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The Downfall of Transformers Quality

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 08:40:23 No.10795649 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>10795686 >>10795854 >>10796108 >>10796251 >>10796285 >>10796474 >>10796508 >>10796517 >>10796591 >>10797577 >>10797769 >>10797924 >>10798322 >>10802650 >>10802703 >>10804151 >>10807720

The downfall of Transformers quality really started here. When the gimmicks became more important than the figures, when the aesthetics just became gaudy, and the longevity of the figure fell drastically.

My questions for discussion are if you agree this is where the fall started, do you think all the problems started here or built up over time, or and if you think Transformers can bounce back?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 08:46:03 No.10795650 Report

Quoted By: >>10798322

Americans are the problem

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 09:47:12 No.10795686 Report

Quoted By: >>10796256

>>10795649
>When the gimmicks where more important than the figures.
Archer era TFs where spot on to the source material and had great gimmicks built in. It really was just rampant cost cutting and loss of talent at the company. Anyone who tells you that new TFs are the way they are because of articulation or accuracy is just coping.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 13:15:09 No.10795854 Report

Quoted By: >>10796020 >>10798410

>>10795649
>The downfall of Transformers quality really started here.
During Prime?
>When the gimmicks became more important than the figures,
Oh, you meant Armada
>when the aesthetics just became gaudy,
No, wait, G2?
>and the longevity of the figure fell drastically.
So are you talking about G1 then? Plenty of fragile toys there.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 16:21:18 No.10796020 Report

Quoted By: >>10796285

>>10795854
Stop trying to apply logic to a troll thread from someone who don't even buy toys. We've had some all time bangers come out just this past year. Anyone who says "things are worse now" is just a nostalgia fag troll with nothing valuable to say.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 17:51:25 No.10796108 Report

Quoted By: >>10796109 >>10797391

>>10795649
the "downfall" of transformers started in TFanimated, not prime.
Prime was the last attempt to get higher quality TFs on the shelves, with their deluxe edition, but those didn't go over as well as they had hoped so the mainline ended up being scaled back
It's not exactly because of animated, or because of TFPrime

It's because in 06, hasbro started the classics line, which is where better resources went, and still go.
So the mainline TV show toylines got the 2nd tier designers moving forward.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 17:52:41 No.10796109 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796108
>deluxe edition
I meant first edition

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 19:37:41 No.10796251 Report

Quoted By: >>10796285 >>10796802 >>10804181

>>10795649
UT toys were entirely gimmicks and no modern toy has gimmicks. Your post is completely retarded

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 19:38:47 No.10796256 Report

Quoted By: >>10796826

>>10795686
Gimmicks are bad and everyone always hated them. Even as a child I thought they ruined toys.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 20:04:21 No.10796285 Report

Quoted By: >>10796289

>>10795649
>MUH GIMMICKS
you're retarded. I don't even think you know what a gimmick is. It's just a buzzword for anything about a toy you don't like. Plus, like this >>10796251
anon said, gimmicks were all over the place during UT. Arguably, "gimmicks" have been a thing since late G1 and G2, for the most part.

>>10796020
I think things are worse now just because alt modes suck super hard. They're more obsessed with accuracy to appease nostalgiafags than they are making good toys. Sure, everything gets ankle tilts now, which is nice, but you're litertally paying more for that. And now that Hasbro has conned people into paying commander class prices for leader class figures with the excuse of "more engineering", they're getting really cheeky.

Like most American companies, Hasbro is just sinking under the weight of its own greed and the greed of their stockholders, so CEOs are desperately trying to wring as many pennies out of consumers before they go under. That's all there is to it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 20:09:35 No.10796289 Report

Quoted By: >>10796296

>>10796285
>ankle titlts

wholesome, six inch marvel legend tier articulation super duper kino posing toy photography instagram?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 20:14:16 No.10796296 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796289
This post is of extremely low quality

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 22:24:52 No.10796474 Report

Quoted By: >>10801457

>>10795649
First Edition had their own issues. Colors were wrong for some like Megatron being white rather than silver [spoiler:lit]apc toys version fixes this[/spoiler:lit]

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 22:48:57 No.10796508 Report

Quoted By: >>10796511

>>10795649
I don't think it's that simple. The early 2000s were a lot more gimmick heavy, and in general I think the toys of the last few years (Titans Return and onward) have been much better than the bulk of what we were getting from 2012-2016. Legacy has been a dud for me (I haven't bought anything in any line since SS86 Hot Rod or something) but the brand has been in worse shape.

