TFv's SDCC Bruticus Review (with photos!)

[onslaught86]

And, you are totally bringing sexy back like it never left!

One is always glad to be of service.

This could blow up in Hasbro's face. Swindle and/or Onslaught could easily outsell the others, meaning that retailers could have 3 or 4 pieces from a five piece case sitting on shelves. This would be bad enough in and of itself. But, when those pieces are made even less appealling by the fact that they are complimented by the missing piece(s), it could lead to the kind of back-log caused by poor sales of wave 1 PCC figures. (And, the problem is even more easily predictable and avoidable.)

I like that they actually thought out the issue of supply by engineering the limbs to be completely interchangeable, that was clearly part of both the marketing (To stores, probably) and design pitch. Two issues with it - Firstly, as you note, the absence of Onslaught could be an issue. While the rest can be substituted with doubles, if the central component not available, the rest are useless. Secondly, they haven't marketed the scrambling at all, instead choosing to use it to sell alternate versions in different configurations for the sake of visual differentiation, or "Confuse the lay-consumer into thinking they're different products instead of the same one in different colours." Seems a bad move.

I doubt there'll be much of an issue with Onslaught, though, since he has the worst vehicle mode of the bunch by a long shot, as well as the worst weapon.

As a result, the Wreckers set could be delayed, only released in limited numbers, or possibly even cancelled. (We know that Hasbro is not above cancelling waves of toys after the debacle of 2010.)

I doubt the Wreckers will be cancelled. The line would have to sell very poorly. Suppose that depends how many cases of Prime/Jazz/Shockwave get over-ordered and shelfwarm. Fundamentally, I think combiner teams make a lot of sense in a product wave, since there's really no better way (Beyond fiction and characterisation, et cetera) to encourage buyers to buy a whole set of toys. Little Jimmy can probably make a case for a Megatron if he has an Optimus Prime, it's harder to make a case that four more toys are needed.

Yeah. For that kind of money, the toy needs to have fewer obvious flaws. It needs to be closer to the game's colours. It would be nice if the game's colours were better in and of themselves. And, the joint issues that JT mentions need to be less pronounced.

Bingo. It's the scrawny torso, shoddy arms, and jointing issues that sour the deal for me. I agree that the game colours would be preferable, and could be better. Surely, given the options available, a proper G1 homage would have been feasible for the single-packed wide release. The Combaticons are all historically visually distinct and eye-catching, I'd imagine that's partly why the original set has seen so many re-releases.

Poor execution of the designs has been an issue for about 2 years now. In some cases, the designs themselves have been seriously flawed to begin with.

Two years? I'd say since, ooh, about 1985, if not earlier. Poor execution has been a mainstay of Transformers, since they're sometimes just too ambitious. Has it gotten markedly worse in the last two years? I'd probably say three or four or even five. Animated had awful quality control in many cases, all the movie lines have had severely compromised toys due to budget cuts, there's a handful that are among the worst Transformers ever made - Universe Ironhide, Galvatron, Cheetor, and Octane spring to mind, as do the ROTF bikes and Demolishor.

That wasn't quite what I meant, though - My thinking was more along the lines of the Transmetal 2 days, when so much love was poured into the gorgeous, intricate sculpts, and the paint jobs let them down. Now, we still see plenty of products harmed by paint and deco choices, but I'm seeing more made of poor quality plastic (All the ROTF scouts and Power Core Combiners, as well as some of Animated), and budget cuts that have outright ruined what would have been solid toys (ROTF Starscream especially).

I think what's contributed to the last few years being particularly disappointing, beyond shrinking in size and a series of badly designed gimmicks, has been the feeling that very few of the figures have come out as they were intended to be.

C'mon and say it.

It has been over 10 years ("10 years!") since Hasbro has released something resembling a competent merge-team. And, the RiD Trainbots were not only "old" moulding at the time, the initial research and design work was not even done by Hasbro.

If we're considering 'Hasbro releases' rather than 'designed', I'm going to call out the Micromaster Sixcombiners as being good toys. Armada's Prime/Jetfire/Overload combination is pretty good. There's also the Armada and Energon Street Action Teams, though I'm unsure how much I really care about those.

That was followed by the back-wards stumble of the "Energon" teams, which were recoloured far more than they should have been. Hasbro was unjustifiably proud of toys that were carrying some of the worst elements from 2 decades before....nearly 10 years ago.

That seemed more like recouping cost than pride. It was the terrible add-on Energon Weapon merge parts that dragged those three teams down (Plus a few abysmal limb modes. Here's looking at you, Superion). The individual components were largely good figures, and with the appropriate fan-modes, all three teams make good gestalts. They shouldn't need that twiddling, though, they should be designed and built to be excellent. They could have been, with hardly any extra effort or resource, yet they weren't, and that still annoys me.

I managed to forgive them for PCC because the toys had high fiddle value and I was expecting better things to come.

That's an interesting statement. Despite owning most of them (Thanks to deep clearance), I'll readily pronounce most of the PCC line as awful. Heavytread and Undertow are the line's gems by a wide margin. The concept was flawed to the core, the quality was terrible, they were tiny and poorly executed and just no fun. Given 'nothing' better came out of it, I'm not giving that line any forgiveness, just the finger and a box in the garage.

That is likely. From what I have heard, the big thing now is third party Stunticons. Hasbro has been stomping that fire pretty hard of late. But, they have not figured out that the best way to deal with the third party companies is to actually meet the demand they are....and do a better job of it. The half-assery of SDCC Bruticus (and the mould-related toys) is just going to leave third party companies with the same opportunities that they have been exploiting for years.

I'm not interested in third party figures. Hasbro's are expensive enough, and generally have better quality control. Add-on kits intrigue me, because they're not something Hasbro would ever do, and are thus a different value proposition. I own and enjoy both the City Commander Magnus Armour and the Bruticus upgrade set with Blast-Off and Swindle.

