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With the movie trilogy finally in the books and it's presence being flushed out with the upcoming Trilogy toy line, times are changing for Transformers toys. While Transformers: Prime toys have finally been ushered in a year after the first episode of the cartoon aired, distribution has been quite the problem. Third parties have certainly made their presence felt, but the gap between the affordable and unaffordable grows larger.

So the question is, are you happy with the current state of Transformers toys?

IMHO,2011 was a bad year for me as I only bought 4 new mold DOTM toys. I just wasn't happy with the inferior toy engineering,ugly design sculpts,misproportioned body parts & that the tiny TF toys seemed the dominant toys in the DOTM toy line.

I'm really frustrated with both hasbro & takara. The only real awesome TF toy they made that I loved was Masterpiece rodimus prime. takara had the superior color scheme. I'm still floored how ugly hasbro colored their TRU MP Rodimus Prime toy.

I'm not looking forward to anymore DOTM/Trilogy movie-verse toys & won't buy any in 2012.

I decided my main TF purchases in 2012 will be 3rd party TF toys. the 90% bulk of my money will go to these 3rd party tf toy companies.

If hasbro decides to create any new mold deluxes or voyagers or ultras of the generations new molds in 2012 then i'll probably buy a big chunk of them.

I actually think the TF Prime toy line has potential to be one of the most more awesome TF toy lines. but SADLY in 2012 I think the DOTM/Trilogy line is gonna steal away the new mold ultra's & leaders from TF Prime. thus forcing TF prime to be a sub-par toy line in 2012. I kinda want to see a leader or supreme sized rock lord TF Prime unicron toy. I'm most excited about buying the TF Prime voyager sized skyquake. I'll probably wind up buying the tf prime voyager sized bulkhead & prtime toys. I'm hoping we get 5 man team combiners of the predacons & dinobots in TF Prime.

Right now,Currently,I'm really looking forward to the four,first quarter Hasbro/Takara toy fair in early 2012. to see TF Product reveals from toyfair UK,toyfair canada,toyfair usa nyc & takara's march toy TF product reveal show.

let me start by saying this nothing is perfect nor will it ever be perfect.ok now that that is out of the way...


i have to say yes. the fact of the matter is weve got a franchise that has grossed billions of dollars and what that means is a future for our franchise in several areas.

i think alot of the perceptions that have made some to feel that our best days are behind us are due somewhat to our "wants and needs" not being fufilled and with so many 3rd parties popping up everywhere it tells me a couple of things. for one we have multiple aveneus to find the figures we want or need for our collections.who would have thought wed see a leader sized sixshot let alone a steampunk shockwave and lets not forget different options for devastator.3rd parties have come along way from simple addons for existing hastak product.

and speaking of hastak weve gotten tracks,blurr,g2 prime,wreckgar,wheljack,scourge just to name a few and im sure more on the way in coming years.right now its a fantastic time to be a fan and collector whether your poison of choice is the movieverse,prime,masterpiece,classics and all its iterations or just the fiction fan made or official.

i believe that the movie line has helped in more ways than most care to admit in that the level of awareness has been raised to a level never seen before.i can honestly say that i havent seen movie related merchandise move off of shelves like these movies have since the original toy story and cars and thats saying something. and none of those franchises have had unrelated spinoff lines comparable to classics,animatd or the new prime line and thats just stateside.

were spawning conventions that were once small gatherings (tfcon) into yearly events that have attracted the attention of the big boys (hasbro). i think transformers as a toyline,comic,hollywood movie,cartoon,and brand lives up to its tag line in that its "more than meets the eye" and in the years to come will prove that without a doubt.

You misspelled "mediocre."

I voted decent, mainly because I rarely saw anything that truly grabbed my attention besides the MP-09 and the Ultimate Prime, the latter which I somewhat regret.

The TF:Prime designs are inferior for my taste, and while Generations produces a few eye-catching pieces, to me it is more miss than hit. The movie lines weren't anything special either. I only got a few figures from all 3 of the movie lines, and I ended up regretting and selling about 1/2 of them.

The 2011 BotCon exclusives were a total score, and I am so glad I went. I like the Animated line, and the Stunticons kick ass. I can't wait for the 3rd party Menasor kit if it gets made. So far the 2012 BotCon exclusives are breaking even for me, as I like Metalhawk, Soundwave, Magnus, and Treadshot, but I can do without the others.