I think the biggest issue is that it has become boring.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 22:50:15 No.10796510 Report

Quoted By: >>10797813

Patriot Prime reviewed the new core class Energon Megatron & it's a piece of shit that falls apart. Now watch, some fat mouthbreathers who need a motorized cart to go shopping are going to start threatening a man who served his country because he didn't suck Hasbro's micropenis.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 22:50:34 No.10796511 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796508
you already tired of this radical revitalization of rock and rolls 80s spirit in this day and age? you better fuck off back tiktok with the rest of your skibdi kind if you know whats good for you

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 22:55:24 No.10796517 Report

Quoted By:

>>10795649
I stopped caring about them after they drastically shrunk in size, and increased in price

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 23 Dec 2023 23:31:41 No.10796591 Report

Quoted By:

>>10795649
Yes
/thread

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 02:23:30 No.10796802 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796251
So modern toys have no gimmicks and no quality control but they cost more. Damn.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 02:55:05 No.10796826 Report

Quoted By: >>10796856 >>10796866 >>10797232

>>10796256
What a miserable childhood you must have had, to trick yourself into thinking toys without play value are actually better.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 03:12:30 No.10796856 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796826
Pretenders are better Transformers than Diaclone cars because they have more play value, checkmate gimmick hathesists

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 03:22:16 No.10796866 Report

Quoted By: >>10796867

>>10796826
transforming is the gimmick, they don't need any more than that

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 03:23:12 No.10796867 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796866
I agree parts forming is stupid

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 03:47:21 No.10796891 Report

Quoted By:

It's funny to see the modern revision of gimmicks as a good thing by kids who were forced to endure them. Kids are no different than adults, they don't mind gimmicks when the gimmick makes sense and doesn't intrude on the figure being a great toy of the character they love. Cyclops having a light up visor or Wolverine with slide out claws? Yeah, great! Neon Glider Capture Claw Batman? The kid just wanted a Batman who looks like Batman. They don't want a Leonardo with a weird manhole cover torso that you slide a ripcord through so he can garble out "COWAPZZA!", they want Leonardo that can move and fight like like a Ninja Turtle should.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 10:35:02 No.10797232 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796826
>Needs an ADHD noisemaker or for half the toy to be a spring loaded gear mechanism to have fun

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 14:59:41 No.10797391 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796108
> Prime was the last attempt to get higher quality TFs on the shelves, with their deluxe edition, but those didn't go over as well as they had hoped so the mainline ended up being scaled back
First Edition probably would have sold better if it wasn’t a limited run that mainly saw release in the US as a Toys R Us exclusive line. I completely skipped out on Prime when I couldn’t get my hands on those First Edition figures.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 15:11:03 No.10797401 Report

Quoted By: >>10797624 >>10802816

the state of current transformers is simultaenously the most collector focused it ever has been and also the worst cost-to-plastic ratio it's ever had. if they had dropped tidal wave, magmatron, or half the g1 updates that we're getting now back when deluxes were still $10-15, we'd all be a lot happier. but instead they wasted everybody's time on "reinventions" and a flood of movie toys nobody not already in the fandom cares about. i can appreciate the quality of older stuff but at least we get characters who actually look like themselves now. too bad it's all shrunk to shit and more expensive than inflation could ever account for. i sure do love core class stuff still though

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 17:11:39 No.10797577 Report

Quoted By:

>>10795649
I thought RotF still had some great figures. For me it was all downhill after that. Complexity was reduced supposedly because parents complained, but cost remained the same. We ended up getting a far cheaper figure without a reduction in price.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 17:13:14 No.10797582 Report

Quoted By:

i havent been into transformers in decades but ill just drop by and say this thing can eat a dick. the starscream was cool though

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 17:52:29 No.10797624 Report

Quoted By: >>10797647 >>10802658

>>10797401
Came by to say something like this; it's a damn shame the Archer era was so full of stupid bullshit like "oh we can't do Dinobots, they're too similar" or "We can do combiners but they can't be the G1 ones exactly". Fucking waste.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 18:10:55 No.10797647 Report

Quoted By: >>10797654 >>10803148

>>10797624
Archer's era always carried with it the attitude of "what if Transformers... but COOL?", seeming to refuse to even entertain the notion that Transformers were already cool. But I guess it makes sense since he started during the later Beast era so he probably had the specter of "Transformers died once already because it was lame and G1" hanging around Hasbro and him at the time.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 18:14:57 No.10797654 Report

Quoted By: >>10802658

>>10797647
Which is dumb because Transformers only ever "died" because they got rid of the main gimmick and tried to make it into GI Joe.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 19:55:38 No.10797769 Report

Quoted By: >>10797827

>>10795649
>The downfall of Transformers quality really started here
you mean here

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 20:43:50 No.10797813 Report

Quoted By: >>10798506

>>10796510
is he better with toyhax decals though?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 20:55:16 No.10797827 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797769
The AOE line was more of a nadir that we've since come uphill from. Fall of Cybertron, Thrilling 30, and Beast Hunters all got progressively worse leading up to the AOE dumpster fire. Massive reduction is size, plastic quality, and quantity of paint and prints, combined with a sudden dramatic increase in price.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 21:04:40 No.10797838 Report

