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Despite things like increasing toy prices, transformations becoming too complex to be fun, and recent movies flopping, how is it that this franchise managed to stay afloat even during the 90s as opposed to stuff like GI Joe, Masters of The Universe, and, given how Sentai is now dead which means no more fresh material, Power Rangers?
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>>11840314
Autism, that's how
>>
>>11840314
Transforming robots are cool, and inherently the best toy.

For the same price as a single dinosaur or action figure toy, you get: A robot that changes into a car/plane/dinosaur/whatever.

That's basically three toys in one: the robot, whatever it turns into, and the puzzle/mechanism to get it from one to the other.
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>>11840314
Old fag TF fag here. Because they’re finally giving us what would be considered the definitive version of G1 characters rather than inspired by. This will be the last chance in my life to get particular characters. While they’ll always be Optimus prime and Starscream, things like Venin which I’ve waited, literally 40 years for a new toy of tend to be more special because of their lack of exposure.

I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE MODERN TF MEDIA. This is strictly a nostalgia thing for me..
>>
Cool robots, and they kept a rather consistent pretense. Also it adapted to different trends pretty well.
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>>11840314
Cartoons. In the 90s and early 2000s, Transformers kept getting cartoons that were bringing in successive new generations of fans, while, particularly in the Beast era, throwing enough bones to the older fans from the G1 era to keep them around, by the mid-2000s Hasbro had mastered managing several different Transformers lines at once, one for the kids based on the current cartoon, a baby's first Transformers line to hook them when they're really young, and a line for the by-then adult collectors who'd been around since the 80s. Then the live action movies and even more cartoons kept Transformers going for another ten years. I'm not sure how many kids are getting brought in by the recent cartoons and movies though, it may be a situation like TMNT where they desperately need something to bring in newer generations again.

Other 80s brands like MOTU and GI Joe tried in the 90s and 2000s, but none of their relaunches managed to pull off the trick of bringing in new fans in enough numbers to sustain the brand, and some of those relaunches weren't embraced by the older fans either.
>>
Massively broad appeal, very pokemon-esque in it's variety of characters and designs.

Joe and MotU have a more narrow appeal and Super Sentai/Power Rangers has just been aggressively mismanaged for years.
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>>11840314
I don't like this current focus on the Primes. They're not bad toys, it's just that leaders (size class and general character) should be one per wave
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>>11840778
The Primes aren't really leaders in a factionwide sense, more like founders.
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>>11840778
I just think they're lame.
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>>11840314
Bringing in a new batch of fans, whether it be a casual or more long term fan, Transformers keeps a new fan base at all times. Transformers seems to be in some form of media at all times, whether it's movies or cartoons or comics so even if you don't buy the toys you know the characters and designs. I think the constant presence of transformers and the wide variety of toys you can buy are big reasons why the franchise continues.
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>>11840314
It's cars that turn into freakin' robots—freakin' alien robots—and shoot freakin' laser beams!
>>
well we can finally get the toys that are what the show looked, like, recent studio series , grimlock, prime and seekers are very good.

Jetfire was really good, has everything you want

Snapdragrons based and

Trypticon was really good and best of all was black zarak

Black zarak is possibly the single best transformer toy I have had, it's massive, great head sculpt, radically different modes, Strong joints, and picked it up for about 100$ US.

That's value.

Even the box knocks it out of the park.
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>>11840314
The series constantly reinvents itself and it's concept is inherently evergreen compared to the other franchises named. The transformations on modern figures aren't nearly as complex as what the fuck they did with the revenge of the fallen toy line though. Never again.
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>>11840314
Rhino farts
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>>11840755
Also the characters being robots allows for more violence.
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>>11840314
While recent movies flopped the bay films were so successful they guaranteed eternal life support
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>>11840409
>Because they’re finally giving us what would be considered the definitive version of G1 characters rather than inspired by
They were so close. Without licensed alt modes, they aren't definitive. If they were licensed, they would be some of the best toys ever made.
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>>11840409
>>11843890
can g1 uncs ever stop being sch whiney fags?
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>>11843893
I don't think it's that whiney to expect a perfect product just once after 40 years. Like 40 fucking years... I think it's actually crazy to not perfect the original even once in all that time and just make other random stuff
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>>11843912
>its crazy nightmar on elm street kept changing the premise every film
>its crazy halo kept changing the story every game
>its crazy ferrari keep changing their models every year
>its crazy star wars kept changing the characters every film
>its crazy markets keep changing the prices on things
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>managed to stay afloat even during the 90s