You're quite right, though, the market for well-designed premium product that aesthetically caters to a nostalgia-driven adult audience is clearly there, and is not being exploited by the first party. It just seems bizarre. I have to assume some of that is to do with Fun Publications handling the 'boutique market' product (In an ideal world, the need to compete directly in that market would be a good reason for Hasbro to take the license off them).

You have been out for a while.

Out of the fandom, not of the game - I've bought all the toys as usual these past few years.

Hasbro is half-assing stuff that they used to get right. Look at the FoC toys. They do not seem bad, until you realize that they are billed as Deluxes, which is supposed to be the most solid and reliable price-point in the line.

Two things make the FoC Deluxes a poor offering in my eyes. The first is the obvious comparison to the WFC figures, which by and large were great to excellent - Soundwave is a firm favourite, as is that Prime. They were unexpectedly good, unexpectedly well designed and complex, with clever weaponry and design choices, unintrusive gimmicking that made them more fun to play with and transform, some of the best toys of their year and Generations/Universe/Et Cetera as a whole.

The FoC figures naturally had a lot to live up to, and it doesn't help that Prime, Jazz, and Shockwave have subsidised Bruticus. As we know, the later redecos and retools of these moulds are coming with extra weapons, and big ones at that. These three have been kept small to balance the cost across the case assortments. That business model hurts the product, and I wish they'd drop it in favour of better toys.

There's also the wider issue of fake parts, which I've seen mentioned in other threads. Relatively recently, I came across the concept of skeuomorphism, a design term that describes redundant detailing that is left in place or intentionally placed to make a new product evoke the old product it has replaced, such as those exceedingly tacky heaters with the false hot coals in the front, or Apple's love of faux leather and wood graphics. I'll say this now, I HATE fake parts in a way that I have not seen in the wider fandom through my searches this year. I hate them. They ruin toys for me. TF Prime First Edition Cliffjumper has fake wheels moulded into the backs of his legs. That toy is otherwise spectacular, an elegant transformation, innovative, complex, fun, and results in both modes looking great. It is an excellent piece of work. And those fake wheels are so unnecessary that it really hurts my love for it. Not only are they unpainted, they're barely noticeable - yet noticing them makes the toy worse.

What that boils down to is a matter of stand-alone product. A Transformer that converts from one mode to another, yet has fake parts of the vehicle in certain places on the robot, smacks of failure. Hasbro and Takara couldn't do it properly. They couldn't engineer it to to transform correctly, so they cheated and cheapened it. They took a Rubik's Cube, got it most of the way solved, then shrugged and painted the rest of the squares to match. Not only that, the fact that the toy has to conform to an ideal outside of itself is maddening. This was one of the great strengths of the brand for a while, that the media was based off of the toy designs, so the toys were effectively self-contained. They were 'complete' unto themselves. There was no need for an outside reference point, no version that was more definitive. Obviously many fans show preferences for animation models that derive from the toys, but until recently, the toys themselves have not been cheapened by their devotion to the designs depicted in the media.

The first time I remember this happening was with the RID Spychangers that Takara had solicited to be in scale with Brave Max, but never released - Wildride, Black Convoy, God Magnus, and Super Fire Convoy. Several of them had fake wheels. This upset me at the time, and upsets me even more now that it's widespread thanks to the movie lines. It is an invitation to give up, to release a shitty product that isn't finished and doesn't even have the decency to pretend that it's its own 'thing'. I don't give the slightest of tosses about Prime Cliffjumper's animation model having wheels on the backs of its thighs, if the toy is good I'd rather the toy be self-contained and 'close enough'.

I *almost* want that Prime. But, I cannot bring myself to reward bad behavior from Hasbro. Jazz is mal-porportioned enough to discourage me from buying my favourite character. Shockwave has obvious screws and rivets on the front of the damned toy. They would be passable Scouts, but are no acceptable as Deluxes.

Suffice it to say that I will not be buying Fall of Cybertron Jazz because his fucking fake wheel feet offend me. And Prime having fake wheels in his back offends me too. I did get Prime, not knowing he had the fake back-wheels. He also has fake knee joints, the real joint is below the knee and results in bad poses. And his neck/shoulder assembly is a bad design. Don't waste your money on this one.

Shockwave's screws wouldn't bother me at all if they'd made them black instead of leaving them silver. Animated set a nice precedent for black screws in places, if memory serves. Fake parts and legoforming are much more offensive to my mind than visible screws. Screws may be out of scale and make them more 'toy'-ish, but they at least have a really good reason for existing.

Economics plays a role. But, Hasbro is also getting lazy because they are assuming that they can. (In the long-term, this will backfire on them. But, that is at least another year or two off.)

They want more money for - objectively - less product. It will hurt their sales. I hope they realise this. I also hope the packaging becomes less ugly and busy and resource-consuming, and the ridiculous case assortments start making more sense. How many more years can the world at large tolerate shelfwarming Bumblebees?

Yeah. But, I wanted to cut back on toys anyway this year. So, Hasbro is helping me with that.

I didn't want to cut down. Don't really have much choice in the matter. A few gems in the mainline product, lots of shoddy sublines that dilute the brand, and desirable exclusives so expensive that it's a rich kids' game to collect them.

There are a few things that appeal. But, even so, much of that is custom fodder.


Dom
-kind of misses KO Toys.

Haven't customised anything in some time. Did make the effort to paint DOTM Rescue Ratchet's rims. Didn't really make the figure any better. Don't think it's a redeeming element of the purchase experience, myself.

At this point, I miss the late end of ROTF and the HFTD line, there were many good toys in there. DOTM was largely bad, there's not been a lot to love since, and the great figures cannot be relied upon to come thick & fast at any point in the year anymore. There's plenty I'm looking forward to - Big dorky Voyager Cybertronian Soundwave with autotransforming disk buddies, Kickback, Prime Skyquake & Magnus, and (of course) G2 Bruticus - but it doesn't feel like any of those will be in my hands soon. Hasbro's (probably unintentional, still quite real) tactic of "Hope people buy the janky stuff because they're impatient for the good things we show off long before they're released" makes the collecting game less fun now than it has been for the last, ooh, ten years?