Quoted By: >>10797842

Transformer's decline began with Combiner Wars when the product budget fucking nosedived and all we were left with was hollow toys made out of flimsy unpainted plastic. It's fucking nauseating to look back at the shit they thought was acceptable to release back then.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 21:08:13 No.10797842 Report

Quoted By: >>10797944

>>10797838
nah, FOC toyline was worse, that was the absolute lowest point of Hasbro's cheapness.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 21:24:45 No.10797865 Report

Quoted By: >>10797873 >>10797909

How come third-party TF toys are better?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 21:28:12 No.10797873 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797865
They're not constrained by little things like budgets and safety standards.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 21:54:35 No.10797909 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797865
hasbro probably has to pay a lot to use things like car licenses. i assume 3p dont

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 22:19:06 No.10797924 Report

Quoted By: >>10798378

>>10795649
>When the gimmicks became more important than the figures
So why the fuck are you posting TFP over Armada?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 24 Dec 2023 22:34:42 No.10797944 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797842
It's still hard to believe this was a thing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 00:48:33 No.10798069 Report

Quoted By: >>10798103 >>10798453

Armada and the Energon Autobots had fun interactive gimmicks. For all of the whining, and yes it is whining, they added to the toys. Every single Armada remake is lesser than the originals and has been back to T30 Starscream. Only Optimus gets remotely close because the originals Minicon functionality wasn't impressive originally. Cybertron's gimmick was the only one of the Unicron Trilogy that actually did hurt the toys because the exact same gimmick could have been done without the keys, which the Energon Decepticons did.

The problem with Transformers now is it's boring, stale and does nothing new. Nothing they do is interesting, cartoons are shit reiterating on the past and Generations is literally remakes.

This is why RotB Airazor from the mainline is such a good toy; she takes something old and does it in an interesting way, taking inspiration from Energon Divebomb. It's a glimmer of new.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 01:24:35 No.10798103 Report

Quoted By: >>10798140 >>10798204

>>10798069
The only armada toy I find to be lesser is megatron because they didn't even bother to implement his gimmicks in some form
Neither screamer nor hotshot ever did anything that couldn't be achieved with more than a few hinges, and armada prime can actually move his legs and still has integration with overload with the only tradeoff being that he no longer has that shitty and ropey base mode
But with megs? They didn't even try, not a single thing was saved even though they totally could have been
I guess tidal wave not having his party boat anymore sucks, but he's also 1 and half feet tall now so it's kinda aiming for a different audience

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 01:58:14 No.10798140 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798103
>I guess tidal wave not having his party boat anymore sucks, but he's also 1 and half feet tall now so it's kinda aiming for a different audience
I'm more othered by the fact that you can't transform it to robot mode without disassembling the combined boat mode. That was really cool.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 03:01:01 No.10798204 Report

Quoted By: >>10802674

>>10798103
>The only armada toy I find to be lesser is megatron because they didn't even bother to implement his gimmicks in some form
I honestly prefer the Combiner Wars leader Armada Megatron over the new one. I'm sure that's an unpopular opinion. The Legacy Megatron of course looks more like the original but even the face sculpt seems dull to me somehow. It should've been a voyager.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 05:29:36 No.10798322 Report

Quoted By: >>10798324 >>10798421 >>10799029 >>10802650 >>10813461

>>10795649
Prime wasn't when the downfall and gimmick spam started. It arguably started with DOTM's MechKek and the metric tons of gimmick garbage put over the line as a ballast after the strange backlash to ROTF and RTS. Basically, >>10795650
Parents wanted something that would babysit their kids rather than entertain having to buy more complex toys and spend half an hour teaching them how to transform a fucking 10 step + minimal adjusting deluxe.
What's weird is that many of the transformations on the main DOTM line were pretty good; streamlined, quick, intuitive, a real improvement over ROTF. You could easily replace Studio Series Ratchet with DOTM Rachet and miss very little. The Best uses the DOTM mold and it's actually better on account of having more paint and a weapon. Meanwhile, the ROTF mold has been promptly forgotten for being kind of ass.
Then you have Prime where the RID subline improved on most figures, only Bulkhead was worse engineering-wise but was a better toy for it. First Edition only had a couple of stand outs despite the demand and praise it got.

Transformers as a whole started their true downward spiral with FOC. Prime and the absolute travesty Beast Hunters was could've been dismissed as an anomaly until FOC made putrid garbage like pretty much every deluxe on the line a normal occurrence on a collector's line.
T30 was a slight improvement but that was when the toys started getting tiny and only started truly recovering with Siege but Siege had a bit of a half assed removal of size classes in favor of GEEWUN scaling, which isn't bad but didn't fully fix the shrinking.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 05:32:52 No.10798324 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798322
cont'd.

