Been resetting the toy department at Walmart, by myself, despite numerous interruptions and obstacles. It's been a frustrating week, but it's over, at least for now. Nothing like some new toys to cheer me up, especially one that I've really been looking forward to!

Hasbro's been systematically giving us the definitive neo-G1 collection, slowly but surely making their way through all the major characters. It's not so much a matter of "who deserves a good update next?" but "who haven't we done yet in the last three or four years or so"? With toys like Earthrise Cliffjumper setting the new standard for Deluxe-class Mini Autobots, it seems that everybody from that group is eventually due for a Deluxe update (except maybe Wheelie), and I've enjoyed pretty much all of them.

So, this version of Brawn stands at about 4.5" at the head, with the assembly behind his head bringing his overall height closer to 4.75" total. He's shorter than a standard Deluxe, which is appropriate and correct, since all six Mini Autobots from 1984 were substantially shorter than the rest of the Autobots (most of the Mini Autobots from 1985 were closer to normal height for some reason). Why was Jazz large and Cliffjumper tiny when they both turned into Porsches? Only Primus knows.

He's styled authentically to his cartoon look, decked out in army green and a schoolbus yellow (you can call it orange and I won't argue), with metallic silver painted forearms and fists, face, and kneecaps. His head is painted a glossy grey, darker than his face. He's got a big Autobot symbol in the center of his body. His head seems slightly too small—the Mini Autobots had child-like proportions in the show, and Brawn was drawn about six heads tall, but this toy is more like seven and a half heads tall. But, they absolutely nailed his cartoon appearance. Just about the only places he really diverges is the lower legs (they are quite obviously jeep parts sandwiched together) and he lacks the black triangle details on his pelvis (a simplication of the factory-applied sticker on the 1984 toy).

He comes with a gun, which the character didn't usually carry, but the animators typically stuck a weapon in the hands of characters like Bumblebee, Wheeljack, etc. when the story called for it. (It's interesting to note that Brawn was completely unarmed when he confronted Megatron and the Decepticons in The Transformers: the Movie. Apparently he was planning to just start throwing punches!)

He's got some good articulation—ball joints for the shoulders, hinged elbows, bicep swivels, a pelvis swivel, hips that rotate and pivot outwards, mid-thigh swivels, hinged knees, and the all-important ankle tilts.

His transformation is surprisingly complex! A lot of the time, Hasbro cribs some of the ideas that Takara brought to the table with Masterpiece, but there's no Masterpiece Brawn to copy from this time. His upper torso kind of turns inside-out for a minute—his head and chest swing down on a hinge, his arms swing out on panels that reveal the side windows for vehicle mode, and his front grill assembly rotates on an axis in a super clever way that also helps to hide his head. The jeep cabin is partially collapsed on his back, so that opens up, and the extra space created is where his robot arms tuck away into. The legs unfold into a shape more closely matching the shape of the G1 toy's legs (those freakishly long stilts) and form the sides of the jeep as you might expect. The robot fists each have one recessed knuckle that allows a tab from each leg to plug into it to create stability. It should bother me that he's missing a piece of his finger on each hand, but I never notice it until it comes time to transform him.

As a jeep, he's not quite 3.5" in length. It's basically perfect, still mostly army green with an orange bumper, a silver painted grill and headlights and hubcaps, and light blue painted windows. His gun plugs into the spare tire on the top (this was originally Outback's trick), and the tire itself is removable. His rear window is not painted, but it has a cute little sculpted windshield wiper that I really like. It's just a fun detail. Big Autobot symbol on his hood. There were a lot of things that bugged me about the G1 toy (like the unpainted side windows, or the fact that they slapped his rub symbol on TOP of the side windows for the 1985 version like they weren't even there) so this is like a scaled-up, souped-up version of Brawn for the modern age, and I love it. You can tell they changed a handful of details to skirt licensing problems (the top fog lights are square instead of rounded, and he's got an extra set of headlights on the side fenders) but he still looks like Brawn to me, so I have zero complaints here.

