The Energon Pub

Some rejoiced and some cried out in anger when Hasbro said they did not intend to extend the Dark of the Moon line. The whole MechTech thing was a matter of opinion, Hasbro decided to not give us three cast characters as toys, and it is the only movie universe toy line not to be in production for at least a year. What are your opinions on DOTM now that it's over? Was it good enough to keep going for a year, or was it so bad that Prime was a better replacement? What did you like and dislike? Here are my pros and cons:
Cons:
- Every action figure in the main retail line came with an enormous b.f.g. weapon, causing Hasbro to decrease the size of the actual figure which threw off the scale sizes with the last two toy lines.
- Weird class choices. Starscream, Ratchet, and Optimus Prime got deluxes, Ironhide and Bumblebee got leader classes, and Megatron only got a voyager. What is this?!
- Unreleased characters. A lot of people were looking forward to a new Soundwave, especially because of his alt-mode. Oh, yeah, and Wheeljack and Leadfoot got cancelled, and we never even saw Mirage. What happened to the Twin Twist/Leadfoot two pack?
- A trilogy line covering all three movies was expected with new versions of old favorites, which barely surfaced.
Pros:
- The removing from the gimmick from the actual figure allowed for better engineering in the transformation (my opinion).
- The addition of MechTech forced Hasbro to make a boatload of new molds and retools.
- Everybody could use everyone else's weapons.

Out of the entire line I just got my favorite character: Barricade. It's too bad the size is so small though.

Although I'm not a big movie fan it's mystifying that they skipped over bots featured in the movie. I guess they figured it's all sell WAY better than it did, but damn. Sucks for the movie fans.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:Out of the entire line I just got my favorite character: Barricade. It's too bad the size is so small though.

I would agree that Barricade is the best, and probably the second-fastest selling deluxe of DOTM. He was so hard to find though, and I didn't get him until December because that's when I found him at Toys R Us after a pre-Christmas restock. But he's definitely way ahead of the older Barricade in design despite his size.

I really like HAB line, especially for those who transform into cool weapons.

It's a shame they canceled HA Soundwave and folks but looking at my movie line collections, I don't feel bad now. I even don't feel I care too much now.

What went wrong? You all know. Bees. Especially the leader class one is a total failure IMO. And the overall cheapness and lack of paints.

I miss the old school scout class. The new Cyberverse commander class is bad. Much smaller in size and articulations are fewer.

Pros:
- Cyberverse. An acquired taste, but it got all 3 Wreckers and all 3 Dreads (if with inaccurate alts) plus some very cool playsets and accessories.
- universal weapon system
- an Optimus that's finally in scale with Bonecrusher
- Shockwave's light-piping

Cons:
- far too many automobiles
- too few Decepticons
- 3 varieties of Bumblebee in 4 Waves (just 3 for Cyberverse)
- characters like Barricade and Jolt getting brand-new toys right off the bat instead of guys like Que or Leadfoot
- no sign of toys for "shiny new major characters" like Mirage and Brains
- Cranckcase's clipped fingers
- the one-off "clean" Wrecker in every class
- MechTech not locking, weighing down TF's arms, not really integrating with the alt modes
- dead before Christmas

OptiMagnus wrote:Some rejoiced and some cried out in anger when Hasbro said they did not intend to extend the Dark of the Moon line. The whole MechTech thing was a matter of opinion, Hasbro decided to not give us three cast characters as toys, and it is the only movie universe toy line not to be in production for at least a year. What are your opinions on DOTM now that it's over? Was it good enough to keep going for a year, or was it so bad that Prime was a better replacement? What did you like and dislike?

There were a lot of factors conspiring against this line. For starters, it was never going to have the longevity of the ROTF line (which overstayed its welcome). The main reason for that was Prime. On one hand, Hasbro needed to get this series going to see if it had legs and, assuming it did, provide a fresh anchor for the franchise.I think concurrent movie and Prime lines were never much of a possibility after the way Animated went. So Hasbro probably felt pressure to get the Prime TV show out there; but they didn't want to be pushing Prime and movie toys onto shelves at the same time. They could hold off on selling Prime toys for a while, but not forever. The First Edition toys were probably what we would have gotten (and all we would have gotten) if Prime hadn't been renewed past the first season.

