JediTricks wrote:BWprowl wrote:Those look like teef to me.
They do at that, so I guess that's just utterly nonsensical then. "We took a bird and made homage to it with a shark!" geez Hasbro.
Well like Six said, shark-themed nose art is kind of an iconic ‘thing’ with planes, so that seems to be what they’re going for. RTS Lugnut had the same thing going on.
It was a subline, what did you expect? What line has run longer than 3 years lately? Prime will run 3 years, seems like your grand expectations are ultimately what doomed your feelings on this, not Hasbro. And it's not like TFPBH is really burning up sales records on the aisles, it's not like the market is keeping it alive, it exists now and eventually it'll be gone - most sublines last about as long and behave that way. All things are transitory.
I guess I misinterpreted things, but I was under the impression that Prime/Beast Hunters was the ‘main’ line, being that it had the larger shelf presence and the cartoon support and was part of Hasbro’s big fancy new Aligned continuity thing.
It had a better run than PCC.
Fair point.
is what I'm talking about, that's a very "wah, everybody else has more" mentality. You are coming off as more invested in being miserable that the line appeals to more than one type of collector than crowing about the myriad of figures that are up your alley.
And that's a LOT of figures in your wheelhouse considering you have a very specialized interest. I think your list actually is bigger than mine since almost everything in BH is an avoid on mine.
To be fair, this was the ‘react to toyline reveals thread’, and my reaction was ‘Damn, Hasbro’s neutering the line I actually like and continuing the one I’m sick of.’ Yeah, it’s self-focused, but that’s the point of a personal reaction; I’m not going to submit my feelings as “Well what Hasbro’s doing with the line doesn’t appeal to me, but they’re making a bunch of stuff that will sell to people who aren’t me, so I’m happy anyway!” Again, you guys are free to like all the Generations and upscales and stuff, that’s fine, but if you’re asking me my opinion, I’m gonna say that I think it sucks.
Cosmos 2009 was a middling-quality toy made for drug store consumers, a poor representation of the character, and exceptionally hard to find, but because his name is on a list of figures that came out at one point, it's somehow a knock against you as a collector... somehow.
I’m just saying that if they were needing to make new Minibots, Cosmos was less in need of a new toy than, like, Tailgate (who I think is the only Minibot at this point who *doesn’t* have a new toy). Or they could’ve made a random new dude, the comics these are based on have plenty of those.
Again, I feel like this isn't the line's fault or the fans' fault, but an issue with you - even when confronted with a sizable list of product that fits in your category, you're not feeling it. You defend Legion Twinstrike loudly and yet most of this stuff that's similar gets a "meh" from you. How can Hasbro make you happy with that attitude while still running a successful mass-market line?
Twinstrike works fine as a Legion figure, but it’s a piece of shit when scaled up and sold for $13. To try to cite the upscales as a legitimate expansion of the line when they’re clearly cash-grabs by Hasbro running on intellectual fumes just reeks of dismissal. Ditto for the legion-class repaints. “You’re not hurting for new stuff, you’ve got overpriced knockoff-style crap and repaints of five-dollar toys you bought last year. Now quit whining and agree with us that Generations is awesome.”
Wow, that's your reaction? That's impossible to please. You like this figure enough to worry it'll cause it to make more good figures, that's a real fuckin' dilemma. You gripe that the new Beast Hunters line isn't enough, you gripe that there might be too many beasts, where can they go from that?
I don’t like Beast Hunters because it’s Beasts, I like it because it’s *different*. Remakes of a handful of dudes from a cartoon from nearly twenty years ago, most of which aren’t exactly hurting for decent toys, would just be another step backwards in the range that I’m saying is what I dislike about Generations right now.
Stuff like Beast Hunters and PCC shows that Hasbro *can* innovate if they want to, if it could actually make money. But people like you who only want cars and trucks and boxy guys from when you were kids are way more numerous and line-driving than people like me, which is why we don’t see that innovation. And I get that. I understand that I’m in the minority and I’m not going to see things I’d like in the line. I’m just trying to articulate that as the reason why I’m coming off as disappointed and unhappy with the offerings that were revealed at BotCon.
