Rated X wrote:Sorry I gotta disagree. Why don’t we just have one Hasbro that makes stuff for everybody instead of Hasbro USA that only caters to kids and Hasbro Asia/Takara that mostly caters to adults ? I don’t agree with the whole “but it’s the Asian market” theory. It’s more like the “kids buy whatever you sell them market” theory so lets get better stuff on the shelves.
Asia IS a different market from the US. I couldn't tell you why things are handled differently over there, I couldn't say whether or not their marketing strategies would work over here or not. I can only suspect the major US retail outlets don't have much faith in carrying large quantities of stuff aimed squarely at collectors, and that's why we don't get many of the bones that Asia and Japan get.
On FOC, the name of the line was supposed to be “Generations” with an “S”. That means G1, Beast Wars, Armada, Cybertron, RID, etc. Not just FOC. The video game did indeed hijack the Generations line and Hasbro let it happen.
Let's look at some numbers. Out of 20 figures in the original Generations run, 5 of them were WFC figs (Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Soundwave) and the other 15 were G1. It looks to me like G1 hijacked Generations the first time around, so this is just the logical reversal. The title "Generations" is a lie, it's just the latest name for "whatever stuff isn't being supported by a TV show". In this case, they've chosen to focus on the FOC era, giving us many of the toys the fans of the game wanted the first time around and never got. Honestly I think you're the only one I've seen who has a problem with this. I understand that you like your G1, but right now,
that's not the focus. Toy Fair is this weekend, maybe they'll announce the next wave of Generations figs after the Wreckers to be G1. Or they could try living up to the line's name and do RID, Unicron Trilogy, or Animated toys. Would you complain if they did that? Be honest, do you actually want Generations to produce figures from all eras of Transformers or do you just want it to be all G1 all the time?
And personally, If I was a kid I would think Beast Hunters and TF Prime is stupid after seeing classics and MP issues.
And then when you got your hands on a masterpiece figure (if you got your hands on a masterpiece figure) it'd probably be too complicated. There's been numerous stories about transformers, even ones targeted at kids directly, being too complicated for kids to transform and them getting frustrated and playing with something else. Hell, I was 18 when I picked up ROTF Leader Optimus Prime and that thing STILL gave me a hard time.
As for whether you'd be inclined for classics stuff over BH, Prime, and WFC/FOC, I'm dubious, but I don't know what you were like as a kid so I'm not going to call complete BS. I think most kids will like this current wave of stuff, and if you don't, that's fine, but don't complain that Hasbro isn't making enough of the things you want, because you don't represent the majority of their consumer base.