TF Views

Dominic wrote:Bull shit. At the very least, DotM Powerglide was made using that "mid-way movie" aesthetic. It was not a CHUG aesthetic figure though. This does not make DotM Powerglide a bad figure. But, it is not a good "G1" Powerglide. (On the other hand, CHUG might well be a "dead look". The look of the figues seems to change every 5 years or so. The movie lines may have sped that change up a bit.)

Exactly. Look at Powerglide next to a guy like Universe Galvatron; he fits right in.

[qiote]I partly agree. But, Hasbro has said that they make toys based on what they think will sell. A "kick-ass redesign" might be something they can sell.

But, if Hasbro does not make that toy, what is the *moral* problem with a non-official figure?[/quote]

Honestly, I don't know why I'm defending it anymore. I'm in a very strange position here, because me and Prowl have pretty much been The Defense of Hasbro here, but...

I think it's all about creator intent. Obviously, nobody working at Hasbro is the "creator" of Transformers, but the current TF team has at least some love for the property, I'm sure.

Let's use the music business analogue again. Nine Inch Nails was signed to Interscope for the majority of their career; throughout that time period there were a lot of projects that kind of fell through the cracks or didn't work out. In '95 or so, there was a concert tape released, Closure. Around 2006 or something they were working to revamp it for DVD, because it'd been long out of print and VHS is a dead format. Trent Reznor (singer/songwriter/primary instrumentalist) was really into the idea of Closure getting a DVD release finally, but then Interscope canned it due to concerns about production budget and how much the market was going to care about a DVD release of a videotape from a decade ago. So Reznor leaked the finished .iso file onto the Internet for free (under a pseudonym).

How does this apply? Well, let's say someone on the Hasbro design team really wants to make a new, huge Devastator. In fact, in his off time, he's already designed and engineered the entire thing. But the head financial guys are all, "We can't release a wave of six green vehicles; kids don't like construction vehicles; combiners don't sell; retailers don't want bad guys; we just don't have the budget this year," and eighty other reasons why they can't do it. So a third party group makes it instead, and the TF design team openly says, "Hey, you know what, good for you. We wanted to do that, but the head guys are dicks, so we'll never get it."

But we've seen the Hasbro design team at panels and at Botcon and their stance is always, "No, fuck those guys, they're stealing our property."

There's also the concept that this could actually become prevailant enough that it could be a problem with getting new stuff. I suspect a large reason why Devastator isn't in FoC and getting a new toy is because all the third party groups are putting out Devastators right now. And I distinctly recall Takara saying that they wouldn't reissue Devastator (or any other combiners) because they were so widely knocked off that it'd be pointless. (Obviously they changed their mind later on, probably because tons of people said, "We'd still buy an official one," so Takara reneged and released an official Devastator reissue.)

I mean, I dunno, here. The biggest factor, for me, has always been the price of these things, and I don't care how expensive it is for these "third-party" (I still HATE that term because it implies SOME sort of licensing deal is there; none of these things are licensed) companies to make because of the short runs. Take the loss, I don't care.

In fact, that's my big issue, and Prowl touched on this earlier. The third-party companies can do no wrong and it doesn't matter if they're hugely expensive and the quality isn't up to Hasbro standards--these guys are indie, don't you understand? They're a small business! Why is that an out to make a product that costs 4-6 times the price and isn't even of a comparable quality standard? If these guys really cared about pleasing the fans, they'd sell them at a loss. Much as Dom says I have no moral obligation to keep Hasbro in business, I also have no moral obligation to keep a third party company in business.

-Where's Hearts of Steel characters?
As shitty as that comic was, the character models would make for excellent toys.

Some of them would; others not so much. In fact, Shockwave and Zeppelin-Scourge were the only designs I even liked. I'll give the third-party companies a prop there; they have the advantage when it comes to doing a one or two-off idea like that. For Hasbro, (and I only sort of understand this) they would need to rationalize a whole slew of toys to make it worth producing them. Toss in the fact that the series didn't even really have an Optimus or a Megatron (when initially published and excepting concept drawings) and you've got a surefire recipe for Hasbro bigwigs rejecting the idea.

In a lot of ways, though, seeing this kind of sub-line pop up reminds me tons of seeing catalogue pictures or ad solicits for the 90s Spawn line, which would very often have this kind of off-the-wall design philosophy. Hey kids! Go buy Renaissance Fair Spawn today! Where did this show up? Why would you want a toy of it? Who cares, Todd MacFarlane made this shit, go buy it.

-Where's WFC Warpath?
I would give them time on this. Hasbro might come through.

Especially when the WFC line had, what, four moulds for it? We didn't even get Starscream until now.

-Leader-class Blackout?
As nice as it would be to have, it would not sell.

The Voyager figure didn't have to be as small as it was, though, and if they hadn't all but eliminated the Ultra scale for the Movie line on, he could have easily been one of those. (I think part of the reason they eliminated the price point, besides shelf real estate, was the fact that there were very few characters in the first movie who could have been made in it. Blackout, definitely. Possibly Ironhide. Brawl could have, but they didn't even do him as a Voyager. I think if you eliminated the electronics from the Ultras, and simply made them larger Voyagers, they'd sell.)

