The Transformers Thread (licensed) Next

[M'Kyuun]

12 hours ago, tekering said:

I think we need to publicly acknowledge the effort @mikeszekely makes on our behalf, sifting through all the mud there to find the occasional nugget to share here.  

As always, thanks Mike, for wading through the quagmire of vitriol, entitlement, and gross disenchantment that seems to pervade the TFW boards and bringing us the pertinent news, reviews, prescient prognostications for what to expect in the coming months and years, and just for sharing your knowledge, support, and enthusiasm for Transformers. This thread would be greatly diminished without your constant inputs and I salute you for your efforts and presence, and for just being an all-around decent flesh creature. 😉

Happy to say Scrapper and Bonecrusher are preordered. I'm not into the lore as much as most TF fans, so the whole upcoming focus on the Primes isn't really grabbing me. The toys have always been the prime appeal of Transformers for me, pun oh so intended, so I'll wait and see how these figs turn out before mustering anything north of curiosity. TBH, with diminishing space in my house for my ever-growing toy collections (yes, plural), I kinda hope they look like crap to me 😄and I can pass on them without regret, but already Megatronus (The Fallen) isn't looking half bad. He has a better tank mode than most of the previous Megatron figs (SS86 Megatron's tank mode remains to be seen). Initially, I thought he was a partial of Tarn, but after looking at my copy and comparing to screenshots of Megatronus, it appears he'll be a completely new mold. 

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I've been really enjoying Hasbro's livestreams and broadcasts to bring news to the fandom. It's rare to have that kind of engagement with a corporation, so the effort and ultimately the personalities of the various marketers and designers who host these things brings a whole new dimension of enjoyment to the hobby. I especially love the BTS development exposition and their constant deference to the brilliant folks over at Takara-Tomy who originally developed the concept and have since kept this toy line going for four decades now. While I'm guilty of complaining about this or that, for the most part I try to never lose sight of how fortunate we are that this franchise, my favorite out of all the various toy lines from the 80s, and there were many, continues to thrive giving us constant new updates and new characters to build out our collections, as well as new lore and media. It's easy to take it for granted b/c we're eating well, but it's obvious that Hasbro is facing challenges to keep this line going at an affordable level, so I remain grateful and hopeful that it will continue, hopefully long after I'm one with the Matrix.

Edited Monday at 05:44 PM by M'Kyuun

[mikeszekely]

Links good for everyone in about 15 minutes.

Bonecrusher

Scrapper

The Fallen will be available later with the rest of wave 1, and Bumblebee and Apelinq should go up tomorrow.

[mikeszekely]

2 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

but already Megatronus (The Fallen) isn't looking half bad. He has a better tank mode than most of the previous Megatron figs (SS86 Megatron's tank mode remains to be seen).

Haven't you? This isn't insider knowledge, just a bunch on my part, but I'm feeling confident that SS86 Megatron will be a heavy retool of Megatronus.

4 minutes ago, M'Kyuun said:

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I've been really enjoying Hasbro's livestreams and broadcasts to bring news to the fandom. It's rare to have that kind of engagement with a corporation, so the effort and ultimately the personalities of the various marketers and designers who host these things brings a whole new dimension of enjoyment to the hobby. I especially love the BTS development exposition and their constant deference to the brilliant folks over at Takara-Tomy who originally developed the concept and have since kept this toy line going for four decades now. While I'm guilty of complaining about this or that, for the most part I try to never lose sight of how fortunate we are that this franchise, my favorite out of all the various toy lines from the 80s, and there were many, continues to thrive giving us constant new updates and new characters to build out our collections, as well as new lore and media. It's easy to take it for granted b/c we're eating well, but it's obvious that Hasbro is facing challenges to keep this line going at an affordable level, so I remain grateful and hopeful that it will continue, hopefully long after I'm one with the Matrix.

I can't speak to anything but Transformers, but I love that the marketing people have kind of taken a backseat, so it doesn't come across as corporate pandering. They've let (some of) the design team became the face of the brand, and they're clearly passionate fans like us. Their enthusiasm is catchy, they're clearly listening to and engaging with the community, and the peeks they give about what goes on behind the curtain helps us known that they're not always happy with the budgets either, and sometimes it's a repaint or nothing.

