eriku Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 yeesh...that just looks downright terrible in every respect. Not even the alt mode is appealing. So far the only sure-buys for me from the movie line is the Real Gear stuff.
The Shade Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 That pic at the end with multiple starcreams (G1, classic, Movie, Energon & Masterpiece) was a really good comparison shot. I think I would choose any of the others before the movie one.
Fit For Natalie Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 No chance of that IMHO. Every TF since Headmasters has had "weapon gimmicks that ruin robot mode". With rare exceptions. I think that's abit of a generalisation. Quite a number of gimmicks don't even get in the way of the robot mode at all.
HoveringCheesecake Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 Man, Screamer looks bad. It's unfortunate. Isn't he an F-22 in one of the comics? I thought that looked pretty badass.
JB0 Posted January 20, 2007 Posted January 20, 2007 No chance of that IMHO. Every TF since Headmasters has had "weapon gimmicks that ruin robot mode". With rare exceptions. Except for the entire Micromaster, Pretender, and Actionmaster lines(Which I think were pretty much everything after the Head/Target/Powermasters until Gen2 began)? Of course, Micromasters and Actionmasters sucked for other reasons, but the Pretenders were decent enough(the early ones, anyways).
Kurisama Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 Isn't he an F-22 in one of the comics? I thought that looked pretty badass. He is - IDW's Transformers; Infiltration, and yeah - he looks kick ass. Even gets his butt kicked severly by Megatron. THAT was a cool scene. On a side note, the art and designs in that comic series (By EJ Su) is really something, really awesome stuff. None of this Don F or Pat Lee crud - Mr.Su is by far (IMHO) the BEST designer/artist the Transformers have ever had. Well, Don F too... but only sometimes.
promethuem5 Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 (edited) That really is probably the single worst looking transformer toy ever... how do they think they're going to be able to sell something like that? I'm wondering if even stupid little kids will buy it... oh...wait.... American kids are morons... nevermind. Point is, the new movie designs were obviosuly a terrible set of design on so many levels, and the inability to be made into toys really is a huge one...Like it or not, alot of Transformers' awesomeness has been from the fact that the designs make great toys, not great shows. Edited January 21, 2007 by promethuem5
eugimon Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 That really is probably the single worst looking transformer toy ever... how do they think they're going to be able to sell something like that? I'm wondering if even stupid little kids will buy it... oh...wait.... American kids are morons... nevermind. Point is, the new movie designs were obviosuly a terrible set of design on so many levels, and the inability to be made into toys really is a huge one...Like it or not, alot of Transformers' awesomeness has been from the fact that the designs make great toys, not great shows. 1.Worst toy ever: If you think movie SS is the worst transformer toy ever... well, you obviously must not have been around for the first 20 years. 2. Morons: American kids are morons, thank you for your keen insight. 3. Bad Designs: how are they obviously bad designs? Please, explain. Let's hear an insightful critique into what makes them so bad. 4. Inability to be made into toys: I don't know, Prime, Megs and Blackout are getting some pretty amazing toy releases. The Cab mode of Prime looks more realistic than MP Convoy. And even the cheapy toy pics released have been getting positive feedback... such as the little roleplay TFs and Jazz and Ratchet look just as good as anything from Rid or Energon. So, I think your point is pretty baseless.
HoveringCheesecake Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 eugimon, what happened? You used to be so nice and cuddly. You seem so angry! Is it over your avatar?
eugimon Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 (edited) eugimon, what happened? You used to be so nice and cuddly. You seem so angry! Is it over your avatar? HAH... i have never been nice and cuddly. just ask Jenius But seriously, prom's moron comment really rubbed me the wrong way. Which made the rest of his "comic book guy" post just seem all the more ridiculous. BTW, i really dig your new avatar Edited January 21, 2007 by eugimon
HoveringCheesecake Posted January 21, 2007 Posted January 21, 2007 Yeah it kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but he's from the US too (isn't he?) and you have to admit that our kids are morons alot of the time. I dig my new avatar too. It really didn't take long to make either. If you want something from M:Zero then just let me know.
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Yeah it kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but he's from the US too (isn't he?) and you have to admit that our kids are morons alot of the time. I dig my new avatar too. It really didn't take long to make either. If you want something from M:Zero then just let me know. heh, i have something in mind, but I think I'll be keeping my avatar for a while...