[Dominic]

Yeah there's two screws on the front that probably should be on the back but I wouldn't really take points off or call it a half assed figure because of it.

There is no excuse for that. They knew better than that in the 19-fucking-70s. When I first saw it, I thought that the toy had been mis-transformed or assembled.

Two issues with it - Firstly, as you note, the absence of Onslaught could be an issue. While the rest can be substituted with doubles, if the central component not available, the rest are useless. Secondly, they haven't marketed the scrambling at all, instead choosing to use it to sell alternate versions in different configurations for the sake of visual differentiation, or "Confuse the lay-consumer into thinking they're different products instead of the same one in different colours."

The problem is that kids and casual buyers are *not* necessarily going to buy a whole wave of toys that cost $15+ USD in one go. Yes, each toy is part of a larger whole, but many people will be looking at it as "5 toys that need to be able to stand on their own". And, anybody who is going to spend the money on a full set is likely not going to buy two of the same limb figure to make two different limbs. Swindle is going to be the point of failure, as he is the most recognizable of the 5 characters.

I doubt the Wreckers will be cancelled. The line would have to sell very poorly. Suppose that depends how many cases of Prime/Jazz/Shockwave get over-ordered and shelfwarm.

The wave could be ordered in low numbers, similar to late wave RTS Scouts. Casual consumers did not miss those toys because they did not know that said toys were in the pipeline. But, we know what happened. Hasbro skipped using new tooling. (Now, nearly two years later, we still have no word on any US release of Frenzy and Rumble. The Windcharger was barely released. And, I think we have to accept that the tail-end recolours are just not going to happen.

The first wave will hopefully be sold through by the holidays, when Bruticus ships to retailers in the US. But, if Bruticus sits for any reason, or if too many of the components sit, that will be a large chunk of a *wave* of toys clogging shelves.

Whatever the next wave after that that retailers have to order, (not necessarily the next one to ship), ends up being could be under-ordered. Remember what happend with PCC? Some stores effectively skipped wave 2, and went right to the 3rd wave's recolours. Imagine one case worth of merge team parts shelf warming and selling through just in time for the recolours of those same toys.

Or the recolours could be under-ordered.

The Combaticons are all historically visually distinct and eye-catching, I'd imagine that's partly why the original set has seen so many re-releases.

And, Hasbro/Takara had the tooling readily accessible.

f we're considering 'Hasbro releases' rather than 'designed', I'm going to call out the Micromaster Sixcombiners as being good toys. Armada's Prime/Jetfire/Overload combination is pretty good. There's also the Armada and Energon Street Action Teams, though I'm unsure how much I really care about those.

Those Micromasters were pieces of shit in the early 90s and they were pieces of shit circa '04. The connection/extension pieces had more plastic than the individual component figures. They were poorly engineered and did not even look good on a shelf.

The AEC bike teams were acceptable for the time they came out largely because of the scale of the toys. But, they were not the type of Combiner that we are talking about here.

I am talking about "Combiners consisting of 4+ members". Hasbro has been pushing that kind of toy for damned near the life of the brand. Devastator bothered me as a kid. So did the plug-head guys. But, I was a kid and (like most people) assumed that it was the best Hasbro could do. (I had no idea how good "Go-Bots!" Puzzlor was.)

After a huge step forward during the Beast-era, Hasbro got slack during the UT. Those combiners carried over some of the most offensive elements from the original series, and Hasbro acted like they were doing us a favour by marketing them at all.

I'll readily pronounce most of the PCC line as awful. Heavytread and Undertow are the line's gems by a wide margin. The concept was flawed to the core, the quality was terrible, they were tiny and poorly executed and just no fun. Given 'nothing' better came out of it, I'm not giving that line any forgiveness, just the finger and a box in the garage.

You are a fool.

PCC was fun. It had fiddle value. I always have one or more of those figure near my bed for easy fiddling access. The only US release that I do not have is Salvage/Bomburst.

How was the concept flawed? (And, might this discussion warrant a new thread?)

I'm not interested in third party figures. Hasbro's are expensive enough, and generally have better quality control. Add-on kits intrigue me, because they're not something Hasbro would ever do, and are thus a different value proposition. I own and enjoy both the City Commander Magnus Armour and the Bruticus upgrade set with Blast-Off and Swindle.

I am not buying 3rd party product either, largely for money reasons. But, plenty of people *are*. Hasbro should recognize, and cater to, that market.

And, it need not be nostalgia based. Hasbro could simply make more modern toys to a higher standard.

Relatively recently, I came across the concept of skeuomorphism, a design term that describes redundant detailing that is left in place or intentionally placed to make a new product evoke the old product it has replaced, such as those exceedingly tacky heaters with the false hot coals in the front, or Apple's love of faux leather and wood graphics. I'll say this now, I HATE fake parts in a way that I have not seen in the wider fandom through my searches this year.

In terms of general principle, I agree with you. This is arguably a symptom of a greater problem in moder society. (But, we have email and FaceBook for that discussion.)

But.....

They ruin toys for me. TF Prime First Edition Cliffjumper has fake wheels moulded into the backs of his legs. That toy is otherwise spectacular, an elegant transformation, innovative, complex, fun, and results in both modes looking great. It is an excellent piece of work. And those fake wheels are so unnecessary that it really hurts my love for it. Not only are they unpainted, they're barely noticeable - yet noticing them makes the toy worse.

It is really a question of degree.

For example, those Legends/Spy Changers from years ago did not bother me because they were smaller toys intended to represent characters that were never intended to be made at that scale or lack of complexity. Similarly, the faux grill/gut on Master Piece Optimus Prime makes that toy look so much better than a more honest design would that I consider the cheat to be a virtue.

I can even forgive FoC Jazz's fake wheel feet because they are unintrusive and intuitively work, similar to RotF Sideway's wheel-hands.

