I'm not dead.

The toys really weren't doing it for me, and the cartoon is streaming on Matlock+ or whatever and semi-accessible, the culture war issues were flaring up (should queer folks and brown folks be allowed to exist in mainstream entertainment, or is that "forcing it down our throats" aka, should queer folks like Gus be beaten back into the closet? Ok, should his friend's mostly fine daughter be denied medical care and have to go back to being his friend's deeply depressed son? Can we at least make that kid stop writing UNIX device drivers?), so I just figured I would take a little time off until I felt the spark again.

And then I didn't really feel the spark again.

(A tiny bit once, but then Fox discovered a non-binary transformer and started up the war upon culture again, and I figured "maybe later" but later never came.)

I've also not been working (why work?), so I don't sit by a computer regularly -- my iPad life doesn't work well with google groups -- my email is just spam and I check my physical mail once every few months and scan for letters saying things are being turned off and then just shred it all. And time has no meaning.

It's possible that there's a bit of general burnout, or I need to adjust my medications. But I've been focusing on learning how to do digital painting and things like that, so maybe not, or not entirely.

Anyway, this was my second draft of my writeup for Toy of the Year, a more upbeat version than my first, and it showed that I've not really been loving the toys. I decided I didn't need to be that negative.

**** ****

I had started to write up my Toy Of The Year, and found that there really weren’t a lot of candidates.

My requirements are simple:
- a toy must be fun
- a toy must be new
- a toy must not feel cheap

Let’s start with “fun”.

This is a year when toys have been plagued by yellowing, parts falling off and other QC issues, and I’m going to say that this is not fun.

If a mushroom peg pops apart when an arm is being turned, it’s not Tarantulas doing an awesome homage to the Legion Of Superheroes character Arm Fall Off Boy, it’s just a problem with the toy — even if the arm can be readily reattached. He might be a fine display piece, but he’s not a fun toy.

This “shit can’t fall off in light to medium play” rule disqualifies a lot of toys. Armada Starscream has a leg that falls off.. Sludge has wing panels. Golden Disk Terrorsaur’s wing. Knockout has load bearing clear plastic that cracks under pressure (a problem with the Jazz mold he is based on which could have been fixed with solid plastic). The list goes on and on.

This is also a year when a lot of toys were sold through exclusive channels with bad distribution, and were not really available for any significant amount of time. This is also not fun.

Lots of toys get disqualified for this. Cosmos was never really available. Crasher. Golden Disk Terrorsaur. Did Minerva even ship?

My rule of thumb for this is a toy has to be in stock somewhere online for two weeks. If so many toys were not plagued by QC issues, I’d accept a pre-order window, but with the quality problems… you’re often pre-ordering a piece of shit with unknown issues that would be deal-breakers for you.

And finally on fun, a Transformer needs to be an action figure and it must transform into another toy. Each mode needs to hold together well under light play. If it is a toy car, it needs to roll, etc.

There are a few toys that get disqualified on this basis. Bomb-burst has wings that are just the arms positioned in one spot on a ball joint without pegging into place. Skullgrin transforms into a block that doesn’t resemble anything, with treads on the far back.

Fun encompasses a lot.

A toy also needs to be “new” (and/or improved)

This doesn’t mean that a toy needs to represent a new character or a new body for that character, but it has to bring something new to the table that makes it better than what came before.

Skipping back to Earthrise for examples, Prowl was the first representation of the G1 character design that had knees and wasn’t a complete fucking disaster like the toy from 2008 or whenever. Meanwhile Earthrise Starscream borrows so much from the Classics Starscream design that he just isn’t new — same character, body, transformation, color scheme (there was a second Classics/Whatever Starscream with the G1 color scheme)… and Coronation Starscream is iffy.

Toys disqualified for not being new enough: Optimus Prime and Scourge, who update the character design from one of the best toys ever to a pretty decent but decidedly lesser toy; Alpha Trion looks like a miscolored Scourge in vehicle mode and is saddled with an Orion Pax that looks too much like Kup (they don’t quite embody the characters they are meant to be); etc.. It’s very subjective.

Transmetal 2 Megatron is iffy. Not having a floppy neck with a gimmick that never worked well is good, but the colors feel too muted, the head sculpt is bad and we lost the ridiculous drag racer mode. If my TM2 Megatron had flaking chrome, this would definitely be an improvement.

Buzzworthy Terrorsaur is excluded by this rule largely for being an inferior color scheme. You might think “wing doesn’t fall off” would be enough new, but it really is an ugly color scheme. The mold changes are extensive from Airazor, to the point where that feels new enough, but Golden Disk had such problems and Buzzworthy is such a step down from where Golden Disk was aiming.

A toy must not feel “cheap”

Budgets are what they are, and there will always be constraints, but when engineering a toy requires cutting a lot of corners it’s time to ask whether the entire design should change. It’s better to make a smaller or simpler toy that works well than a larger toy with a lot of flaws because of cut corners.

Toys have large gaps where years ago they would have had panels covering them. It means that the toy is not as good for display.

Cosmos is a prominent offender, although he makes up for it by being cute. Elita-1 has big gaps on the back of her shins.

Look at Elita-1 and Pointblank. Feel them. Look at the hard, glossy plastic used for Pointblank and the soft, pliable, matte plastic used on Elita-1. It’s hard to believe that they are from the same toyline. The softer plastic on Elita means things are never quite locked into place, but also, she feels like she came from a discount line.

(Ironically, Pointblank could probably use a more pliable plastic given the design's incredibly tight tolerances. And, of course, rotating wrists to allow his forearms to be positioned to give him better elbows and some re-engineering to not shed the weird bits on the side with ball joints in transformation.)

And a toy must have enough paint deco that it feels like a character. Armada Starscream, for instance, is missing about half the details that make him recognizable.

And it shouldn’t matter since I throw it out, but the new packaging is terrible. It’s flimsy and always damaged and toys look like they’ve been sitting on the shelves for months even when they are just put out. Part of the toy experience is taking it out of the package, and everything in Legacy is already starting with a small strike against it.