[sh9000]

This came in handy today at Entertainment Earth for the Constructicons and other preorders that were adjusted.

[M'Kyuun]

7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

Haven't you? This isn't insider knowledge, just a bunch on my part, but I'm feeling confident that SS86 Megatron will be a heavy retool of Megatronus.I

I'm embarrassed to say that, despite even the namesake, I was completely oblivious to the possibility that Megatron would be a retool of Megatronus. It would have to be a very heavy retool, but after you mention it, it seems rather obvious. I'm facepalming.

7 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

I can't speak to anything but Transformers, but I love that the marketing people have kind of taken a backseat, so it doesn't come across as corporate pandering. They've let (some of) the design team became the face of the brand, and they're clearly passionate fans like us. Their enthusiasm is catchy, they're clearly listening to and engaging with the community, and the peeks they give about what goes on behind the curtain helps us known that they're not always happy with the budgets either, and sometimes it's a repaint or nothing.

From what I've seen, folks like BMac and Emily are often sharing the limelight a fair bit with the designers. Emily, in particular, stands out for her enthusiasm and her onscreen charisma; I miss her when she's not available to do the streams. While it's the designers I really want to hear from concerning the toys and their development journey, I find the marketers often contribute interesting BTS info as well as just infusing enthusiasm into the conversation. Sometimes the requisite marketing talking points can be a bit obvious and awkward, but for the most part, I still think these things would be diminished without their presence, personalities, and their nudging to keep things rolling along. That said, I think it'd be great to have just a round table with Mark and Evan and maybe a designer or two from TT (Hasui would be on my list for sure) just talking about dream toys and some tidbits on development, perhaps personal art (b/c all these cats can draw), or even showing us their collections. In short, it'd be neat to see them in a venue as fans doing what fans do. But yeah, circling back to the original topic, I don't wish to sell the marketing team short, as I've been impressed by their segue from just doing their 9-5 to media stars in their own rights, along with the designers, none of which probably ever thought live-streaming would become a regular part of the job. We may not agree that the Execs at Hasbro make the best decisions all the time (I still think they're reeling from Brian Goldner's passing), but making the marketers and designers the relatable faces of Hasbro as enthusiastic fans themselves was a brilliant idea. That those folks have been up to the task and have become celebrities of a sort to Hasbro's fans is a win for both sides. Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that LEGO started this trend a bout a decade ago and it made celebrities of their designers, two of whom have risen to tv stardom on LEGO Masters.  

[mikeszekely]

Quick addendum to my recent Optimus Prime reviews with stuff I literally just discovered today.

1. Legacy United Deluxe Optimus Prime's smokestacks are attached via 5mm pegs.  That's it.  Despite what I've pictured here, he doesn't hold them as pistols all that well due to the pegs being kind of short and his hands sitting well below the plane of his forearms, but they're super easy to pop off, and they leave 5mm ports behind if you want to play with him and some Weaponizers/Armorizers/Junkions/Fossilizers.

2. Studio Series 86 Commander-class Optimus Prime actually does have a way to carry his ion rifle without stuffing it in his trailer.  I missed it at first, because I'm used to stuffing 5mm pegs into 5mm holes, or dedicated tabs into dedicated slots.  But Prime's rear doesn't have any tabs that fit into the rifle's slots, and the magazine on the rifle prevents the 5mm handle from reaching the 5mm port in the hitch.  But that magazine is actually the key!  On the panels you folded up from his calves over his thighs, there's some square-ish holes that I mistook for the usual Hasbro waffles.  Turns out that they're the same size and shape as the magazine, so you plug the magazine into them and presto, alt mode rifle storage.

[M'Kyuun]

13 hours ago, mikeszekely said:

  On the panels you folded up from his calves over his thighs, there's some square-ish holes that I mistook for the usual Hasbro waffles.  Turns out that they're the same size and shape as the magazine, so you plug the magazine into them and presto, alt mode rifle storage.

 

Not the most elegant nor the most complimentary of storage options, but at least it's there. I wish integrated storage was the standard, from inception to production, an intentional hidden or integrated storage of bot weapons.

[shazam]