Beast Wars. Then to a lesser extent RiD2001. Then to a far greater extent Armada. Then the Bay movies.
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>>11840314
Its just a really good series with generational apeal that had really good character writing
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>>11840314
I suggest you go outside instead of reading retarded tweets by 14 year olds. Transformers is around because its still popular, because robots are cool and evergreen while being really easy to adapt, the toys are still liked and if you genuinely think recent toys are too complex you might genuinely be brain damaged.
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>>11840700
G2 kid here, this is exactly how they hooked me. As a kid, the cartoon—which was new to me in the early 90s—was just so cool it got me into the toys.
> Other 80s brands like MOTU and GI Joe tried in the 90s and 2000s, but none of their relaunches managed to pull off the trick of bringing in new fans in enough numbers to sustain the brand, and some of those relaunches weren't embraced by the older fans either.
I enjoyed the 2002 MOTU revival a lot but think it worked on me because I had a passing familiarity with the original. I think that was the case, more generally: it brought in older kids who weren’t going to buy toys but liked the show anyway. Not sure about GI Joe, what exactly happened there? Honestly, I’ve heard nothing about Joe except the shitty live-action films, and my son doesn’t even know what Joe is, let alone being interested in it.
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>>11844186
>Armada
I remember people hating on that show a lot, but I always enjoyed it because it was like a loose anime version of transformers, with a lot of anime cliches and funny dialogue. The transformation sequences were so over the top, what fun.
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>>11845482

The show is debatable, but the toyline was a massive success, especially with little kids. They loved the Minicons.
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>>11845549
Yes, the Armada toys were really cool. My brother had a few of the core set of Autobots. The detail and transformations were a lot better than previous gens. Breath of fresh air after beast machines.
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>>11845479
>I enjoyed the 2002 MOTU revival a lot but think it worked on me because I had a passing familiarity with the original. I think that was the case, more generally: it brought in older kids who weren’t going to buy toys but liked the show anyway.
That seems to be broadly the case from my own experience, fans of the original embraced it in a way they didn't embrace New Adventures, but they were all adults by 2002, and not enough of them were buying the toys to keep the line alive, while for whatever reason, it didn't really do any better than New Adventures in creating a new generation of young fans. The toys overloading on He-Man and Skeletor variants and other characters being difficult to find didn't help either.

>Not sure about GI Joe, what exactly happened there?
The 1980s line finally ended in 1994, and during the same time frame as Transformers getting G2 and Beast Wars, GI Joe got Sgt Savage and then GI Joe Extreme, both were in larger scales with less articulation, and none of the 1982-1994 characters carried over. Sgt Savage only got one cartoon episode on a video packed with one of the figures, while Extreme did get 2 seasons of cartoon and 2 comic miniseries, Hasbro seem to have pulled the plug on the toys before the cartoon was done.

