characters, but was not strictly tied to them, with many characters being more nebulous (Sea Spray being a good example). Most fans refer to this line as HFTD (based on the game-ad-sticker) or 'yellow-box' for easy reference purposes, but it was not a 'secondary banner' of the ROTF line by any means, it was a brand new line that replaced ROTF (JT can probably confirm the change in SKU numbers, since he's into that sort of thing). That yellow-box line got its own 'secondary banner' in Reveal the Shield, which definitively obliterated any pretense the line had of being tied to a specific continuity, as you had G1/Classics-style guys sharing space with Movie guys, and weird nebulous shit like Mindset.

What you or your top-5 TransFormers fansites consider anything is irrelevant, as far as marketing and retail is concerned, 'HFTD' and its secondary banner of RTS was a completely new, seperate line.

That's true, HFTD is a different assortment SKU from ROTF, here's the breakdown...
2007 Movie Voy SKU: 81060
ROTF Voy SKU: 83972
ROTF NEST Voy SKU: 83972 (these are part of the movie line's SKU, but they were released the following year well after the movie had come out and Hasbro had moved on to expanding the story outwards from the movie, hence we get stuff like Recon Ironhide)
HFTD Voy SKU: 98457
DOTM Voy SKU: 28734

JediTricks wrote:Profits reports are about retailer orders, not market takeaway (aka consumer purchases). All those early reports for DOTM tell us is that retailers ordered early and hard, it doesn't reflect consumer purchases from said retailers. The end-of-year report reflects that retailers didn't order much additional product because consumers didn't buy up a lot of the original product they had on shelves.

You're missing the point here entirely, which is that the movie toy lines still sold pretty well despite Tigermegatron thinking they didn't because he doesn't like the way they look. DotM may not have done as well by the end of the year, but it still started out strong by given reports and that decline does not reflect the aesthetic of the designs given the other movie lines didn't have that problem.

Sparky Prime wrote:

JediTricks wrote:Profits reports are about retailer orders, not market takeaway (aka consumer purchases). All those early reports for DOTM tell us is that retailers ordered early and hard, it doesn't reflect consumer purchases from said retailers. The end-of-year report reflects that retailers didn't order much additional product because consumers didn't buy up a lot of the original product they had on shelves.

You're missing the point here entirely, which is that the movie toy lines still sold pretty well despite Tigermegatron thinking they didn't because he doesn't like the way they look. DotM may not have done as well by the end of the year, but it still started out strong by given reports and that decline does not reflect the aesthetic of the designs given the other movie lines didn't have that problem.

I did understand the point, I just don't agree with it. Retailers ordered a lot of product before knowing if audiences would like the look of the product, that pumped up early returns but didn't say anything about actual market interests. The actual market takeaway was much lower than expected. Does that speak to how the product looked as characters? Not specifically. My argument before was that the market liked how the movie aesthetic looked, Movie and ROTF sold very well, my argument had been that the market didn't like DOTM's smaller product and simpler designs coupled with higher prices.

In any case though, you're right that there's certainly no reason to claim that the aesthetic is the cause for the DOTM line's failure, the problem wasn't the movie aesthetic as that was previously very successful.

But the DOTM line never did well, you can still see its failure on shelves today, TRU has resorted to giving them away, Target has repackaged discount sets and STILL can't sell them on clearance, that first wave failed at market and is still failing at market 2 years later.