Clay wrote:Aye, it's a shame that Devastator had to be undermined by their own internal design restrictions. While I can appreciate that Hasbro are squarely aimed at a wider market than any of the third party outfits, if this was the best that they could do... why bother?
Well...money, obviously. They probably did some market research and figured out that they'd make more profit off of this half-assed effort than if they'd done the individual Constructicons properly and charged $20 more for the set.
Clay wrote:At least the Scramble groups have all been good fun.
True enough. It's just a shame that the line is dying out without them bothering to make half of the traditional teams. I just don't get cramming out random characters as combiners, while only releasing one out of the twenty-one Technobots, Terrorcons, Seacons and Predacons. I mean, the argument is "they need recognizable characters", but I really doubt that kids are more likely to buy Mirage, Cyclonus or Hound than they are Nosecone, Cutthroat or Razorclaw. If they'd combinerized the likes of Megatron, Starscream, Soundwave or Bumblebee, sure, I'd believe that. But out of the random redecos the only actual needle-mover was Optimus.
And that's without getting into silly stuff like the G2 box sets or Victorion.
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:I can only speak for myself, but I'd have been happier paying slightly more across six individually released voyager toys that are really good and combine into a Devastator that's a bit meh.
The scary part is that (here at least) the set actually costs the same as six Voyagers. So the actual price would have worked out to about the same. I think I would have been happiest with six Deluxes so that they would have been compatible with the rest of the line. It would have been nice to toss Scrapper onto Menasor as a leg, or have Scavenger attach to Superion as an arm. Or to have four random dudes slapped on as limbs for the Hook/Long Haul torso.
Speaking of, has the official fiction ever played up the interchangeability of combiner parts? That could actually be very interesting.
Brendocon 2.0 wrote:But then I'm definitely part of team "to me the Constructicons are a group of six characters I like who happen to have a combined form". Giant smashy robot is a tertiary concern for me.
I tend to agree. I'm way more excited to have a cool modern toy of Air Raid or Dead End or Hot Spot than I am by the combined modes. Though don't get me wrong, it's definitely cool that they can combine. It's just not the main appeal for me.
numbat wrote:Firstly, I do apologise for my remark about the individual Constructicons. That was meant as a joke.
Sorry for misinterpreting it. Unfortunately a lot of people in the fandom will say that and mean it.
I've honestly never understood why so many people only care about the combined modes, with no attention given to the individual robots. No matter where you look, be it the cartoon, the comics or the character bios, it seems like the writers went out of their way to make the super robots as boring as possible. At least some of the individual robots got a personality!
numbat wrote:Also, if interested, here is a comparison between the Unite Warriors Constructicons and Combiner Wars Stunticons in vehicle modes:
numbat wrote:He felt this may be the only chance Devastator got for an update, so tried to make the figure fit with the Masterpiece cars in scale, in the idea it could be the Masterpiece Devastator, even if it didn't quite match in quality. So the size was always intentional.
This is probably my biggest gripe with the set, actually, even beyond the overly-simple individuals. Devastator is just too big and doesn't fit in with the rest of the CW toys at all. He doesn't look like he belongs with the rest of the line and there's no play value to messing around with him and Superion, which makes it really easy for me to ignore him without any regrets (whereas I probably would have bought all the Stunticons, Protectobots and Combaticons to go with my full set of Aerialbots if I'd had space and money for them, just because).
I think I'd even have been happier with a Constructicon team that was randomly turned into a Scramble City group, with one of Long Haul or Hook randomly upsized into a voyager torso and the other demoted to a legends accessory.
numbat wrote:Anyway - I doubt anyone will argue that this is a Masterpiece.
I've actually seen people argue exactly that on other boards.
inflatable dalek wrote:I think with the Constructicons I'd be more forgiving if they'd been available individually or part of the current cartoon aimed at kids. Effectively though it's a big expensive set only adults are going to want (I suppose if children know who Devastator is at all they think of the ROTF version) that consists of cheap kids toys.
Yeah, I don't get this sort of cost-cutting on what amounts to a (for all intents and purposes) online-exclusive collector-oriented product. If there were shelves full of these in all my local stores and a big push to get them into the hands of kids, that'd be another story. Though how kids would be expected to play with a combiner that's taller than Dikembe Mutombo, I don't know.
But when the product's primary demographic is adults, I dunno. You'd think that they'd have taken a different approach to the thing.