After that, Hasbro largely retreated to aiming GI Joe at the now-adult fanbase in the late 90s and early 2000s, but then relaunched with the GI Joe vs Cobra line in 2002, backed by a new comic and some CGI animated movies and had some success, but then shifted to bigger scale figures and an anime-style show with Sigma Six, and again the older fans didn't support it and it didn't bring in enough new fans. They went back to the usual figure scale for the Anniversary line and the movies, and were doing reasonably well until the 2nd movie getting delayed for a year basically killed the toy line, most retailers just didn't order the later waves after Hasbro wanted them to return the first wave figures they'd ordered.
>>
>>11845764
> That seems to be broadly the case from my own experience, fans of the original embraced it in a way they didn't embrace New Adventures, but they were all adults by 2002, and not enough of them were buying the toys to keep the line alive, while for whatever reason, it didn't really do any better than New Adventures in creating a new generation of young fans. The toys overloading on He-Man and Skeletor variants and other characters being difficult to find didn't help either.
Didn’t help that getting traction for the dormant He-Man brand in 2002 meant competing against the first big mainstream anime adoption wave in the US. I remember watching MOTU 2002 on Toonami: it surrounded by Gundam, DBZ, TF: Armada, and lots of other anime and even older shows. Hard to stand out in that environment, especially when all the competitors had toy lines. Not to mention Star Wars prequel toy mania at the time and the tartakovsky clone wars stuff about to come out the next year.
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>>11846323
Having to compete with all of that probably helps explain why the 2002 MOTU cartoon was built around EPIC FIGHT SCENES so much though. It was a better time...
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>>11845764
>Hasbro wanted them to return the first wave figures they'd ordered.
hah how are they always mismanaging everything, MtG quality and oversaturation, Beyblade quality fuck ups. It's fine and expected to have product lines and shows not take off for whatever reason but these guys go out of their way to fuck things up.
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>>11846655
Yeah, the show had great animation, and the fights were very well done.
>>
Transformers is still doing well, but I really think we're about 10 years away from the lack of truly successful new TF media for 10 years becoming an issue.
RiD2015, despite being controversial with the fandom, did well. And maybe it being all in on appealing to kids even at the expense of its continuity to Prime or faithfulness to G1 characters helped.
Stuff like the Bumblebee movie or One, despite under performing, has it's audience.
But as time goes on, it's going to be increasingly harder to sell G1 over and over(especially as inflation will make it harder to live up to older figures under a certain price). They can ride out BW, Armada, the movies, Animated, and Prime for more nostalgia. But those audiences will also get older, there's going to be a point where you can't resell them the same characters every 5-10 years(BW is already going through this with the 3rd or 4th rerelease of the Kingdom figures.)
The franchise was a well oiled machine cycling new and old from 1996 through 2011, but since then there's been diminishing returns on the new and more focus on just nostalgia.
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>>11847155
>The franchise was a well oiled machine cycling new and old from 1996 through 2011, but since then there's been diminishing returns on the new and more focus on just nostalgia.
Children used to drive toy purchases, now the demand is coming more and more from adults, so I’m thinking the legacy TF characters and brands are safe for a good while, like you said. The media environment is so fragmented that idk how you sell kids on new TF shows when you’ve now got media companies mining creepypasta for inspiration. I don’t even know where kids watch cartoons now (mine don’t, really); Cartoon Network is basically dead.
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>>11847262
They watch online. The current TF cartoon is streamed on Youtube. And five minutes long.
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>>11847155
>>11847262
like anon >>11847281 said kids watch online, and it's not just cyberworld, they watch all the old stuff animateds first ep has 1mil views and beast wars has over 2mil views, so they end up liking those shows and characters too, which makes the generations figures of those figures actually desirable for the kids too, this is also why Optimus Primal keeps showing up in toylines, he's just popular, so Transformers doesn't really need channels like CN, all their stuff is online or streaming services.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP72deF2QGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ1Rgx_tunA
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>>11847359
Yeah, good point, I guess that’s the new distribution channel of choice. I noticed even the 24/7 G1 livestreams rack up hundreds, even thousands of viewers at any given moment, seems.
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>>11840314
>transformations becoming too complex to be fun
the transformations have arguably gotten simpler with each new toyline, even the masterpiece and studio lines
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>>11848272
This, the complexity for hasbro mainline western stuff peaked at RoTF and has only gotten simpler and frankly better and more fun with each year, only thing holding many figures back has been dog ass materials like clear plastic and the odd QC issue.
Only thing that has really gotten too complex is MP but even then they seem to have come to their senses, idunno I don't pay attention to it anymore
>>
There's also the factor that unlike MOTU and GI Joe (And now Power Rangers), TF is a franchise that's always trying to adapt to the times but still keeping elements from previous versions
Meanwhile the others are too stubborn to change and when they do something goes wrong and it's immediately back to basics.
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>>11848424
I think >>11847155 has a point that Transformers is going to run into problems if it doesn't get back on track with having new iterations that are really successful at bringing in new generations of kids in enough numbers to keep it going, TMNT is the other 80s brand that did a good job of periodically reinventing itself and bringing in new generations of fans, but it's started to run into problems after a number of poorly received reboots in a row.

