Kurona wrote:Being fair, I think TR's lack of intuition isn't so much a lack of talent on the designer's side; but more that the leading design ethos is basically G1 but also they can do more than move their shoulders now. That doesn't mean there can't be some fantastic design despite that, and we have seen quite a few examples - Triggerhappy, Megatron, Topspin - but it is a huge inhibition. God I miss Thrilling 30.
I think its the total opposite to that. The only thing great about thrilling 30 was that the designs were varied but there was no imaginitive transformations like we see here, aside from Skybyte (and as we know, a great transformation can get totally ignored when the rest of the toy isnt great). Quite a few toys in thrilling 30 suffered from the same problem of recreating G1 like Scoop who is as plain as you can get. Jetfire also is pretty much his G1 toy with a similar transformation (less of a bad thing in that case). And you also had the simplest deluxe of the past 5 years: tankor.
But now with the Titans Return line they are giving us characters we know in totally new transformation schemes. Topspin is a perfect example. There is nothing homaging the G1 transformation, its a totally new way to interpret that toy. Kup is the same way too, with the best leg transformation I have ever seen. Blaster too is super cool by reinventing that whole leg area and reinventing the casettes too. Its really cool to see another attempt at other castte bots who share the same alt mode but have completely different transformatons and it works great for the birds and Rewind/Rumble. You also have sharkticon who is nothing like his G1 self. I was even amazed at Kickback who has this whole new abdomen part making him more organic and also hiding the arms in locust mode.
Its just the original headmasters who end up similar to their G1 selves and even then thats not the case for all of em.
All in all, there are far more ingenious transformations in the Titans Return line than there were in the Thrilling 30 line and I am so glad we have that cheap plastic and small deluxe size behind us.