Seibertron wrote:With all of that said, my basic point is this: if sets like these Platinum sets that are supposed to be celebrating the 30th anniversary aren't appealing to the very people that these sets are designed for, what's the point of them? As it stands, these sets are extremely disappointing, especially with the absurd pricing that just strikes me as an extreme slap in the face as a collector and as a Transformers fan. I am looking forward to getting to talk to the brand team about these sets at Toy Fair in 12 days.
In all honesty, I think this is somewhat right but has one fatal flaw in logic. I don't think these actually are designed to appeal to us, this particular "us" being the western audience. I'll go through the Platinum releases to date and we can check out the reactions as I
personally recall them as I make the very long version of my point, but there's a tl;dr at the end of this post that got out of hand as I typed it if you'd like to skip all that:
- YotS Omega: Three camps of people here: 1) Yay, a Classics Omega! 2) Stupid Energon toys! 3) Zomg not nearly as cool as Planet X Chicken Ship :sips PBR:
- YotS Optimus: Outside of some diehard UT fans and OP collectors, did anyone care? I did, but I fall into one of those camps.
- Grimlock v. Bruticus: People complained that SDCC Bruticus was hard to get. Then it basically gets a re-release and people complained that it wasn't different enough.
- Ultra Magnus: "Too big". Great toy though, but yep, it shelfwarmed.
- Predaking: Well received, but general sin of being too pricey for most to care outside of G1 collectors until Amazon heavily discounted it. Also plagued early on by Amazon's careless shipping method: shipping labels stuck directly to the toy's box and just sent on with no protection.
- YotH Starscream: See YotS Optimus. Shelfwarmed hard.
- YotH Optimus: You love it now, but people complained because it wasn't a straight up MP-10 re-release at the time.
- All of the AoE releases: Many of these were great, and appropriate uses of the Platinum subline imprint. They were also too expensive for most to care, and had downright strange distribution and release timing.
- YotG Optimus: See YotH Starscream/YotS Optimus.
- YotG Soundwave: Lots of jokes, but mostly, see YotH Optimus.
- Insecticons: People mad at Kmart for the audacity of wanting to make a profit on something, only to realize their local Kmart closed up shop a long time ago.
- Seeker Squadron, Intel Ops, Trypticon: Well received and priced pretty much in line with what you'd expect G1 reissues to be priced at. Fun minor variances from the originals but more or less faithful otherwise. Might be the only home runs Platinum has achieved to date.
- Triple Changers: Let's not even get started. Love/hate abound in the fan community with little in-between. Confusing distribution and release timing to the point where some like myself had them six months before their official western release through Amazon.
- Dinobots: Does anyone care outside of Dinobot collectors such as myself? Even I'm waiting for clearance (well, and a paycheck, but that's circumstantial.) Also irritating given the SDCC set that already happened - why weren't these the toys in that?
- YotM Optimus: Cost not surprising, but also makes it a tough sell. Will probably end up like YotS Optimus/YotH Starscream/YotG Optimus, with a small boost from Beast Wars and OP collectors.
- Upcoming sets, both confirmed and rumored: These feel like Hasbro Asia originated ideas. Western audiences, especially those that import from Japan and Hasbro's Asian market, seem more than ready to move on from these molds.
Platinum has tried a lot of stuff, and used (or is going to soon use) molds from all but four major
past lines (Beast Wars, Animated, Armada, Movie 1). These are presumably done in runs that I'd guess to be around 10,000 units, which makes the MSRP be what it is for these to ever get by a board room. Hasbro can probably justify their continuing existence, despite some past failures (or what look to be from outside), because they're all repaints, and I think these face a similar challenge to Botcon sets these days.
This challenge is maintaining appeal and relevancy when collectors' dollars are stretched literally more than ever if they want to keep pace with the hobby. It's easier than ever to import at very reasonable pricing, MP releases crank out monthly, along with said Platinum sets, regular releases, Combiner sets as of late with G2 Superion, TFCC and Botcon stuff, other imports, other licensed product, and bless your heart if you try all that
and even the smallest dosage of unlicensed robot toys. So, even if they can appeal to a small number of folks as compared to say, mass release Combiner Wars toys, these are low cost, high margin items.
I think the best thing to do with these Platinum sets is to temper all expectations. Even I have fun armchair designing other concepts for these, and have done so in this very thread, but at the end of the day I'm determined not to let the idea of what could have been force any kind of judgment into what is. There's another main reason for this that I'm finally about to circle back around on.
Disappointment is fine and natural, but it's pretty clear that someone said from the get go that this "30th Movie Anniversary" product was going to use Classics/Universe 2.0 molds. Looking at the selection, many of these haven't been released through Hasbro Asia at all (exception being Deluxe Galvatron), so I think that's your likely genesis. I also look at comments in this thread about how the Platinum Seekers are not easy to come by in that market. Additionally, how about the pictures online or sometimes used for news when these sets get released in places like Singapore: there's a ton of this product on the shelves there! If I walk into TRU today, there isn't one single Platinum Edition release on the shelf. Same thing with Target, despite them actively having stock of a set online right now. I just don't think this (the western world) is a market being actively pursued for these sets, and quite frankly, I don't blame them at all for that when I think back to our cold receptions to many of these releases as shown above.
tl;dr We're probably all disappointed here in the west because these sets aren't for us, because they have no idea what the hell we want anyway based on our own behavior. Therefore, these sets are being designed with Hasbro's Asian market in mind.