Ultimately the problem MOTU and GI Joe kept having was that if they change too much the 80s fans won't show up to support it, while nothing they've tried has successfully clicked with younger generations in enough numbers. Even when you have something like 2002 MOTU that did so much right, it still failed because kids didn't want the toys. Transformers is the one brand that's really successfully juggled catering to kids and to adult collectors.
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They need a new setting, where Optimus and Megatron expies don't show up until later as a hype moment but something that isn't as divergent from transforming vehicles as Beast Wars is.
Also a game in that setting that runs on both mobile and pc/console to act as a loss leader. Something f2p but not predatory and also can be played solo without relying on a large playerbse for matchmaking. Maybe they could just fund their own Roblox game. A huge number of kids are on that platform, it's crazy.
Just my random thoughts, what got me into TF as a kid was Beast Wars and only later did I get into the G1 bots.
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121 KB JPG
>>11840409
This guy is retarded
>>11840314
>how is it that this franchise managed to stay afloat even during the 90s
The answer is very obvious. They were very good at adapting to the times. As it turns out, vehicles transforming into robots is a very marketable, timeless and versatile concept.
Beast Wars came out around the time of the Dinosaur and early CG craze of the 90s from stuff like Jurassic Park. In the 2000s, they took advantage of gimmicks, playsets and collectables (minicons, energon stars, force chips). The Movies 1-3 are a no brainer really.
It also leads into this >>11840884

It's only from 2015 onward they've slumped because they're in this constant feedback loop of nostalgia grabs

>>11844268
I work with kids. Transformers is talked about from time to time, but not even close to the level it was even during the Unicron Trilogy.
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>>11848090
Online streams aren't a particularly good metric since companies bot their views constantly. Also if these 2m views were making an impact we would know through finance reports.

>>11848293
The general consensus of the brand peaking in 2010. With ROTF (especially early ROTF) shit was obviously too complex but after a year the engineering became more polished and we got what were basically some of the greatest action figures from all time from that period. If anything things became too simple and transforming figures became less fun as the lines became more focused on "cartoon accuracy"

And another thing. This current wave of designers just don't seem particularly creative or intelligent at all. There's a reason why people glaze Aaron Archer and 2000s Takara so much. They were actual engineers and designers that knew how to work within limitations and you could see them constantly improving every year.

>>11843912
Nigga you'll be saying this again in the next 8 years when Transformers has it's 50th anniversary and they remake the 84-86 cast for the 7th time. Only people who care about "definitive" transformers are all 80s boomers.
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>>11849073
Looking at the history of the franchise and Hasbro's other franchises vs Transformers, I think the real secret ingredient for what helped the Transformers stay relevant is their brief time under Kenner and the legacy of that through Aaron Archer leading the design team/brand up until 2013. Hasbro generally ran it's brands very conservatively, while Kenner was all about making wild shifts and changes to chase the market. Some didn't all work(GI Joe Extreme), but it did work well in Transformers' case. Most importantly, they didn't feel obliged to the older fans, they served kids first. Archer came from Kenner and kept a lot of their design philosophy, and part of that was pushing for new designs and angles.
Meanwhile whenever things went wrong for GI Joe or MLP, they just looked at their older audience and tried to cater to them. That was quik, safe money, but now especially in GI Joe's case it means it's almost exclusively a market over 40.
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>>11849116
>MLP
You-know-what did manage to not only save the franchise but make it even more popular than it was in the 80s and was possbly the actual show that held the Hub together.
Though Hasbro now has no idea what to do with the franchise what with the show having ended years ago.
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>>11849095
>The general consensus of the brand peaking in 2010.
maybe with the movie performance and movie toy sales, it's still going strong
> There's a reason why people glaze Aaron Archer and 2000s Takara so much.
because everyone who were 6-10 years old when the UT was running are now in their late 20s early 30s and going "MY TRANSFORMERS WERE SO MUCH BETTER" like the Genwunners they claim to be so much better than.
>They were actual engineers and designers that knew how to work within limitations and you could see them constantly improving every year.
fucking lmao, imagine saying this and then trying to claim something like SS86 Starscream isn't a product of the teams at hasbro and takara improving a lot over the decades, many of those said engineers being the same people that worked on UT. sit down kid.
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>>11849095
> Online streams aren't a particularly good metric since companies bot their views constantly. Also if these 2m views were making an impact we would know through finance reports.
Do they? There have been many times I’ve come across G1 or GI Joe streams, and they read “27 watching now” under the thumbnail, that doesn’t seem like bots to me. I’d expect bots to be keeping them at least in the high hundreds at peak times.
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>>11850024
I literally said they don't mean anything you braindead retard.