I can’t think of any toys excluded simply for feeling cheap, but it’s something that weighs down a toy’s other flaws. And it means that the toys that are a step down from the best feel merely “mostly ok” rather than “pretty good”.

No, I take that back. Elita-1 is excluded for feeling cheap.

But taking all that together, there’s not much left. Iguanus, Wrecker Bulkhead, Cybertron Override and Bumblebee Movie Brawn.

Note that each of these toys has a lot of paint, everything pegs together tightly in each mode and they can all roll.

Brawn has a strike against him for a large gap on his top, but the design of that vehicle mode is so unlike anything else that it balances out.

Iguanus gets the nod because he has lots of ground clearance. And he’s fun. And can stand up in motorcycle mode. And fits into the gunnery station of HISS Megatron.

But a lot of the toys a step down have really fatal flaws.

If Tarantulas barely holds together now, what is he going to be like in two years as plastics expand and contract? He’s going to be sitting at the bottom of a bin with his arms separated while I play with Transmetal Tarantulas (either original, or formal wear variety). He’s going to be trash that I keep in my home. Might as well be a Movieverse toy.

Now, this might just be that I am losing interest in Transformers, but I like to use Toy of the Year to look back at what toy from 10 and 20 years ago as well.

2002 was awesome. The tail end of RID and then Armada. Scourge, Air Attack Optimus Primal, Megabolt Megatron, Supercon Optimus Prime, Cyclonus, Demolisher, Tidal Wave, Megatron, Hot Shot — all very fun toys that hold up 20 years later, and the toys a level below those standouts are also really good.

2012 was not as good, as it was the year of The Great Cheapening, but it still gave us TF:Prime with many good toys, along with FOC Starscream, Shockblast and Soundwave. And the GDO redecos and remolds.

Great stuff, each of those years. I think the current toys are just not as good. The best toys now don’t really match up to the best toys then, or even the second rate toys then.

——

Ultimately, I think Generations (and Studio Series 86) went in the wrong direction when it began really committing to screen accuracy with Earthrise.

The toys require more complicated transformations that the engineering often cannot successfully accommodate, and it means higher labor costs in assembly (at a time when labor costs are rising in Vietnam), which requires cutting other corners even after raising prices.

On Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 3:15:04 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> I'm not dead.

Dude. DUDE. You were gone like eleven months. It's one thing to take a break for a few days or a few weeks. But you're a major contributor here, and the newsgroup is very small, and people noticed when you were gone.

I e-mailed you. I also sent you snail mail. An answer would have been nice!

But I'm glad you're okay.

And I'm sorry for contributing to the factors that made you want to leave. I regret that.
Onto Transformers stuff. I can't tell you how much I missed going through your posts and responding to them point by point. I will not always agree with you, but I will do so respectfully!
> Lots of toys get disqualified for this. Cosmos was never really available.. Crasher. Golden Disk Terrorsaur. Did Minerva even ship?

I forget. I think I got mine from Hasbro Pulse. I have no idea if she ever officially hit Walgreens.
> My rule of thumb for this is a toy has to be in stock somewhere online for two weeks.

I think only the dog items stay in stock for that long. I've seen pre-orders sell out within an hour!

> Skullgrin transforms into a block that doesn’t resemble anything, with treads on the far back.

Skullgrin's vehicle mode is pretty objectively awful.

> Skipping back to Earthrise for examples, Prowl was the first representation of the G1 character design that had knees and wasn’t a complete fucking disaster like the toy from 2008 or whenever. Meanwhile Earthrise Starscream borrows so much from the Classics Starscream design that he just isn’t new — same character, body, transformation, color scheme (there was a second Classics/Whatever Starscream with the G1 color scheme)…

I actually dug through a box of much older toys the other day because I was looking for something. I forget what. But I encountered Classics Starscream after probably five years of being accustomed to the Siege/Earthrise styling, and he's so disappointingly small now. I used to love collecting the Deluxe-class Decepticon jets but now they feel inadequately tiny.

> Toys disqualified for not being new enough: Optimus Prime and Scourge, who update the character design from one of the best toys ever to a pretty decent but decidedly lesser toy; Alpha Trion looks like a miscolored Scourge in vehicle mode and is saddled with an Orion Pax that looks too much like Kup (they don’t quite embody the characters they are meant to be); etc. It’s very subjective.

No attempt at doing a G2 Laser Prime will ever capture the sheer excellence of the 1995 toy. It cannot be surpassed.

Alpha Trion is a relatively unimportant character who probably wouldn't have gotten his own mold. Making him out of Scourge was a sensible move since they both have that rounded Floro Dery body styling. It's not a perfect Alpha Trion, but it's better than the various other versions (Titans Return lion, or the Cyberverse toy). It's close to what I wanted, and it will look good on a shelf populated with other characters.
> Transmetal 2 Megatron is iffy. Not having a floppy neck with a gimmick that never worked well is good, but the colors feel too muted, the head sculpt is bad and we lost the ridiculous drag racer mode. If my TM2 Megatron had flaking chrome, this would definitely be an improvement.

I remember a lot of people complaining about the floppy neck, back in the day. But, yeah, they really dropped the ball with that robot head sculpt. Which is a rare misstep these days, considering how many head sculpts in recent years have been the pinnacle of excellence.
> Budgets are what they are, and there will always be constraints, but when engineering a toy requires cutting a lot of corners it’s time to ask whether the entire design should change. It’s better to make a smaller or simpler toy that works well than a larger toy with a lot of flaws because of cut corners.

I think I agree with that in theory. The premise seems sound.
> Toys have large gaps where years ago they would have had panels covering them. It means that the toy is not as good for display.

There are a LOT of third-party gap-filler kits for a great many toys. But, you shouldn't have to make a third-party purchase to make a toy feel complete.

> Look at Elita-1 and Pointblank. Feel them. Look at the hard, glossy plastic used for Pointblank and the soft, pliable, matte plastic used on Elita-1.. It’s hard to believe that they are from the same toyline. The softer plastic on Elita means things are never quite locked into place, but also, she feels like she came from a discount line.

