BWprowl wrote: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?
With Megs, it's funny you say that, he fell off my shelf today and I got a better look, he isn't terrible but he is the way I described him - you called him a "mess", not me, all I did was point out his shortcomings.
Swerve, let's stick with him because he's more similar to Megs in transformation. The thing with Swerve is that he's simpler, but far more satisfying. His body has that nice scale where the head isn't too small, the hands aren't too big, the arms and legs aren't too long or too short. His transformation isn't complex, it's just the right amount of "puzzle play" so that he's not made up of too many transformation compromises, and he doesn't de-transform easily or have floppy bits. He's not perfect by any means, but he's satisfying in a way that Megatron doesn't reach - Swerve lands the Minibot aesthetic and feel perfectly while containing personality and homages. Cosmos is even better for me because he's more fun looking, he also has the Minibot thing down (although he's not as pudgy as the G1 character).
When you think back on modern Minibot-type characters from the Classics aesthetic, who do you get?
- Powerglide, who is over-complicated and very large as a voyager.
- Bumblebee back in Classics '06 who has some of it but also is panel-y and a bit big for a Minibot.
- Beachcomber and the other '08 Legends who are really thin-walled and price-compromised to feeling more like a Happy Meal or Gumball Machine Toy than a true Minibot
- Seaspray who split the movie and classics aesthetic to be a fun toy but not much of a Minibot.
- Warpath who is absolutely a great figure, but very much a Deluxe.
So Cosmos and Swerve hit that sweet spot where they fill the void in the brand of little guys who don't feel like Happy Meal toys or Minicons - don't get me wrong, I like minicons, I even like the partner figures that came with all these Generations Legends figures (the best I own is Chop Shop, but he is a really silly weapon), but they don't really fit in well with deluxes and voyagers the way that Swerve and Cosmos do, they don't feel as "whole" a toy as these 2 new minibots.
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.
That's how it is though, this is a brand that has cycled a generation of kids already, twice or more really. But it's also the market has changed and the technology to deliver has changed. Compare Warpath to Classics Starscream or Bumblebee, do they really feel the same level of "modern" to you? They don't sport the same amount of articulation or design, they don't use their alt modes as effectively as the latter. Compare '07 modern Camaro Bumblebee to ROTF or DOTM Bumblebee, same thing in smaller doses. 5 years is a lot of water under the bridge for a toy brand. And the '08 Legends were never really part of the larger line, they were meant to augment it at retailers who didn't carry the bigger toys, so there is a lot of disparity between then and now.
It's not the amount of time that makes a figure modern, it's the quality.
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.
Universe 2008 Legends and Generations 2014 Legends are unrelated lines, they share no pricepoint or design concept or marketing. Universe 2008's Legends were specifically designed not to sell as part of the brand, but to fill the brand in at alternate retailers who had neither space nor market for regular Transformers toys, so they were essentially playing the role of the Happy Meal toy - they were cheaper and more simplistic in order to get the Transformers brand into drug stores and those sorts of alternate retailers. It's definitely not meant to be the same scale. And if you think Cosmos is a nobody, keep in mind that he's well-remembered for being a nobody even by casual fans, due largely to the cartoon. They are apples and oranges.
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!
That's the problem with compromises, people live with them until they no longer have to, then they recognize that they don't like compromises. Classics Jetfire kinda sucks, I've always said it, but I've generally focused on what's good about him because there were no other alternatives... eventually enough people raised their voices to make Hasbro aware of that figure's shortcomings and now they're addressing it. This new toy also looks to have some notable compromises, but it looks promising and it's a character and a scale that a lot of folks want to see.
You shouldn't care so much about what other people think, only about what you think of Jetfire - if you are totally happy, save your money on this new one. But don't be surprised that others have different opinions, that's how the world works. You spend a lot of time in that post talking about what "we" like and what "we" think sucks now, but why are you focused on the "we" aspect instead of the "me" aspect of the conversation? I liked Classics Optimus for his time, but he was a product of the compromises brought about by that era of design, he's got the kibble chunks on the forearms and the low-detail vehicle rear end, he's got the weird guns and the bumper-butt. He's not "bad" now, but he's aging out, that figure no longer represents the best of what the brand can offer. Hell, I own both Masterpiece Optimus molds, they represent the character in vastly different ways, no one figure is perfect forever.