If he has any flaws at all, it's that a tiny piece of orange real estate is still visible when he's in jeep mode, but you can really only see it from the side. It's just a tiny little orange triangle that's not hidden by anything green.

I don't collect or keep the background pieces, but I do appreciate the artistic effort that goes into them. Brawn's background piece is the interior of the shuttle from The Transformers: the Movie, complete with a gigantic hole ripped in the side, and Brawn's navigation chair off to the side. It's a moment frozen in time, with Brawn now only seconds away from his tragic demise. His text blurb on the back reads, "In an effort to protect the crew, BRAWN is the first to act when DECEPTICONS attack the AUTOBOT shuttle." That's right, he was the first to act. He was also the first to die. But, hey, them's the brake shoes.

The CAD models on the back of the box show a pin hole in the side windows, but they must have figured out to redesign the toy so the pin was no longer visible, because it's not there on the final product. Sweet!

Obviously, we will most likely get an Outback remold out of this toy eventually. Outback's cartoon model was a much more literal interpretation of the G1 toy than Brawn's, so they drew a lot of things on Outback that Brawn didn't have in the show, like the door flaps on his arms or the weird stilt legs or the fact that his face was sort of halfway embedded into his upper chest. Obviously, they can't change every aspect of the toy without adversely affecting the engineering of his transformation. I really don't see how they're going to be able to add the door flaps to his shoulders, since the robot arms tuck away into a very small area without a lot of wiggle room for extra parts. But, maybe they'll surprise us. I'm sure he'll get a remolded chest and robot head, if nothing else.

Just wow. I'm blown away at how good this toy is. Everything about him is beautiful—the colors, the styling, the transformation, the vehicle mode, the engineering—everything. There are third party versions of Brawn that get the legs and pelvis a little more accurate, but for a mainline Hasbro toy that's only twenty bucks or so, this is stupendous. Top flight. Evan Brooks and everybody else at Hasbro get a gold star.

Zob (and I wasn't even in a good mood when I started writing this, either)

On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 7:35:35 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:
>
> Hasbro's been systematically giving us the definitive neo-G1 collection, slowly but surely making their way through all the major characters. It's not so much a matter of "who deserves a good update next?" but "who haven't we done yet in the last three or four years or so"? With toys like Earthrise Cliffjumper setting the new standard for Deluxe-class Mini Autobots, it seems that everybody from that group is eventually due for a Deluxe update (except maybe Wheelie), and I've enjoyed pretty much all of them.

Wheelie doesn't really need to be a deluxe since he is the smallest Minibot in the cartoon.

> He comes with a gun, which the character didn't usually carry, but the animators typically stuck a weapon in the hands of characters like Bumblebee, Wheeljack, etc. when the story called for it. (It's interesting to note that Brawn was completely unarmed when he confronted Megatron and the Decepticons in The Transformers: the Movie. Apparently he was planning to just start throwing punches!)

Sometimes in the early episodes of the G1 cartoon Brawn would brandish a large white tube for a gun (in the image it's dark gray though)

https://www2.unicron.com/images/igallery/resized/24501-24600/tf_rotf00389-24558-1024-1024-80-wm-left_top-100-Unicroncomwatermarkpng.jpg

On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 7:35:35 PM UTC-4, Zobovor wrote:

> Hasbro's been systematically giving us the definitive neo-G1 collection, slowly but surely making their way through all the major characters. It's not so much a matter of "who deserves a good update next?" but "who haven't we done yet in the last three or four years or so"? With toys like Earthrise Cliffjumper setting the new standard for Deluxe-class Mini Autobots, it seems that everybody from that group is eventually due for a Deluxe update (except maybe Wheelie), and I've enjoyed pretty much all of them.

Wheelie doesn't really need to be a deluxe considering how small he is in the cartoon.

> He comes with a gun, which the character didn't usually carry, but the animators typically stuck a weapon in the hands of characters like Bumblebee, Wheeljack, etc. when the story called for it. (It's interesting to note that Brawn was completely unarmed when he confronted Megatron and the Decepticons in The Transformers: the Movie. Apparently he was planning to just start throwing punches!)