So, schedule-wise, the DOTM toyline was dealt a lousy hand. In terms of leader figures, it also got kind of screwed by the extended ROTF line, Hunt for the Decepticons, which included both a variation on the ROTF Leader class Optimus Prime as well as Leader class Starscream, both excellent Leader class figures. So it wouldn't have made sense to release these characters again as Leader class figures; especially in the compressed DOTM schedule.

Unfortunately, the choices for DOTM leader figures were mostly questionable:

• Sentinel Prime - okay, no complaints about the choice of character here. Pivotal role in the movie; large vehicle; 'bot that should be big.
• Ironhide - ehhh… not the worst choice; but definitely far from the best. Previous movies had yielded decent Voyager class figures; and DOTM would have yet another Ironhide in that class. A Leader Ironhide just seems unnecessary.
• Bumblebee - Sigh. Really??? Right on the heels of Battle Ops Bumblebee (a vastly superior figure by just about any measure), we get this…thing. Completely and utterly unnecessary.

If the Ironhide and Bumblebee leader slots had been replaced by Megatron and Shockwave, do you think anyone would bemoan not having Leader class figures for Ironhide and Bumblebee? Anyone?

Cue the crickets.

Human Alliance was kind of a disaster, too. The HA Basic figures did not have an adequate movie tie-in and the vehicles were mostly silly. The HA Deluxe figures started out of the gate with repaints of ROTF HA figures (Bumblebee and Skids), one of which didn't even appear in the finished movie. We had to wait too long for HA Roadbuster to show up; and much too long for HA Leadfoot to show up at Target. An opportunity for an HA Topspin was squandered; such a figure could easily have replaced Skids or Bumblebee in the line-up. And we all know what happened with HA Soundwave. Perhaps the biggest problem: none of the new HA Deluxe molds seems like it measures especially well against the mostly-excellent ROTF HA molds. (Well, except HA Sideswipe. He's not so excellent.)

The Voyager class had a few standouts; but most of these figures were simply par. Skyhammer was outstanding, but wasn't in the movie. Megatron was very good. The rest were not altogether bad; but just okayish.

Deluxe was similarly hit-and-mostly-miss. I think MechTech weapons detracted more from these figures than they did from the Voyager figures: they tended to be more disproportionate and they tended to detract more from the vehicle mode. Hasbro couldn't find time to fit Soundwave and Que into the schedule (in North America); yet we got Nitro Bumblebee, Darksteel, Armor Topspin, Specialist Ratchet, and Cyberfire Bumblebee. Not exactly how you make the best of a compressed schedule.

And no Dino. If you can fake and Audi R8 and an Aston Martin DBS, why can't you fake a Ferrari?

… Which brings us to Cyberverse: good diversity, good character coverage, and mostly gets the relative sizes right. (Mostly. Sorry, Starscream.) It's not without its flaws: figures tended to be overpriced (especially Legion class) and (with the notable exception of the Ark) the playsets tended to be pretty weak. But on balance, it was the best-executed component of the DOTM toy line.

Now, I like Cyberverse and I like that it has been a successful concept. But part of what makes it look good is the fact that the rest of the DOTM line fell far short of the mark. I'd have a hard time coming up with a ROTF short-list. For DOTM, it's pretty easy. Outside of Cyberverse, I'd say the highlights were Leader Sentinel Prime, Voyager Skyhammer, and Deluxe Topspin. Yeah, that was way too easy.

Pros and cons:

Pros:
--Overall excelent engeneering. None of the figures were bad desing wise.
--Cyberverse. Excellent concept of figures in scale with each others, compatible with playsets. Perfect to make epic battle scenes.
--Some truely memorable figures.

Cons:
--Shitty distribution at the end. They could have skipped some repaints in favor of the unreleased molds.
--Mectech weapons are way too big for deluxe class figures.
--Overal size of the figures that are reduced.
--Why an inferior Leader Bumblebee when this slot could have been used for a Leader Megatron?

Well:
Updated characters looked fantastic. (Ironhide and the aforementioned Barricade are shining examples.)
Sentinel Prime. (Seriously, the Leader Class figure doesn't receive enough love. Underrated.)
New figures were rather neat, and followed their on screen models quite well, all things considered.