>>11849890
>maybe with the movie performance and movie toy sales, it's still going strong
In terms of toy sales that was 2007 or 2009. When talking about quality its almost always 2010.
>"MY TRANSFORMERS WERE SO MUCH BETTER"
With the exception of Cyberton, most of the praise of their stuff comes from what was made during the later tenure, zoomer.
4 or 5 figures in one line isn't even a remotely close metric. We should have gotten engineering on the level of SS86 Seekers about 10 years ago. The impact is also significantly dumbed down when you realize this shit goes for about the price as 3rd party legends figures which do all this shit on a smaller scale but better. Nigga talking about "sit down kid" I know it wasn't you that was actually buying those figures back then
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>>11850089
>. The impact is also significantly dumbed down when you realize this shit goes for about the price as 3rd party legends figures which do all this shit on a smaller scale but better
lmao if you wanna pay $60 for a tiny ass figure, good on you I guess. I don't want that, but hey keep buying them so this time next year those $60 3P Legends become $90.
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>>11850143
So instead you want to pay $45 dollars for a slightly larger, worse quality figure. At that point just buy an MP.
>but hey keep buying them so this time next year those $60 3P Legends become $90.
As if this isn't already happening with hasbro.

When figures enter these price ranges they become an investment and I'd rather invest in the "tiny ass figure" that isn't marred by Hasbro's infernal QC
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>>11850154
I did but the DS seekers for $50 each way back, that was a great deal. But the MP 52 Starscream was what, $200 at retail? That price difference is massive compared to the retail SS one.
Yes prices are going to go up for both. But the Legends scale just is never going to be appealing to me for high quality figures. I need some larger size. If I but Legends, it’s gonna be for a cheap desk toy, not a $90 Optimus.
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>>11850089
>We should have gotten engineering on the level of SS86 Seekers about 10 years ago.
on what basis?
>The impact is also significantly dumbed down when you realize this shit goes for about the price as 3rd party legends figures which do all this shit on a smaller scale but better.
I thought everyone understood that 3rd party operates outside of limitations big companies like hasbro does, but also legends 3p are costing as much as leaders
>>11850154
>At that point just buy an MP.
the jump from a 45 dollar figure to a mp costing damn near 200 dollars is a pretty big jump anon
also
>that isn't marred by Hasbro's infernal QC
lmao both 3p and MPs have had terrible QC
>>
>>11850191
>on what basis?
On the basis on stuff we were getting back in 2010, is this even an argument? Are we really going to sit here and pretend the quality of figures didn't go down in 2012 and didn't really improve significantly until Siege?
>I thought everyone understood that 3rd party operates outside of limitations big companies like hasbro does, but also legends 3p are costing as much as leaders
3p legends are better quality than your average leader class figure. Yes they operate outside the limitations of larger companies but when said larger companies are encroaching the prices of 3rd party figures what's the point of even buying them. Might as well save my money on a better product.

