I forgot one other Botcon 2013 reveal, apparently Archer and Rik Alvarez are no longer with the company.
BWprowl wrote:Everyone keeps saying the nose-art is bird-themed, but I swear when I looked at it it looked like the classic shark look with teeth and everything. Maybe I'm going crazy. I liked it, anyway.
Yeah, it could be that, but why would they paint a shark on a character that used to be a bird?
Fair point, it always astounds me how bad Hasbro is at playing with their own toys. Dreadwing just looked sad. I swear one day I'll convince them to hire me as a professional Con-and-Show-Transformer-transformer. I'd do it just for admission!
I call that stuff out at Comic-Con, but for some reason at Botcon I let it slide. Sometimes they'll do something about it, others they won't.
Well a lot of it is that given the choice between lines, I'd much rather see the bland and samey Generations line be the one to dry up and get put out, and have the previously innovative and interesting Beast Hunters be the one to continue. And Hasbro certainly seemed poised to keep that one going for a bit and to keep TRYING with it, but now instead they've pulled the rug out and said, essentially, that not only do they not care about the line and pushing the envelope anymore, but apparently I was wrong for ever caring about or liking it myself! Of course fans wouldn't want anything new or interesting, apparently I should be excited for the umpteenth blue car Autobot with a hood-chest and doorwings, since that's the one they put all the effort into.
That's simply not how it works though, budgets don't cross lines that way, the brand keeps such things segregated. Also, you are in a deep, deep minority when it comes to Generations. Hasbro knows it, they milked the crap out of that at the panel. And even after all the setup milking it the audience still lost its collective shit when we got to the Generations brand title slide signifying product they cared most about was coming.
They're not telling you anything of the sort, they ran the BH line to conclusion and probably then came up short when they had to change gears for the next thing.
I admit that I'm being kind of self-centered on what I'm wanting out of the line here, but the way it comes across to me is that the kiddies get their huge, hollow, simple Legends-upscales, you old people get your boring, samey, nostalgia-grabs, while I get...uh...um...
BTW, you realize you're griping that they're doing more Autobot cars in a year when we're going to get a new Waspinator, new Rhinox, tons of new Beast Hunters characters, Cosmos, a giant citybot, and a whole new line of constructable figures. THAT is what comes off a little self-centered when you only focus on hating on the stuff other people like, even over focusing on the stuff you like. "Other people like something that doesn't agree with me, noooooo!"
Twinstrike, Hun-Grrr, Hardshell, Predaking, Abominus, Laserback, Ripclaw, a different Predaking, Grimwing, Vertabreak, Blight, Rotgut, Skylynx, Darksteel, ANOTHER Predaking mold, Windrazor, Rhinox, Waspinator, and Soundwave.
I almost think the TFGo figures *could* have worked under the BH banner, being that it's all about being new and different, even though I agree with you that they might be a bit too 'Japanese-looking' for what Hasbro's doing with TF these days. They also don't fit neatly into Hasbro's price-point structure, so there wouldn't have been anywhere to 'put' them. I would not mind getting some of those toys, but I've fully accepted that I'll have to get them from Takara if I want to.
Wait, I'm sorry, you wouldn't mind getting some of the GO figures? Would that be the car, or the jet, or the beasts that are the wildly different stuff you've been bemoaning a lack of?
Yeah, but Flywheels is maroon and hot pink, I think the best choice is obvious on that one.
Actually, I'm not seeing the joke there at all.
Well that's hard to say one way or the other. Dinobot, like you said, already had a toy. Waspinator just got one right now (two, actually, so if you get the Generations Deluxe and the set with Legends Megatron, Waspinator will be able to use himself as a Targetmaster), and Wheeljack got one around then that was already clearly pre-planned off of Tracks. BW Megatron already had his planned before he won this year (if it indeed still comes out), while Ultra Magnus hasn't really stopped getting toys for a while now. So really, the only one you could argue 'got a toy because he won' would be Wheeljack, and even then it's arguable. Honestly, it really does come off as coincidence more than anything else (and does anyone really think Wheeljack wouldn't have gotten a new toy regardless of if he got into the Hall of Fame or not?).
It's not hard to say, Hasbro said it.