Wrong:
Downsizing figures, including the updated ones, to give us RIDICULOUS weapons. (Seriously, some of them were downright jokish.)
Distribution was terrible. (One of the worst I've seen.)
Some of the figures felt a little...cheap in spots. (Not all, but some.)

I think they kinda phoned it in, on this one.

The big fail was not releasing on screen characters first. Utterly ridiculous. They knew already that 'old' lines get eclipsed by new lines so they should have planned for this or delayed TF:P, which is also full of bad choices but that's another topic and enough has already been said on that.

I hated the Mechtech guns and the downsizing of figures, it ruined the line for me. I didn't buy many figures and those that I did buy either had their weapons chopped up and rebuilt or are waiting for that to happen.

The best part of the line for me was the most accurate Barricade so far, although he needed an ankle mod to make him taller, and the best Ratchet so far.

On the one hand it managed to simplify popular characters that initially (in 2007 and 2009) where not all that accurate while downsizing them as well. I'm thinking about Starscream, Bumblebee and even Skids. Making them more playable, easier to transform and they look far better.

On the other hand... The thinner plastic is showing it's downside, many figures show stressmarks and breakage. For a higher pricetag, that's inexcusable.

pros:
we got some cool molds like megatron, skyhammer, and many others
some had nice weapons
the human alliances were nice.

cons
useless characters were real eased instead of the newer better ones (skids, mudflap, jolt)
the best part of the line was dropped like a hot rock (soundwaves (deluxe and HA) Que and lead foot)
some if not most had terrible paint apps.
most were too small
very bad distribution problems
and too many damn bumblebees.
most of the weapons were retarded.
not enough decepticons

One thing that I don't get is why Transformers (first movie) and Revenge of the Fallen could afford to be sold alongside Animated and Generations with no problem but Dark of the Moon HAD to be killed about 7 months in for Prime? We're not even getting Generations 2.0 until late summer! And DOTM went fine being sold with Generations this year. It would only make sense to phase out Generations, phase in Prime, and then phase out DOTM and bring Generations back in. At least the rest of the new molds could be covered before the line was killed.
Maybe I'm biased because I don't like Prime as a TV series or as a toy line. But maybe Hasbro could at least bring out the deluxes later on like they did with Generations last year and Animated in 2010.

The mechtechs were all pretty decent. I could look past all of them, especially after removing the spring to make them stay open. The only one that looks ridiculous is from Rachet... good thing I own the Specialist version that comes with a decent gun.

I'm still bummed Hasbro did not release Leadfoot and Mirage. I really hope that leadfoot mold gets released by Hasbro, since $45 is way more than I'm willing to pay to acquire the Takara version. Hasbro did release Soundwave and Que, though only in Asia... Don't see why they only decided to release them in Asia...

OptiMagnus wrote:One thing that I don't get is why Transformers (first movie) and Revenge of the Fallen could afford to be sold alongside Animated and Generations with no problem but Dark of the Moon HAD to be killed about 7 months in for Prime?

Animated was not an especially successful toy line. Or it wasn't an especially successful show. Or both. Whatever the Real Reason, when the products aren't moving fast enough, there's concern that concurrently available lines might be cannibalizing one another's sales.

Generations is a different beast because, unlike the movie lines, Animated, or Prime, it's not backed by a television or movie property. (Well, at least, not one that's being currently produced.) It has a different audience; and demand for it isn't dependent on hype generated from a movie or TV spots.

We're not even getting Generations 2.0 until late summer!

I bet it happens sooner than that.

Interestingly, Generations 2.0 is yet another different sort of beast from a marketing perspective. For the forseeable future, Generations 2012 is the Fall of Cybertron line. So it is backed by a current media property; only this time it's a video game. At the same time, the line is expected to appeal to the same folks that Classic, Universe Classic/G1, and Generations appealed to.

And DOTM went fine being sold with Generations this year.

Says who? I still see a lot of DOTM overstock at retailers; but Generations is long gone. (Not that I think Generations had anything to do with slow sales of DOTM.)

It would only make sense to phase out Generations, phase in Prime, and then phase out DOTM and bring Generations back in. At least the rest of the new molds could be covered before the line was killed.
Maybe I'm biased because I don't like Prime as a TV series or as a toy line. But maybe Hasbro could at least bring out the deluxes later on like they did with Generations last year and Animated in 2010.