HA! Rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. The "constant innovation" was basically in presentation, once Hasbro handed the reins over to Kenner and Kenner went whole-hog with ball joints, that's all it was until Armada, and then Armada was just a playskoolized version of G1 design crossed with BW/BM. They didn't cut anything off prematurely, there was 3 years of Prime, 1 year of its subline, most sublines last a year.
Toy technology and advancements in engineering aren’t what I mean by ‘innovation’, I mean what the line *was*. Kenner took over and totally reinvented TF around Beast Wars: New altmode style (realistic beasts, which we’d never had before), new factions with new symbols, new characters, everything. Then a year later, that was reinvented itself with TransMetals and Fuzors, also things we’d never seen before. Then they reinvented themselves again, Transmetals II, basically riding the coat-tails of the McFarlane lines that were popular at the time, but still unlike anything we’d seen in TF at that point. Then BM rolls around and the line gets *radically* reinvented, moving the setting fully to Cybertron, swapping out Predacons with Vehicons (which turned into truly ‘alien’ vehicles with anthropomorphized features, still something we’d never seen before in the franchise), gave both factions new symbols, and reinvented the very aesthetics of the series. Then RiD was brought over, and even as a stopgap that came across as another ‘change’, with the good guys being ‘Autobots’ for the first time in years, but fighting ‘Predacons’.
Then Armada brought it back to Autobots and Decepticons fighting on Earth, but we still got a third faction of Mini-Cons introduced, shaking up the dynamics and changing the way TFs ‘worked’, with each guy coming with an additional figure that activated some characteristic feature. Energon had it so half the line were interchangeable combiners, and Cybertron went nuts with varied aesthetics spread across the concept of Transformers who evolved on different worlds, with a system that also harkened back to the ‘characteristic features’ thing of Armada.
Then the one-two punch of Classics and the Movie happened, and Hasbro discovered the way to loads of sales was remaking G1 guys and having Autobots fight Decepticons on Earth while turning into vehicles, and we’ve been stuck in that rut ever since.
WHHHHHHHHYYYYYYY do you hate the colorwheel?!?
I dunno, why are you so attached to it?
Yup, toy collecting is still really big and active, it's just not a very public hobby. You should have seen at Botcon the thug type guys in their late 20s and early 30s getting all excited over toys, not just this year either, it always cracks me up to see "urban street tough" guys who get giddy over Predaking and BH Prowl and whatnot. It's there, it's just not generally seen because it's a "grab and go" type of hobby, not a stand around in the same place doing something hobby.
Yeah, this is really interesting, and almost makes me interested in checking out BotCon or SDCC, if only to be entertained by seeing such things.
This is the second time you’ve mentioned BH Prowl and him being worth getting excited for. I don’t watch the cartoon, is he really cool or something? Looking at the Legends versions, his color scheme at least doesn’t stand out terribly much from Smokescreen.
I'm sorry but no, I lived through that era as a kid, you're wrong, TF was better-written than the majority of toy cartoons of its era, it ended because Hasbro fucked with the recipe to make New Coke Transformers via The Movie and season 3. BW is so well remembered because it was the first successful CGI cartoon to tell relatively deep, personal stories while selling toys. TF G1 paved the way for B:TAS and its ilk.
Wow, really? I threw on ‘Autobot Spike’, first episode of S2 on Netflix the other week while I was eating dinner, and was shocked at how…not good it was. Putting aside that fact that this show clearly was never meant to be viewed in HD, the voice acting and presentation and production values were just…well they weren’t on the level of Batman TAS, let’s just say that. If this was really ‘better’ than what else was on at the time, I shudder to think how bad that other stuff WAS.
When was the last time someone talked about how incredibly shitty Rhinox and Silverbolt and Waspinator figures were, even? Those characters are so good on the show that we forgave how terrible their toys were. Depth Charge is essentially a NERF Disk Shooter gun with legs.