Wheeljack also appeared new in Prime. I dunno if that BW Megatron from FOC Grimlock was ever a real thing or a planned thing, we'll find out more hopefully at SDCC. And how surprising is it really that characters worth of the hall of FAME are getting reused regularly?
What's throwing me is that they're still the same color as the lower parts of the elbows, whereas Blitzwing needed that blasted paint to pull that off. So does that mean there's been a change in how the mold-colors are arranged? Possible RTS-Jazz -style running change for Blitzwing? I'll see, I guess...
Don't focus on the PVC parts molded in a similar color, focus on the color of the shoulders, especially the inside, and the lower legs -- those parts are all ABS like the upper arms, and all the same color this time as the upper arms. My flash got into the part, you can see the slight translucency that comes from being a molded rather than painted part, and you can also see inside the upper arms where the elbow joint is snapped into place. The mold seems to have 3 ABS channels, the chest gets white while the arms and legs get blue, and the lower arms get black. I guess saving money on not remolding anything but the head pays.
Sorry, I admit it came off as too harsh. It's mainly that the other places I was reading had been nothing but "I wanna see Whirl! I wanna see Whirl!", and I was just sick of it, wanting to scream "You know what Whirl looks like! Jesus Christ!". Am I the only one who can patiently wait for SDCC for this?
There's a good chance we won't see the slide at SDCC, that's what they did last year, the Botcon preview slides didn't get brought to SDCC so Botcon would feel special.
Have you actually seen what you're calling 'older-kid/collector focused basic 3.75" figures' for the IM3 and Ultimate Spider-Man lines? They're on the level of 'vehicle driver' figures from a couple years ago, with static poses, 5 POA, and almost no accessories. And they retail for $10.
Yeah, they're shitty shit shit, but that's I suspect from a brand management shift. The IM3 figures have a little more sculpting and have interchangeable limbs. I don't think I even noticed the Spidey figures enough to speak on them. But they are meant to be older kid focused product. Star Wars picks up the slack on collectors.
I honestly think the Doubledealer remold looks nice, but if they really did oversell it by making a big announcement about a 'New Voyager Doubledealer!' without immediately clarifying that it was just a Blitzwing remold, then yeah, that would definitely be a goof.
They played a game of "guess the character", having the audience yell out possible characters to the 3 Hollywood movie-themed clues per character, then they'd tell us the name BEFORE showing the slide. It overbuilt anticipation, and I think up until that point every figure revealed was a new mold or well-known and exciting.
Yeah, I'm with you, and I don't have *too* much issue with the compromises made.
I know why they did it, but I must admit I don't like it at all.
Retail Metroplex's shortcomings are very clearly the result of retailers demanding Hasbro deliver something under a specific price point.
At a product this size, Hasbro dictates the pricepoint, not the retailers. The retailers are already out of shelf real-estate no matter what, the question is really just "will kids ask for it for xmas, and will parents find it reasonably priced enough to buy it?" There's essentially no difference between a toy that costs $100, $125, and $150 to retailers; the only difference is in what the manufacturer will wholesale it for.
I like Twinstrike a lot as a Legion, the hollow bits don't look bad at all at that scale. Not sure what you're guys' issues are with him, he's great for a little five-dollar toy.
To me, he looks like ass, he looks worse than figures from 15 years ago. He looks cheap and simple and suffering needless cost-cutting measures of one-sided molding with hollows on the opposite side of major pieces, the articulation and transformation look uninspired at best and suffer from odd ball joint cost-cutting choices like whatever the hell is going on with the beast mode necks. So to me, that's why he looks like ass.
Dom wrote:Yes, with the global economy in turmoil (and people have less reason to spend money)....that is exactly the time to release a half-assed toy (a discretionary item) at that size and price.
Maybe if stickers looked better to start and aged better, I could get behind this. But, as it is, no way.
Throwing good money after bad is not wise, they're not some young startup looking to make a name by leveraging their current financial standing for an improved future. There's no justification to write off a loss on a figure like this, especially when the deco isn't its selling point.
