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TulioDude wrote:People need to chill out a bit and have clear things.

Aniamted cancelletion had nothing to do with the movies.


THis whole topic is weird.

Actually, did we ever find out why Animated was cancelled?

Why are we talking about Animated?

I'm confused.

I'll give the movie a chance and a ticket purchase. My hopes dont go any higher than that.

Give me Fillion as Rodimus already....

PrymeStriker wrote:
Actually, did we ever find out why Animated was cancelled?

Why are we talking about Animated?

I'm confused.

Hasbros development of the 'brand' dictates that there is only a couple of continuities 'on the go' at any one time;

A lot of mentions of Animated refer to how it was treated (or, more clearly, 'jilted') in favour of TFPrime - the inference being that the new movie may possibly do the same;

Animated was originally lined up as 'filler' between the 2007 movie and ROTF; (this might not have been the case originally, but how it ended up anyway) - there was only a projected Wave 1, 2 tops of the figures, depending on customer interest (in the same way they said TFPrime 'wasn't going to get any toys' until people started asking for them)

I love the Animated toys, but, each time I try to watch the fiction, I can't. I suspect I'm not the only one, but I rarely bother with the fiction, the only exceptions are G1, movies and TFPrime.

Tie that in with the leap forward computer generated animation had taken at the time (simplified animation like South Park, which tries to look like crap, but actually uses quite clever computer animation, and is created only about a week ahead of time), and compare it with the traditional 'look' of TFAnimated - which looks a LOT older than it is, and took much longer to create, using more 'traditional' methods, and Hasbro seemed to realise they had 'backed the wrong horse', as it were...

The jump was made to dump Animated, and go with TFPrime - Prime is one long (admittedly, impressive) computer game 'cut scene', where the CGI assets are moved around in the 'sandbox' - the main overhead is the design/creation of them, once they go 'into rotation' on the show, the more cost effective they are - the renders for Prime, Bulkhead, Ratchet etc haven't changed much since the beginning, IMHO.

Hasbro made a conscious decision to unceremoniously 'dump' it like an 'inbetween girlfriend', and start from scratch, along with bringing it more 'in house' - which made a lot of people angry, for various reasons (me? I liked the toys!)

Regime changes at the head of Transformers brand marketing have brought in this 'aligned continuity' which will serve to join the games, TFPrime and the movies, past and present, to some extent. (Good 'old fanwankery will also fill the gaps)

The movie itself will be a mix of old and new characters- Bulkhead, for one, will DEFINITELY be in it, maybe Arcee , Wheeljack, Breakdown, Smokescreen (which is a pastiche/homage of all the 'young bucks' like Rodimus, Cliffjumper, etc over the years)- Movie Prime will still be there, I'm hoping they'll go with a couple of old G1ers as well (Magnus, Kup, Mirage, Inferno, Cyclonus) -

With all the Wrecker love over the last couple of years, I'm guessing they'll repopulate the Wrecker team, hopefully they wont be as one dimensional as last time, maybe they'll be the main plot, or subplot of the film;

And with Megatron killed off in the final reel of DOTM, I'd lay money on Galvatron being the 'big bad' of TF4. Nemesis Prime may also be a player.

Hopefully, they won't screw up by letting Bay add, or change characters on a whim (name changes/rollbacks were rife in the last couple of films), or that can't be licensed for toys (Dino/Mirage/Rush/Whatever, but without it being a GM festival either); or add these comic relief characters that seem to stray from the brands continuity (Skids, Mudflap, Brains, The Doctor, Que)

I'm cautiously looking forward to it, as long as they don't screw it up.... again.....

Now if they can have this cross-over with G.I.Joe, I think a lot of people would see it in hope of getting a jolly out of them recreating the scene where the Joes killed Bumblebee (as they thought he was an alien threat).

Oh, and I blame Spielberg and not Bay for a number of issues that kept the first three movies from being G1-fans friendly.

Hmmm, a lot has been said.

I just hope they do the scales right and make the figures screen accurate. ROTF was the best of the 3 toyline wise.

I don't mind getting 3 versions of Ironhide, but the DOTM one were so bad compared the the very first. Why make moar if they are less then the original?

Screen characters need to be made into a toy FIRST, and the weapons have to be screen accurate, no huge ass boxes that have a little gimmick. I find the DOTM weapons horrible.

Since TF4 will be more in space, I guess we'll see less humans.

And Hasbro, plz repaint/mold ROTF Leader Megatron into a DOTM Megatron or Shockwave. Y U NO have DOTM Decepticon Leaders?????????

Come on Hasbro, you didn't manage to make sales because the markets wanted to you to make so many god damn Bumblebees that won't sell instead of releasing SW (Deluxe & HA), Deluxe Que and Leadfoot during the line's run, then you nimrods blame us?! The hell with it!

In the next two years the Transformers will turn 30, and if this TF4 toyline is proven successful, then we might have proved you a little wrong. If not, you have failed us and we expect to take you jobs and get Takara's employees stateside to teach you how business should have went since 1984!!!!!!!

Anyway, I hope you reissue the G1 toys in 2014, then we'll make up our minds. You have two years before the anniversary, Hasblo!

El Duque wrote:Hasbro has posted the contents of the UBS Best of Americas 2012 Conference that was held a couple of days ago, and there were a few interesting tidbits regarding our favorite transforming alien robots.

• Transformers 4 will feature a new cast, including new robots, they feel the lower than expected toy sales for Transformers DOTM were due to recurring cast of robots in the previous trilogy. They hope new Transformers characters will reignite toys sales.

They need to pay more attention to fan comments. Yes, there were way too many Optimus and Bumblee toys. (I counted literally about 30 Deluxe Optimus on the shelf upon release vs. one to five of most other characters.) But there were a lot of other problems--downsizing of toys, horrible paint schemes and a generally ugly design aesthetic on most new molds, gimmicks that overwhelmed their toys (mech tech), and oh yeah, a crappy writing/directing staff for the movies. DOTM was no more or less than you'd expect from the previous two movies--not as bad as ROTF, but no better than Movie 1, except for having more robots--but the movie formula got old, and the toys were totally out of touch with what fans wanted.

But while we're talking about characters, where were Leader Megatron and Shockwave when you needed them? Ironhide and Sentinel were nice, but WTF was that with Leader Bumblebee? You wasted your budget on THAT when you could have given us a couple nice new Decepticon molds? And on top of that, you blew your chance to do Optimus right by giving him a trailer: One was nothing more than a plastic box that opens up in a completely nonsensical way, and the other was too stuffed with kibble to do anything but turn into a useless set of butterfly wings.

My guess is it will take much more disappointing sales from Movie 4 for them to get the point. I'll hold out the possibility that they'll surprise us and do something really interesting and worthwhile, but I'm not holding my breath.

Why don't they realize that the drop in sales for DOTM was because of the damn downgrade in figure quality? That and the obnoxiously poor decisions of classes they made some of the characters. They gave Bumblebee a Leader sided figure. For what!? That space belonged to Shockwave or Megatron!

Regarding the gimmicks, I'm curious. Does everyone else think the Mech Tech gigantor weapons that are too oversized for the figure, and make silly Wiley Coyote contraption grabbing motions... are a waste? I want that money to go into the figure... to add functionality, posability, features, paint apps, or simply to make it 1/3 larger.

I think my only exception was Soundwave's little mech tech weapon that makes a broadcast dish. That little thing was brilliant... and nicely proportional.



Where does everyone else sit on this?

Thoughts?