>lmao both 3p and MPs have had terrible QC
And? Retail QC is even worse than both.
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>>11850199
>On the basis on stuff we were getting back in 2010, is this even an argument?
anon, the 2010 stuff is good, but they're not the new seeker mold good, the team was also hit with massive budget cuts which also stopped it, they still did a lot of neat engineering during the prime wars, TR is a prime example of this.
>didn't really improve significantly until Siege?
Because Siege was a clean restart, partly why PoTP was so ass was because it was basically a filler series before the proper reboot with clearly higher budgets
>3p legends are better quality than your average leader class figure.
not really
>but when said larger companies are encroaching the prices of 3rd party figures what's the point of even buying them.
because they're bigger and far cheaper to get, easier too, they're also just good.
>Might as well save my money on a better product.
Hasbro does deliver good product, if you wanna talk about money compared to what you get 3P isn't really a great deal.
>And? Retail QC is even worse than both.
retail is cheaper and I can actually get easy replacements for them no matter where I am in the world.
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>>11850932
>anon, the 2010 stuff is good, but they're not the new seeker mold good
I can get the same enjoyment from the SS86 seeker from a figure that was $8 back then. The SS86 seeker is very good but it's overhyped.
You're also missing the point. Yeah, we had major budget cuts in 2012 that affected every line going forward but Siege basically showed a lot of this shit could have been avoided from the very beginning. Plus Titans Return's engineering isn't anything to write home about really. I will say it's WAY better than shit like CW and PoTP
>not really
There hasn't been a leader class in the last 3-4 years that's above a 7/10 besides 86 Megatron and Grimlock
>because they're bigger and far cheaper to get, easier too.
They're bigger and cheaper but almost always have worse QC.
> they're also just good.
Let's not lie to ourselves.
>>
About the series long-running success compared to stuff like MOTU, GI Joe, and soon Power Rangers is not being afraid to actually add new characters into the mainline IE recent characters like Bulkhead, Lockdown, Wingblade and Airachnid appearing in recent media or even try to completely redo existing characters IE sometimes Optimus is a semi-trailer, sometimes he's an oil tanker, sometimes a firetruck, sometimes a truck that's trailer turns into a base or that merges with his trailer to give him a super-mode he has a "successor" who turns into a gorilla, etc. IE recent characters like Bulkhead, Lockdown, Wingblade and Airachnid appearing in recent media

Meanwhile those other ones always use the same characters from the original lines with the same exact gimmicks with slight differences from time to time (Female Ram Mam in MOTU CGI Netflix) or variants like snow outfits while Power Rangers is stuck with outdated shit due to Toei axing Super Sentai due to Hasbro fucking up international toy sales.
>>
>>11840314
They went over this subject a bit in this episode of Toy Armada
https://youtu.be/nHvWyRrUnos
One thing that stood out to me is the part about not having the story guys and the toy design guys under the same roof. They say you need toys to have a story and identity to sell them because if you just show kids toys and tell them to make their own stories the kids just go play Minecraft or with their Legos or whatever because that's a superior sandbox experience to anything a one off toy could do
Transformers really excelled here in the past but it will have problems in the future because they are relying too much on nostalgia currently.
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>>11851440
> Power Rangers is stuck with outdated shit
This is the reason I stopped watching PR as a kid, after the initial wave of mania hit western kids. It was the same thing, over and over, all they ever did was change the outfits and settings a little. Got boring very quickly. Most of my “cohort” had already checked out forever before the shitty 90s movie. Pretty common story, but I have to think the sameness of that franchise led to lots of diminishing returns with kids over time.
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>>11851517
>he kids just go play Minecraft or with their Legos or whatever because that's a superior sandbox experience to anything a one off toy could do
You're absolutely right in that the most appealing feature of any toy is a "sandbox" experience where you use the toy as a sort of conduit into another imaginary world, but kids simply no longer use their imaginations. Character toys and action figures fell out because kids would rather minecraft or lego, but now, they don't even have enough of an imagination to do that. The easier route is to just watch someone on youtube play with minecraft or lego. There are tons of channels out there generating hours and hours of content where they just use their minecraft builds as VR movie sets to tell silly, simple stories for kids using recognizable locations and characters.