I'm of the mind that DOTM died (mostly) on its own merits (or, rather, the lack thereof). With a few exceptions, it was not a very good toy line. My guess is that there was more than one person calling the shots who was eager to put it in the past. Considering the opportunities presented by Prime and Fall of Cybertron from a marketing perspetive, it's hard to rationalize cutting money from those budgets (and, yeah, it's gotta come from somewhere) to spend pushing what will generally be perceived as last year's product.

A lot of good pros and cons have already been mentioned so I wont waste time repeating them. My son does love the mechtech stuff and having his own cyberverse collection so I see them as cons but he sees them as pros. My biggest pro and con is how well they did the deluxe Soundwave and didn't release it! I don't collect the movie line but I do collect Soundwave and that figure blows his satellite version from ROTF right out the water.
I don't like having to pay import prices for such a bland paint scheme or having to paint it myself. That figure won me over the second I saw it transformed with all the nice touches it had. I'm sad now because I was able to get a legend sized Ravage for the ROTF one but will not be able to do so with Laserbeak. It really should have been released here because it would have flown off the shelves.

Really, all the pros and cons I would have stated have already been covered here, but there is one thing I'll mention that may also have contributed to the state of things.

The overproduction of all those "extra" lines of TF toys that at the same time weren't really TFs in the classic sense. All the Playskool trash, such as the non-transforming "action feature" figures and vehicle toys with pop-out weapons, etc. Every one of these extra lines not only pulled money from the budget that could have gone towards the main line, but took up tons of limited retailer shelf space as well. To retailers, "Transformers" are "Transformers", they don't differentiate classes, only branding.

In trying to implement a "let's please EVERYBODY and saturate each and EVERY market demographic" strategy with the TF brand for DOTM, Hasbro basically starved the main line of much potential. It was an incomplete shadow of what it was supposed to be.

They continue to do so with all that Bot-Shot and Rescue bot stuff. Some may like those, and that's cool, but gee, these PRID figures sure are getting small, and wow, look how little shelf space the deluxes are getting...no wonder BB builds up to critical levels so quickly!

Back in my day (the vaunted G1 era) the main line was the focus and heart of the TF franchise. You got T-Shirts and party favors and lunchboxes with TFs on them, but the actual TOYS were all main line. Hasbro wasn't trying to spread themselves so ridiculously thin.

Just my take on things.

^
You may have a point with all those "stealth force" vehicles, hot-wheels cars, costumes, and other non-transforming toys.

Instead of having these on shelves, they could have release Soundwave, Leadfoot, Leader Megs, and more........

But heh, we are not businessmen. What do we know?

One more point to add to those above is the simple fact that we've been getting variations on the same designs of the same characters since 2007. For every collector that's willing to pick up every variation of Bumblebee or Optimus there are a hundred parents that aren't. "New deluxe Jolt for the DotM line? No thank you, little Timmy has one I got for him in 2009." After 5 years of movie toys on shelves I think the core movie cast is just past the point where it can do well commercially.

Most all of what can be said has been said. The Mechtech weapons, the shrinking sizes, the horrid distribution and cutting the line too early,

Too many (*(^%&*)()) Bumblebees...

I agree dotm was a mess toy wise. besides my voyager skyhammer, shockwave(love my shockwave), optimus(the BFG one not the one with the axe/gun), and my deluxe cyberfire bumblebee(had the shoulder break). I don't collect many leaders so I can't comment on those or the cyber classes. the deluxe class figures, at least their weapons, are so so. I like the idea it just wasn't executed well.

For me what went wrong was the mech-tech guns. They were huge, disproportionate, often times just plain impractical, and some just felt like giant plastic tumors. The figures themselves I cant really find much issue with other than size.

It feels like the DotM line was one big missed opportunity. I really wish the line was able to have a run like the RotF line and its follow up HftD line. For my collecting purposes, Cyberverse and HA are a waste of plastic and took away from the main line.

I think that some of the movie's major characters not seeing release in toy form while Jolt, Mudflap, and Skids got new molds must be due to miscommunication between Has/Tak and the movie studio. I think I remember a Hasbro rep even said had they known how important Shockwave was they would have given him a leader figure. What could have been! Here's a list of what I think this line needed that we never got...