I know they are experimenting with different textures on the surface of the toys. Maybe they're experimenting with using different grades of plastic as well? I really don't know.

> (Ironically, Pointblank could probably use a more pliable plastic given the design's incredibly tight tolerances. And, of course, rotating wrists to allow his forearms to be positioned to give him better elbows and some re-engineering to not shed the weird bits on the side with ball joints in transformation.)

There was a Nonnef Productions add-on kit that actually replaced the biceps and elbow parts. The trade-off is that he lost that big chunk of the front grill for vehicle mode. I got as far as switching one arm out, decided I liked the stock parts better, and switched it back.

> And a toy must have enough paint deco that it feels like a character. Armada Starscream, for instance, is missing about half the details that make him recognizable.

I never got the Legacy version. My Walmart still has lots of Armada Starscreams and lots of Beast Wars Inferno. Just a sea of red toys.

> And it shouldn’t matter since I throw it out, but the new packaging is terrible.

I am also throwing the packaging out now. The packaging's main job is to a) protect the toy during transit and b) make it look attractive enough on the shelf to make somebody want to buy it. Besides eliminating the plastic window for environmental reasons, studies have shown that if you can physically touch a toy, you're much more likely to buy it.
> If Tarantulas barely holds together now, what is he going to be like in two years as plastics expand and contract? He’s going to be sitting at the bottom of a bin with his arms separated while I play with Transmetal Tarantulas (either original, or formal wear variety). He’s going to be trash that I keep in my home. Might as well be a Movieverse toy.

I don't really have anything to say about this, so I'm just going to mention that if you ask Alexa to set a spaghetti timer for ten minutes, right now since it's October, she will say it in a creepy witch's voice. But if you ask her to set a baby timer, or a children timer, she will not do it. Somebody actually programmed her to not be a creepy Halloween witch if you are cooking children in your kitchen.

(She'll still SAY "baby timer for ten minutes, starting now" but she'll say it in her regular, serious voice. Because cooking babies is serious business. This is no time to mess around and talk in silly voices.)

> Now, this might just be that I am losing interest in Transformers, but I like to use Toy of the Year to look back at what toy from 10 and 20 years ago as well.

We're talking a lot about 2022, but have you bought many toys in 2023?

> 2002 was awesome. The tail end of RID and then Armada. Scourge, Air Attack Optimus Primal, Megabolt Megatron, Supercon Optimus Prime, Cyclonus, Demolisher, Tidal Wave, Megatron, Hot Shot — all very fun toys that hold up 20 years later, and the toys a level below those standouts are also really good.

I had a lot of issues with the Armada-era toys falling apart (especially Red Alert) but I do recall quite liking the Supercon version of Optimus. Having put some distance between us and Armada now, it's amazing that they were only charging $12 for Deluxe-class toys and yet each one was packed with some kind of spring-loaded gimmick... sometimes several of them. Now they charge $25 and you get zero gimmicks.
> 2012 was not as good, as it was the year of The Great Cheapening, but it still gave us TF:Prime with many good toys, along with FOC Starscream, Shockblast and Soundwave. And the GDO redecos and remolds.

I don't have a clear mental capsule of what the 2012 product line was like. There are some years that I find myself frequently referencing (2008 and 2014 in particular) when talking about older toys, but not 2012.

> Ultimately, I think Generations (and Studio Series 86) went in the wrong direction when it began really committing to screen accuracy with Earthrise..

I don't agree with that at all. The screen accuracy is what makes me love pretty much all the modern-era toys from 2019 and onward more than anything else in my collection (except vintage G1 for nostalgic reasons). Like, all the toys I've got from, say, 2006-2014 have been supplanted with better versions of the same characters. That's almost a decade's worth of toys I have no use for now.
> The toys require more complicated transformations that the engineering often cannot successfully accommodate, and it means higher labor costs in assembly (at a time when labor costs are rising in Vietnam), which requires cutting other corners even after raising prices.

I won't deny that there have been some design flaws. But, compared to the Great Cheapening, we're consistently getting toys made of better-quality plastic (assuming it doesn't start yellowing!) and usually we get about 90 to 95 percent of the paint applications that I want to see (they skip a few here and there, which is a shame, but it's often fixable with ToyHax stickers and such).

On Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 10:15:04 PM UTC+1, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> I'm not dead.

This makes me very happy.

Velvet Glove (who will be a pro-diversity and LGBTQ rights voice whenever you need it, and apologise when she gets it wrong. Because this stuff isn’t simple or static, but it’s still important.)

On Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 4:15:04 PM UTC-5, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> I'm not dead.
>
> The toys really weren't doing it for me, and the cartoon is streaming on Matlock+ or whatever and semi-accessible, the culture war issues were flaring up (should queer folks and brown folks be allowed to exist in mainstream entertainment, or is that "forcing it down our throats" aka, should queer folks like Gus be beaten back into the closet? Ok, should his friend's mostly fine daughter be denied medical care and have to go back to being his friend's deeply depressed son? Can we at least make that kid stop writing UNIX device drivers?), so I just figured I would take a little time off until I felt the spark again.
>

This is one of the first times I've already had whatever streaming service for a Transformers show, and just because it was included in my phone plan. I had never tried this service before that but then I discovered it also has Star Trek. Earthspark is also intermittently shown on Nickelodeon, not that they make it easy to find.
Those exclusionary people who have to hate on others when those others aren't hurting others piss me off, and sometimes the upset whining of extremists makes me happy, and then it's too much and I just can't take their crap sometimes, I more than understand.

> And then I didn't really feel the spark again.
>
> (A tiny bit once, but then Fox discovered a non-binary transformer and started up the war upon culture again, and I figured "maybe later" but later never came.)
>

A nonbinary peace loving ALIEN ROBOT that somehow without saying anything about surgery was telling kids to get surgery that's just not available to kids. Yeah those were really dumb arguments and really dishonest people making them.