To be fair, I know we’ve mentioned here a few times here how unfortunate Rhinox’s toy was. Silverbolt and Waspinator aren’t bad at all, Silverbolt mainly just suffering from a lack of color. No idea what your problem with Depth Charge is, he’s got the disc gimmick, yeah, but the rest of the toy is fine.
Are you practicing for the opera? Because all I'm hearing is "me me me me meeeee!"
Skids is a character in current media that is interesting and different as a character from others. Why does someone who owns Bluestreak need Prowl or Smokescreen? Why does someone who owns Shrapnel need any other Insecticon at all? Thundercracker, Ramjet, Dirge, Thrust, Skywarp? I HAVE STARSCREAM ALREADY, THANKS. TWINSTRIKE? NAH, I HAVE SINNERTWIN FROM 25 YEARS AGO, AND WHAT DOES HE DO THAT AIRACHNID DIDN'T LAST YEAR?
I think my thing with Skids is that I *REALLY* hate the character at this point. And normally, with as into the toys as I get, a decent or interesting toy can actually mitigate a bad character, but Skids’s toy…does absolutely nothing for me. Universe Roadbuster/CD Hot Shot even does the ‘shit-tons of guns’ thing better, I really have no reason to own that toy. Hence my dismissive reaction to it.
Hasbro is in the business of making fun toys for kids and totems of characters that collectors want to own. What Skids does that TFP Hot Shot doesn't do is look like the recent incarnation of Skids with all the crazy weapons and the updated look, and also he's not a shitty, gappy repaint of the most overused annoyance character of the last decade. What he does that Rumble doesn't is deliver a product to mass retail, and he does it without being a kibble-queen with giant shoulders and low detail and hollow accessories. Does that mean TFP Hot Shot and Rumble suck? No, I own them both, they're relatively alright, but they're not Skids.
Do you own Skids yet? He could have just as many negatives as Hot Shot and Rumble there. Like being Skids, for one.
Yeah, it's really tragic how there's no Breakdown or Skyquake or Dreadwing or Vehicons or Hardshell or Airachnid or Knock Out or Predaking or Terrorcon or Evac or Flamewar or Star Hammer or Energon Drillers or Twinstrike or Hun-Gurrr or Windrazor or Blight or Rippersnapper or Apex Armors or Rot Gut or Ripclaw or Skystalker or Vertabreak or Grimwing. That is a FUCKING SHAME THAT NONE OF THESE NEW OR SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT FROM THEIR NAMESAKE CHARACTERS EXIST IN THE CURRENT LINE.
It is a shame, because instead of getting MORE new guys or cool new ideas, we’re filling the shelves up with Bumblebees.
Aaaand by "samey" you mean not like any previous Transformers show in presentation or scenario, at its closest bridging the live movies to the G1 cartoon's first season to BW to Animated, right?
How is “Groups of Autobots and Decepticons on Earth turning into cars and planes fighting over resources” not like any previous Transformer show? It rips most of its elements wholesale from either Armada or Animated, and brings hardly anything new to the table.
One thing I’m coming to realize here is that I can put up with Transformers being samey across fiction and toys so long as it’s…good. Like, I loved Animated, even though it was essentially the same thing I’m complaining about with Prime (though Animated at least had a unique ‘Superhero’ angle running at times), simply because it was a good-ass cartoon with an art style I liked, and I could happily buy the toys even though they were Optimus Prime and Bumblebee and Megatron and Starscream turning into trucks and jets, since they were cool toys from that good-ass cartoon I enjoyed, and I’m a nerd who liked having physical representations of things like cartoons and stories I like. But with something like Prime, where I dropped it after less than ten episodes because I just couldn’t stand it, but still want to keep buying the toys because I like Transformers toys and some of them look neat, it’s easier for me to get burnt out because there’s no context for them to me besides ‘car guy’, ‘jet guy’, ‘other Optimus Prime’, and the like. Which is why the Predacons from BH appealed to me so much in that scenario, since even without a crappy cartoon to tell me how one guy was different from another, I could immediately see that these guys were unlike anything I’d gotten from the line before. They even had a new faction symbol, for crap’s sake!