Sometimes in the earlier episodes of the G1 Cartoon Brawn would use a large white tube for a gun.

https://www2.unicron.com/images/igallery/resized/24501-24600/tf_rotf00389-24558-1024-1024-80-wm-left_top-100-Unicroncomwatermarkpng.jpg

Swivelbot

On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 9:41:41 PM UTC-6, Swivelbot wrote:

> Wheelie doesn't really need to be a deluxe considering how small he is in the cartoon.

Wheelie's size kind of bothers me. He looks like he should be a super tiny Transformer when he's hanging out with the Dinobots, but pretty much *every* character is super tiny compared to the Dinobots. Sometimes he's only a couple of heads taller than Daniel, but then again, Bumblebee is only a couple of heads taller than Spike. In fact, when Wheelie and Bumblebee were standing right next to each other in "The Return of Optimus Prime," they were the exact same height. It feels like a mistake, but it's actually consistent with the Sunbow scale guide.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't think Wheelie is as small as we tend to perceive him. In any event, we need a Deluxe version of Wheelie to erase that horrible Core-class attempt. Something with fists that retract into the forearms, you know?

> Sometimes in the earlier episodes of the G1 cartoon Brawn would use a large white tube for a gun.

I have no doubt that when Takara gets around to doing a Masterpiece Brawn, he'll come with such a weapon.

Zob (and hopefully a little retractable drill for the front of his jeep mode)

I've largely skipped the Deluxe-class updates to the Minibots; I'm perfectly happy with my PoTP Beachcomber, for example.

But I've never felt that there's been a release that's done justice to Brawn, until now. This attempt is pretty much perfect. The transformation is original without being frustrating, and it looks exactly like the cartoon character brought to life. A shame that it's apparently quite hard to find now; Hasbro needs to do a better job with distribution. Fans are lining up to hand over their hard-earned money, and Hasbro can't even make the product available. No wonder their stock price is tanking.

On Thursday, February 15, 2024 at 6:10:31 PM UTC-7, CodigoPostal wrote:

> I've largely skipped the Deluxe-class updates to the Minibots; I'm perfectly happy with my PoTP Beachcomber, for example.

The Power of the Primes version certainly wasn't a bad toy, by any stretch of the imagination. But, 2017 was the tail-end of the "everybody's a Deluxe" approach, which meant that smaller characters (Mini Autobot, Insecticons, etc.) had to be Legends-sized by default. When they rejiggered the scale beginning with Siege, that sort of necessitated everyone getting scaled up slightly. They've finally found a good cartoon-accurate scale system that works (basically, just follow the Sunbow scale guide) which means that tiny Mini Autobots are no longer acceptable.

However, I recently pulled my Legacy Beachcomber out of the toy box and was horrified to discover that his rubber tires had absorbed some of the red paint from Devcon's boot. This is kind of awful. And now we're finding out that Legacy Sandstorm is going to have rubber tires as well. I had to pop off Beachcomber's tires and store them separately in a plastic baggie, and I'll likely have to do the same with Sandstorm. My opinion of Beachcomber is significantly lower than it was when I first got him!

> But I've never felt that there's been a release that's done justice to Brawn, until now. This attempt is pretty much perfect. The transformation is original without being frustrating, and it looks exactly like the cartoon character brought to life.

Brawn is excellent. I can't emphasize enough how much I love that they're finally releasing what I consider near-perfect versions of these characters, after many years of these semi-acceptable, half-redesigned attempts. Finally, no more of this Perceptor-as-a-truck or Scourge-as-a-V-shaped-nightmare nonsense. It took Hasbro forever to get that out of their system. It's like they were doing entire toy lines based on somebody's vague childhood memories of what the characters looked like.

> A shame that it's apparently quite hard to find now; Hasbro needs to do a better job with distribution. Fans are lining up to hand over their hard-earned money, and Hasbro can't even make the product available. No wonder their stock price is tanking.