As for the shrinking, it's not really that big of a problem because there's a real dire, unfixable problem with the plastic quality. Go back to your pre-DOTM toys and they feel dense and solid regardless of actual weight. Titans Return had slightly better plastic, which might be part of why people like the line so much, but POTP went back immediately to the gummy, wafer-like plastic of T30 and CW. Even Siege and later lines have stayed the same quality-wise.
You can fix broken joints, buy upgrade kits, and fix lacking paint apps but bad plastic is actually impossible to fix without going to Hasbro's factories and forcing them at gunpoint to use better plastic.
Time will only tell how long post-ROTF toys will last when toys like ROTF Bludgeon have started falling apart, with no replacement in sight just to rub salt in the wound.

>dude legacy bludgeon is still in stores
SHUT THE FUCK UP

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 06:48:31 No.10798378 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797924
TFP had the original concept for the line(a few premium figures) scrapped when it became a mainline and was given the awful springloaded weapons.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 07:32:12 No.10798410 Report

Quoted By: >>10798415 >>10807720

>>10795854
I really want to agree with you, but we hadn't any decent toyline since prime (aside from some figures from RID) cyberverse and earthspark has ben shhhhhhh8!

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 07:37:43 No.10798415 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798410
That's because the design team straight up said in 2015/16 the plan is to let the cartoon lines be lesser quality so they can sell grown up fans improved versions in Generations 5-10 years later. which is exactly what's happening with Strongarm getting a Generations figure.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 07:49:20 No.10798421 Report

Quoted By: >>10798466

>>10798322
First Edition Prime and even regular Prime was fantastic. The real downfall started with AOE, RID and CW.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 08:50:34 No.10798453 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798069
They never added to the toy, only reduced it to a single feature that would define it. Toys that could barely function as such because they put the gimmick into the spotlight and ignored everything else. Hell, they didn't even paint the sculpted in faction symbols right because they thought nobody would care. Pretty sure Archer has gone on record calling the kids who would be buying Armada toys "dumb".

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 09:17:54 No.10798466 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798421
That was when it started to pick up in momentum but FOC was when it really began. Thin low quality plastic, increasing prices, lazy engineering, shrinking figures, rampant mold reuse, a weird gimmick; everything bad about current mainline can be traced back to FOC while Prime FE and RID only had voyager Starscream and FE Vehicon as truly awful figures.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 10:26:48 No.10798506 Report

Quoted By:

>>10797813
Most TFs are because Hasbro barely paints them.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 21:04:03 No.10799029 Report

Quoted By: >>10799035

>>10798322
>It arguably started with DOTM's MechKek and the metric tons of gimmick garbage put over the line as a ballast after the strange backlash to ROTF and RTS.
>Parents wanted something that would babysit their kids rather than entertain having to buy more complex toys and spend half an hour teaching them how to transform a fucking 10 step + minimal adjusting deluxe.
They were too fucking complicated. It's great they managed to pull off the engineering on a retail toy, but for fuck's sake a few years before the movie lines were the UT. In 2005 the flagship Optimus toy was Cybertron prime. 4 years later it was ROTF Optimus. They aren't comparable and kids didn't evolve to have tastes THAT different in terms of what they wanted from a toy in 4 years.
Transformers before the movies

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 25 Dec 2023 21:14:09 No.10799035 Report

Quoted By:

>>10799029
>They were too fucking complicated
I miss those days now (I've come around on the original WFC Bumblebee's transformation for example, though I still haven't bought the Studio Series version and I'm not sure if I want to) but this is true. They are genuinely complicated. They are a better kind of complex than MP44's retarded panel explosion, but even a lot of deluxes of that period are more complex than the average 8 year old would ever want. I distinctly remember even adult collectors complaining in some cases.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 27 Dec 2023 20:11:18 No.10801457 Report

Quoted By:

>>10796474
First Edition never had a white megatron? Are you okay mate?

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 07:54:54 No.10802254 Report

Quoted By: >>10802670 >>10807500

Gimmicks have been around as long as the brand, what really killed quality was the 2007 movie.

Remember around that time petroleum prices were up, so plastic became more expensive, and they started using cheaper plastics as well, leading to lots of stress marks and new issues.

But Hasbro realized they could raise prices and people would still pay it, and just never lowered them.A habit they have continued with every possible excuse to the present day.

Add to that the movie figures were highly detailed and engineered to a complexity that the Hasbro factories simply couldn't maintain the necessary QC. Animated, Prime, and everything past it has been mediocre compared to the quality pre-2007. With AEC I never had to cherry pick for a figure that didn't look like shit in the package.

They have only gotten worse as the engineering gets more ambitious, plastic quality keeps getting cheaper, parts counts and paint apps keep dropping, at the same time proces keep going up, so now we have $50 deluxe scale "voyager" figures with pop on wheels.

Kids don't care about G1 throwbacks, only diehards are still buying this shit. Who needs another Optimus Prime and another Bumblebee month after month, year after year?

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 17:05:46 No.10802650 Report

Quoted By:

>>10795649
>When the gimmicks became more important than the figures
That started in 2002 with Armada. Only difference is they had the money to actually make the toys not shit in terms of quality and longevity.