So basically, as long as some good fiction is carrying the line, it can be whatever it wants because I’ll want toys from fiction I enjoy. But if the fiction’s going to suck, then the toys have to sell *themselves* to me by being remotely interesting and unique on their own.
The comics and their inspired figures are in the same boat, since that arm of the fiction has me so burnt out as well. I don’t think there’s a single, solitary ‘character’ from any of those comics that I would be excited to see in figure form. Hell, the one I actually am the most excited about is the Generations Stealth Bomber Megatron, since that’s a toy of a cool design of Megatron from a comic I liked where I enjoyed the way he was written.
Be....cause they weren't? Seems like you have a bias against show characters, there's nothing about K-9 that's better than Cheetor, nothing better about Polar Claw than Megatron, nothing better about Retrax than Optimus Primal.
It might be that the non-show characters don’t have anything to be compared to. Cheetor’s original toy has an atrocious Beast Mode, and has the misfortune of being associated with an annoying character from the show. K-9, on the other hand, is just some cool-looking cipher who turns into a dog, and a decent-looking one at that.
Part of it might be that I was just blown away by K-9 when I was a kid, since his altmode and how his toy was done came so far out of left field. A ‘Beast Wars’ guy turning into a German Shepherd? Crazy! And oh wow he’s not just a repaint of Wolfang, he’s like almost all new parts!
I think another part of it might be that, as much as me and other people like Beast Wars the show, it and its characters have been discussed to death and there isn’t a lot left to ‘think about’ with them. But guys like Sky Shadow and Jawbreaker (and the Deluxe Insecticons, tangentially) have cool looks and cool bios and nothing else, so it’s easy to get caught up imagining what adventures they would get up to.
around 1997, do you have a working time machine? That'd help quite a bit. It's an alright show but its flaws are on display horribly when viewed from a modern lens.
The animation has aged horribly, I’ll admit that much. BM actually looks a lot better and comes across as more ‘timeless’, due to the stylization it employed.
Right, hence "you are a bad analyst of such things". Trek is in that as well, the appeal of TOS and TNG and DS9 reruns carried fans a looooong way.
This. I’ve got a friend who’s not quuuuiiiiiite a Trekkie, but he’s definitely Trekkish, and he’s happily going through and rewatching TNG and DS9 and reflecting on them, and discussing that with another Trekkish guy we know at the local hobby shop.
That is unlikely, its combiner appeal seems to focus solely on existing fans rather than new ones, but the product itself is designed to appeal the opposite way.
I still think marketing is what failed PCC in a lot of ways. Had they just marketed the damn things as “Basics with Mini-Cons and power armor/super modes” and not tried to pass them off with the ‘Commbiner’ name, I think fans would have been a lot more accepting of them. At least a little bit of tie-in fiction would have helped it sell to general audiences too, but Hasbro couldn’t figure that out when they let Xevoz tank at retail, so why would they learn now?
Shockwave wrote:I think Prowl is just burnt out on TF as a brand and a concept in general (mostly based on the fact that he actually said that not too long ago). But, I also think what he's wanting from the line is... I think about the best way to describe it would be a continuation of G1. In the sense of "if G1 hadn't ended, what other new alt modes and characters could have come out of it?" I have to admit that I've thought this as well, BUT, I can see why they aren't and why we're still getting toys based on old characters. It's because Generations is basically continuing Classics line's "G1 just redone with current toy tech" trend and I think they're determined to get through all of the old G1 characters before they start cranking out new ones.
Like I realized partway through above, I think a major point here is that I could handle the lack of conceptual innovation on the part of the line if I at least liked the fiction driving it more. Maybe we’ll see in the early 2014 go-around when this alleged ‘new’ TF cartoon kicks off.
