Dominic wrote: As for not seeing FE, the internet has ruined that for all fans, we all know what we're missing
But, kids and the rest of the general market are unlikely to know (and by extension unlikely to care) about that they are missing.
Which is why I said "fans" and "we".
so naturally Hasbro makes a dumbed-down version with TF, to capture the over-saturated and constantly-failing action-game-piece-figure market? Then again, they also put out Star Wars Fighter Pods which are a direct response to the Squinkies lines, except at 3x the cost, and no Star Wars market showing any interest in the concept.
Most large brands have a "like this other thing, but it is our brand" sub-line. Lunch boxes are a basic example of this dynamic. [/quote]Lunch boxes are not alternate toys competing with the main toy line's money.
Kids don't generally think that way, but BB has a very limited play pattern since he doesn't talk and thus doesn't emote, doesn't yell at enemies,
As kids, my cousin and I worked around this with SnakeEyes in "GI Joe". We just made sure that there were other characters for him to interact with.
We tried, "he talks/mumbles" a bit, but that was stupid. [/quote]Snake Eyes is expressed in body language, posture, and most importantly, unique actions (just dressing for work every day in ninja commando gear is expressive enough, but then actually using a katana and uzi at the same time, that is all any kid ever needs from an action figure), BB enjoys no unique actions or look or body language, he's just terrible at emoting except with his big stupid eyes and rubbery cartoon posture which don't come through on the figure.
GI Joe:ARAH was a great line for building an army of individuals and buying vehicles for those individuals,
Money aside, yes. But, in practical terms, even if I allocated all of my money (limited allowance and gift money) and all of my
yearl "gift slots" (x-amount for holidays, birthdays etc), I still had to make choices. I generally stayed with "Transformers" and
"GI Joe". I knew that every non-TF of non-Joe that I got was one less toy from a line that I collected.
But, ARAH was *huge*, even discounting vehicles.
Late 1986 was a good time for my toy collecting. As much as getting diabetes sucked, being in the hospital meant that I got a few extra toys,
and got to complete Predaking. But, there was plenty more that I missed from that year.
Ditto for "GI Joe". I almost got all of the 1986 figures. (I skipped Iceberg because I had a thing against "season specific" toys.) But, even as a kid I knew that there was no way in hell that I would be getting more than a few vehicles. [/quote]Heh heh, season specific figures... so, no Shipwreck because he's all about Fleet Week?
ARAH vehicles started at like $6, many were $10-$18 IIRC. There were a ton of cool vehicles under the big $30 pricepoint pieces. Not everything has to be the USS Flagg.
That's cool that TF and ARAH helped you through a tough time, '86 was an excellent year for ARAH and pretty damned good for G1 as well.
If there were fewer toys in 1986, then army building would have been a more practical option. With "Prime", there are few enough toys. But, how many kids can actually find the toys that do exist?
When we were kids, "army building" was literally building an army out of so many unique characters that were affordable and findable. Now it's generic guys and they're impossible to find.
they go way in for blind-pack and build-it-yourself gashopon
The only way to do it is to buy a sealed case. As expensive as that is, it is usually still cheaper.
Not all Gashopon cases are "complete" waves, and they do a lot of "rare piece" runs that are only 1 per 10 cases or something along those lines. I have my Furuta Enterprise-E right here, it's the chase figure in that wave, goes for $25 and up for a 4" plastic starship, and I was lucky to get it apparently.
Alternatively, if you only like a few figures out a large set, it is worth buying pre-opened figures as a premium.
Of course, neither of the "good" options described here are practical for most kids.
Neither is a good option for collectors like me either.
-getting sick of using NotePad for this.
That's fixed, right?
BWprowl wrote:JediTricks wrote: The first Legion Prime figures don't count as a launch because it's just Cliff and BB, I think, and they're in a transition case with DOTM cards and new cards in it from the same SKU.
Those first waves of Legion that showed up in my area before the street date had Ratchet and Vehicon in along with Cliff and BB. Just sayin’.
Pretty sure that's wave 2.
I didn’t even know you could buy Commanders sans the DVD, huh. They’re all eight bucks over at my Targets, but don’t seem to be selling *too* too fast.
Every Target here has sold through of every Commander except Optimus (damn this stupid show title, every time I type "Prime" for that character and then have to erase it for clarity's sake).
Dude, I was so excited, and that thing was so awesome, I bought it at full price *at Toys R Us* the first day I saw it here. It is kind of tempting to get multiples on clearance and use their connection points to hook them together into one big, meched-out circular playset of awesomeness though.
Glad you dig it. I was into the idea from the first mention, but when they said it only really fits Legion figures, I lost my interest. So these TFP vehicles holding Commanders, that is more my speed.