The immediate problem arises when it is done excessively and/or lazily. The unpainted leg wheels on "Prime" Cliffjumper are a good example of this.

And, we should not forget the larger problem of lazy design. Back during the UT, the toys and character models were designed to look the same and work well together. There were some discrepencies. But, for the most part, the toys looked like the show and/or comics.

That was how it should have been. Hasbro learned during the Beast-era, (still later than they should have), that character models needed to be consistent. The more that the toys complimented the media and vice-versa, the happier everybody was. Character designs may have changed considerably between the concept and production stages. But, the character as released was consistent. it looked right and it was likely pretty welly designed and executed.

Now, it feels like Hasbro has removed part of the initial process, specifically the phases that involved making sure that the toys and control art were mechanically compatible.

In other words, Hasbro and Takara used to go the extra mile to make sure that the toys and animation models would be largly interchangable without obvious cheats.

Don't waste your money on this one.

Cost has been a huge factor for me.

I meant to cut down on toys this year to begin with. But, I expected Prime and Jazz to be the temptation that would break me. But, the jump in price (fast approaching $20 USD in some places) and the decline in the quality of the engineering is making it pretty easy to skip. Poor quality control means that a specific copy of a toy might be bad, but there are also good copies in existence. Poor design means that the problem is not only consistent, but was probably avoidable to begin with.

The current crop of toys has the rather ignominous distinction of being toys that I sort of want....right up until I see them. The last toys to hold this dubious honour were G1 junk like gun Megatron (one of the worst robot modes ever) or the jets. (Getting PVCs of those characters in '02 killed any desire I had for original figures of them.)

They want more money for - objectively - less product. It will hurt their sales. I hope they realise this. I also hope the packaging becomes less ugly and busy and resource-consuming, and the ridiculous case assortments start making more sense. How many more years can the world at large tolerate shelfwarming Bumblebees?

I have brought this up a few times.

Hasbro is falling victim to a case study of the moral hazard. In other words, they are suffering no immediate consequence for foolish behavior, and are thus unlikely to change their behavior.

Hasbro has gone 5 years with a movie every other year. The over-all decline in their performance, (toy design, painting, even basics like distribution or case assortments), really took root during movie 2. But, it did not matter. Enough collector were on auto-pilot. And, kids tend to be more forgiving....especially when they did not actually know how much better Hasbro had been about those things in the past.

The problem will become apparent when the current crop of kids starts to age out, which they will in the next year or so if they have not started to already. And, kids are like little sheep. If their big brother does not like "Transformers", will the little ones? How long will they stay?

A kid who was 5 when the first movie was released is now 10. He is at the point when he is either going to age out or take the first steps towards becoming a collector. Becoming a collector is much less appealling when the product is getting worse and more expensive, even before one considers the social pressures to not buy toys.

And, with the economy being what it is, parents are less likely to buy kids as many toys to begin with. Fewer toys, especially when the toys are not as good, are not going to encourage people to start buying, let alone continue to buy....

didn't want to cut down. Don't really have much choice in the matter. A few gems in the mainline product, lots of shoddy sublines that dilute the brand, and desirable exclusives so expensive that it's a rich kids' game to collect them.

I wanted to cut back because there was other stuff that I needed to concentrate on. Unexpectedly, money became an issue as well this year. But, Hasbro has really made the whole thing pretty painless.

As of now, I have a 100% skip rate for "Dark of the Moon". I am likely to buy one "Prime" toy for customizing. If not for the planned US release of the "Asia market" figures, I would be looking at a similarly high skip-rate for "Geneations". Even so, the toys that I do like are recolours, and most of those will be custom fodder.

Of course, time has been an issue with customizing.

"Hope people buy the janky stuff because they're impatient for the good things we show off long before they're released" makes the collecting game less fun now than it has been for the last, ooh, ten years?

It is down to the comics for me. IDW is holding my interests with "Robots in Disguise". ("More than Meets the Eye" and "ReGeneration 1" are filler. Neither would be enough to keep me in comics on their own merits.) And, I am planning to do a read through of the old UK (and select US) run.

The toys I like are getting to be fewer and further between. And, they tend to be more expensive exclusives/imports that I have to think thrice about before buying.


Dom
-but, at least Hasbro is making it easy to not spend money....

[Onslaught Six]

The question of the first (and even second) FOC toys shelfwarming is an odd one, because--at least in all the stores I've seen--Generations isn't getting its own dedicated space again. This also happened for quite a bit when HFTD and Generations first started--stores just threw them all up wherever they would fit, because they were all the same price, so who cares?

[JediTricks]

Hey, they're good pictures! I just...well, there's no way I'll be buying him at his inflated price, so it's the retail release I gotta worry about. Plus I have the G2 version preordered.

You guys already know I wasn't even very fond of the SDCC colour scheme anyway for a variety of reasons, so!

Also, even though you have the figure, I don't think any of us do, so it's...hard to do a comparative comment?

Ok. I was mostly doing a big review to give folks an idea of what the G2 and retail and Wreckers versions would be like, since the supply of SDCC ones was already exhausted.

Oh look, it's totally not me coming out of nowhere to post something! Hi, guys. How've you been?
O6 linked me to the review when I found a gap in my currently insane work/study schedule - and considered this significant enough to talk about.

Wow, welcome back, been wondering about you what with the disappearing act and all. That's too bad about the tight schedule, but at least work and study mean positive steps forward usually.

First up - fantastic gallery & commentary, I'd almost forgotten what it was like to read a review that went properly in-depth with niggles like joint placements and cost-cutting sprue-merges. Clearly I've been away too long! As you rightly note, this set of five figures represents a large chunk of the TF product for the best part of a year, with the Wreckers to come, and probably additional releases after that (Will be keeping a close eye out for Takara's take). The SDCC set has been a big ticket item on my radar for obvious reasons, but I could not justify the $300+ NZD that it would come out to on the secondary market, especially in light of the love that went into the G2 set - and the lower prices + cheap international shipping that Amazon's business models afford them. So I remain Bruticusless for now, and gaze at your photos with a mixture of envy and detachment, because it's probably the idea that I like more than the reality.