> I've also not been working (why work?), so I don't sit by a computer regularly -- my iPad life doesn't work well with google groups -- my email is just spam and I check my physical mail once every few months and scan for letters saying things are being turned off and then just shred it all. And time has no meaning.
>

I'm glad you're not dead

> It's possible that there's a bit of general burnout, or I need to adjust my medications. But I've been focusing on learning how to do digital painting and things like that, so maybe not, or not entirely.
>

That's actually cool. I don't know how to do that but a co-worker needed some software to do that and I found an old drawing tablet for them so it looks cool. If you ever put some art online I'd be interested in seeing it.

> Anyway, this was my second draft of my writeup for Toy of the Year, a more upbeat version than my first, and it showed that I've not really been loving the toys. I decided I didn't need to be that negative.
>
> **** ****
>
> I had started to write up my Toy Of The Year, and found that there really weren’t a lot of candidates.
>
> My requirements are simple:
> - a toy must be fun
> - a toy must be new
> - a toy must not feel cheap
>

I generally agree with you on this part

> Let’s start with “fun”.
>
> This is a year when toys have been plagued by yellowing, parts falling off and other QC issues, and I’m going to say that this is not fun.
>
> If a mushroom peg pops apart when an arm is being turned, it’s not Tarantulas doing an awesome homage to the Legion Of Superheroes character Arm Fall Off Boy, it’s just a problem with the toy — even if the arm can be readily reattached. He might be a fine display piece, but he’s not a fun toy.
>

I didn't even know this was an issue. I have not had this issue at all. You've got me looking at mine and I don't even think his pider legs have fallen off yet and I do play with my toys.

> This “shit can’t fall off in light to medium play” rule disqualifies a lot of toys. Armada Starscream has a leg that falls off. Sludge has wing panels. Golden Disk Terrorsaur’s wing. Knockout has load bearing clear plastic that cracks under pressure (a problem with the Jazz mold he is based on which could have been fixed with solid plastic). The list goes on and on.
>

I have not had the Sludge long enough to have wing panel issues, I can say mine have not come off but I just got Sludge.
I totally agree with Terrorsaur's wings. Airazor didn't have these issues, why was Terroraur so bad. At least the wings aren't breaking, but the fact they can't stay on at all is just as bad.

> This is also a year when a lot of toys were sold through exclusive channels with bad distribution, and were not really available for any significant amount of time. This is also not fun.
>
> Lots of toys get disqualified for this. Cosmos was never really available.. Crasher. Golden Disk Terrorsaur. Did Minerva even ship?
>

My coworker had someone get him a Cosmos from Ross this week, at the same time one of the local game shops has Cosmos in their display case for $75 which they consider below market value.
I got Crasher from Ross 2 weeks ago. It's more available in Ross for $8 than it was in Walmart.
I have yet to see a Minerva in the wild. People tell me a Walgreens 40+minutes away had 5, and if I go out there there's always none left even though they insist the store was stocked 3 hours before.
I finally saw my first ever in-person Kingdom Red Alert, the previous Walgreens exclusive, last month when someone traded theirs in.

> My rule of thumb for this is a toy has to be in stock somewhere online for two weeks. If so many toys were not plagued by QC issues, I’d accept a pre-order window, but with the quality problems… you’re often pre-ordering a piece of shit with unknown issues that would be deal-breakers for you.
>
> And finally on fun, a Transformer needs to be an action figure and it must transform into another toy. Each mode needs to hold together well under light play. If it is a toy car, it needs to roll, etc.
>
> There are a few toys that get disqualified on this basis. Bomb-burst has wings that are just the arms positioned in one spot on a ball joint without pegging into place. Skullgrin transforms into a block that doesn’t resemble anything, with treads on the far back.
>

I'm willing to overlook Bomb Burst's arms not pegging in, though it does annoy me greatly. Skullgrin was terrible. I bought him used for $15 and sold him a week later for less. I couldn't take that the front half of his "vehicle" (using the term loosely) had nothing to keep his front from just dragging until it sinks in the ground and gets stuck. I

> Fun encompasses a lot.
>
> A toy also needs to be “new” (and/or improved)
>
> This doesn’t mean that a toy needs to represent a new character or a new body for that character, but it has to bring something new to the table that makes it better than what came before.
>
> Skipping back to Earthrise for examples, Prowl was the first representation of the G1 character design that had knees and wasn’t a complete fucking disaster like the toy from 2008 or whenever. Meanwhile Earthrise Starscream borrows so much from the Classics Starscream design that he just isn’t new — same character, body, transformation, color scheme (there was a second Classics/Whatever Starscream with the G1 color scheme)… and Coronation Starscream is iffy.
>

I have every seeker that was released in Classics mold, which is basically all of the speaking ones and a few background guys. Meanwhile Esrthrise made it easy to find Starscream.....and...... well nobody else.
Earthrise Starscream is Air Commander in charge of..... Starscream.

> Toys disqualified for not being new enough: Optimus Prime and Scourge, who update the character design from one of the best toys ever to a pretty decent but decidedly lesser toy; Alpha Trion looks like a miscolored Scourge in vehicle mode and is saddled with an Orion Pax that looks too much like Kup (they don’t quite embody the characters they are meant to be); etc. It’s very subjective.
>

A whole bunch of Sweeps are showing up at Ross, and really they're mass re-release of Scourge. I don't think that even they know in the show which was Scourge and which was Sweeps.
I'm in the camp that even Earthrise Optimus cab was better than Siege, even if they did have a bunch of leftover leg engineering from Siege. I don't mind the trailer. I don't need my trailers to be huge

> Transmetal 2 Megatron is iffy. Not having a floppy neck with a gimmick that never worked well is good, but the colors feel too muted, the head sculpt is bad and we lost the ridiculous drag racer mode. If my TM2 Megatron had flaking chrome, this would definitely be an improvement.
>

I didn't get him because his colors seemed wrong. I still have my original TM2 and am desperately trying to combine 2 other TM2 Megatrons to make an intact one for my girlfriend, but it involves knocking out pins and the area where the pins are is notoriously weak after 24 years.

