The Energon Pub

Sorry, but with all the talk about complexity and all...

I think that Hasbro's done with the line, and have decided that 30 years is enough, and they're trying to gradually put the line out of business. No one will like this. I would have hated when I was 6.

Nemesis Maximo wrote:

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Sorry, but with all the talk about complexity and all...

Haaa...

I get it, they'll make figures for us old weirdos playing with toys "sub Group" they've labeled us.
However this isn't thier first go at this. Those awesome 5 POA Star Wars and GIJoe figures.
Kids like challenges, it's the age if digital toys.

And Hasbro is going back to the age of hair metal to pick up more kids.







Also, the paint apps, or lack of are a huge indicator this is about money and nothing about kids.
Looks like a piece of crap dollar store toy. Kids do know the difference, if your research team didn't come
To that conclusion, fire them.

Admit it, these toys are going to stick to the shelves like superglue. It's not a perfect causality, but alot of the toylines notorious for their lower quality (DOTM, BH) tended to sit around. Meanwhile the classics type generations toys often fly off the shelf. In the long term they're selling to the public, but in the short term they have to sell to the stores. Whether it shelfwarms or not isn't of immediate concern. Sadly when wave one of Age of Extinction is clogging shelves and the tail-line of it is cancelled, the stores are going to not order the succeeding fan-oriented toyline (First Edition style) due to thinking that kids don't like Transformers anymore. It's too bad that retailers are so shortsighted and lack the nuance of most Transformers fans, as it really creates some distribution problems for us

My eye keeps going between the visibly hollow plastic parts of this toy and the "SMASH AND CHANGE" conversion. I have to wonder how long it will be before there's a recall due to kids breaking these into bits.

I for one am very excited. This means that unlike past years, there won't be that one movie toy that would work well in my Classics collection. They're ALL going to suck so I can ignore them all!

Flakmaster wrote:Ah, LEGO.


You won't get the magic of old TFs back until you stop making shellformers;

Sorry but, magic of old TFs? Aren't you being overly dramatic?
We just had Generations Springer, Rhinox, Hoist, Blitzwing, Masterpiece Prowl and more.

What are you talking about, okay the new Leader looks like a shellformer, and this transformer is probably like the fast action battlers from the first/second movie. Not a main line robot.

I totally agree with the interviewed person. ROTF Prime is great, but he's complex. I for one don't mind if they go towards Armada/Cybertron complexity. Just one line, don't all you "fans" quit the franchise and jump on another franchise bandwagon.

We've seen what 3 toys now from this line? This doom and gloom stuff is really premature. If it turns out the line is all crap then it's crap, but we don't have any idea if that's so yet.

For the record I haven't liked any of the 3 Primes yet.

We seem to be in an age where everything has to be dumbed down for children because it's "too hard for them". Most video games made today have campaigns you can breeze through, cartoons for kids that teach no discernable lesson, and toys that barely do anything. When I was a kid, I had a lot of transformers, and as far as I can remember double dealer and quick switch were the two most complicated. I could transform them myself and I think I was five or six at the time. Simplistic as they are by today's standards, they still had a fair amount of steps to transform them. My little brother had RID prime and Magnus when he was five. HE FIGURED OUT OMEGA PRIME.ON HIS OWN. Kids don't need things to be ridiculously simple. All it does is slow their development. The problem isn't that the toys are hard to transform, it's that kids are used to minimal effort these days. To me, over simplifying the transformers is akin to having kids read nothing more complex than doctor sues from the time the learn to read up till they are ten years old. Imagine the lack of advancement they will make. As a kid, I saw each new transformer as a challenge, and refused to read the instructions (all the way up to rotf prime then I caved lol). While I agree rotf had figures of collectors level complexity and some simplification was needed for more ages to enjoy future lines,I call BS on this move being done for the kids sake. Fall of cybertron figures were a decent enough balance, but also included dollar store grade plastic, shoddy paint apps (what few there were) and a size reduction. Bot shots cost nearly five bucks. These new simplified, cheaply made bricks to come are going to cost just as much as the more complex bots, at a fraction of the production costs. My g1 prime is a brick. But a brick with chrome, rubber tires, diecast parts and awesome accessories that survived me as a child. I understand inflation.I understand making a product that kids of younger ages can enjoy. But seriously, if the quality isn't there, then it's just a way to make bigger profits. I would rather buy my kid a toy that costs 50 bucks and is well made than a toy that is brittle and hollow for 10-15 bucks. Kids aren't so stupid they can't handle a few complicated toys, and while a lot of parents will go the cheap route at first, after a few figures snap from thin plastic or bore the child with sheer simplicity and get abandoned they will not want to waste any more money on the line and profits will suffer. I understand that they said they will still make complex toys for older buyers, I just think the younger kids deserve better than this. My transformers were still amazing to me even as I aged...these new toys are disposable at best.