Thank you! This was sort of what I thought we'd end up doing when we first discussed branching the site out of just forums, now I can say IT'S HARD WORK!

Geez, $300 NZ is a lot, that's $250 US, it's not even going for that much here on the aftermarket. I hear ya about sticking with that G2 set.

As you note, the colours are very drab, meaning that the reasoning behind livening them up a bit for retail holds some water. I'm still unsure why neither of those two versions went with a G1 scheme for Vortex, he seems awfully confusing between the red and the yellow. It's unfortunate that this set is so compromised in terms of component scale, wonky modes, ugly/hollow weapons, and most crucially, the official robot mode arm configuration. It still seems bizarre to me that Hasbro's clearly talented team can stand to see their work so unnecessarily butchered, be it in default configurations or shoddy, incomplete instructions.

It seems like they accidentally gave Vortex's colors to your namesake. Vortex does suffer in the color department from being the biggest eye-gouge, although I still can't get over how caramel-brown Blast Off is.

I was explained that in general they design the toys and by the time another department has screwed them up, the designers have been working for months on later product. Seems like it's the brand manager's job to ensure that doesn't get out of control, which doesn't speak well for the Transformers brand manager over the last few years, lots of weirdness like what you mean has cropped up in the line.

I greatly appreciate your work with those alternate limb modes, this is easily the best documentation of those I've seen. Giant gorilla Blast-Off just doesn't look good, and neither does open-handed Vortex. I much prefer your alternate configuration for both (Aside from Blast-Off's absent hand - Is it possible to jam a gun in there somehow?). The Swindle/Brawl arms seem immediately aesthetically superior to that default configuration. There's something very Mecha about that Brawl arm, although the hands being different sizes is a bit of a turn-off. When some version of this set makes its way to me, I think I may try for Brawl & Blast-off as legs - those toes make all the difference - with Swindle & Vortex as arms. A shame about Swindle's top half not locking at all, made worse by his having more articulation than the others and better hand sculpts to boot. It will be interesting to see whether the bonus weapons included with the Wrecker set contribute towards the combined form in any meaningful fashion. I don't have high hopes, mind you, but added bulk and a few locking tabs could, it seems, make a big difference.

Vortex's flat open hand reminds me of a karate chop.

Blast Off's alternate config is a big open cavity, but annoyingly there's no access to 5mm pegholes so there's nothing to attach it to, you'd have to wedge it into some kibble. It is possible though, never occurred to me.

As you say, this set does not represent the monumental leap forward that the years of engineering experience between this product and the last proper combiners would lead one to conclude it should. Whether it's cost-cutting or the wrong features being sacrificed - regardless of it increasing retool & redeco potential, I think I would rather have seen the Scramble City gimmick scrapped in favour of the limbs being dedicated to one configuration. That would theoretically have allowed for the figures to perform better at those individual tasks, rather than poorly at many, and could even have allowed a few extra joints or grams of plastic to go Onslaught's way - he being the only one that does not have two combined modes, and the most compromised as a vehicle.

I am guessing they went Scramble City because they wanted to use the alternate config to sell Ruination later. Alternately, it's possible this team doesn't have the imagination or vision to deliver what you're talking about, they haven't done combiners except PCC - this is what happens when a skill is not passed down or flexed enough. And I still feel like Onslaught was a lost opportunity, that they should have pushed to get him out of Deluxe into Voyager.

As for doing them as dedicated limbs, I see what you mean, it's a lot of faith that they wouldn't have just delivered this same figure though - Blackout's leg mode doesn't take anything away from his arm mode, and there's very little compromise in Vortex's leg mode. But you could be right, they might have taken the figure an entirely different direction. If I had thought of that, I would have asked them at Comic-Con.

Perhaps it will be interesting to see if the third party manufacturers will produce anything to help extract the full potential from this set. Replacement hands, heads, and guns, add-on merge parts, stickers from Reprolabels, all would help. It brings me to the same conclusion about a gap in the market that I've come to many times before - Beyond the Masterpiece line, there are just too many compromises made to ambitious designs like this one to allow them to be profitable at mass market retail (And in the SDCC set's case, it feels a little more painful as there's a premium price, and they aren't really premium product). There's really no ideal solution to the problem. Collectors would surely eat up a properly premium giftset, yet economies of scale mean exclusives cannot have any additional tooling. High-end collectables have a flourishing home in the Japanese market, for sure, but Hasbro & Takara do not license the property to companies who would compete with them in that field, and those companies would not have the experience needed to tool the products properly - Hot Toys G.I. Joe makes sense, Hot Toys Transformers does not. Given how excellent some of the Masterpiece figures are, HasTak are clearly capable of performing for that audience themselves.

Considering how many 3rd party combiner and PCC things are going on right now, the idea for expansion of this set seems very promising.

I've been thinking about the Hasbro problem lately, how they've become so big a company that they cannot cater to anything but the mainstream market, they cannot exploit smaller markets even if they want to. The thinking came up during a conversation about Force FX Lightsabers, Master Replicas lost the license and Lucasfilm gave it to Hasbro, it's the same factory making the product in China but now Hasbro is the distributor, but Hasbro's business model requires a minimum monthly purchase to get an account, I think it's $5000 per month. $5k per month in orders is easy for a big box chain store like Target or Walmart, but Force FX Sabers sold best in small specialty stores to non-toy-collector types, and those stores cannot really afford to buy $5k of Hasbro toys a month, so the only way they can carry the product is to go through a 3rd party distributor like Diamond, or buy it retail and sell it at a huge markup. Hasbro has always been a business model centered around pushing a large amount of product rather than a small amount of specialty items, going all the way back to the Hassenfeld Brothers selling textiles, so the company is very big and with that comes big overhead - an item run of 2,000 pieces for them would be a disaster, yet smaller companies would be thrilled to push that many pieces of a specific item - Galoob is a great example, they were a smaller toy company (but still fairly big) in the '90s and sold Star Wars Action Fleet and Micro Machines mini vehicles and mini-figurines, they remained profitable and those lines were successful until late '98 when Hasbro bought them, but Hasbro running those same business models failed both Action Fleet and Micro Machines within a year of running them with the exact same team and factory, and when Hasbro tried to revisit those brands 6 years later with new teams they did even worse. Hasbro simply isn't equipped to cater to a small, passionate boutique fanbase; and no smaller manufacturer has approached them to get a license to manufacture those items that would take up that slack - Super7 recently got a license to do Transformers Super Shogun, their 24-inch-tall retro-styled rocket-fist figures, and they make their business work with microscopic sales compared to what Hasbro does, so they'd be closer to the type of business to make what Hasbro can't. It's quite a mental conundrum.

