Personally I'm not keen on the idea of non-Transforming playsets in Transformers. However, while I have zero interest in Star Wars, akin to the barge how about Hasbro making detailed models of the ships of Transformers? The Nemesis, Revenge, Axalon, Ark, Quintesson..
Corkscrew etc Maybe even diecast too?
megatronus wrote:AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Flashwave wrote:AllNewSuperRobot wrote:A Beast themed City Bot could have work just as well. Just saying.
But who do you do? Scorpinok? Fans will want him to match Fortress Maximus in scale and asthetic. Trust me, asthetic does matter, but only when its not right. That just leaves... Chela? Orcanoch? A Titan Class Tako Tank? I'm not sure who the more onscure character would be there.
Absolutely Scorponok. He was the only City Bot to have three legitimate alt-modes. I've said this elsewhere but the City Bots should have been released as sets/pairs. So all the more reason Scorponok should have followed Trypticon over Predaking. Completing the City Bot line while at the same time remaining inkeeping with the beast themed aesthetic they sought to continue with the combiner.
As an aside and I've mentioned this elsewhere too, it would be nice if Hasbro/Takara would remember there are more than two Gestalts in Tranformers. They don't have to keep repeating Devastator and Predaking over and over again. Piranacon would also have matched up to a beast themed combiner and HasTak hasn't shown the Seacons any love at all in a long time. Likewise with Monstructor too, for that matter...
Alternating between city bots and combiners is smart. It decreases collector fatigue for these huge robots, and gives parents justification to buy more and/or different product from year to year. That said, I wish Devastator was executed better.
The thing is they only have
one more City Bot left! Make Scorponok and the City Bot line is complete. It's so frustrating for HasTak to not be compelled to finish a line that is 3/4 done and then move onto the next thing. Scorponok is legitimately different enough to stand out to consumers/collectors anyway.
megatronus wrote:City bot two packs would be crazy good for collectors... but an unmitigated disaster. Very few would put up the money for them until they clearance out. Metroplex and Fort Max were both liquidated, Trypticon was also regularly 30% or more off. Imagine the business reckoning if they actually sold 2 Titans together.
I didn't mean sell them in packs of two, I meant make them as a set of two IE Metroplex>Trypticon, Optimus>Megatron etc When you make one toy, the next should be the rival character. It's not like the entire cast of TF isn't virtually paired off to make this a feasible retail option.
megatronus wrote:Devastator is the first and most iconic combiner, and it's not like we've gotten a huge number of (good) ones. Really just the Titan. Asking Hasbro to stop reverting to Devastator is like asking them to maybe shift the focus away from Optimus Prime --- never gonna happen.
This is what I was getting at before. HasTak seems forever stuck in a rut of repeating the "popular" characters over and over again. EG rumours of yet
another Optimus Prime in the MP line next year! It's ridiculous and the fanbase is just as much to blame as Hasbro themselves.
Yeah, many of the later edition Gestalt's weren't fantastic. Yet if Hasbro applied themselves to redesigning those lesser combiner teams today, instead of sticking to the Lazy/Safe option who knows how good the Horrorcons, Seacons etc could look with their current know-how?
Personally I love the Decepticons (there are subtle clues). They are the best characters in all of Transformers in my eyes. BUT, I am sick of seeing Devastator, Predaking and the Seekers heading up every Official and 3rd Party G1 based line, because fans and creators alike seem so resistant to change. Surely there are only so many times you can make the same Starscream and his alternate palettes?
I think you've got some wires crossed in a conversation that had already finished. Alongside reiterating points already made by others. At the end of the day my interest in the Toys is as only a Collector now. That means the MP line and by extension the Titans Return/Generations City Bots (only because I picked up Fort Max and Trypticon on sale) and so, to that end, I have no interest at all in the lesser typical retail lines. Although my "rant" was strictly speaking as a hypothetical anyway. I am well aware of what repaints mean to TF lines, you'd have to be stupid not to be.
The Japanese version (believed to be slightly different) would have had more complex electronics with a base that might have rotated and a moon that would have done 