So, we know that there will still be complex figures for us. Awesome, right? The "main" lines will be simpler and dumbed down for the kids and made cheaper for Hasbro's bottom line, and specialty lines will be made for collectors. Isn't that... at least in essence, what we've been asking for?

Assuming this change in toy aesthetics doesn't taint the Generations or Masterpiece lines (and aside from slowly decreasing in size they've become no less complex), the only real concern left is how much it'll cost us in difference between figures.

It sucks that we'll have fewer lines we want to collect from, but isn't this a win-win? Hasbro gets what they want and they keep giving us the things we want?

Granted, we're all concerned Hasbro will eventually cheapen their other lines or charge us more for the same product, but for the moment, this doesn't seem so bad. I'm looking at the upside of saving money by buying from a smaller subset of figures.


Then again, 3rd parties will almost certainly exploit this opportunity Hasbro's just handing to them...

a toy for a 5+ years old kid based on a PG 13 movie ?

-daddy can I watch the movie?
-wait 8 more years son, is too violent for you, but you can keep your toy next to Elmo.

dubsimus prime wrote:I think that Hasbro's done with the line, and have decided that 30 years is enough, and they're trying to gradually put the line out of business. No one will like this. I would have hated when I was 6.

Oh how wrong you are.

I just want to add, comparing, lets say ROTF prime, to a 1000 piece puzzle is seriously stupid to me. For one thing, puzzles don't come with instructions that somehow use numbers on the back of each piece to help you figure it out perfectly in one go. I think puzzles have a limited and repeptive joy factor too. Each Transformer has a unique way of changing shape, can be posed differently in both/all modes sometimes... There's so much more that goes into them.

That statement makes it sound like transforming a complex robot is boring, long, and arduous. Maybe if its a crappy robot, but ROTF is far from crappy, and the insane engineering and screen accuracy puts it miles above a boring ass puzzle thats pretty much the exact same thing it was 100 years ago. Dumb analogies bug me. Sorry to hate on puzzles, they're alright, but I'm not pre-ordering the next 1000 piece puzzle of predaking. /Rant

Here is what people aren't realizing, it specifically says that they are keeping the adult collectors in mind. Don't you realize, Hasbro already basically did this before? What do you think Fast Action Battlers, or RPM's were? Simplified versions to make it easier for kids. I will admit, a Fast Action Battler would reign supreme over this any day, even some Fast Action Battlers had some challenging transformations for kids. Plus, would you rather have Hasbro waste money on making ten different versions of Transformers toys you can buy, or make only TWO versions - Simplified for kids, and normal complexity for adults? That may be what they are doing here, who knows? I wouldn't flip out just yet guys. Plus you got to remember, this is a TOY line for CHILDREN.

Henry921 wrote:So, we know that there will still be complex figures for us. Awesome, right? The "main" lines will be simpler and dumbed down for the kids and made cheaper for Hasbro's bottom line, and specialty lines will be made for collectors. Isn't that... at least in essence, what we've been asking for?

Assuming this change in toy aesthetics doesn't taint the Generations or Masterpiece lines (and aside from slowly decreasing in size they've become no less complex), the only real concern left is how much it'll cost us in difference between figures.

It sucks that we'll have fewer lines we want to collect from, but isn't this a win-win? Hasbro gets what they want and they keep giving us the things we want?

Granted, we're all concerned Hasbro will eventually cheapen their other lines or charge us more for the same product, but for the moment, this doesn't seem so bad. I'm looking at the upside of saving money by buying from a smaller subset of figures.


Then again, 3rd parties will almost certainly exploit this opportunity Hasbro's just handing to them...

this actually sounds really solid. perhaps the plan at face value seems like comeplty horse pucky aiming to screw over the adult fans, buy think of it this way. cheaper main line toys that get eaten up by kids and DONT self warm equels larger profits for hasbro that a portion of can to back into the "adult collector figures" to get them back to the size and quality they once where. granted that would mean we would get less figures overall because what we know as deluxe, voyager ect... are now no longer the "main line" the quality may skyrocket! win win for us and hasbro. the only dowside being again, the quantity of figures.

when i saw the caption on the thumbnail read "optimus prime" i thought there was a mistake by clueless journos.

Don't care much for the new packaging, I prefer the logo being horizontal and the boxes landscape with the toys in vehicle mode (wouldn't it save space, packaging and transport costs????)