There are still several Brawns at my local Walmart, so if anybody needs him at cost plus shipping, let me know and I can hook you up. (The offer stands until they're sold out, which I have no control over. Please don't dig up this message in six years and ask me if they're still available. They won't be.)

Toy sales on the whole were pretty abysmal throughout 2023. Mattel just barely managed to hang on with a one percent decrease over 2022, and that's only because of their extremely lucrative Barbie movie, which raked in like $1.4 billion. Hasbro didn't do nearly so well.

The thing of it is, these companies sell completely inessential products. You need clothing and food and gasoline, but you don't need toys. There are many collectors on a wide variety of forums who have been saying for a while now that they've been effectively priced out of collecting. Inflation has been hitting consumers hard. They'll still begrudgingly buy eggs and milk and beef even during shortages when pricing has skyrocketed, but that means the higher price of essentials is cutting directly into the budget normally allotted for extra fun stuff like going to the movies or buying toys.

And, honestly, Hasbro hasn't been helping themselves by raising prices. There comes a point where twenty-five dollars is just too much to pay for a single action figure, whether it's Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black Series or Transformers Legacy. They set the MSRP at a given point because they want to turn a profit by a certain percentage per sale, but that just bites them in the ass if they're raking in far fewer sales overall because nobody wants to pay those prices in the first place.

Also, I'm seeing more retail theft than ever before in my toy department, and I'm sure that's a side effect of all this. Novelty toys that used to be a dollar are now selling for three or four dollars, and when mom says no, there's nothing to stop unscrupulous kids (or adults!) from just ripping open the package and calling it a day. I used to find maybe one or two empty packages during my work shift, and now I'm routinely finding a dozen or more. I wonder if the sheer number of fraudulent Amazon returns is also the result of this. Amazon doesn't have a process in place to verify the authenticity of returned products, so they end up reselling a lot of figure swaps and damaged goods to unsuspecting consumers. It's an epidemic, I tells ya!

Financial analysts are predicting that we've finally reached the upper limit of what consumers will tolerate, and they're saying we might see some form of deflation in 2024, where pricing comes back down to levels consumers will actually deem acceptable. We're seeing some of it already at Target, who has recently bumped down their Deluxe pricing to $20, Voyager class toys to $30, and Leader-class toys to $50. It's kind of sad that this sounds like a bargain now, when it was actually the normal retail just a few short years ago!

Zob (armchair market analyst extraordinaire)

> Toy sales on the whole were pretty abysmal throughout 2023. Mattel just barely managed to hang on with a one percent decrease over 2022, and that's only because of their extremely lucrative Barbie movie, which raked in like $1.4 billion. Hasbro didn't do nearly so well.

And those 2023 sales came in the context of a movie year, when ROTB generated media hype and a G1-looking Optimus and his pals were everywhere to be seen. What happens when the hype is absent?

> The thing of it is, these companies sell completely inessential products. You need clothing and food and gasoline, but you don't need toys. There are many collectors on a wide variety of forums who have been saying for a while now that they've been effectively priced out of collecting. Inflation has been hitting consumers hard. They'll still begrudgingly buy eggs and milk and beef even during shortages when pricing has skyrocketed, but that means the higher price of essentials is cutting directly into the budget normally allotted for extra fun stuff like going to the movies or buying toys.

Agreed. Toys are utterly inessential, which is much of the joy of owning them. But when fans have to contort themselves into Hasbro apologists to justify the cognitive dissonance of spending so much on little chunks of plastic, you know something's gone haywire.

Also, the G1 market is rapidly becoming a non-renewable resource. We've gotten our final, or near-final updates to the Sunbow cast. Most of us aren't going to need a new Hoist, or Grapple. Another Optimus? Another Magnus? Another go at the same Titans they've already given us? The market just won't be there, not anymore, and definitely not at the current prices.