>>10798322
>DOTM Rachet
You could kind of tell which designs were done first and which ones were just kind of rushed out and simplified.
I still miss Human alliance basics, they felt like an homage to GI JOE

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 17:10:23 No.10802658 Report

Quoted By: >>10802737

>>10797624
>Archer Era vetoes all combiners after Energon
>First thing Warden does when he gets on board is combiners
>Nearly all of them are awful and the "flagship" combiner is the worst of the lot

Should be careful what you wish for.

>>10797654
It was already losing steam by 87 but AM's kinda sealed it

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 17:17:14 No.10802665 Report

Quoted By:

"Cartoon accuracy" pushed the downfall. Now we have complex transformations to hide shit the toon didnt' draw because they were on a budget. Menasor is a big bot with armor attachments instead of a combiner so some fat fuck who never owned the toys can finally get "screen accurate" shit. Complaining that a toy that came before the cartoon doesn't look like the cartoon should have your first amendment rights revoked.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 17:22:24 No.10802670 Report

Quoted By:

>>10802254
>Add to that the movie figures were highly detailed and engineered to a complexity that the Hasbro factories simply couldn't maintain the necessary QC
I think people didn't mind it at the time because figures were deluxes were still 10 bucks and the transformations were involved and cool enough to warrant a purchase.

The fall I would say was kind of in 3 stages:

Fall of plastic quality
Price Hikes
Bad/Uninspired engineering

I guess you can also count brand homogenization but that's more of a general issue with the franchise itself

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 17:25:31 No.10802674 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798204
>It should've been a voyager.
He would have been way too short. They should have just given him more ports, weapons (Combat Knife) and blast effects

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 18:05:43 No.10802703 Report

Quoted By:

>>10795649
it started whenever they stopped putting metal pins on all of the wheels

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 18:44:52 No.10802737 Report

Quoted By:

>>10802658
>Should be careful what you wish for.
This isn't the gotcha you think it is; Warden had a newer team with a slashed budget. Archer had 10 years to figure shit out and he just didn't.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 19:53:42 No.10802816 Report

Quoted By: >>10803109

>>10797401
>the state of current transformers is simultaenously the most collector focused it ever has been and also the worst cost-to-plastic ratio it's ever had
I agree with this if by "Collector focused" you mean "nostalgia pandering". I'm not going to sit here and pretend every toy from 15 years ago is a masterpiece, but there was an effort to make toys worth owning on their own merit, and not just because they were plastic representations of X character from Y series. Alt modes in particular have really been getting thrown under the bus lately, but it's a compromise people are willing to make because most fans are just looking for "THING THAT LOOKS LIKE SHOW" to stick on a shelf in bot mode to collect dust.

The biggest shame of it all is that every toy just feels like a placeholder for its next marginal upgrade in accuracy in 2.5 years. With bots like SS86 Ultra Magnus, it's almost as if they fucked up certain parts of it on purpose, because, if they made a "perfect" Ultra Magnus, how the fuck would they get everyone to buy the next one? Say what you want about the Classics era toys, but at least they had a direction and didn't feel entirely like a grift to get into fanboy wallets. Rule #1 of literally anything is never to listen to fans. Fans are retarded.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 20:28:27 No.10802849 Report

Quoted By: >>10802875

You guys are a bunch of braindead fucks that started to collect in 2018
Transformers as a brand died with FOC +. CW
First Edition had a very VERY small run, shit died with their FOC and CW slop
The quality was so bad, the wheels had no pins or even screws
No transparent windows, the quality was so bad that some CW/FOC figures had less than 5 fucking screws in the whole figure, all cheap plastic held together with friction
CW Bruticus for example, that thing is vomit inducing, same with CW Devastator, some constructicons can't even bend their elbows
Tooner scum cummed in their pants because
>MUH COMBINERS MODERN COMBINERSZSZ!
Grab the worst DOTM figure and compare it to any CW figure, the plastic, transformation and even gimmick quality is night and day
TF rid had a better quality but awful design
The brand recovered with WFC Siege but Earthrise is the same slop that Hasbro gave us with CW, awful quality bad engineering overall toonslop for braindead G1 fucks that are willing to pay $300 for a fucking Greenlight or Skywarp or Prowl and Ironhide
That's why I love KOs, I've seen a $20 KO SS Sentinel Prime that comes with tons of shit and has diecast and the quality is better than Hasbro's quality plus guns and everything, fuck Hasbro, fuck tooners, fuck troons and their Legacy shit with an Arcee that looks like a man

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 28 Dec 2023 20:57:23 No.10802875 Report

Quoted By: >>10803109 >>10803154

>>10802849
Prime wars in general was a low point, with TR being the only good part of the trilogy. Lots and lots of forgettable and awful shit came from that trilogy. So many potential big hitters juat completely flopped because they were part of those lines. I forgot tiran class predaking even exists because literally nobody talks about him. How do you make a fucking titan mediocre and forgettable?