I don't know as much about Takara, it seems like they used to actively cater to those boutique Transformers buyers but since the Tomy buyout they've stagnated.

I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, here - It's frustrating to be a fan of the property and see so many figures come so close, and fall crucially short. Even if this set isn't as excellent as it could have been, I still admire its ambition, and hope that it's successful at retail to allow for more along the same lines in the years to come.

Good sentiment.

This could blow up in Hasbro's face. Swindle and/or Onslaught could easily outsell the others, meaning that retailers could have 3 or 4 pieces from a five piece case sitting on shelves. This would be bad enough in and of itself. But, when those pieces are made even less appealling by the fact that they are complimented by the missing piece(s), it could lead to the kind of back-log caused by poor sales of wave 1 PCC figures. (And, the problem is even more easily predictable and avoidable.)

As a result, the Wreckers set could be delayed, only released in limited numbers, or possibly even cancelled. (We know that Hasbro is not above cancelling waves of toys after the debacle of 2010.)

The difference there is that these figures are meant to work as stand-alone toys too, the characters are individuals in the game as well as a combiner; PCC figures really stank of needing other toys to make them acceptable, what with big blue combiner cubes everywhere and such. Also, with multiple editions means that there are twice as many opportunities to create a complete bot, even if it's with a different color of that guy.

You are right though that the Wreckers could be delayed or canned though, that is consistent with first-quarter-of-the-year figures too. But at least then it's all at once rather than cancelling half the figures after the first two came out.

Hasbro has been stomping that fire pretty hard of late. But, they have not figured out that the best way to deal with the third party companies is to actually meet the demand they are....and do a better job of it.

They don't even need to do a better job, just SOME overture towards that market - not blinged-out G1 Soundwave, not this over-compromised Bruticus set, and certainly not ignoring half the MPs for this year.

Hasbro is half-assing stuff that they used to get right. Look at the FoC toys. They do not seem bad, until you realize that they are billed as Deluxes, which is supposed to be the most solid and reliable price-point in the line. I *almost* want that Prime. But, I cannot bring myself to reward bad behavior from Hasbro. Jazz is mal-porportioned enough to discourage me from buying my favourite character. Shockwave has obvious screws and rivets on the front of the damned toy. They would be passable Scouts, but are no acceptable as Deluxes.

Economics plays a role. But, Hasbro is also getting lazy because they are assuming that they can. (In the long-term, this will backfire on them. But, that is at least another year or two off.)

I think you're being a little harsh on Shockwave. Yeah there's two screws on the front that probably should be on the back but I wouldn't really take points off or call it a half assed figure because of it. And the pins holding the arms together are no less offensive that any of the seekers or the Autobot cars from about the last 5-6 years.

I will agree on Jazz though, that chest just dominates the robot mode. Prime is also a pretty solid figure all around, my only complaint being that his head seems too small.

First off, I like this Shockwave figure, but at $15, those screws are pretty bad, and while I agree that the hinge pins showing everywhere is not terrible it is more than I've seen on other figures. But what bugs me about Shockwave is the sheer simplicity of him, he's small, just not that many parts, not much paint, and his transformation is basically just flipping his torso over and folding his shoulders up. All that compromise would be acceptable had they not jacked the MSRP up from $12 to $15 at the same time. It does come off as laziness to me as well - maybe it's not lazy, maybe they really worked their asses off to deliver as much as possible to a figure that was limited in parts, but then it's lazy of brand management to let things get so bad.

I need to stop reading other people's thoughts. Before I was cool; now I just notice the screws.

Also, I'd like him more if he didn't have the wings.

While the screws were the first thing I noticed about his alt mode, I find them easy to overlook in person, they add splash to a rather dark and simple torso, there's a bunch of hinge pins showing so it plays off them, and it's under the giant Shockwave-Manboob.

I disagree about the wings, without them the back of the vehicle is not only NOTHING, but narrow ugly nothing with more gaps. Flip the wings up vertical in alt mode and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

Firstly, as you note, the absence of Onslaught could be an issue. While the rest can be substituted with doubles, if the central component not available, the rest are useless. Secondly, they haven't marketed the scrambling at all, instead choosing to use it to sell alternate versions in different configurations for the sake of visual differentiation, or "Confuse the lay-consumer into thinking they're different products instead of the same one in different colours." Seems a bad move.

Maybe that's why they made Onslaught so mediocre, so that he'd always be around.

Why do you feel it's a bad move to use the scramble city limb config to sell a second round of figures instead of as an active gimmick with the first round? I don't think it's a detriment, Hasbro is basically starting anew with combiners, so the expectations are lower, they don't have to one-up a previous attempt they way they did going from Devastator to Bruticus and the other scramble city '86 figures. Limb swapping wasn't a significant marketing push for the G1 figures either, not in the US anyway.

I doubt there'll be much of an issue with Onslaught, though, since he has the worst vehicle mode of the bunch by a long shot, as well as the worst weapon.