One thing I’ve noticed (and I might go into more corroborative detail on this once I get home and can make time for research) is that it seems that toys that are yellow are more likely to shelfwarm than others. Just off the top of my head: Universe Classics Cheetor, Movie 1 Voyager Mudflap, ROTF Tuner Mudflap (with his added yellow highlights)…
Interesting idea, although it could just be coincidence - M1 BB certainly didn't pegwarm for that first year. Also, one of the current pegwarming DOTM BBs is black.
Well, that and the fact that Prime only has, like, five villains. Some reason they can’t pull a BW (or hell, Movie) with this line and chuck in a bunch of cool toys that have nothing to do with the show?
I dunno what they're thinking, they've sorta mismanaged the timing on this line anyway, so entertainment support really shouldn't be so important to them. Then again, Animated was also all-show-characters, IIRC, and that line was good. They need more villains here, not just Megatron repaints either.
Eh, he’s still got plenty of defining red everywhere, the silver on his abdomen, all that white covering up the clear plastic on the vehicle’s midsection so he can have everyone’s precious clear windows (never understood it myself. It eats up paint budget, can lead to color-matching issues, and inevitably results in chipping down the line. Not worth it.). I’d say he’s comparable to most toys released in the last few years. Of course, it’s important that I admit that I don’t get *nearly* as wound up about paint apps as everyone else seems to.
I generally like clear windows, it gives a more real-world feel to a figure. There's something annoyingly chintzy about the Armada cars having painted windows, for example. Anyway, back to Ratchet, he looks really plain, there's not all that much red even compared to the Legion figure. The red they gave him is all lip-service too with thin paint and obvious white borders. IMO, he looks horribly cheap.
I’d say calling the G1 Mini-Bots better than Legion is a bit of a stretch. Even the iffier Legions like the Twins are miles ahead of guys like Brawn or Warpath as far as transformation and robot mode playability. Ditto for Spychangers, actually, who are way more simplified and non-intricate than the Legion guys.
Comparing G1 Mini-Bots to the rest of the G1 figures, they are much closer in sync to those toys than Legion are to these, size and value and build quality. Mini-Bots are simplified, but so are the deluxe figures from that time. Legions also rely way too heavily on ball joints which makes them feel fragile and not look as robot-like on a toy that small. Spychangers are in 2packs, so for the same price as 1 Legion you got 2 Spychangers that had weapons and could be used on Hot Wheels tracks, but most importantly you got TWO of them for $4-5.
I’d read about the alleged All-Prime Prime case on DvD’s page, not sure how accurate it was.
DvD's page is great, but he sometimes takes things at face value which aren't accurate.
I wouldn’t call ROTF ‘great design’, it had dropped gimmicks, gimped molding and shoddy quality control everywhere. The first Movie toys at least felt more complete and fully-realized, even if they weren’t quite up to being fully screen-accurate. Compare that to stuff like ROTF Leader Prime’s arm-crippling blades, Voyager Starscream’s static-molded guns and non-retractable hands, or Sideways’s fully-molded blade-spinning mechanism and claw-extending gimmick that just wound up being solid pieces. Later toys, and particularly the gold-box/HFTD series did get better though, I’ll admit.
It was great design compared to Movie 1 and DOTM in terms of transformation and sculpt and a layered feel. The first movie toys are noticeably simpler in those areas when compared to movie 2's. Talking about Starscream's hands, Prime's blades, Sideways' internal gimmicks that were cut is like judging a painting chiefly on its frame - LC Prime's sculpt, transformation, alt mode, robot mode, articulation, it's all better and more accurate than M1's; Starscream's EVERYTHING is better than M1's. and Sideways is an excellent figure even with those gimmicks nerfed. Saying Sideways or LC Prime are bad because of a little thing here and there is not seeing the forest for the trees.
Anyway, I STILL don’t understand the way people dump on the DOTM molds. They’re either superior to their preceding versions (Barricade being a good example, Megatron too), or good reinterpretations at different sizes (Deluxe Prime and Starscream are great). Yeah, there are still some losers (Voyager Prime), but you have those in every line. I wonder if people don’t just jump to hating DOTM because of MechTech and the knee-jerk ‘Rawrg gimmicks bad’ reaction. Just toss the Mechtechs in a bin if you don’t like them.
DOTM molds are a lesson in frustration. Most have pretty simple, weak decos. Many are fairly simple transformations and have less parts overall. The robots have a simpler, less-layered look to them. More of their budgets are dumped into action-gimmick weapons than figures themselves. There are more facade elements used. There are a lot of shortcuts used in the DOTM line which make it feel cheap and lesser-than. Dlx Starscream is good for what he does, but he gets away with murder having half his torso made up of gaps and a panel folded down from either wing.
