What if bad economy made hasbro merge TF & G.I Joe toy lines

[Tigermegatron]

What if the Economy got so bad,that Hasbro was forced to merge the TF & G.I Joe toy lines into one entity to help them sell better in
stores. what would your fan reaction be? positive,negative?

Personally from the way I see the situation,it's already being done in the media & toy lines.

Various Transformers toy lines are now including 2 to 3 inch sized G.I Joe designed human figures. examaples the $29.99 HA & some DOTM toys.

Getting G.I Joe vechicles that transform into sentinet transformers robots would be various TF fans dreams come thru. having these toys come with 2-3 inch G.I Joe humans would be another dream for some.

As far as the media side of things goes. in the micheal bay movies & IDW comics were currently getting army guys who are getting starring core characters persona's.

So from my stand point. what the difference if the current core cast of army guys in the micheal bay TF movies & IDW get swapped out for G.I Joe starring core cast of humans.

would anyone really care if spike in IDW got swapped out for DUKE from G.I joe.

What if the humans kids in the TF cartoons got swapped out with younger rookie G.I Joe members,who were in the first stages starts of their JOE careers.

The only real problem I can see is the cobra element entering into the equation. I honestly don't like the Cobra bad guys because their superfiscial bad guys that would never exist in real life situations.

when was the last time a evil real world dictator was seen wearing a metal face plate helmet? or how about having real world crazy ninja villians. physco twins? a mad scientist who did cross dna experiments merging humans with animals or monsters? the whole cobra snake cult.Baroness,Serpentor,etc...

I suspose the merger might work if the COBRA element got cancelled out & didn't exist. or if the COBRA element got a bit more
realistic,tweaked & had less members. example: G.I Joe extreme having that bad guy pose a a diplomat/dictator & then turn into a bad guy for his personal agenda.

Maybe if they played up the realistic factor of the middle east evil dictators & gave some of them Cobra members names. like cobra commander being the evil dictator from Libya. having Destro being a evil dictator from the middle east that had his family generations own almost all the oil in the middle east. the Baroness who is suspose to be a USA spy agent but crosses sides to to cobra & pretends to be good to usa officials. Dr mind bender instead of being a bio-chemist. dr mind bender would be a guy who can create advanced military machines & bombs for the evil sides.

Sorry,I just don't see the Cobra from the 1980's cartoon/comics nor the cobra team from G.I Joe renegades merging well with transformers in todays era.

I can envision various ( like 1 or 2 on each faction dide) sentinent transformers robots dying in battle on earth & having their sparks extinguished. It would be kinda cool to have the Joes & Cobra's pilot those sparkless TF bodies as their battle armor suits. their could be human entries/occuppancy into the robots in the car modes like HA has & human entry/occupancy in the robot chest cavity.
SIMILIAR TO THAT 1986 SEASON 3 TF G-1 "ONLY HUMAN" cartoon episode.

I don't think i'd be a fan nor want exo-suits type "avatar movie" robots type transformers.

[Gomess]

Ok, two issues here:

(1) Merging two toylines isn't a logical solution to poor returns. =/

(2) Pretty sure many have tried TF/Joe crossovers before, and they've never reeaally worked in my estimation. I just don't see the attraction. They were both made by the same company, both came out around the same time... but apart from that, there's nothing thematic to bring them together.

Also, you don't have to reduce fantasy elements in order to make something more 'realistic'; you just have to change the tone. Metal Gear (hey, it's the only other army-related fiction I know!) *seems* more realistic than Joe because of its tone, when in fact it's probably even more outlandish, pound for pound.

So really, if you had to meld TF and Joe, I'd rather Cobra stayed just as nuts as they are. Or heck, became *more* imaginative. Because we're talking about giant alien robots that shrink to the size of tapedecks, here.

[Dominic]

Merging "GI Joe" and "Transformers" would not help either franchise.

Transfan reaction would likely range from favorable to irate. In the US, transfans react well enough to self-contained cross-overs. But, overseas fans, (which TF has a fair amount of), would likely not handle it as well, even if "GI Joe" were rebranded as "Action Force" or some other such thing. (Even if said fans were to lack Gomess' disdain for military imagey, "GI Joe" has never done especially well outside of the US.) And, there are plenty of TF fans in the US who would complain about bastardizing their hobby.

"GI Joe" fans would range from indifferent to irate, favoring the latter. They do not handle change well in the least. At most they can handle self-contained cross-overs, with the understanding that they stay self-contained. Any new fans drawn in by the cross-over would be balanced out by the number of Joe fans who would skip the line. And, most of those fans would collect "Transformers" anyway.

Honestly though, your cross-over idea seems to be very TF slanted, more an excercise in subsuming "GI Joe" into "Transformers" than mixing the two.

DDP set down the ground-work for a good cross-over back in '03. And, to be fair, McDonough and Patyck likely would have pulled something off had Dreamwave not imploded.

For whatever reason, Hasbro has never made any crossover toys. (This year's SDCC Starscream/Cobra Commander set is about as close as we are realistically likely to get.) Such a line could probably sell based on brand-strength alone.


Dom
-would like to see Costa write a legitimate Crossover though....

[Gomess]

Honestly though, your cross-over idea seems to be very TF slanted, more an excercise in subsuming "GI Joe" into "Transformers" than mixing the two.

This. Tigermegatron almost seems to be playing devil's advocate, saying, "Well I GUESS this is how the crossover'd work, but I don't really like the idea..." when he came up with it. =p

[Onslaught Six]

What if the Economy got so bad,that Hasbro was forced to merge the TF & G.I Joe toy lines into one entity to help them sell better in
stores. what would your fan reaction be? positive,negative?

That's not going to happen. Hasbro would just cancel the line that wasn't selling the best.

Given past history and current sales, that'd be GI Joe. Nobody buys GI Joe.

[Dominic]

Hey, there is a devoted, if constantly shrinking, pool of grown men who are buying "GI Joe"! And, natural attrition will not be a serious issue for at least another 5 years!


Dom
-just be happy with HA toys. Okay?

[Shockwave]

"GI Joe" has never done especially well outside of the US.)

That's not exactly true. It sold very well in Japan in the late 60's/early 70's which is how we even have Transformers to begin with.

[BWprowl]

That's not exactly true. It sold very well in Japan in the late 60's/early 70's which is how we even have Transformers to begin with.

Wasn't that technically Microman though? And for what that's worth, we actually *have* gotten a couple official Microman/Transformers crossover toys (Mo'fuggin' KICKER just barely counts, then you've got Magnificus and Ga'Mede).

While the human figures they include are hardly Joes, I'm rather enjoying the new Basic Human Alliance figures. I'm especially loving Thunderhead and Tungsten, mainly because I've been wanting figures based around this concept forever. I'd buy a whole line of Transformers fighting/interacting with humans in transforming exo-suits, and Thunderhead pulls it off pretty much exactly the way I imagined it. I've only heard about a couple waves of these things, but I sincerely hope Hasbro makes more. (I also just really want to see them repaint Backfire w/Spike into Sureshock w/Kicker.)

So anyway, I would certainly buy a TF/Joe Crossover line (and like others already said, I'm genuinely shocked it's never been done before), but just straight-up merging the two into one line likely wouldn't work. Has that ever even been done before? Multiple toylines getting stuck together like that?

[Gomess]

Has that ever even been done before? Multiple toylines getting stuck together like that?

...Diaclone + Microman = Transformers...?

[Onslaught Six]

No, that'd be more like if someone packaged TFs and Joes as opposite forces in a line called HUMANS VERSUS ROBOTS or something.