David Hingtgen Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Ok, less general statement: Big gimmicky/functional weapons, are the most common thing you'll find in a TF in the last 15 years that messes up robot mode. I really hate it when an otherwise cool sculpt (or "it could have been cool") has giant immoble hands, or "no arm" or "half the alt mode permanently attached to his forearm" to fit some 3-inch long transparent "energy blast" piece of plastic and a spring inside it. Leave the spring-loaded gimmicks in the weapons, not the robot.
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Ok, less general statement: Big gimmicky/functional weapons, are the most common thing you'll find in a TF in the last 15 years that messes up robot mode. I really hate it when an otherwise cool sculpt (or "it could have been cool") has giant immoble hands, or "no arm" or "half the alt mode permanently attached to his forearm" to fit some 3-inch long transparent "energy blast" piece of plastic and a spring inside it. Leave the spring-loaded gimmicks in the weapons, not the robot. agreed. unfortunately, what adults think of as cool and what adults think kids think of as cool can be pretty different.
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 (edited) Wow, didn't think that such a seemingly understandable view would get lambasted quite so much... and jeez, I'm a 17 year old guy from New York, so I think I get to criticize my fellow American children... for starters, look at most of the standard American fare cartoons and kids shows today... utter garbage with horible animation and crappy toys... and yet kids buy them. Sounds kind of moronic to me.... As for the designs, I even said a page or two back that I really liked the look of the newest Optimus movie figures, but even you should be able to notice from thos pics, they hardly match the so far shown movie design CGI renders... the CGIs have tons of spindly tidbits sticking off that can hardly be visualizewd fitting together to form a truck... but the Prime figure at least has a real nice looking heavy duty feel with some great detail on it. The Megatron figure hardly matches the CGI on a fundamental level either.... look at how much extra stuff is present on the figure in both modes that isn't there on the CGI shots... None of the movie designs we've seen so far can really be accurately reproduced as toys due to the eploded metal shreddy nature of they transformations... it's not like I'm making this stuff up, just look at the pictures... And as for the new Starscream, I've got plenty of old Transformers toys and other old figures... I can think of quite a few 80s toys I'd much rather have than that horrendous SS figure.... Edited January 22, 2007 by promethuem5
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 right, and the cartoons are so faithful to the toysm right? like the beast wars toys, looked exactly like the cartoon right? even though those were CGI renders? Here's a lesson in making arguements. When you make a statement that claims something to be true, anyone contradicting only needs to prove one instance that disproves your statement to render your entire arguement false. In this case, your claim is entirely subjective, as you have yet to submit any sort of rational reasons why SS is bad.
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Alot of the later Beast Wars toys were accurate to the CGI... heck, RID toys were all accurate to the cartoon... that's not what I'm talking about dude... the movie designs are so overly complicated with extra crap that it's be nearly impossible to make a toy that works exactly the same way... people have been saying that from the get go... I don't undertand why you're getting so upset. The new Starscream figure is a crappy toy because it looks really ugly and isn't accurate to it's vehicle design roots, and has gigantic gimicky arm guns taking up half of the plastic in the figure and throwing the whole design out of proportion... just look at the pictures...
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Alot of the later Beast Wars toys were accurate to the CGI... heck, RID toys were all accurate to the cartoon... that's not what I'm talking about dude... the movie designs are so overly complicated with extra crap that it's be nearly impossible to make a toy that works exactly the same way... people have been saying that from the get go... I don't undertand why you're getting so upset. The new Starscream figure is a crappy toy because it looks really ugly and isn't accurate to it's vehicle design roots, and has gigantic gimicky arm guns taking up half of the plastic in the figure and throwing the whole design out of proportion... just look at the pictures... Which "a lot" of BW toys would this be? Optimal optium wasnt, his shoulder cannons weren't anything like they were in the cartoon. The cheetah dude was only remotely like his cartoon counterpart. and what about rattrap? Every single toy short changes their animated counter part. The question is, does the movie prime look like his movie counterpart? Is there some big part of him that's different? like his legs? or his torso? nope. minor details may be different but he looks like the CGI. Same with jazz, ratchet, and blackout. I just like picking on fanboys.