You can't really compare Megatron from movie to movie since each design is so different, and Barricade wasn't a new sculpt in ROTF so it's not a good comparison either.
Well yeah, they’re using it as the main-line *now*, but I don’t know that that was always their intention. I’d heard their initial plan was just to run the FE molds in a still-running Generations line, like the WfC toys.
Exactly, they had the FE molds ready to go as a subset in Generations, but then decided somewhere along the line to have Prime carry the brand, so they had to redo the whole thing to fit with consistent gimmicks and aesthetics across a whole ‘Prime’ line. But they still had those FE molds, and wanted to get *some* return on them, so they got released the way they did.
Their SKUs have always been separate, even on early slides, I don't buy that FE was meant to be part of Generations. It doesn't even match their standard business model for TF of having entertainment drive the mainline.
I thought that was just for the interaction with the lights on their own weapons? I haven’t seen much of the upcoming Cyberverse vehicles, I’m interested in what they turn out to be.
They said it specifically about the Voyagers at SDCC last year. I don't have any Voys to confirm, but all 4 Voys in the line so far (OP, Megs, upcoming Starscream and Bulkhead) have clear stuff going on.
I’d guess that the Fighter Pods are less aimed at getting the Star Wars market to buy Squinkies and more at getting the Skquinkies market to buy Star Wars toys.
At triple the price? I dunno, it's not like Squinkies is such a huge collectible brand that it'd warrant that type of gouging from that core audience. Also, their marketing has been squarely at the Star Wars buyers so far, selling it as a slightly-zany lightly-game collectible.
They look cool. Sometimes that’s all kids need. Look at Boba Fett.
Boba Fett is attitude though, it's as much about what he's not doing as what he is. Jango Fett wasn't as popular despite looking cool too, and that's because the more we knew of him, the less cool he was.
This was one of my primary complaints back when I was first watching/reviewing/bitching about the show. Really, what is the point of it? At least the audience can grasp what MovieBee is trying to say on the same level that characters in the movie are.
It seems like they're trying to feel like the movie with him in as many ways as possible, but the TV writers realized it was too difficult and the idea got lost in committee until it just puked out as a mess.
For the record, I actually enjoy blind-packed stuff. There’s a fun ‘rush’ to it, and it’s conducive to impulse-buying/collecting.
Ugh, I hate "rush" buying, I've been stuck in that world collecting TF and Star Wars in "find it now or get it never" for a decade, it's awful to live there. I feel like I got into a blind-pack, impulse-buy line about 8 years ago, but I cannot remember what it was - it was fun in the moment but down the road it felt incredibly disappointing as a non-complete collection with a lot of extra stuff I didn't want. Hot Wheels tried this a couple years ago too, didn't pan out so well.
It’s one reason I enjoyed grabbing those Mega Bloks Halo figures or the blind-packed FIM Ponies. I’ve honestly thought Hasbro could do well to sell blind-packed GI Joe troopers of different sorts.
That's not a bad idea on GI Joe Troopers if they're all relatively generic troopers instead of individual characters. Mix-n-match limbs, heads, accessories, and paint schemes would do well (except for the "gotta catch 'em all" collectors, that'd suck for them).
Ditto me as well. I think I’m over what a bad taste the episodes of Prime that killed it for me left in my mouth, and I can enjoy getting toys of the designs I *do* like, such as Starscream, Soundwave, and Ratchet. I’m looking forward to Knock Out.
I was hoping it'd work for me that way, but so far there are more toys I don't want than do, there's a lot of frustrating compromises in the US products so far - paint and simplified sculpts. I'm sitting through the show now but still hating it, hoping that something will work, punching the clock once a week.
If they produced some Kre-O TFs that could actually transform between both modes, I admit, I’d be all over that.
That'd be a bit step in the right direction.
Tigermegatron wrote:Thus far,for the TF Prime toy line we barely got wave 1 released in stores & it's been 3 months since the initial first release in stores.
It's been 6 if you count the FEs.
I'm wondering if a joint release of TF Prime toys by both Hasbro & Takara is making TFP toy release in stores much slower. but this can't be the case because hasbro & takara have seperate manufactoring factories where they produce the TFP toys. Maybe the master molds needs to be shipped back & forth between the hasbro & takara manufactoring factories.
I don't think that's correct, I think Takara and Hasbro manufacture from the same factories, just with different materials and decos and budgets. The molds are generally stored at the factories and are exceedingly difficult to move even from storage to the floor, so moving them to another factory seems really outlandish and expensive.