Don't forget some of the worst colors. Impactor is at least getting a new weapon though (look in bot mode): http://photos.actionfigs.com/panel/p744 ... rmers.html

Bingo. It's the scrawny torso, shoddy arms, and jointing issues that sour the deal for me. I agree that the game colours would be preferable, and could be better. Surely, given the options available, a proper G1 homage would have been feasible for the single-packed wide release. The Combaticons are all historically visually distinct and eye-catching, I'd imagine that's partly why the original set has seen so many re-releases.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that either: A) the other scramble city molds have been damaged or lost; or B) Onslaught being the only non-shitty core of the bunch makes that group the most exciting. Onslaught is the only core who isn't easily breakable (Silverbolt), repetitive of Optimus Prime (Motormaster), a weird nothing, or a beast, right?

Armada's Prime/Jetfire/Overload combination is pretty good.

But that's just Prime wearing robots as shirts and pants, not a real combiner character, and certainly they weren't a team (beyond all being Autobots).

There's also the Armada and Energon Street Action Teams, though I'm unsure how much I really care about those.

Armada was 10 years ago, Energon was 8 years ago.

That seemed more like recouping cost than pride. It was the terrible add-on Energon Weapon merge parts that dragged those three teams down (Plus a few abysmal limb modes. Here's looking at you, Superion). The individual components were largely good figures, and with the appropriate fan-modes, all three teams make good gestalts. They shouldn't need that twiddling, though, they should be designed and built to be excellent. They could have been, with hardly any extra effort or resource, yet they weren't, and that still annoys me.

Third Party types have revisited the Energon ____ Maximus crowd recently and turned out semi-decent combiners, but man does it take work. And again, those molds were marketed 8 years ago. And they're STILL pushing those molds occasionally, they showed up in the ROTF line, and even the TFCC has been using them I think.

That's an interesting statement. Despite owning most of them (Thanks to deep clearance), I'll readily pronounce most of the PCC line as awful. Heavytread and Undertow are the line's gems by a wide margin. The concept was flawed to the core, the quality was terrible, they were tiny and poorly executed and just no fun. Given 'nothing' better came out of it, I'm not giving that line any forgiveness, just the finger and a box in the garage.

Pretty much right on all counts. The only good thing about the line was it was fairly cheap.

You're quite right, though, the market for well-designed premium product that aesthetically caters to a nostalgia-driven adult audience is clearly there, and is not being exploited by the first party. It just seems bizarre. I have to assume some of that is to do with Fun Publications handling the 'boutique market' product (In an ideal world, the need to compete directly in that market would be a good reason for Hasbro to take the license off them).

I touched on this heavily above, but I don't think Hasbro has been locked out by FunPub, even with their new laughable subscription service, because Hasbro suggested the license could be had if one of those Third Party types had come to Hasbro for a license instead of just stealing IP. Part of me thinks I should talk to Super7 about trying to extend their license, they licensed the rights to do retro "Alien" figures from Fox based on the unproduced line Kenner came up with in the late '70s, they're boutique and now they have a TF license.

There's also the wider issue of fake parts, which I've seen mentioned in other threads. Relatively recently, I came across the concept of skeuomorphism, a design term that describes redundant detailing that is left in place or intentionally placed to make a new product evoke the old product it has replaced, such as those exceedingly tacky heaters with the false hot coals in the front, or Apple's love of faux leather and wood graphics. I'll say this now, I HATE fake parts in a way that I have not seen in the wider fandom through my searches this year. I hate them. They ruin toys for me. TF Prime First Edition Cliffjumper has fake wheels moulded into the backs of his legs. That toy is otherwise spectacular, an elegant transformation, innovative, complex, fun, and results in both modes looking great. It is an excellent piece of work. And those fake wheels are so unnecessary that it really hurts my love for it. Not only are they unpainted, they're barely noticeable - yet noticing them makes the toy worse.

What that boils down to is a matter of stand-alone product. A Transformer that converts from one mode to another, yet has fake parts of the vehicle in certain places on the robot, smacks of failure. Hasbro and Takara couldn't do it properly. They couldn't engineer it to to transform correctly, so they cheated and cheapened it. They took a Rubik's Cube, got it most of the way solved, then shrugged and painted the rest of the squares to match. Not only that, the fact that the toy has to conform to an ideal outside of itself is maddening. This was one of the great strengths of the brand for a while, that the media was based off of the toy designs, so the toys were effectively self-contained. They were 'complete' unto themselves. There was no need for an outside reference point, no version that was more definitive. Obviously many fans show preferences for animation models that derive from the toys, but until recently, the toys themselves have not been cheapened by their devotion to the designs depicted in the media.

Man! I have totally missed you, I was fighting the "fake parts" argument all by myself a few months ago. And now they're all unpainted too, so it's sculpted to clearly be a tire like on FOC Optimus and then left in blank red, why waste the time sculpting tires there then?!? Why make the figure look more phony and then also more shitty?

Sometimes I can forgive if the premise was important to the character before the toy, but generally it's unacceptable.

Shockwave's screws wouldn't bother me at all if they'd made them black instead of leaving them silver. Animated set a nice precedent for black screws in places, if memory serves. Fake parts and legoforming are much more offensive to my mind than visible screws. Screws may be out of scale and make them more 'toy'-ish, but they at least have a really good reason for existing.

I just checked all my Animated figures (except Soundwave, lost) and they're all silver screws, but the only visible screws are on Longarm/Shockwave in alt mode, every other figure the screws and screw holes/bosses are hidden away from view as much as possible, and if they can't be hidden they're set deep enough to not stand out. It's shocking how lazy Hasbro really has gotten in these last 4 years. Hell, FOC Shockwave even has a DIFFERENT set of screws showing in vehicle mode on the top!