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 (edited) I'm not talking about looks so much as functionality... based on the pics we;ve seen so far of prototypes, alot of the toys similarities to their movie counterparts are going to come from extra surface detial kibble made to mimick the super complicated nature of the movie designs, and they arne't going to transform really at all how the movie designs work... mostly because the movie designs are so impractical that you wouldn't want a toy that worked accurately because it'd be horribly fidgety and fiddly adn delicate and probably cut your hand open on the all the stupid splintery bits... No fanboys here, just someone looking at this dillema from the practical side of the issue. Edited January 22, 2007 by promethuem5
Fit For Natalie Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 right, and the cartoons are so faithful to the toysm right? like the beast wars toys, looked exactly like the cartoon right? even though those were CGI renders? Alot of the later Beast Wars toys were accurate to the CGI... heck, RID toys were all accurate to the cartoon... A common misconception - Transformers for the most part are designed as toys before the animation is ever made, aside from the movie and technically some of Beast Machines. So Beast Wars was Mainframe taking the design of the toys, then improving upon them to make them more life-like, particularly the organic beast modes, or more convienient for animation purposes. Generally, japanese TF cartoon productions try to be as accurate to the toys as possible, for some reason.
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Right, which is why RID, a JAPANESE Transformers production, had better more accurate to the toy animations... not American Beast Wars. I just still don't understand why he started wigging out about Beast Wars when I said the movie prototypes barely match the transformations of the CGI renders so far because the movie designs are impractical...
JB0 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Just to throw my 2 cents in... "American kids are morons" should read "Kids are morons." There's nothing unique about american children having bad taste. Kids just don't know better, and even when they do they let their imaginations patch over the shortcomings.
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 (edited) Right, which is why RID, a JAPANESE Transformers production, had better more accurate to the toy animations... not American Beast Wars. I just still don't understand why he started wigging out about Beast Wars when I said the movie prototypes barely match the transformations of the CGI renders so far because the movie designs are impractical... First, you're the one who started comparing movie toys to past TF incarnations. I picked Beast wars as a point of reference because both beast wars and the movie are CGI. Is this too obtuse for you to figure out? But if you want to compare more recent shows to their toy counter parts, go ahead. I guarantee you won't get a perfect match up between toy and cartoon... which is what you're demanding of the movie toys. Do they look similar? sure they do, can you tell what character they are at first glance? Sure. and from the pics we've seen of prime, black out, megs and ratchet, they all look like their movie counterparts. Do they have all the little mechanical bits modeled out? Nope, but then you don't seem to have a problem with this simplification of form with anything else, macross or even TF. why does it bother you so much that these movie toys do the same thing? Take the Vf-1 for example. According to your standards, this is a suck design right? Since nobody has managed to make a toy 100% faithful to the animation? Righ? The old 1/55 have swing bars, that's a HUGE difference to the animation. The 1/60s have legs that detach which is 90% correct, but they don't have the transfer mechanism. The 1/48s have a new wing bar system, but that's not right either. So the VF-1 is a horrible, impractical and bad design that only morons would like, right? Secondly, how do you know what the move transformations will be? From the trailer? From the .5 second shot of the back of primes head? So, because the back of prime's head has moving bits that the toy doesn't, the whole toy fails? Even if the rest of the transformation matches? If you have some inside information on the transformation sequence of prime or blackout or any of the bots, lets see it. Put up or shut up. So far, you've just ran your mouth with your hyperbole fanboy spewage, without bothering to back up a single thing you've said. And again, this all goes back to you pushing your subjective and ill informed tastes down other people's throats and calling them morons if they don't happen to agree with what you deem cool. Edited January 22, 2007 by eugimon
eugimon Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 A common misconception - Transformers for the most part are designed as toys before the animation is ever made, aside from the movie and technically some of Beast Machines. So Beast Wars was Mainframe taking the design of the toys, then improving upon them to make them more life-like, particularly the organic beast modes, or more convienient for animation purposes. Generally, japanese TF cartoon productions try to be as accurate to the toys as possible, for some reason. I don't see anything wrong with this. Why should animation be limited by the physical constraints of a 7" toy? G1 transformers was all over this.. since many G1 characters have only a passing resemblance to their toy counterparts.
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 And again, this all goes back to you pushing your subjective and ill informed tastes down other people's throats and calling them morons if they don't happen to agree with what you deem cool. Actually it really wasn't... if you actually read, you'd see that I said I didn't like the new Starscream figure, and then I said that American kids simply buy products based on branding and labeling, regardless of wether the product (in this case toys) was atually any good. The new Starscream figure is bad (In my opinion, feel free to have your own, albeit a bit less argumentatively) because in its alt mode, the sleek and modern F-22 Raptor, has a giant block of crap on the bottom half where the toy designers couldn't make the seemingly over-complicated transformation 'fit' into the design limitations set by the designs themselves. Your comments aout the VF-1 are totally unfair, because if you again, read, you'd see that I respect engineering that works over perfect accuracy mspot of the time, as is the case of the 1/48 VF-1, which is a new way to solve a seemingly impossible problem that works well in all modes.