I went over my in-law's house the other day and my nephew wanted to put on a movie. What he put on was some hour long youtube video of two guys in Minecraft, ad-libbing a half-assed story about Tony Stark and the Ninja Turtles trying to stop some bad guys from stealing magical potions or some shit. This is the kind of stuff we used to make up for ourselves as kids, but now people on youtube do the imagination part for you. It's scary to think how much worse AI will make this crap; kids are just going to have a constant digital imagination running for them. No need to ever use your brain for anything that isn't working. We're watching the death of life in real time, friends.
>>
>>11849073
>I work with kids. Transformers is talked about from time to time, but not even close to the level it was even during the Unicron Trilogy.
You mean when you were small, as in an actual kid, who would just talk about the thing you're into aka transformers.
Truly a great mind here.
>>
>>11840327
fpbp
>>
>>11844186
>Then to a lesser extent RiD2001.
RiD01 doesn't get the credit it deserved. It was just supposed to be a filler line but it sold so well Hasbro was throwing whatever they could into the pot to extend it like various cancelled Beast Machines toys. The Spychangers especially seemed to have sold well sice they added new US exclusive repaints and molds late into the line. The figures remained in circulation as budget store exclusives until 2006 too.
>>11846323
>>11845764
I remember reading once the big struggles with He-Man 200x was that 80s kids viewed big buff shirtless He-Man as "powerful looking" but the more cynical 00s kids just thought he looked gay. Which was why 200x He-Man covered up with the Snake Armor later on. Can't remember where I read it but it sounds believable.
>>
>>11847155
>it's going to be increasingly harder to sell G1 over and over
Hard disagree. People complain, but G1 is what sells. The reason is because Hasbro has spent the last 20 years re-treading G1 characters and there are always new fans jumping on who don't have the big names characters yet. You might get some Armada kids hyped for a new Hot Shots but a character like Bumblebee (who was once practically forgotten) has been so in-focus for the last 20 years that he's a much more viable character with both adults and kids. G1 is just more viable. And you have new collectors coming in all the time who don't have those G1 characters but want them because they've been exposed to them non-stop since 07.

That's why they're having such hard time selling Beast Wars to both nostalgic audiences and kids. The market wasn't as viable as it should be since those characters spent 20 years out of the spotlight. For example the Predacon boxset with the Takara decos is still in-stock on Hasbro's website, but the G1 Autobot United 5 pack from 2024 with a bunch of G1 guys everyone has bought multiple times sold out in a couple of hours and most of those figures were released as stand alone figures since that have sold out on various storefronts. People want G1. Like Legacy Inferno in my opinion might be one of the best Transformers figures I've ever owned, I really love him, but it shelfwarmed and is barely discussed. And there was no reason for it to shelf warm either because its a great figure. Tigerhawk is another great Beast Wars figure that is just littering stores like Ollies and Ross now. Armada and Animated are doing okay, but not well enough that they can overtake the line.
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>>11844268
>if you genuinely think recent toys are too complex you might genuinely be brain damaged
/thread
kids and teenagers love complex robot toys
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>>11858888
>kids and teenagers love complex robot toys
lmao, no they don't. most kids these days hardly have the attention span to transform a robot once, no matter how simple it is.
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>>11861884
This. I have a friend with a 9-year-old that keeps all of his robots in robot mode. Sometimes I'll be over his house and I'll pick one off the floor and transform it into vehicle mode, and he'll get frustrated and tell me to transform it back. The fact that all these robots actually have two modes is entirely irrelevant to him.

Hilariously, this sentiment is largely echoed by older collectors as well, which is exactly why Hasbro has been able to get so lazy with alt modes. It's all about robot accuracy to the G1 models, with the alt mode being a total compromise/afterthought.
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>>11858814
Can confirm: the cultural programming in the 2000s said being muscled = gay.
>>11858850
I love BW, but they really have never done anything to keep it alive like they’ve done with G1. The 10th and 20th BW anniversaries were nil besides a few redeco’d figures and, later, the MPs. No real attempts to reimagine those characters to endear them to new generations. I think Hasbro people have always viewed BW as a bridge that gave people a breather before more vehicle bots. Despite that, I’ve always considered BW some of the coolest transformers toys ever, especially some of the og deluxe figures and the later TM2s.
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>>11840314
It's simply one of hasbros pet series, that's literally it. Not that that is particularly a bad thing but I guess that's my bias talking. It's like with Bandai and Gundam.



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