At this point, I miss the late end of ROTF and the HFTD line, there were many good toys in there. DOTM was largely bad, there's not been a lot to love since, and the great figures cannot be relied upon to come thick & fast at any point in the year anymore. There's plenty I'm looking forward to - Big dorky Voyager Cybertronian Soundwave with autotransforming disk buddies, Kickback, Prime Skyquake & Magnus, and (of course) G2 Bruticus - but it doesn't feel like any of those will be in my hands soon. Hasbro's (probably unintentional, still quite real) tactic of "Hope people buy the janky stuff because they're impatient for the good things we show off long before they're released" makes the collecting game less fun now than it has been for the last, ooh, ten years?

What's that internet expression? "So much win!"

There is no excuse for that. They knew better than that in the 19-fucking-70s. When I first saw it, I thought that the toy had been mis-transformed or assembled.

The reason it's there is because the wing hinges block screw access from the other side, and because the shoulders are on transformation hinges there they couldn't rely on glued tabs to hold it together.

(I had no idea how good "Go-Bots!" Puzzlor was.)

No merge parts but it has a Toyota Celica for a crotch, so it loses points there.

After a huge step forward during the Beast-era, Hasbro got slack during the UT.

Different design teams, BW was Kenner, UT was the new Hasbro.

You are a fool.

PCC was fun. It had fiddle value. I always have one or more of those figure near my bed for easy fiddling access. The only US release that I do not have is Salvage/Bomburst.

How was the concept flawed? (And, might this discussion warrant a new thread?)

Jezus you are delusional.

The question of the first (and even second) FOC toys shelfwarming is an odd one, because--at least in all the stores I've seen--Generations isn't getting its own dedicated space again. This also happened for quite a bit when HFTD and Generations first started--stores just threw them all up wherever they would fit, because they were all the same price, so who cares?

Around here they still have dedicated SKU tags for each, but with so little product for Generations there's no reason to waste empty or nearly-empty pegspace on it.

[Onslaught Six]

We have some good, solid pics of Retail Bruty out of Korea or Hong Kong or something now:
http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-new ... es-175793/

I dig it. Blastoff in particular looks suave as hell, and Onslaught is very much improved. (I told you his wheels would be black!)

Swindle actually looks like he's the worst of them, deco-wise; I really hated how muted the SDCC version seemed but this doesn't do him any better. His face is also unpainted which rubs me weird ways--I know it's toy accurate, but...

I think overall, the two toys are actually designed to serve different purposes. The SDCC release is clearly intended to be displayed as Bruticus, while the retail toys look like they're going to fare better as individuals.

[JediTricks]

Cheetimus over at AllSpark apparently bought two sets, and customized one. His *really* looks like the game. (Mind you, we are talking about the "better" SDCC toy here...)

http://www.cheetimus.com/

It is too bad that Hasbro did not bother to give complete directions. (I am fine with "reverse order" instructions. But, based on JT's review, they could have tried a bit harder with the instructions for making the limbs.)

The fact that even the more game accurate colour scheme is so far off is enough to make me glad to have skipped this set.

After playing as the Combaticons and Bruticus yesterday, I can say that the colors Cheets did there aren't game-accurate, Hasbro's work is. Vortex especially caught my eye because he's pretty much exactly what Hasbro delivered in the SDCC set, while Onslaught is close to the retail figure's colors. Swindle stays with the SDCC set's colors, surprisingly, and I didn't pay much attention to Blast Off because he stays in the background most of the time, but the quick look I saw was close to the SDCC as well. Of course, the Bruticus toy doesn't remind me a damned bit of the game character, and that's where Hasbro really loses points, but that's about build more than deco. Of course, Cheets' embellishments look great though and add the depth that Hasbro's doesn't enjoy.

We have some good, solid pics of Retail Bruty out of Korea or Hong Kong or something now:
http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers-new ... es-175793/

I dig it. Blastoff in particular looks suave as hell, and Onslaught is very much improved. (I told you his wheels would be black!)

Swindle actually looks like he's the worst of them, deco-wise; I really hated how muted the SDCC version seemed but this doesn't do him any better. His face is also unpainted which rubs me weird ways--I know it's toy accurate, but...

I think overall, the two toys are actually designed to serve different purposes. The SDCC release is clearly intended to be displayed as Bruticus, while the retail toys look like they're going to fare better as individuals.

I was thinking about getting retail Onslaught, but holy christ does that look over the top colorful. I think I can see getting Blast Off just for variety's sake - the caramel color on mine is so hard to look at.

Swindle in the game is close to the colors you get on the SDCC version, I was quite surprised. He's a fun character to play with, so I noticed him a lot. The retail colors are so bright and then to contrast them with a black head is a disaster in my book.

I really am curious to see how retail handles these Skittles Rainbow colorings, this is the same sort of decision that originally spelled doom for the classic G1 line and now it's infected the Generations line, but this is the 21st century so things may be different now.

[annhell]

I didn't have anything worth saying on this thread before, since I had no access to the toy.

Well, Skiitles-ticus has arrived on my litle island here, and I have Blueberry Onslaught in front of me right now. I find the toy, on it's own, very underwhelming. The vehicle is ... well... pretty much all the negative opinions I've read on this are spot on. The bot mode looks okay, proportion wise, but the articulation suffers, which makes for a not-so-fiddle-worthy toy on the whole.

Surprsing to me, is that the blue and green don't look all that bad on their own. It's the varied, bright colours of the other figures that make the combined Bruticus look so silly, I realised.

Shall comment further as I open and fiddle with the other Skittlecons over the next few days.

For now, I leave you with this idea from one of the local collectors for an alternate transformation of Bruticus' arms:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/7974 ... f091_b.jpg

[Onslaught Six]

Seeing him all together like that, he actually doesn't look bad at all. Also, those arms are glorious. Holy shit.

[JediTricks]

That arm transformation on Blastoff looks risky, I think that might break his head off - I futzed with a similar pose and ran into his neck peg juuuuust starting to stress when I stopped.

Anyway, it's not a bad-looking transformation - the wider shoulders lend themselves more to the feel of the character from the game, as do the rotated thighs. I love the distribution of the weapons, except for the swords which just don't go with this set at all anywhere.