Skyquake87 wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 6:53 pmAs for Kingdoms Beast Wars figures...I like the beast modes! I like that they're sticking with the intent of the original line - organic beast modes. I prefer these characters looking like actual animals, and not the smoothed out cartoons the limitations of CGI gave us at the time.
I understand where you're coming from, but at the same time Megatron is still purple and Dinobot still doesn't have any feathers, so the realism already seems to be a bit...selective, I guess? I just wish it was differently selective.
For me at least, when I think of what these characters look like, their animal faces come to mind as quickly as (or quicker than!) their robot faces. I mean...this is just what Dinobot looks like to me.
Giving his toy such a starkly different beast face rubs me the wrong way, just like it would if I transformed him to robot mode and found that he had G1 Sideswipe's noggin for some reason. I'd love to see a line of realistic animal-mode Transformers but the Beast Wars cast seem like an odd bunch to do it with. But maybe I'm in the minority, identifying with the beast looks as much as the robot ones?
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmNot as big as you'd think. He takes up a large area on account of the legs, but those are actually pretty spindly. Most of the mass is in the claws and body, which is roughly the same as Depth Charge.
Depth Charge is huge too, though! It's one of my favourite things about him.
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmAnd I also noticed while on ebay that any Beast Wars figure related to a show character is getting
ridiculous in price. I remember buying up all my Beast Wars stuff around 2005-2007, so I still think of Inferno and TM2 Blackarachnia being around $15 boxed. Good grief, have they gone up in trade!
Even the non-show toys are starting to see steep price increases! When I started getting really into Beast Wars stuff about a decade ago, the show characters would sell for a pretty penny already but you could still get someone like Cybershark or Torca or Manterror mint and complete for $10 or $15, max. Nowadays I see people listing anything Beast Wars on eBay for double or triple what I paid for it, though I don't know if anyone is actually
paying that much for it.
Apparently this sort of price inflation is hitting all across the collectibles spectrum, and it's accelerated quite a bit over the last year and a bit as people stayed home and had to find new hobbies, while also (if they were lucky enough to still have a job) suddenly having more spending money since they weren't going to movies, concerts, sporting events, restaurants, etc. I'm curious if we'll see prices drop over the next year as people's attention drifts back to old interests. And also if there's going to be a mass sell-off or if a decent number of those new collectors are here to stay.
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmStill one of my favorite animal transformers to date. The rhino mode is a statue, but it's so good, I don't care. I think the old one is clearly better, but the new one is... new? Of course, I try not to be too dismissive about it since there are a lot of fans active now that weren't in 2013 when the previous Rhinox came out, so I have to remind myself that the new figure costs half what the old one trades for if still in the box.
That's about my feelings as well. It's nice that it exists for folks who don't already own any Rhinox toy but it's a shame that seven or eight years' worth of engineering advances haven't allowed them to improve on anything the last one did.
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmWas there much complaining about POTP Optimal Optimus because it was different from the original?
Oh, very much so, yes. A lot of Beast Wars fans were POed that we were getting our first new toy in half a decade and it was being compromised by a gimmick that none of them asked for (and, indeed, weren't aware of when they voted on the thing). The vote itself was also littered with art of season 1 Primal and while he was a component of the final product, it clearly wasn't what anyone was expecting. Myself...I'd more been hoping that Deathsaurus would come away with the win. And apparently Hasbro was too, but I think they shot themselves in the foot being all coy with their "unknown evil" sobriquet.
I feel like the entire "Leader Evolution" idea was mishandled, though. The fact that Hasbro burned Powermaster Prime on a clunky Magnus retool Headmaster the year before really set them back, since that
should have been the gimmick's flagship toy. Not to mention...what the heck would they have done if Hound or Arcee or someone had won that poll? Optimus Primal was implemented a bit awkwardly but at least the end result made a lot of sense.
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmI vaguely remember the contention being that, given that the "leader evolution" or whatever gimmick was mandated for whatever character won the poll, Star Saber would have been a better fit anyway
I feel like he or Thunderwing would have buried all the other contenders if Hasbro had told the voters what they were actually voting on. Much like Scorponok probably would have walked away with the "choose the next Titan" poll if Hasbro had told people the toy they were voting on was going to be a Headmaster. But when you don't have all the information, it becomes a straight popularity contest. And Hasbro should never underestimate Beast Wars fans' ability to influence those!
Clay wrote: ↑Mon May 24, 2021 7:20 pmOf course, the next line (Siege) debuted the "Commander" class, which honestly seems like a much better place to put someone like Star Saber (or even a Victory Saber set), so that was ultimately a bunch of complaining about nothing.
A Commander Star Saber would be nice. Looking at Jetfire and Sky Lynx, I feel like it would be tough to do the combined form justice even at that price point, though that could just be my own indifference to Victory Leo talking. Of course, that also depends on how much they'd commit to Star Saber being a nesting doll of increasingly smaller robots...
Clay wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 2:55 amHmm. I thought about this a bit, and I think you skirted around the elephant in the room: the transformers toys always
do something, which is transform from a robot into something else. Given that that's the fundamental draw
Is it, though? I get the impression that a lot of our fellow fans don't care about their toys' alt-modes very much. I've even seen a sizable number of fans who say they've never transformed their toys at all! I think there's a large contingent of buyers who only care about the characters and look on the transformation as a necessary evil. Which is fine, everyone enjoys these things differently.