Legends
Lazerbeak

Deluxe
Dino
Soundwave (in the US)
Leadfoot (in the US)
Que (in the US)

Voyager
Ratchet (new mold to match IH)
Dreads

Leader
Shockwave
Megatron
Striker Optimus (in the US)

What could have been! Better luck in 2014!

Dean ML wrote:It feels like the DotM line was one big missed opportunity. I really wish the line was able to have a run like the RotF line and its follow up HftD line. For my collecting purposes, Cyberverse and HA are a waste of plastic and took away from the main line.

For the most part, I agree. Cyberverse was rather wasteful. However, there were some plusses.

- Powerglide.(Fantastic figure. Not cheapish, felt like a real figure.)
- Crowbar. (Small and simplistic, but a very neat transformation.)
- Hatchet. (I don't even know where to begin. Just a fantastic figure.)

Dean ML wrote:I think that some of the movie's major characters not seeing release in toy form while Jolt, Mudflap, and Skids got new molds must be due to miscommunication between Has/Tak and the movie studio. I think I remember a Hasbro rep even said had they known how important Shockwave was they would have given him a leader figure. What could have been! Here's a list of what I think this line needed that we never got...

What could have been! Better luck in 2014!

...you know... I *do* recall something along those lines. I won't swear on it, but I'm almost 100% sure that actually happened. I just can't remember where I read it. =\

The lack of communication has been prevalent throughout all of the movies.

TF1 Optimus? His truck mode is forgivable. His transformation is forgivable, given the time frame. The detail on his robot mode, including chest details...not so much.

TF1 Megatron? Head went through revisions and it was kept a secret as to what the final product looked like, because we had been misdirected so many times.

HFTD Battle Blades Bumblebee? They had to go through the 70's Camaro, the Concept, the remolds/redecos of the Concept, to finally get a figure that was incredibly close to being accurate, but still missed the mark of being perfect. (Though, it was sooo good, it was forgivable.)

And now, Shockwave.

Granted, I realize Hasbro has to have a rather sizable amount of heads up time, to get the ball rolling for these things, and it would be nice for Paramount/the production company to help clue them in.

But...they're making movies that bring in huge bank. They're on a very hectic schedule. Bay's constantly on the move, constantly editing, constantly filming. In all of that, communication with Hasbro, for their designers, just isn't first priority. Would it have killed Hasbro to be the first to make contact and ask ILM (or Bay's CGI group) for renders to work off of?

Jolt didn't sell well in ROTF or HFTD. Why he'd come back for DOTM, when he had nothing to do with it? No idea. People say Hasbro's been playing it safe, especially with the economy and all, but none of these moves have made fiscal sense.

Jolt? Redecos of Bumblebee and Ratchet? Producing the final 3 Deluxe Class molds we're missing and not releasing them, for all intents and purposes? Just...ridiculous. It's almost like they went insane, or on a drunken bender and created a memorandum requiring these moves be made.

As you said, perhaps 2014. Which makes me wonder if this was all intentional to some degree. Since they didn't come out here, they'd be perfect line filling fodder for the next film. Might even get a Dino out of it. They'll have to change the body shell for the car (or maybe they'll do that in the film), but we might finally get one.

Just bad, bad planning.

The only DOTM Character I got was shockwave and I do actually like the figure, the head is good and the overal design is a bit rocky for my taste.

Personally I'm not getting the DOTM toys cause I hated the film so much It made me not want to work. No film has ever done that.

Overall the toys in my opinion were mostly good but very similar, nearly all of them were cars I mean why?? I did like the look off crankcase, Megatron, optimus prime and of course Sentinel Prime. The card modes are the best especially sentinels a very well done.

I actually liked the mech-tech mechanism, yes it does make the figures smaller but they remind me a bit of Targetmaster weapons. Its just a nice gimmick to have and makes them uniform.

I bought one figure from this entire line. That was Leader Ironhide.

I had no desire to buy any others. The whole movie aesthetic wore off on me during the ROTF line. I just got tired of it. The new line made smaller figures and gave them guns that were sadly out of scale with the figures. For a toy line that is trying to appear movie-accurate, giant guns that didn't appear in the movie didn't make a lot of sense.