It's a shame earthrise was such lazy slop that continues to plague the line with that awful ER seeker mold and even more lazy remolds in the form of detritus (which will become a half-assed hound that people are excited for, for some reason)

Legacy I think is mostly fine aside from some questionabl decisions, at times it feels like the designers are at odds with corporate when it comes to doing what they wanna do. I think the fact that they couldn't make a SINGLE figure for energon until united, and the fact that it had to be core class AND a recognizable character like megatron, really shows. But at the smae time they've been able to pull some deep cuts into the franchise, stuff we haven't gotten for actual decades or characters that have never even gotten a single figure. I don't think we've gotten deliberate outreach like that since, what, classics? t30?

Anonymous

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Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 00:13:37 No.10803109 Report

Quoted By: >>10803154

>>10802875
For Detritus it kinda works tho because he's a JUNKion but yeah, ppl are overhyping hound out of it w/o knowing how bad I'll look, no seats in alt mode, huge gap in at the rear in alt mode, robot feet that become the door but doesn't do the job

But at the same time it's the same fandom that eated the shit out of half-assed Siege retools that came out worse in Earth form (Kingdom Magnus, ER Optimus, Ironhide & Ratchet, i'm looking at you all) only to be invalidated not so long after >>10802816

Anyway I justified in my collection that every Siege toys that got reused later with an Earth Form is because the characters are fucked up Transformers (Characters pictured)

(I also got SG Soundwave but shhhuuuutttt)

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO IMG_20210213_005059.jpg, 487KiB, 2688x1512

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 00:52:48 No.10803148 Report

Quoted By: >>10803154 >>10803185 >>10803189 >>10803331

>>10797647
>Archer's era always carried with it the attitude of "what if Transformers... but COOL?"
No, Archer's era had the attitude of "what if Transformers... but 2006?". Just like the original G1/Diaclone toys, the alt mode was the priority. They weren't selling a character just to make your nostalgia tingle, they were selling a toy. And the toy justified itself with its own style and an actual bio that made it feel like a character even if there was no corresponding media to reinforce it.

Some of you may be too young to remember, but back then, everything didn't have to be perfectly analogous to some media from your childhood. It was definitely before the current era of nostalgia-shittery we're drowning in. Even long-standing Geewunn fans were perfectly happy because it was back before every franchise ever was turned into some shuffling profit-zombie to milk the wallets of gullible nerds. Real toy collectors were happy to get new toys of their favorite characters even if those toys weren't 1:1 jerk-offs of 40-year-old character model sheets. Because people actually liked to collect toys for the toys themselves. Crazy concept, right?

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO IMG_20210128_173342.jpg, 1MiB, 2497x1404

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 01:09:38 No.10803154 Report

Quoted By: >>10803335

>>10803148
Takara even took it further because of how much more genuine the toy collecting culture is in Japan compared to the US, with the inclusion of mini comics and box art that made you excited to have the toy you just bought, even if you knew jack shit about it. As >>10802875 said, TR was the only good part of the Prime Wars trilogy, and that's largely because the headmaster gimmick is such a "toyetic" thing. It justifies alt modes, makes each toy feel like a mini-playset instead of just an action figure, and gives everything various levels of compatibility with everything else, probably why the Takara versions went the extra mile and included color-matching titanmaster vehicles or even Targetmasters as well as a full-color mini-comic that basically serves as an origin for the toy you just bought? Fucking stellar. That's how you make a toy feel like something worth owning. These days we can't even get a fucking bio because Hasbro is so cheap. Cartoonfags and casual nerds cried about "muh forced partsforming", but it was definitely the last time that mainline Transformers felt like toys that an actual kid would be excited to play with, and not some 40-something hamfister who's going to make a 20 minute youtube video talking about how accurate the bot mode is and how much he loves the ankle tilts before he sticks on on a shelf to collect dust for the next 2-4 years before it gets replaced.

>>10803109
>the same fandom that eated the shit out of half-assed Siege retools that came out worse in Earth form
Siege was Hasbro testing the waters as to just how hard they could squeeze brainless collectors for every penny, and the answer was "a lot". Now they've got people paying $90 for shit that's barely even leader class because everyone showed them they'll empty their wallets for trash as long as it's accurate trash that panders to their sense of nostalgia.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 01:30:26 No.10803185 Report

Quoted By: >>10805434

>>10803148
Transformers is a multimedia franchise. The media is hugely important. People complain about Batman toylines that went on for years but only had the standard Batman in year one out of twenty.There's no reason to expect Transformers fans to be any different.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 01:32:13 No.10803189 Report

Quoted By: >>10803197

>>10803148
That constant change was an exciting thing. Imagine actually being pleasantly surprised by a neat new alt/robot mode design instead of being able to predict the bulk of new releases as just being G1 ... G1 ... [x] in the style of G1 ... and so on.