> Also, I'm seeing more retail theft than ever before in my toy department, and I'm sure that's a side effect of all this. Novelty toys that used to be a dollar are now selling for three or four dollars, and when mom says no, there's nothing to stop unscrupulous kids (or adults!) from just ripping open the package and calling it a day. I used to find maybe one or two empty packages during my work shift, and now I'm routinely finding a dozen or more. I wonder if the sheer number of fraudulent Amazon returns is also the result of this. Amazon doesn't have a process in place to verify the authenticity of returned products, so they end up reselling a lot of figure swaps and damaged goods to unsuspecting consumers. It's an epidemic, I tells ya!

Even those fans who wouldn't shoplift will cut into Hasbro's profits by buying KOs and 3P. KOs offer the same product at the same or better quality, for cheaper (see: the lack of Studio Series ROTB Optimus Primes on shelves or online vs the far better MHZ-01 KO with sturdier plastic, an improved and streamlined truck bed/leg structure, tons of weapons, and an articulated Noah Diaz that puts the pack-in Wheelie and Daniels from the SS86 Dinos to shame, for less than the price of a Voyager).

3P meanwhile, offers more bang for your buck. Back when Hasbro's mainline offerings were $9.99, an $80 City Commander upgrade for Classics Magnus was princely. But today? Hasbro pricing and 3P pricing are increasingly comparable, only 3P offers superior product.

> Financial analysts are predicting that we've finally reached the upper limit of what consumers will tolerate, and they're saying we might see some form of deflation in 2024, where pricing comes back down to levels consumers will actually deem acceptable. We're seeing some of it already at Target, who has recently bumped down their Deluxe pricing to $20, Voyager class toys to $30, and Leader-class toys to $50. It's kind of sad that this sounds like a bargain now, when it was actually the normal retail just a few short years ago!

I miss the days of $20 Beast Wars Ultras, $15 Megas, $10 Deluxes, and $5 Basics. Though in retrospect, those prices were probably only possible through massive exploitation of Third World factory workers.

Nowadays, the companies exploit both the workers over there, as well as the consumers over here. It's called progress.

(And the stock price still tanks, and the C-suite still takes home ridiculous amounts of money).

On Friday, February 16, 2024 at 10:20:50 PM UTC-7, CodigoPostal wrote:

> Agreed. Toys are utterly inessential, which is much of the joy of owning them. But when fans have to contort themselves into Hasbro apologists to justify the cognitive dissonance of spending so much on little chunks of plastic, you know something's gone haywire.

I don't see a lot of that. I usually see quite the opposite—fans framing Hasbro as this greedy capitalist corporation who is deliberately making collectibles more expensive and more cheaply-made than ever before. Everything from the lack of plastic windows in toy packaging to the tone-deaf character selection is seemingly a purposeful and deliberate dig at otherwise faithful and loyal collectors.
> Also, the G1 market is rapidly becoming a non-renewable resource. We've gotten our final, or near-final updates to the Sunbow cast. Most of us aren't going to need a new Hoist, or Grapple. Another Optimus? Another Magnus? Another go at the same Titans they've already given us? The market just won't be there, not anymore, and definitely not at the current prices.

There does seem to be a small but ever-present contingent of fans who are entering the collector market now, or only within the past few years. I see people posting pictures on Reddit and saying things like "this is my whole collection" and it's like 20 toys that were available at retail in 2023. It's honestly kind of adorable. So, to them, characters who were widely available in 2022, or earlier, might as well not even exist. (Yeah, sure, eBay exists, but aftermarket pricing is always erratic, and it's unlikely a collector who has only been in the game for twelve months is going to seek things out on the secondary market.)

But, yes, for most of us, they're giving us the definitive versions of many characters, and there will be little reason to keep buying the same characters continously. My neo-G1 collection is finally nearing something resembling completion, and going forward, it's likely I'll only be picking up characters who haven't yet received modern-era updates in 2019 or later. For me, personally, that's going to represent a huge decrease in discretionary spending, compared to what I've been collecting in recent years—especially when gobbling up multiples of the Quintessons or Sharkticons or Allicons or Insecticons or Sweeps for armybuilder purposes. It's not that my interest in Transformers is waning—it's just that I have nearly everything I want, at this stage.

> Even those fans who wouldn't shoplift will cut into Hasbro's profits by buying KOs and 3P.