Comic started to get good in the 70s (maybe late 60s). But, there was still learning curve up to the early 90s, where the industry did a huge backward stumble, and then came back even better. Hopefully, toys will do the same thing (as painful as this next step will be). The best way to have dealt with most 90s comics (and there were exceptions) was "not at all". Of course, the 90s were a chance for smaller companies to get in on the game, which provided more competition for the big 2.
Toys in the '90s were in the same boat as comics, and most of those ended up in the "not at all" territory. If the toy industry is at a point of flux, they are either going to cast out kids in favor of collectors a la the '90s, or vice-versa where collectors are cast out wholesale a la Armada. Which one do you think will work out better, repeating the days of collectors sinking their kids' college funds into Spawn figures, or Armada where toys were kept on the super cheap and appealed to a younger audience and took off?
We have been spoiled. From the 90s to the end of the last decade, toy companies consistently stepped up their game with better sculpting, better painting and better engineering. They may have been making toys, but they were toys that could hold an adult collector's interest. (Face it, kids were not the ones who pushed Hasbro away from t-crotches and such a decade or so back.)
You are forgetting Armada and DOTM there, buddy.
And, this brings us back to my comic musings. As I have said in the comics thread, it is beyond me that anybody would have stayed with comics before 1975 or so. I just cannot see it. At most, I could see somebody keeping a habitual subscription (or even a trip to the news-stand) until they moved or had some other moderate to significant life change. But, it is beyond me that anybody would have read comics as "a thing" past a certain point in their lives.
You are crazy as a crank on that one. Comics got huge in the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s after each decade had its own crash, just because you deride the content doesn't mean it's actually worse, you just aren't as good an analyst of such things as you think you are.
With old toys, the same idea applies. I just cannot see adults being excited or interested by the current standard of the toy market. Yeah, they are toys. And, yeah, they are going to be good enough for most kids. (My standards were certainly lower 25+ years ago.) But, there is going to be much less for us ol' folks.
Comic-Con International is the largest geek convention in the hemisphere, with over 135,000 fans streaming through the doors, and the reason there aren't more is ONLY because the San Diego convention center is not legally big enough to hold more people, so the fire marshal prohibits it. Of the exhibit hall space with over a thousand exhibitors and dealers, the company with the most exhibit booth space year after year is Hasbro and Hasbro Toy Shop. The Hasbro Toy Shop collectibles line is so long that it has been closed repeatedly by the San Diego fire marshal in the past 7 years, and now has to use a raffle ticket time system to let people into its line. Other top exhibitor space users include Mattel, LEGO, Bandai and Sideshow. And there are tons more companies at the convention, all catering to adult collectors. The idea that there's no excited market is just wrong.
I can see this actually.
But, Swerve and Cosmos are based on modern designs. Those are not really nostalgia grabs. (If nothing else, Swerve did not matter at all until Roberts used him over at IDW.) If anything, Swerve is a question of "making a character that matters". (And, I say this as the guy who is really not enthusiastic about "More than Meets the Eye".)
And, figure it this way, kids (as mentioned above) will be much more forgiving because they will not know better. Adult collectors are not going to be. Stuff like Swerve or Rhinox are being pitched to us, to keep us interested until Hasbro gets things sorted out. (Of course, I am being *very* charitable towards Hasbro with that statement. And, I do not fully believe it.)
I can't see it that way entirely, that's like saying "well, you bought Luke Skywalker 36 years ago, so you don't need another one". Some characters endure, some characters are given new life because of who they are and the kernels of genius that spawned them still resides, and that makes them resonate with people, people who want higher quality, newer versions on the shelves. Hasbro put out PCC with all new characters and it faceplanted despite a fairly reasonable pricepoint. Star Wars, a property based largely on 3 movies - the newest of which turned 30 last month - remains the number one licensed boys toy brand. The reason we have Transformers today and not Go-Bots isn't because the G1 Transformers were better toys, they weren't, it's because there's something about their story that touches people, that matters to people. It's not just nostalgia, it's the essence of the brand that carries forward, the characters and the settings, the ideas and the methods. That's why we keep getting cars and planes and tanks and Soundwave and cassette minions and triple-changers and mouthplates and Seekers and little guys and arm-mounted fusion cannons - it's not because Hasbro's lazy, it's because that is what makes Transformers "Transformers", that is the recipe that keeps bringing folks back to the brand, old and new.
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