The only recent releases that feel like a throwback to the Archer era are the weaponizer Junkions. They have original alt modes and a proper gimmick that makes them feel like a toy for kids and not just a display piece.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 01:38:34 No.10803197 Report

Quoted By:

>>10803189
Toys for kids don't need gimmicks.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 03:02:48 No.10803301 Report

Quoted By:

I hope everytime some faggot complains about toy quality, Hasblow fires another troon and an exec gets another million dollar bonus :))

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 03:30:41 No.10803331 Report

Quoted By: >>10804418 >>10805439

>>10803148
>Even long-standing Geewunn fans were perfectly happy
Very revisionist of you. We longed for good updates of our original toys and settled for half-baked homages that came along very infrequently. That's far from "perfectly happy" in any reasonable context.

Headmasters was also as stupid a concept in 2015 as it was in 1987. Now, spring loaded weapons, that was _real_ fun gimmick. Bean counters won't allow an ounce of metal in the toys now though. It was like that old saying about tyranny - first they came for die cast, then they came for springs and screws, now we're lucky if half the wheels are pinned.

Literally every gimmick since CW has been partsforming. Combiners, headmasters, weaponizers in Siege, dumb "shields" in Earthrise, skeleton bones in Kingdom, this Junkion bit they're doing now in Legacy. Weak ideas, lazy execution.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 03:36:07 No.10803335 Report

Quoted By:

>>10803154
I like the SS86 Hot Rod just fine, but there's something about the Classics/Henkei Rodimus I've always liked. I wish I still had mine. I'm tempted to buy one again.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 20:09:21 No.10804151 Report

Quoted By: >>10804162

>>10795649
Armada and animated were filled with gimmicks, and are considered great. The problem is Hasblow is run by greedy American ceos

Also Prime toys had huge budgets as Hasvro was flush with movie money

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 20:22:58 No.10804162 Report

Quoted By:

>>10804151
>Animated
>filled with gimmicks
The gimmick of... looking like the character from the cartoon show?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 20:37:02 No.10804181 Report

Quoted By: >>10804188 >>10804297

>>10796251
Cybertron to this day has some of the best and most unique figures in transformers history. Yes there were duds like Backstop or Leobreaker, but we also had great figures like Ransack, Crumplezone, Metroplex, Mudflap, and one of the best designs for an Optimus Prime ever.

I don't think there has been anything since RTS that held the same level of design quality since, and I liked some of the Prime figures just fine.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 20:45:31 No.10804188 Report

Quoted By: >>10804194

>>10804181
The best Cybertron figures were the ones whose gimmicks you could ignore.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 20:52:24 No.10804194 Report

Quoted By:

>>10804188
The best Cybertron figures where the ones where the planet key gimmick added to the figure rather than subtract from them. CD Scatorshot, Crumplezone, Megatron/Galvatron, Optimus, planet keys were great.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 29 Dec 2023 22:33:16 No.10804297 Report

Quoted By: >>10804821

>>10804181
And Downshift, don't forget him!

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 00:18:58 No.10804418 Report

Quoted By: >>10804827

>>10803331
Spring loaded shit is garbage and just ruins the toy

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 05:58:44 No.10804821 Report

Quoted By: >>10805431

>>10804297
I would agree if they hadn't designed him with neck articulation and then locked it by making his neck locked in place...

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 06:01:19 No.10804827 Report

Quoted By:

>>10804418
Spring loaded stuff that doesn't properly lock down or compromises design is definitely a detractor.

You cannot tell me that RID primes ladder rack missiles are not cool as hell.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 18:46:27 No.10805421 Report

Quoted By:

The downfall started with John Warden's autistic obsession with movie garbage and G1. Now the new guys are in the process of reversing that.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 20180629_201001_resized_1.jpg, 519KiB, 2064x1161

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 19:01:14 No.10805431 Report

Quoted By: >>10807701

>>10804821
If you let something like that completely ruin an otherwise 10/10 bot, I dunno what to tell you. Like yeah, it's a flaw, but christ, he still mogs pretty much every other muscle car Transformer in existence in spite of it.

Personally, I think it's a flaw that only makes him stronger. He proves that articulation isn't the most important thing about a Transformer and never was. A bot can have the best articulation in the world, but if the alt mode is shit and it's no fun to transform, then what's the fucking point? It's hard for me to think of a bot in my entire collection where just looking at it makes me want to pick it up and transform it more than Downshift. He's got G1 minibot energy with deluxe class clout.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 19:03:44 No.10805434 Report

Quoted By:

>>10803185
We're on /toy/.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 19:09:37 No.10805439 Report

Quoted By:

>>10803331
>everything I don't like is partsforming!
pretending to be retarded is the same thing as being retarded, you know
>spring loaded weapons, that was _real_ fun gimmick
lmao, literally partsforming

Anonymous

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Anonymous Sat 30 Dec 2023 20:11:54 No.10805505 Report

Quoted By:

This was a really interesting thread to read. I was really into transformers as a kid, but around the time of DOTM I moved on to Gunpla and eventually got into collecting more anime robot figures from Macross, Eva, etc.
Because of that I never really learned any of the background development stuff that went on with Transformers, but it's interesting to read tidbits about it in this thread. Never knew about these guys named archer and warren and their role in the toylines or even really understood why certain figures were worse than others even when they were in the same class and show/movie. Or why the UT toys had a much more solid feel compared to more recent stuff.

