JediTricks wrote:I'm with Dom on it, Megatron isn't half as satisfying as Swerve and Cosmos - there's too much fiddly business that really doesn't pay off well on Megs, joints that only sort of work right and sort of pull the figure apart, a mediocre cannon weapon, and scale issues at the head and hands, stuff that doesn't hold together as well as it should, stuff that doesn't look nice. I like the minicon with Megs a little better, but he's not as good a weapon either. Megs is arguably the best of the 2013 Generations Legends and he's fairly middling compared to Swerve and Cosmos IMO.
On some level, I can kinda see what you're talking about: Megs's legs are kinda iffy in their posability, and I wish his turret went together a bit more solidly in vehicle mode, but he's hardly the mess you describe him as.
I think one point that needs to be made is I haven't even seen Swerve and Cosmos on shelves yet, let alone been able to actually handle them, so it's kinda flying over my head as a concept how they could actually be so much better than Megatron and Starscream, who I really enjoyed. Especially since Swerve and Cosmos looked so unremarkable and conventional from pictures, so I'm having a hard time figuring what could be so great about them. Swerve is literally just a red truck who turns into a blocky, standard robot, what could possibly be so standout about that?
The previous Cosmos is kinda shitty-looking, FIVE years old, and nigh-impossible to find, the idea that it should count as anything other than a collectible really doesn't jive with me. That era of Legends - the ones made for drug stores - have really thin-walled, compromised designs and unappealing ball joints in a way that doesn't fit in well with modern figures.
I'm kind of blown away that a mere five years ago apparently doesn't count as 'modern' anymore. I mean for god's sake, I still think of the Classics toys as 'modern' figures of whatever characters they're homaging.
Onslaught Six wrote:I can't see the argument in terms of Cosmos; like JT said, that was FIVE years ago, and that toy was impossible to find. I suspect the entire reason Warpath was redone as a Deluxe was because he was equally difficult to find.
See, Warpath is a different story since it's being done at a completely different scale. No one's going to compare a Legends version of a character against a Deluxe version, it's nonsensical and unfair to both versions, it's the same story for, say, Legends vs Deluxe Trailcutter; they're aiming to do different things, so co-existing is fine. Hell, they even salvaged the Legends Warpath after the fact by repainting it into a decent Gutcruncher homage. But with making a character TWICE at the same scale, especially a nobody like Cosmos who it's frankly kind of amazing even got ONE new toy, it comes off as kind of incongruous. It's like, what did the team at Hasbro find so offensive about the original Legends Cosmos that they had to re-do it and correct it so soon after? I genuinely wonder.
They aren't doing it as a particular slight against you, or anyone who likes these ones--I really wonder where that random hostility comes from. You don't like it? You don't have to buy it! I mean, okay, they make a new Movie Bumblebee literally every other year. (Depending on how the movie toyline stretches, sometimes it's even every year. Or even less.) I bought NewBee in 2008 and that was enough for me until 2010 when they released a way better Bumblebee (in BBBB), and then they proceeded to release even more Bumblebees, but I liked the one I had so I stuck to that one. Likewise, ROTF Prime is pretty much a definitive toy for me (accessory choices aside) and so I have no desire to buy another Movie Prime ever again, no matter how many times they change his design in the films. I'm not *offended* that they continue to make new ones of the same character just because my particular favourite version is now "outdated."
Hell, they made a new Generations Onslaught, and this one was even a combiner, but my favourite is still the Universe Ultra. They could make new Onslaughts every year until I die and I wouldn't mind.
It's not unreasonable to expect Hasbro might do new toys of certain characters on a semi-frequent basis. (I'm going to maintain that "five years inbetween releases" isn't even "semi-frequent" but whatever.) These toys, despite being more recent, are not inherently "better" than the one you got before; they're simply different. Likewise, there are updated toys of dudes that I explicitly didn't buy because I thought they looked shitty.
That's a thing though, a lot of these 'updates' are seen as and agreed upon to be inferior versions of what came before. Sometimes there's a reason for this (Generations FoC Onslaught has to be a Combiner core, and a Deluxe besides) so you can understand why they would turn out so differently and unfavorable. But the point of it all is that you still have that previous version you liked, and it's not suddenly invalidated in the public eye of everyone *else* just because a shiny new version got trotted out. I've gotten to that before, and I'll get to it again.
It's the exact same shit now. The new Jetfire (or Cosmos, or Springer) doesn't "invalidate" any previous versions of the toy. Those are still just as available as they ever were. But let's say I didn't like a certain aspect of the last Jetfire, and this new Jetfire does what I want. Let's pretend the new Jetfire has a Valkyrie head, which is something I want in a Jetfire, and so I instantly am happy that there's a Jetfire that's closer to what I would want out of a Jetfire toy.
See, you talk about Jetfire here, and that's the one I keep coming back to, because that's the one that set me off the first time we saw it. Because sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who actually remembers Classics. Like I'm the only one who remembers Classics Jetfire coming out and everyone agreeing that that toy was pretty much the bee's knees. There was a shit-ton of love for that toy! People were raving about it! For fuck's sake, TWO of my friends who don't even collect toys bought it for themselves because it was just that cool a toy! So when Hasbro unveiled Generations Jetfire a few months back, my reaction was understandably a perplexed "Why? I thought we already had the perfect Jetfire that everyone loved?"
And it would've been a different thing if I'd seen more personal preference like you bring up there, if I'd seen mostly people going "Oh this one's closer to the Skyfire design, I'll get it for that" or what have you. But instead, as soon as this...thing was revealed, all you fucking heard was about how much everyone apparently hated Classics Jetfire! How we'd apparently been suffering with this piss-poor attempt at the design for so long and only NOW were we getting the right version! Just pages and pages of people extolling the virtues of this new toy while simultaneously just shitting all over the old version, which I was still under the impression we were supposed to love! I didn't get this memo!
It's that mentality of "A new version came out so the old version automatically sucks ass" that drives me away so hardcore from this character re-use/re-making thing, and conspires with how goddamn fickle the fandom is. Similar things happened with Classics Optimus Prime, where it seems like everyone was blowing themselves over how cool and perfect and everything we wanted that toy was just a few years back, and now everyone's whining for a new version! Why even beg for a new one if you're apparently just going to want a NEW new one a few more years later?
I mean, wasn't that a big conclusion we all came to in the mid-00s? "If you don't like the current incarnation of TF, wait a year?" Why can't that apply to certain characters or toys, too?
That's the thing, I didn't even know we *didn't* like the previous Jetfire, or even the previous Cosmos (I recall some fond things said about the original Legends one when it came out, but now there's a new one, so it sucks shit)!
I mean, fine, make all the new Movie Bumblebees you want, that's expected, we've grown accustomed to that. But not something like Classics Jetfire. I loved Classics Jetfire. I thought we all loved Classics Jetfire. And now you show me that all you have to do is wave a bigger size-class and a fake cockpit in people's faces and all of a sudden they hate Classics Jetfire? That's just so damn...jarring.