-A G1 Ironhide and Ratchet that aren't plagued with issues?
Universe more or less delivered on this.

JT is going to complain about the altmodes having excessive panel lines and the spine being poorly engineered so they're always looking slightly down.

See, I can play this game too. I don't have any more sympathy for these dudes in their basement than I do for Hasbro, when it comes down to it. I have a set budget and Hasbro gets me more toys that I would likely enjoy for that amount of money.

And, by the same line of thinking, if Hasbro wants my money, they have to produce something worth my money.

And I would say that, Prime excepted, they tend to deliver. I might not have bought everything in DOTM, but that's because a large amount of the line were new figures of characters I already had a good version of, even if some of the newer toys were arguably better moulded or painted. But I bought damn near every toy in the Generations and RTS lines--I think the only non-Movie/WFC guys I deliberately skipped (rather than couldn't find) were Seaspray, Junkheap and Skullgrin. That's a pretty good track record. (I even bought the RTS Classics Bumblebee repaint, since I didn't have the mould, and finally found a colour scheme I liked on it.)

I think this is kind of a double edged sword. On the one hand, I prefer to buy official product when available. For example, the WST figures. There were only 3 official waves of figures, with chase variants. Everything that came out after was all from unlicensed (screw calling them "3rd Party"!) companies. So, if I decide I want WST figures and have all the ones from that line, I would track down all the ones officially made by Takara and leave it at that. The only exception I made to that was Shockwave, for obvious reasons. But by and large, I would only count the Takara versions if I wanted to have the "compete set" and would feel no need to get the rest of the stuff put out by unlicensed companies. Same generally goes for the rest of the collection as well when it gets into unlicensed companies producing figures that will likely get released at some point down the road anyway (like Springer or the various constructicons or what have you). I don't really think I'm articulating this right. Like, I get the unlicensed stuff when it comes to stuff like the city commander armor because it was a case where Hasbro completely nerfed it on UM. I also get it with the G3 Trailer or the BTS one for classics Prime because once again, Hasbro nerfed us on the damn trailer. So I get it with things like that that pander to the smalle fan base of us that want our Primes to have trailers when Hasbro consistently says "fuck you, we're not doing that, this is what you get, fucking like it." Um, no. So I guess I don't have a problem with it when it's just a small run of custom sets that pander to the few fans that want it and I can even understand the higher price since they are essentially just recovering the cost of producing it, but I do see Hasbro's point now that it has escalated to the point where they're just releasing shit just for the hell of it. The Insecticons, Springer, the cassettes, the two different not-Devastators... yeah, I can totally see why Hasbro's pissed about those. The unlicensed companies went too far with it. Instead of limiting themselves to add ons to existing toys, they are now producing their own toys that are now in direct competition with what Hasbro produces (even if it's not the same characters). And, it's now even gone so far that there are unlicensed companies that produce add ons for other shit produced by unlicensed companies! It's a system that is literally now feeding in on itself.

TLDR: So to sum up: Additional shit that makes you have to buy a Hasbro toy in the first place: Good. Original shit that is in direct competition with Hasbro? Bad. Know the line.

Shockwave
-And now we know.

And the sad part is, Hasbro now has to worry about that line. If they crack down on Not-Devastator, they have to crack down on trailers and City Commander too.

I think part of it is also kind of a..."ridiculous concept" quotient. Getting a new Ultra Magnus with a trailer that becomes his armour is pretty unlikely. (Hasbro has REALLY been shying away from combining figures since the ArmEnerTron days--I suspect a lot of fan backlash about certain figures being "ruined" by combining gimmicks for a few years was a contributing factor.) A new combining Devastator? Unlikely, but possible--we got Classics Dev in 2006, and we got some more Energon repaints in 2009--it's just that I'm sure the market can only bear so much. We're getting Bruticus this year which means it might be a while--a few 'years'--until Hasbro can do a Devastator because you gotta worry about corporate and stuff like case assortments and retailers.

So in short--it's not that likely that we'll get a Magnus with a combining trailer. A new Dev? Slightly more likely. A new Springer? Very likely--I suspect we're going to get him next year. (The fact that he's been absent for so long is almost disconcerting, but not when you factor in that we only just got Blurr and Kup in Generations.)

Oh, and then there's the case of these guys making outright new figures of characters 'Hasbro already redid.' We got Universe Ironhide and Ratchet. Maybe they weren't the best figures in the world but they made them--they made official versions. The new iGear (or whoever) ones are blatantly not giving a fuck that they did that, and going and making their own ones anyway. They aren't "filling a market void that Hasbro has ignored," and they aren't "supplanting existing toys with better parts." They're blatantly making new toys of characters Hasbro 'just' made new toys of a few years ago. If Hasbro makes a new Ironhide toy and you don't like it, you DON'T get to bitch and make your own Ironhide toys and sell them en mass.