The toyline that killed my interest in TF was AoE. the designs of the film were so bad, you couldn't really tell what they were supposed to turn into because they removed a lot of the vehicular traits from the robot mode. Which made it practically impossible to make figures for most of them (AoE Bumblebee still doesn't have a toy that can figure out that transformation iirc). Battle Blade Bumblebee was my favorite TF toy at the time so it was disappointment that the nex movies didn't have one that matched that quality.
Around the same time I noticed the other toylines like FoC were starting to feel really cheap, hollow, and had really lazy painting compared to classics.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 03:10:14 No.10807500 Report

Quoted By:

>>10802254
That happened to my siege soundwave. Literally tanned in the flaps in his legs in alt mod and it stressed the fuck out of the ports. It feels like nippicking but at the same time transforming the toy in the intended way literally damages it.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO HeadFix9.jpg, 99KiB, 700x525

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 07:24:50 No.10807701 Report

Quoted By: >>10812114

>>10805431
>Personally, I think it's a flaw that only makes him stronger. He proves that articulation isn't the most important thing about a Transformer and never was. A bot can have the best articulation in the world, but if the alt mode is shit and it's no fun to transform, then what's the fucking point? It's hard for me to think of a bot in my entire collection where just looking at it makes me want to pick it up and transform it more than Downshift.
yeah bro that's kinda bullshit, the only reason his head can't turn is a design flaw, we figured out how to fix his head...now 18 years ago jesus
https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/cybertron-downshift-head-fix.214491/

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 07:39:46 No.10807720 Report

Quoted By: >>10807961 >>10808553

>>10795649
>When the gimmicks became more important than the figures
So G1? You know, the series DEFINED by gimmicks because the toys themselves were steaming hot dogshit? Even G1 megs had a stupid plastic bullet gimmick.
>when the aesthetics just became gaudy
Again, so G1? G1 toys look ugly as shit.
>the longevity of the figure fell drastically.
Again, G1? Gold plastic syndrome started with late G1-Early G2.
>My questions for discussion are if you agree this is where the fall started
We're living in a goddamn golden age. We're getitng figures of characters from every continuity instead of just one, and we've had some absolute bangers in the past couple of years; Transmetal 2 Megatron being GOATED, and then there's the core class optimus prime with his fantastic.

>>10798410
Again are you high? Legacy has been amazing.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 14:19:45 No.10807961 Report

Quoted By: >>10808348

>>10807720
>So G1? You know, the series DEFINED by gimmicks because the toys themselves were steaming hot dogshit? Even G1 megs had a stupid plastic bullet gimmick.
The main gimmick of G1 was transformation, funny to see how many people fail to understand that.
Also Megatron only had the bullet mechanism in Japan.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 19:48:59 No.10808348 Report

Quoted By: >>10808382

>>10807961
>The main gimmick of G1 was transformation, funny to see how many people fail to understand that.
That's barely a gimmick in a series called TRANSFORMERS, and it spawned all sorts of gimmicky shit like headmasters, powermasters, action masters, and then g2 which was full of retarded shit like water color, stupid ripcord launchers,and whatever the fuck was going on with the ones that had weapon platforms you shoved up their arse in alt mode.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 20:19:09 No.10808382 Report

Quoted By:

>>10808348
>That's barely a gimmick in a series called TRANSFORMERS
It totally is, it's just that people seem to have a wrong understanding of what a gimmick actually is. The selling point of the line compared to many other toys was the transformation, that was the whole gimmick at first. Obviously they needed to add more gimmicks as time passed to try to keep things fresh, but at that point the line was already in decline.

The hateboner some pople have over gimmicks reminds me of geewunners hating everything that deviates even slightly of some nonsensical idea of what a Transformer toy should be like. So much negativity instead of just finding joy in what you like or even give different things an actual chance.

Anonymous

Anonymous Mon 01 Jan 2024 22:38:05 No.10808553 Report

Quoted By:

>>10807720
>Legacy has been amazing.
I'm not seeing it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 04 Jan 2024 16:17:04 No.10812114 Report

Quoted By:

>>10807701
Except the toy looks worse with that "fix" because of how unnaturally high the head sits as a result. Congrats on missing the entire fucking point of what I said. More joints aren't always better. Maybe you should go collect revoltech instead?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 05 Jan 2024 10:05:38 No.10813461 Report

Quoted By:

>>10798322
you're correct about FOC and the rise in oil prices was a primary factor in why everything got lighter, smaller and thinner

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