> Buzzworthy Terrorsaur is excluded by this rule largely for being an inferior color scheme. You might think “wing doesn’t fall off” would be enough new, but it really is an ugly color scheme. The mold changes are extensive from Airazor, to the point where that feels new enough, but Golden Disk had such problems and Buzzworthy is such a step down from where Golden Disk was aiming.
>

On Wednesday, October 25, 2023 at 7:17:58 AM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:

> I didn't even know this was an issue. I have not had this issue at all. You've got me looking at mine and I don't even think his spider legs have fallen off yet and I do play with my toys.

> I have not had the Sludge long enough to have wing panel issues, I can say mine have not come off but I just got Sludge.

I wonder how much variation there is between different copies of the same toy. It's unusual for me to buy two identical copies—what happens much more often is that I'll buy the original toy and then the redeco months later, but those are made of different colors of plastics with slightly different properties, and the second production run is cast from molds that have endured the stress of an earlier production run. Comparisons are probably unfair.

My point is that I don't think there's been a case where if one person gets a Tankzap toy with a floppy left arm, then everybody who buys Tankzap will have a floppy left arm. I think there are still minor variations in how tight the workers tighten the screws at the factory, how much mold release oil is used, stuff like that. I think it's rarely universal.

I suspect some of it might also be how roughly people manhandle their toys. I would add to that the people who don't ever look at the instructions, so they don't always correctly intuit how the parts are supposed to move, or in what direction, or to what degree. Of course you're going to pop off pieces if you're handling a toy for the first time and don't know how the parts are made to swing open.

> Skullgrin was terrible. I bought him used for $15 and sold him a week later for less.

And to think we could have gotten Energon Monsters instead. I have no idea what an Energon Monster actually is, but I'm sure it would have been better than Skullgrin.

> Earthrise made it easy to find Starscream.....and...... well nobody else.

I imagine this was deliberate, and a calculated Hasbro response to people complaining during Combiner Wars that there were too many redeco toys. Starscream's buddies got shunted to different outlets so you had to go to Target to get Skywarp/Thundercracker and you had to find Ramjet/Dirge on Amazon and you had to go back to Target again to pick up Thrust.

Nobody complained that they flooded the market with jets during Earthrise, so I guess it worked!

> A whole bunch of Sweeps are showing up at Ross, and really they're mass re-release of Scourge. I don't think that even they know in the show which was Scourge and which was Sweeps.

"Well, you all do look alike..."—Galvatron, probably

> I got bored with Override rather fast. She wasn't terrible, but she also wasn't great. I was just sitting there remembering all the other things her original toy had, and this one seemed needessly complicated for a toy that didn't have the gimmicks anymore.

Oh, wow. I own that toy. I forgot it existed.

> I also like Combiner Wars Menasor better. I don't understand the obsession with toys that are based on bad lazy drawings of better toys. G1 Menasor was lazy drawing to save time instead of drawing the actual toys they were based on, and we have to take that simplified line drawing and make it our gold standard of something that used to be better. I don't need Motormaster with live hockey pads to be Menasor.

Okay, the hockey pads thing was actually pretty funny.

You're applying real-world logic to the in-universe appearance of the characters, though. Yes, part of the reason the G1 characters looked the way they did is because the complex designs of the toys were simplified for animation. That much is obvious. But the designs of the characters were also, frequently, *improved* for animation. There are so many toys that didn't have proper hands (Gears, Brawn) or arms (Throttlebots, Battlechargers) or proper legs (Throttlebots again, Powerglide, Mixmaster, Lightspeed) or proper faces (Bonecrusher, Windcharger) or even heads to speak of (Ironhide/Ratchet). To me, the cartoon versions of those characters look a lot better than their G1 toys do.

But, that's like saying that the lightsabers in Star Wars are made from old camera parts or that Luke Skywalker was wearing bleached denim jeans with the pockets removed. That explains why the things looked the way they looked, but it's irrelevant. You still want your collectibles authentic to the source material. Nobody goes, "Well, let's not make this expensive lightsaber collectible look like old camera parts, because that was lazy prop recycling." They make the replica look exactly like the old camera parts.

But, let's put that aside. For whatever reason, the Transformers characters look the way they look in the G1 cartoon. Jazz has no doors on his back, Optimus Prime has no wheels on his hips, and Starscream doesn't have a jet nosecone sticking out of the back of his head. When the cartoon designs become the inspiration for new toy designs, it's always fascinating to me how they manage to realize this stuff in three dimensions. How are they going to hide Jazz's doors? Where are they going to stuff the wheels so you can't see them on Optimus? How are they going to tuck away the jet nosecone on Starscream? They can't just follow the designs of the G1 toys, because the G1 toys could never do this stuff.

But, I don't find Menasor's cartoon design to be especially lazy. Unlike a lot of season one Autobots, they took the time to draw all the vehicle tires on the Stunticons who formed the arms and legs, even though that's, like, more than four times the amount of tires they would have been drawing if they'd left them on the designs for, say, Bluestreak or Sunstreaker. They did leave off the tires entirely for Motormaster, so there's that, I suppose. But Menasor still looks like a robot who's made up of a bunch of different cars. He wasn't oversimplified in the extreme the same way that, say, Devastator was. Devastator loses a hell of a lot of details. Scrapper's and Mixmaster's tires all disappear, Scavenger's shovel disappears, Hook's crane arm disappears.

The weirdness of Menasor's cartoon design really lies in the way the Stunticons transform and combine into him. The transformation models for late season two were phoned in, and it shows. Some thought was given to the way the mechanical parts moved for the season one transformations, and they enjoyed close fidelity to what the Hasbro toys actually did. You could watch the show and figure out, more or less, how the Jazz toy transformed or how to transform the Soundwave toy. But late season two cheated the transformations in the extreme. To become a truck, Onslaught just lays down on his belly. To change from jet to robot, Silverbolt's nosecone just retracts into itself until he becomes a box shape, which sprouts arms and legs. Motormaster just *becomes* Menasor and then the other Stunticons clamped onto him like decorations. This felt wrong in 1985 because it isn't what the Hasbro toys did.