Twoducks Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 Actually it really wasn't... if you actually read, you'd see that I said I didn't like the new Starscream figure, and then I said that American kids simply buy products based on branding and labeling, regardless of wether the product (in this case toys) was atually any good. The new Starscream figure is bad (In my opinion, feel free to have your own, albeit a bit less argumentatively) because in its alt mode, the sleek and modern F-22 Raptor, has a giant block of crap on the bottom half where the toy designers couldn't make the seemingly over-complicated transformation 'fit' into the design limitations set by the designs themselves. Your comments aout the VF-1 are totally unfair, because if you again, read, you'd see that I respect engineering that works over perfect accuracy mspot of the time, as is the case of the 1/48 VF-1, which is a new way to solve a seemingly impossible problem that works well in all modes. Yeah, movie SS isn't going to win any beauty contest and we could make jokes about it but, personally, seeing someone bent so much steam over how a little 10$ toy that he isn’t forced to buy looks is a sign that that person needs to disconnect from whatever it is that makes him unhappy (very easy to do when it's jus a toy line). The 1/48 is in a whole different league: - The 1/48 costs about 125$... the little SS toy 10$-20$ - The 1/48 is a lot bigger that the SS toy… that means there’s more room to work with. - The 1/48 is THE product, not part of a wave of completely different designs that hit shelves at the same time... SS will share space with a lot of other TF movie toys that also have to be engineered at the same time. -The 1/48 is based on a design made 25 years ago... the designers of SS don't have 25 years worth of chunky monkeys, bandais, bamprestos, model kits or whatever to get ideas from, plus, as said before, they have to do all the other movie toys also. -From the looks of the filtered designs, the movie TF are very complex, more so than the beautiful VF-1. So no wonder they are more difficult to make a little toy that looks somewhat like the movie AND can transform into real vehicle. On the kids thing: I hear a lot about how stupid kids are today and what crappy shows they have but remember that in the 80's kids went bonkers over toy bricks that starred in a cartoon that isn't remembered for its stimulating and immersive plot. What has raped my childhood more than any remake, movie or whatever has been actually seeing again some of the shows I loves as a kid. The great majority are pieces of crap made just to sell crap, much like today. So any stupid American, Japanese, German or whatever kid can have fun with that little toy the same way as the stupid American, Japanese, German or whatever kids did in the 80's with their mostly static metal bricks.
Metal_Massacre_79 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 (edited) Funny you should mention the shows we grew up on. My son is watching TF Cybertron right now, and I can't stand it. Each Transformer has to tell itself to transform (i.e. Optimus actually says "Optimus Prime, transform"), and Thundercracker sounds like some retarded redneck cowboy (WTF!), and Landmine sounds like a 30yr old with a 3rd grade education. My son likes it just because it's Transformers. I can't stand it for the reasons mentioned. And when the hell did Steve Irwin become the VA for Jetfire?!? Edited January 22, 2007 by Metal_Massacre_79
Tober Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 And when the hell did Steve Irwin become the VA for Jetfire?!? You can't distinguish between an Aussie ocker accent and an English cockney accent!?
promethuem5 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 That was pretty much my point about the moron-kid part... that show is absolutely horrendous, and a staple of typical cartoons these days...
mister_e Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 For those complaining about how dumb, moronic, or idiotic modern cartoons are, I think nostalgia is severely clouding your memory. Until just a few years ago, I still thought that 80's cartoons were so much better than today's stuff. I remember seeing Transformers Armada and thinking, "Wow! That is crap. G1 was so much better than this garbage." Well, since then I've watched a bunch of my old favorites from the 80's on DVD (Transformers G1, GI Joe, Thundercats, etc) and I really wish I hadn't. They are every bit as corny, cheesy, poorly animated, terribly written, and horrendously voiced as today's cartoons. You just think they weren't because you have fond memories of them.
GobotFool Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product...amp;mode=retail Hell yeah!
HoveringCheesecake Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 I was about 30 seconds behind getting the news post for that at tfw2005. Oh well. I want to see painted pictures.
Knight26 Posted January 22, 2007 Posted January 22, 2007 http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product...amp;mode=retail Hell yeah! Ok that is freaking cool and may be the first transform I buy, outside of Macross, since I was kid. Yes I still have yet to get the MP Starscream.
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