Clay wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 2:55 amCoincidentally, you've articulated (heh) my feelings of apathy towards 3 3/4" figures of all flavors (Marvel, Star Wars, GI Joe, etc.) pretty well. They might be neat to look at, but in my mind they don't
do anything to justify having a physical representation of a character. I fully understand that I'm in the minority about that as far as collecting little plastic baubles go, but that is how I approach it.
I feel like you bring up an interesting point. I enjoy superhero action figures a fair bit myself, but I enjoy them in a
much different way than I enjoy my Transformers. I have a selection of Transformers on my desk all the time to fiddle with, but if I get a new X-Men figure it'll get played with for five minutes, put in a cool pose and then added to a shelf and not touched again for six months until I decide to re-pose all of them en masse. Transformers are (for me at least) a lot more fun as
toys.
I feel like there's been a big switch towards emphasizing poseability and points of articulation over good transformations or action features lately in the fandom. And I think a lot of that is due to the movies drawing in a lot of people who were "toy collectors" first and "Transformers collectors" second, and who maybe don't appreciate all the things that make a Transformer different from a Marvel Legends or G.I. Joe figure.
And speaking of segues, another thing that today's breed of fan seems to really value is having all their toys match the same aesthetic standard. And then there's weirdos like me!
I watched the movie the other day after I got SS86 Hot Rod, and I decided to get my toys of the movie's "new" Autobots and Decepticons out for a play. It's an eclectic bunch but I like it. Leaving aside Hot Rod, who I ranted about in the new toys thread...
I feel like most of the '86 movie designs really don't make for great toys. They were designed as cartoon models first and when Hasbro tries to translate them into plastic, that really starts to show. Most of them don't even really look like they transform into anything! I think that's why I liked
Generations Kup, but was left completely cold by the TR, Legends and SS86 takes on the character. This toy has a lot of important touchstones that make it "feel" like Kup (to me anyway), but the designers also did a great job of making sure you
could see what it turns into. The horrifying face sculpt makes this feel more like a Movieverse take on the character than G1 Kup, though. It's no surprise third parties made themselves a pile of cash selling replacement heads.
I like
Legends Blurr mostly for the colours, but I also like that the "design language" of this body owes as much to Brainstorm as it does to Blurr. Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr always felt like odd ducks among the Steelhaven crew and the other late-run Autobots they hung out with in the later Marvel run. This toy makes Blurr, at least, finally look like he belongs with those guys. I wouldn't call this a "definitive" Blurr, if that's something you care about, but I love the way it "Nebulosifies" his design.
I actually did want to get a Siege Springer, not because I don't like
Generations Springer but because I thought it would add some nice diversity to my Wreckers set if I had a version of the guy that didn't share a body with Sandstorm. This is a great toy, though. Still probably the best Triplechanger they've ever engineered.
Titans Return Wheelie is one of a whole pile of great Legends figures that got released during the Prime Wars lines. One of the things I really liked about the TR and POTP figures in this size class is how they doubled as vehicles for Titan Master figures. Some did that better than others but I think Wheelie pulls off the gimmick quite well. He's also a really nice, small robot action figure.
I am stunned -- absolutely gobsmacked -- that there have been three different takes on the character since
Universe Galvatron and none of them have enticed me to move on from this mess of a figure. He was in tank mode when I pulled him out of the bin and parts fell off at least five times as I tried to remember how to transform it. I think the rumour was that this was designed as an Ultra and demoted at the last minute because they already had a bunch of tanks in that size class. I don't think it would have made a very good Ultra either.
Universe Cyclonus is good stuff, though. I do have to say that there's something weird about giving a toy-inspired deco to a figure that's so clearly taking inspiration from the TV show, but he wears the dark purple well. His Kingdom toy is really popular but it seems more like a lateral step than anything.
Generations Scourge is one of the few characters where I feel like reinventing the alt-mode was unequivocally a good choice. He still turns into a pretty vague geometric shape but at least now it's recognizable as a flying machine. More than anything, I like the more angular look to the demon wings that it gives this body.
Also, am I the only one who's absolutely adamant that Cyclonus and Scourge need to be Targetmasters, but don't care at all if Hot Rod, Kup or Blurr have their partners? It's extra weird because I actually owned Targetmaster versions of Hot Rod and Kup as a kid. The only thing I can think of is that it's because the UK comics made a fairly big deal of how much more powerful these two 'Cons were thanks to their gun buddies.
I tend to forget that Ratbat was also a Movie debut. In fact, I tend to forget he was in the cartoon at all. But he was and he did. so here's a
MP Ratbat KO in all it's fuel auditing glory!
Hasbro seems to be averaging roughly one new Sharkticon mold a year since
TR Gnaw came out, but I feel like this guy is the only one that finds the sweet spot between being a functional action figure, but still being small enough to be cute.
I'm not surprised to find that I don't have any toys of G1 Arcee, but I
am pretty stunned to realize that I don't own a single modern toy of Ultra Magnus. I used to have the Titanium figure, but I don't anymore and I've yet to replace it.