So now we've got a Motormaster toy that can transform into Menasor, and the other Stunticons attach to the arms and legs like decorations. They accomplished this ridiculous, impossible thing that the cartoon came up with. I love that. It inspired the guys at Hasbro to innovate and actually come up with something pretty clever that more closely matches what we see on screen. It's weird to me that people would complain about that.

I'm a fan of the Transformers cartoon, so I like when the toys look like these characters that I love. I'm really excited about Gears next year, and I can't wait to see if they find a way to hide the wheels on his arms and legs for robot mode. I can't wait for new Throttlebots that are actually built with a humanoid physique, instead of the G1 toys, whose robot modes were still basically just cars with the doors swung open and the trunk flipped back. A lot of the G1 toys were cleverly engineered, to be sure, but they don't always look like the media characters. I think it's awesome when we get new toys that actually resemble the media designs.

Zob (rebuilt the backroom steel all day at work, and boy are my arms tired)

On Tuesday, October 24, 2023 at 2:15:04 PM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> Ultimately, I think Generations (and Studio Series 86) went in the wrong direction when it began really committing to screen accuracy with Earthrise..

That's a hot take nowadays but put me on the list of people who feel like screen accuracy isn't the greatest engineering goal for designers to aspire to. I will take this a bit further and say I don't think cartoon accurate paint jobs are all that great either. I really like what they did with the Stunticons in terms of molding and design (except for how the combined form turned out). But then they go and rerelease them in cartoon decos and it looks bad. All the physical detailing does not match up with where the paint goes. It's especially evident on the chests of the limb bots. Like do we really love the G1 designs so much that every single aspect of them has to echo through the paint jobs in this age of superior sculpting? The simplicity of the Sunbow designs and the G1 sculpts only brings down what is possible with current manufacturing. Nowhere is that more evident with how silly those redecod Legacy Stunticons look in the Menasor box set.

> The dominant play pattern seems to be “gingerly transform it twice, and then pose it on a shelf”, which means things like articulation are more important than being able to roll in car mode, or parts staying on when the toy is moved.

That Hasbro knows this and designs things accordingly became evident to me with the Earthrise Battlechargers. I remember thinking I don't care if the car is a mess and at that moment I felt I betrayed myself and every ideal I ever expected from a toy robot car. But hot damn they look so good standing there on the shelf. I feel like the car mode is the most 'toy' part in all this so I can forgive my lowered expectations. Because I'm not playing with toys, I'm collecting robots. Like nowadays I still order Happy Meals in addition to my sandwich but I always tell them to keep the toy. I'm just in it for the McNuggets and the flashy cardboard box. I ain't no baby!
> And I never found the fourth Stunticon limb, and my Motormaster is already yellowing. I wasn’t thrilled with the entire design of this iteration of Menasaur, so I’m not going to go out of my way — I’m honestly tempted to just drop the 4/5ths that I have into a nearby dumpster and regain space in my house.

I never found Motormaster. If you ever do that, let me know what day and which dumpster. I would love to have a Menasor dumpster diving story.

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 11:34:13 AM UTC-6, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:

> That's a hot take nowadays but put me on the list of people who feel like screen accuracy isn't the greatest engineering goal for designers to aspire to.

I have said this in the past, but I honestly find it *more* impressive when the designers find clever ways to tuck away the wheels or windows or whatnot, just because they're pieces that the animators didn't draw in robot mode. I mean, with Masterpice Hound, for example, his rear tires actually change shape and collapse into themselves just so you can stuff them inside his robot boots. I think that's so awesome.

> Like do we really love the G1 designs so much that every single aspect of them has to echo through the paint jobs in this age of superior sculpting? The simplicity of the Sunbow designs and the G1 sculpts only brings down what is possible with current manufacturing.

Okay, I get what you're saying.

In some alternate quantum reality, they played it close to the vest, and the cartoon versions of the Stunticons basically looked exactly like the toys.. Probably something like this reimagined Dead End by Guido Guidi:

https://www.deviantart.com/guidoguidi/art/Dead-End-Settei-toy-accurate-280835293

If Dead End had looked like that in the show, I would have accepted it, and I probably would have liked the fidelity to the Hasbro toy. You could even argue that the cartoon designs were really bad advertising because they did not accurately represent the G1 toys. The car modes were more or less right, but it's like they didn't have access to the G1 toys so they just made something up for the robot modes.

So, yeah, it would definitely be possible nowadays for Hasbro to come up with a toy that looked more like Guido's design, above, and it would be a thing of awesomeness. But, for better or for worse, Dead End looked a certain way in the cartoon. If the goal is to give us a toy based on the media depiction, then the closer they get to the cartoon look, the happier it makes me. I love the show, so I want to own something that matches what I see on my TV screen.

To me, wanting new toys to look more like the G1 toys is a little bit like wanting new Star Wars action figures to look more like the old Kenner action figures.
To me, that's silly nonsense. The goal should be to match what we see in the movies. People here on the newsgroup used to get stuck on the whole "but the G1 toys came first" mentality and seemed incapable of separating the two. The G1 toys and G1 cartoon designs are intrinsically linked, to be sure, but that doesn't mean I want all new Ironhide and Ratchet toys to have no heads, just to remain beholden to their 1984 releases. We've moved past that point.

> Because I'm not playing with toys, I'm collecting robots. Like nowadays I still order Happy Meals in addition to my sandwich but I always tell them to keep the toy. I'm just in it for the McNuggets and the flashy cardboard box. I ain't no baby!

I remember the good ol' days when they did the Beast Wars promotion at McDonald's and people were so *angry* when their local restaurants wouldn't sell them just the toy. I ate so many Happy Meals that month. (I've more or less sworn off McDonald's in recent years, though. I just can't do it any more. It was my go-to lunch for years because it was right inside the Walmart where I worked. I think I overdid it!)

> I never found Motormaster. If you ever do that, let me know what day and which dumpster. I would love to have a Menasor dumpster diving story.