Simplification of some toys is a good thing in my opinion because having to read instructions should be there only for the larger complicated toys. But indeed, they should have different levels of complexity as was the case back in G1's days.

As long as this is just for the movie line, it does not bother me.

DoctorOblivian wrote:as AWESOME as the ROTF leaderclass optimus was. that thing STILL takes me, a grown man, 10 minutes to transform. i think that is what they are trying to move away from, for ATLEAST the movie line.

I can't be the only one who can transform ROTF Prime under 2 minutes.

I think the first couple of years of G1 toys (the Diaclone/Microman stuff) poos all over this.

I understand that Hasbro says they'll continue to make toys for older collectors (no mention of those being Generations figures. The occasional MP release could qualify and that could be it. We'll see.) but one of the reasons I started getting less new TFs as a kid was because post-movie there was a general decline in quality and complexity. My parents didn't see as much value in them because they were dumbed down too much and felt much cheaper. It was only the gold box Classic Heroes that kept me getting the toys.

Admittedly this and the other bubble bath Prime we've seen do look slightly more complex than the likes of Hardhead or Guzzle, but only just. I think if I could manage G1 Prowl at age 3 or 4 a child of a similar age now should be able to handle a similar level of complexity, if not more.

The press release behind the toy is vague. You guys are crying about nothing. G1 was not all simple, nor was G2.

I swear this is not the end all to be all for the new movie line of toys. We have already seen pics of TF4 Optimus Prime. This is intended for the younger audience so they can have fun.

This. Watch it.





Come on hasbro. You know that "hard transformations" is not a legit reason to simplify a figure.

gantzrunner wrote:We seem to be in an age where everything has to be dumbed down for children because it's "too hard for them". Most video games made today have campaigns you can breeze through, cartoons for kids that teach no discernable lesson, and toys that barely do anything. When I was a kid, I had a lot of transformers, and as far as I can remember double dealer and quick switch were the two most complicated. I could transform them myself and I think I was five or six at the time. Simplistic as they are by today's standards, they still had a fair amount of steps to transform them. My little brother had RID prime and Magnus when he was five. HE FIGURED OUT OMEGA PRIME.ON HIS OWN. Kids don't need things to be ridiculously simple. All it does is slow their development. The problem isn't that the toys are hard to transform, it's that kids are used to minimal effort these days. To me, over simplifying the transformers is akin to having kids read nothing more complex than doctor sues from the time the learn to read up till they are ten years old. Imagine the lack of advancement they will make. As a kid, I saw each new transformer as a challenge, and refused to read the instructions (all the way up to rotf prime then I caved lol). While I agree rotf had figures of collectors level complexity and some simplification was needed for more ages to enjoy future lines,I call BS on this move being done for the kids sake. Fall of cybertron figures were a decent enough balance, but also included dollar store grade plastic, shoddy paint apps (what few there were) and a size reduction. Bot shots cost nearly five bucks. These new simplified, cheaply made bricks to come are going to cost just as much as the more complex bots, at a fraction of the production costs. My g1 prime is a brick. But a brick with chrome, rubber tires, diecast parts and awesome accessories that survived me as a child. I understand inflation.I understand making a product that kids of younger ages can enjoy. But seriously, if the quality isn't there, then it's just a way to make bigger profits. I would rather buy my kid a toy that costs 50 bucks and is well made than a toy that is brittle and hollow for 10-15 bucks. Kids aren't so stupid they can't handle a few complicated toys, and while a lot of parents will go the cheap route at first, after a few figures snap from thin plastic or bore the child with sheer simplicity and get abandoned they will not want to waste any more money on the line and profits will suffer. I understand that they said they will still make complex toys for older buyers, I just think the younger kids deserve better than this. My transformers were still amazing to me even as I aged...these new toys are disposable at best.

EXACTLY!!! I've had this opinion for YEARS. I personally have always been picky about what I wanted, even when I was little, and I wanted to get the best product from whatever mainline I purchased from. (Marvel Legends & Spider-Man classics to be exact.) Seeing the state of the world of entertainment and products for modern age kids and younger audiences is really disappointing.

As a collector and parent must i say movie lines was to complex and to fragile for my 6 to 8 year olds, best line so far for them was the cybertron line, they was sturdy and had simple enough transformations for them plus the planetkey features could they still use even if the loose the keys. As a collector did the movie line not attract me at all for the movie figures looked so bionicle lego and the animated line did look to cartoonish and then so did the prime line with some exception (love first edition bulkhead). Simplified movieverse figures may be the way to go for the kids but this looks abit over simplified as i said earlier cybertron line was simple but didn't put an idiot label on the kid.