I'm definitely interested in some of those amazing 3D-printed characters and accessories I posted about earlier. I'd buy official versions of B.O.T. or Deceptitran if Hasbro was selling them, but if they don't exist, then yeah, my money will just end up going to these other guys.

> I miss the days of $20 Beast Wars Ultras, $15 Megas, $10 Deluxes, and $5 Basics. Though in retrospect, those prices were probably only possible through massive exploitation of Third World factory workers.

I think inflation is the biggest contributing factor. Ten dollars in 1996 money is equivalent to about $20 in 2024, so in some ways we're "really" spending almost the same amount, adjusting for inflation, on a Deluxe toy. But, it's still a hard pill to swallow. And it's especially difficult to accept when they're reissuing a lot of older products but charging modern-era pricing for them. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, it wasn't difficult to keep up on collecting the Ninja Turtles I wanted back when they were $3.99 at Toys "R" Us, but those same exact toys are being sold at Walmart now for ten bucks a pop, usually with fewer accessories or paint applications, and I just can't fathom it. That kind of money adds up quick.

Zob (and I still have all my vintage Ninja Turtles, so it's not really like I'm missing out)

Zobovor wrote:

> On Friday, February 16, 2024 at 10:20:50 PM UTC-7, CodigoPostal wrote:

>> Agreed. Toys are utterly inessential, which is much of the joy of owning them. But when fans have to contort themselves into Hasbro apologists to justify the cognitive dissonance of spending so much on little chunks of plastic, you know something's gone haywire.

> I don't see a lot of that. I usually see quite the opposite—fans framing Hasbro as this greedy capitalist corporation who is deliberately making collectibles more expensive and more cheaply-made than ever before. Everything from the lack of plastic windows in toy packaging to the tone-deaf character selection is seemingly a purposeful and deliberate dig at otherwise faithful and loyal collectors.

People are stupid.

I mean, Hasbro is a greedy capitalist corporation, of course, and they will always be trying to sell less for more, but it has nothing to do with a desire to annoy the collectors.

Granted, the current direction of over complex toys that maintain cartoon accuracy is exactly what I don't want (and why I gave up on Masterpiece toys), but the pendulum will shift the other way soon enough (much like Doctor Who -- I hated Matt Smith, but then they gave me Peter Capaldi and all was forgiven). Not some deep desire from Hasbro to poke me.

(Now we need a new cartoon based on these toys, where animators simplify the designs further, and then toys based on those new designs...)

I do think that some of the price increases are an effort to recoup on losses in previous years and across other brands.

>> Also, the G1 market is rapidly becoming a non-renewable resource. We've gotten our final, or near-final updates to the Sunbow cast. Most of us aren't going to need a new Hoist, or Grapple. Another Optimus? Another Magnus? Another go at the same Titans they've already given us? The market just won't be there, not anymore, and definitely not at the current prices.

> There does seem to be a small but ever-present contingent of fans who are entering the collector market now, or only within the past few years. I see people posting pictures on Reddit and saying things like "this is my whole collection" and it's like 20 toys that were available at retail in 2023. It's honestly kind of adorable. So, to them, characters who were widely available in 2022, or earlier, might as well not even exist.

I find the people say who have been collecting for ages, and then show a collection of Earthrise and newer, with a few of the Titans Return re-issues, the most adorable, because they have some notion of the history. Where do these people come from?

I have no idea what causes someone in 2020 or so to start collecting toys from a 1984 cartoon. Maybe they have a Movieverse collection that they just don't show anyone, and are going backwards?

> But, yes, for most of us, they're giving us the definitive versions of many characters, and there will be little reason to keep buying the same characters continously.

I like things that are new. If they gave us a line closer to Classics and Universe 2.0, I would be delighted. Give me my wacky reinterpretations that still try to be the same character.

>> Even those fans who wouldn't shoplift will cut into Hasbro's profits by buying KOs and 3P.