Well, the yellowing one that I shipped back to Amazon probably ended up on one of their infamous "return pallets." I hear they sell those at wholesale, so for only a few hundred dollars, my slightly used Motormaster (and a whole bunch of other junk) could perhaps one day be yours!

Zob (not entirely sure if I remembered to put his instructions back in the box, though)

Welcome back, Gustavo. I'm really glad that you're with us.

And, I empathize with a lot of what you wrote in terms of real-life realities, while also echoing Zob, Velvet Glove, and the others in saying that you're truly appreciated here.

We missed you and your contributions a lot. Glad to see you again.

JB

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 2:56:53 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 11:34:13 AM UTC-6, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:
>
> > That's a hot take nowadays but put me on the list of people who feel like screen accuracy isn't the greatest engineering goal for designers to aspire to.
> I have said this in the past, but I honestly find it *more* impressive when the designers find clever ways to tuck away the wheels or windows or whatnot, just because they're pieces that the animators didn't draw in robot mode. I mean, with Masterpice Hound, for example, his rear tires actually change shape and collapse into themselves just so you can stuff them inside his robot boots. I think that's so awesome.
> > Like do we really love the G1 designs so much that every single aspect of them has to echo through the paint jobs in this age of superior sculpting? The simplicity of the Sunbow designs and the G1 sculpts only brings down what is possible with current manufacturing.
> Okay, I get what you're saying.
>
> In some alternate quantum reality, they played it close to the vest, and the cartoon versions of the Stunticons basically looked exactly like the toys. Probably something like this reimagined Dead End by Guido Guidi:
>
> https://www.deviantart.com/guidoguidi/art/Dead-End-Settei-toy-accurate-280835293
>
> If Dead End had looked like that in the show, I would have accepted it, and I probably would have liked the fidelity to the Hasbro toy. You could even argue that the cartoon designs were really bad advertising because they did not accurately represent the G1 toys. The car modes were more or less right, but it's like they didn't have access to the G1 toys so they just made something up for the robot modes.
>
> So, yeah, it would definitely be possible nowadays for Hasbro to come up with a toy that looked more like Guido's design, above, and it would be a thing of awesomeness. But, for better or for worse, Dead End looked a certain way in the cartoon. If the goal is to give us a toy based on the media depiction, then the closer they get to the cartoon look, the happier it makes me. I love the show, so I want to own something that matches what I see on my TV screen.
>
> To me, wanting new toys to look more like the G1 toys is a little bit like wanting new Star Wars action figures to look more like the old Kenner action figures.
> To me, that's silly nonsense. The goal should be to match what we see in the movies. People here on the newsgroup used to get stuck on the whole "but the G1 toys came first" mentality and seemed incapable of separating the two. The G1 toys and G1 cartoon designs are intrinsically linked, to be sure, but that doesn't mean I want all new Ironhide and Ratchet toys to have no heads, just to remain beholden to their 1984 releases. We've moved past that point.
> > Because I'm not playing with toys, I'm collecting robots. Like nowadays I still order Happy Meals in addition to my sandwich but I always tell them to keep the toy. I'm just in it for the McNuggets and the flashy cardboard box. I ain't no baby!
> I remember the good ol' days when they did the Beast Wars promotion at McDonald's and people were so *angry* when their local restaurants wouldn't sell them just the toy. I ate so many Happy Meals that month. (I've more or less sworn off McDonald's in recent years, though. I just can't do it any more. It was my go-to lunch for years because it was right inside the Walmart where I worked. I think I overdid it!)
> > I never found Motormaster. If you ever do that, let me know what day and which dumpster. I would love to have a Menasor dumpster diving story.
> Well, the yellowing one that I shipped back to Amazon probably ended up on one of their infamous "return pallets." I hear they sell those at wholesale, so for only a few hundred dollars, my slightly used Motormaster (and a whole bunch of other junk) could perhaps one day be yours!
>
>
> Zob (not entirely sure if I remembered to put his instructions back in the box, though)

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 4:56:53 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 11:34:13 AM UTC-6, Evil King Macrocranios wrote:
>
> > That's a hot take nowadays but put me on the list of people who feel like screen accuracy isn't the greatest engineering goal for designers to aspire to.
> I have said this in the past, but I honestly find it *more* impressive when the designers find clever ways to tuck away the wheels or windows or whatnot, just because they're pieces that the animators didn't draw in robot mode. I mean, with Masterpice Hound, for example, his rear tires actually change shape and collapse into themselves just so you can stuff them inside his robot boots. I think that's so awesome.
> > Like do we really love the G1 designs so much that every single aspect of them has to echo through the paint jobs in this age of superior sculpting? The simplicity of the Sunbow designs and the G1 sculpts only brings down what is possible with current manufacturing.
> Okay, I get what you're saying.
>
> In some alternate quantum reality, they played it close to the vest, and the cartoon versions of the Stunticons basically looked exactly like the toys. Probably something like this reimagined Dead End by Guido Guidi:
>
> https://www.deviantart.com/guidoguidi/art/Dead-End-Settei-toy-accurate-280835293
>
> If Dead End had looked like that in the show, I would have accepted it, and I probably would have liked the fidelity to the Hasbro toy. You could even argue that the cartoon designs were really bad advertising because they did not accurately represent the G1 toys. The car modes were more or less right, but it's like they didn't have access to the G1 toys so they just made something up for the robot modes.
>
> So, yeah, it would definitely be possible nowadays for Hasbro to come up with a toy that looked more like Guido's design, above, and it would be a thing of awesomeness. But, for better or for worse, Dead End looked a certain way in the cartoon. If the goal is to give us a toy based on the media depiction, then the closer they get to the cartoon look, the happier it makes me. I love the show, so I want to own something that matches what I see on my TV screen.
>
> To me, wanting new toys to look more like the G1 toys is a little bit like wanting new Star Wars action figures to look more like the old Kenner action figures.
> To me, that's silly nonsense. The goal should be to match what we see in the movies. People here on the newsgroup used to get stuck on the whole "but the G1 toys came first" mentality and seemed incapable of separating the two. The G1 toys and G1 cartoon designs are intrinsically linked, to be sure, but that doesn't mean I want all new Ironhide and Ratchet toys to have no heads, just to remain beholden to their 1984 releases. We've moved past that point.