Overall, I am actually happy for this personally, as I have been trying to get out of mainstream collecting, and poor quality and design will definitely help. We all know Hasbro and Transformers, they will keep reinventing the lines, so I think there's some good stuff coming down the line.

The toys themselves are excellent. My only complaint is some of them are impossible to find.

Just having recently gotten back into collecting, I can say I am happily impressed with the quality of most of the TF toys out there.

I think the G1 re-issues, re-imagings and 3rd party stuff is totally off the hook, and has totally brought out my passion for re-gathering what was my favorite toy line as a kid. Nostalgia has a way of getting to you, eh?

However, a few personal bones to pick:
1. I wish "they" would stop concentrating on things like armada, cybertron, beast wars, etc...growing up with this toys (and the cartoon) as a kid I view everything post-4th season strictly as non-canonical and would rather have quality-made versions of classic characters than a bunch of half-efforted Optimus Primals and such.

I understand alot of you guys may be into that thing, and more power to you for your individual passion...but the forum asked for my opinion and there it is.

2. Night of the Living Bumblebees is killing me. Michael Bay needs to be strapped to a rocket and launched into space for ruining the franchise. Although nice to watch as a standard "twitchy" guy movie, it blew TF canon and tradition out of the water. The only thing he did right was getting Peter Cullen on board (and whats-her-name is kinda nice to look at, too). I avoid all the movie-based toys like the plague, not to mention the 9001+ Bumblebee figures they have spawned.

Other than that...I am pretty pleased with the state of toys...the molding, the articulation, and especially the improved scale. Compare a G1 Prime to a G1 Bumblebee...and then take that pair and compair it to a Generations Classic BB and Takara Prime (only using these because all 4 are withing my sight range as I write this).

Parking G1 BB in alt mode next to G1 OP..."LoL scale". And standing G1 BB next to his Classics Deluxe counterpart makes me be all like..."LoL lowbrow".

And all the little details...I even notice the things like how all the peg-fist-holes are standardized so any figure can basically pick up any other figure's weapons, with a few exceptions (darn you Galvatron!). I could go on and other, but I would risk totally having a nerdgasm and having to go and do some more internet shopping...

Well, I've just gotten a toy of a character I was excited about last June, and I'm still waiting on toys for characters I was excited about in 2010. And all why know about the Movie Trilogy line is repaints, no word on Generations (but even more repaints are hinted at), FoC is too far away to even think about, and Prime is JUST getting started (not even in my stores yet). Two 3rd parties are working on Devastators, which is cool and all but way out of my price range -- plus I'm not too big on G1 Devs (gimme Movie or, better yet, Animated).

The current media is amazing and the toys are great (though not as good as RotF/HftD/2010/RtS), but news is soooo slow.

DJrasmo wrote:I wish "they" would stop concentrating on things like armada, cybertron, beast wars, etc...

Not trying to start a fight or anything, just curious as to where you're seeing these things, because I'm not. Everything I've seen (Hasbro, Takara, BotCon, 3rd party) is either G1 (or heavily based on G1), Movie, or Prime.

I voted Good due to the upcoming release of Prime figures and the heavily anticipated continuation of the Classics line. I've been overly impressed with what Hasbro has done in the last couple of years in terms of these figures, and I think it's only going to improve further. I can't wait.

The only reason I didn't put Excellent was my general dislike of the Movie line and the deep sadness inside me with the knowledge that they're going to continue it.

I said decent mostly due to distribution, but that's not so much HasTak's fault as it is the stores. New stuff can't be put out until the old is gone, and nobody wants the DOTM Deluxe Prime and orange Roadbuster repaints that are currently pegwarming near me. But anyways...

A lot of the Generations/RTS molds were excellent updates of characters, and even a few of the more obscure got to shine (like Straxus/Darkmount and Thunderwing). Now that the repaints/retools are rolling out, i'm not expecting to see much more excitement from Generations.

The Movie line needs to finish up and get off the shelves. A lot of them weren't the greatest but there were a few good ones. Still waiting on Deluxe Leadfoot to be released so I can finish the Wreckers, then i'm done with Movie stuff.

Prime needs to get here faster. With the exception of Bumblebee and Deluxe Prime, every mold has been a win. The shelves have to be cleared of the above Movie stuff of course, which means I probably won't see any of it for a good long while.