> I'm definitely interested in some of those amazing 3D-printed characters and accessories I posted about earlier. I'd buy official versions of B.O.T. or Deceptitran if Hasbro was selling them, but if they don't exist, then yeah, my money will just end up going to these other guys.

I really want Skuxxoid and Slizardo action figures. Hasbro has been doing the Retro and FauxRetro line for Star Wars, and that seems like the right level of detail.

(I really wish they had weaseled them into the PotP line as Prime Armor, even if that would have either made no sense, or retroactively made the Skuxxoid the Prime of Complaining About Family Responsibilities)

>> I miss the days of $20 Beast Wars Ultras, $15 Megas, $10 Deluxes, and $5 Basics. Though in retrospect, those prices were probably only possible through massive exploitation of Third World factory workers.

> I think inflation is the biggest contributing factor. Ten dollars in 1996 money is equivalent to about $20 in 2024, so in some ways we're "really" spending almost the same amount, adjusting for inflation, on a Deluxe toy. But, it's still a hard pill to swallow.

I would say that the 1996 toys were also better. They always had at least one gimmick, and they were larger with more paint apps and more plastic.

Modern toys have more posability, and allocate the parts count towards ankle tilts rather than flapping wings, so that might be a draw, but they are also a lot smaller and more fragile.

And yes, I will sit there and make the wings flap for hours, and while I seldom shoot missiles across the room intentionally, I like knowing that it can happen at any moment. I also like bright colors.

Gustavo (was recently captivated by the light sparkling through the clear blue missiles of 2010 SeaSPRAY -- has there been a recent toy that is as simply beautiful? Siege G2 Sideswipe, maybe, with that ruby red windshield with the silver paint behind it?)

On Monday, February 19, 2024 at 3:40:45 AM UTC-7, GustavoWombat wrote:

> I do think that some of the price increases are an effort to recoup on losses in previous years and across other brands.

That's probably true to an extent. But, it's not really fair of them. I mean, when Transformers was a hugely hot brand in 2007 with the first live-action movie, and was making a kazillion dollars, it made sense to pour that revenue back into the brand to help it grow. By the same token, if G.I. Joe or something is having a bad year, it's not right to take away Transformers profits to help save it.

> I find the people say who have been collecting for ages, and then show a collection of Earthrise and newer, with a few of the Titans Return re-issues, the most adorable, because they have some notion of the history. Where do these people come from? I have no idea what causes someone in 2020 or so to start collecting toys from a 1984 cartoon. Maybe they have a Movieverse collection that they just don't show anyone, and are going backwards?

I'm honestly not sure. I find it perplexing. There are a lot of fans out there who collect new toys based on the G1 characters, but they have never watched an episode of the G1 cartoon. Which, honestly, is ancient by today's standards. But, Transformers really are one of those toy lines where you can enjoy them based solely on the clever engineering and the puzzle aspect of their design without necessarily having watched the series from 40 years ago in which they were first introduced.

I see people on the message boards saying things like "I'm super excited about Tidal Wave finally getting a new toy, but I have absolutely no idea who Sandstorm or Gears are" and it speaks towards the idea that the brand is finding new fans all the time. It used to be that Transformers and G1 were synonymous with each other, but that hasn't been true for a really long while.

> I would say that the 1996 toys were also better. They always had at least one gimmick, and they were larger with more paint apps and more plastic.

I'm not really sure I even miss the spring-loaded guns and stuff. They were cool during Transformers: Generation 2, because it was the first time they were finally able to do it in a way that was safe. The fact that you could actually fire a missile across the room was a novelty, and it was fun. But, it also severely limited the way the missiles (and thus the launchers, and sometimes even the toys themselves) could be designed. Putting three-inch long missiles on the G1 reissues, for example, ruined the aesthetics and was a huge mistake.

So, in truth I'm kind of glad they've phased those things out. I love children's toys, obviously, but that doesn't mean I still play with them like a child does. Missiles that spontaneously pop out of their launchers and fly across the room behind a bookshelf or a couch is annoying as hell, and it hurts my knees to crouch down and look for stuff like that.

Zob (is turning 48 next month and is officially an Old Person™)