But the Kenner Starwars toys were dumbed down versions of movie counterparts, the movie set a realistic standard with real people and detailed vehicles.
Transformers is the opposite. The toys had the real vehicles and detailing that got omitted from the cartoon for cost cutting measures. Most of the cars were no longer real world cars. Most of the robots were suddenly cardboard box Halloween robot costumes as in a series of rectangles attached to each other, where the toys had significantly more detail. The toys had circuit detail stickers the cartoon left out.
On either side, take the most detailed and try to add details.Sure Ironhide and Ratchet were the exception to the rule, but for the most part the Kenner toys were the side subject to cost cutting, and the animation of Trnsformers were also the cost cutting side. The cost cutting side is the side with less detail.

If I had a time machine and had to worry about causality I'd go back in time and tweak the show bible to fix Menasor, Rumble, Frenzy, Tracks, Gears, Brawn, Hound, Jazz, and Mirage to top so many of these arguments.

> > Because I'm not playing with toys, I'm collecting robots. Like nowadays I still order Happy Meals in addition to my sandwich but I always tell them to keep the toy. I'm just in it for the McNuggets and the flashy cardboard box. I ain't no baby!
> I remember the good ol' days when they did the Beast Wars promotion at McDonald's and people were so *angry* when their local restaurants wouldn't sell them just the toy. I ate so many Happy Meals that month. (I've more or less sworn off McDonald's in recent years, though. I just can't do it any more. It was my go-to lunch for years because it was right inside the Walmart where I worked. I think I overdid it!)

I don't recall the last Mcdonalds toy I needed to have. Part of me is irritated when people come into my work insisting that their fast food toys are worth money, but at the same time we just had the Riverboat McDonalds Bumblebee someone paid us $55 for. I think I still have the riverboat Cliffjumper and green bee somewhere but they're not worth a much as the yellow and black Bee

> > I never found Motormaster. If you ever do that, let me know what day and which dumpster. I would love to have a Menasor dumpster diving story.
> Well, the yellowing one that I shipped back to Amazon probably ended up on one of their infamous "return pallets." I hear they sell those at wholesale, so for only a few hundred dollars, my slightly used Motormaster (and a whole bunch of other junk) could perhaps one day be yours!
>

I saw Motormaster at Target one time, and then someone traded him in twice and he sold the same day both times.

Today's best option is to pay $16 for him at a Ross store.

>
> Zob (not entirely sure if I remembered to put his instructions back in the box, though)

I have a giant box of Transformers instructions people go nuts for, but I generally consider a toy complete without instructions. Every Lego set instructions are free online. with Youtube people don't need instructions.

On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 10:18:00 PM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:

> The toys had the real vehicles and detailing that got omitted from the cartoon for cost cutting measures. Most of the cars were no longer real world cars. Most of the robots were suddenly cardboard box Halloween robot costumes as in a series of rectangles attached to each other, where the toys had significantly more detail. The toys had circuit detail stickers the cartoon left out.

Okay, but does more detail automatically equal a better design?

Taken to its extreme, you end up with something like the Siege toy line. They added tons of greeblies as surface detail to most of the toys, especially early in the Siege assortment, and I remember people complaining about that. Siege was not, to my recollection, widely-hailed as the best Transformers toy line ever. You could almost hit overload with so much visual stimulus.

On the other hand, toys like Masterpiece Inferno have a certain simple elegance to their design. Sometimes less is more. The cartoon designs are like feng shui. Instead of cluttered, they are simple and easy to absorb. It's a completely different design philosophy.

So what about the late G1 cartoon models that were super-detailed? Is the animated look for Apeface or Grotusque inherently better than the animated look for Hound or Bonecrusher?

Zob (already been to three trunk-or-treats this year and it's not even Halloween yet)

On Monday, October 30, 2023 at 4:50:59 PM UTC-5, Zobovor wrote:
> On Sunday, October 29, 2023 at 10:18:00 PM UTC-6, Irrellius Spamticon wrote:
>
> > The toys had the real vehicles and detailing that got omitted from the cartoon for cost cutting measures. Most of the cars were no longer real world cars. Most of the robots were suddenly cardboard box Halloween robot costumes as in a series of rectangles attached to each other, where the toys had significantly more detail. The toys had circuit detail stickers the cartoon left out.
> Okay, but does more detail automatically equal a better design?
>
> Taken to its extreme, you end up with something like the Siege toy line. They added tons of greeblies as surface detail to most of the toys, especially early in the Siege assortment, and I remember people complaining about that. Siege was not, to my recollection, widely-hailed as the best Transformers toy line ever. You could almost hit overload with so much visual stimulus.
>

So Siege was greatly received around here, the toys still much better than the Netflix show. A lot of people still use Siege toys for their G1 representation of many characters. People hold up Siege Megatron and Optimus as the penultimate representations of the robot modes

> On the other hand, toys like Masterpiece Inferno have a certain simple elegance to their design. Sometimes less is more. The cartoon designs are like feng shui. Instead of cluttered, they are simple and easy to absorb. It's a completely different design philosophy.
>

I've had 2 Masterpiece Primals (or MP-32 "Convoy-Beast Wars") with their smooth CGI look that nobody wants, but the Kingdom Primal I've probably sold like 30 of, and now even the Premium finish Kingdom Primal people will take with it's fake fur detailing and higher pricetag over the screen-accurate and cheaper MP Primal with it's strangely smooth shaved gorilla.

> So what about the late G1 cartoon models that were super-detailed? Is the animated look for Apeface or Grotusque inherently better than the animated look for Hound or Bonecrusher?
>

Yes. Yes it is. The level of detail of a ninja turtle is inherently better than the detail level of Fred Flintstone.

>
> Zob (already been to three trunk-or-treats this year and it's not even Halloween yet)

I just got back from the liquor store and parking was a nightmare because it's next to one of the largest Halloween stores in the US.