The Energon Pub

Let's pretend for a moment that at some point in the future, Hasbro rolls out a new Transformers Collector's Club ... what would you like to see them do with a brand-new clean slate collector's club? Would you guys want to have early access to retail figures? Exclusive figures that you can only get through a subscription? Premium decos? Something along the lines of MattyCollector? What about pricing? Packaging? Throw your ideas out there! I'm curious to see what kinds of ideas, thoughts, suggestions, etc all of you have.

Well, I don't think early access to figures is really the best of ideas. I mean, it gets some reviews out, but as it is many reviewers get the first versions of figures released, so to me that doesn't stand out.

Now, what I do love is when they make exclusive figures that are rare and seldom seen. The 3 Tri-Predacus guys were awesome and I loved that they brought those guys up. The same goes for that Punch/Counterpunch figure from a few years ago. I would die to have been able to buy that figure at retail. The exclusive figure deal is pretty awesome and something that makes it good for me. I just wish that maybe those special figures would also get a limited release outside of the collectors club, as in we have a limited number, you guys get first dibs, then it goes to everyone else after a certain length in time.

Now I'm talking from someone who was not part of the collectors club nor ever attended a transformers convention of any kind, but as someone who could potentially in the future.

As for price, if Hasbro did the collectors club, that could make it cheaper due to fewer people to go through (if I'm interpreting the idea correctly that has happened).

I still want a collectors club, but I wish it was cheaper and maybe some figures were more available, but that last thing may be beside the point.

I think The Club excels when they do homages to niche characters. I would love a continuous subscription service similar to what they did. Hopefully the price will be more attractive given Hasbro's logistics.

@ Seibertron

Could you explain in more detail how Matty Collector works, for comparison's sake?

• Affordability for international members (not always the easiest I know)
• Print media sent digitally, that way international members don't need to wait nearly a month after everyone else receives their print media
• Original characters. No more rehashing of existing characters

Seibertron wrote:Something along the lines of MattyCollector?

*shudders*

I've been collecting the entire Masters of the Universe Classics line from day one. MattyCollector is still a ridiculous mess of incompetence and spite for their customers. If Hasbro were to do a collector oriented online store, it would be a smashing success if they did everything the OPPOSITE of how MattyCollector has handled things for the past 8 years.

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Seibertron wrote:Something along the lines of MattyCollector?

*shudders*

I've been collecting the entire Masters of the Universe Classics line from day one. MattyCollector is still a ridiculous mess of incompetence and spite for their customers. If Hasbro were to do a collector oriented online store, it would be a smashing success if they did everything the OPPOSITE of how MattyCollector has handled things for the past 8 years.

Can you elaborate?

megatronus wrote:

Wolfman Jake wrote:

Seibertron wrote:Something along the lines of MattyCollector?

*shudders*

I've been collecting the entire Masters of the Universe Classics line from day one. MattyCollector is still a ridiculous mess of incompetence and spite for their customers. If Hasbro were to do a collector oriented online store, it would be a smashing success if they did everything the OPPOSITE of how MattyCollector has handled things for the past 8 years.

Can you elaborate?

They have continued to use Digital River, certainly one of the WORST online store infrastructures and management packages you could ever choose to front end your business, for the entire time MattyCollector has been around, and have refused to listen to feedback from their customers over the incompetence of their system, from not being able to handle traffic on sale days, to getting orders wrong, randomly losing subscriptions in their systems, sending your items to the wrong place, over charging you for your purchases, and being almost completely useless as far as customer service goes to get a problem rectified. That's to say NOTHING of the stuff Mattel did themselves over the course of MOTUC, from shorting runs of popular characters and hiding some as incentives to get you to buy in to a whole year at a time, forcing you to get D-list characters, pointless variants, and stuff the self appointed "ToyGuru" made up from his fanwank fantasies. It's been a mess, but damn, a majority of the figures are wonderful for MOTU fans.

Rare G1 reissues; nice boxes but nothing overly expensive with some interesting redecoes mixed in.
Don't always need the foam boxes; well constructed book box is nice with plenty of character.

Subscription service would be nice if it were more cost effective; tends to be a bit more now than i really would like to shell out although i still participate for the rarity.

Less of a plethora of tertiary items for sale; a few bots, a few pieces of merch and a comic or 2 would be a nice transitional reduction and keep a sensible price point accessible to all ranges of the fandom.

And yes, a collectors club please.
While I was not always pleased with FP, the positive stuff they did produce was great for the line and the fandom in general.
Always enjoyed receiving my membership figures and mag, for better or worse.

Encore type releases, do a poll. Let only paying (premium) members vote on what they'd be wanting to re-issue. Do it ala TT. Take a vote and release the vote winner like MP Starsaber. Btw, scratch that as the Western audiences are all talk but won't translate to purchasing like the JP fans. This might be too broad a generalization but prove me wrong then I'll withdraw this statement.

Wolfman Jake wrote:It's been a mess, but damn, a majority of the figures are wonderful for MOTU fans.

For me, that's the crux of most TFCC drama. Overall, the product was great, but the way it was distributed was hit or miss at best... and don't get me started on the fiction (the idea of Axiom Nexus drives me nuts... having a setting that justifies whatever wild and nonsensical ideas come to mind doesn't make for quality storytelling in my estimation).


With that in mind, I'd be happy to see similar product from a Hasbro-run Collector's Club so long as it was conceived and presented in a more organized way. If they could streamline the delivery and thematic elements of the TFSS (my favorite aspect of the Club) and Botcon, you could have something huge on your hands. Imagine the TFSS was expanded to 12 months, with 1 of the 13 Original Primes delivered each month, culminating in a convention featuring a box set of the false Primes and Optimus as the centerpiece? OR: what if they released crew members of the Lost Light for 12 months, building up to a DJD convention box set?

Beyond (or in addition to) the occasional ambitious project, it would be great if Hasbro's Club became an outlet for toolings not released at retail (like Reflector this past year), brand new characters (such as Victorion - how cool an exclusive would she make?), or adult appropriate accessory packs (like better articulated CW hands/feet or advanced weapons packs).

Problem is, no manifestation of a Collector's Club is going to make everyone happy. Some people really love the niche stuff the Club put out (I'm one of them!), others pine for lower price points and product with wider appeal (I'm one of them, too!). Even Hasbro can't do it all.

Megatronus' last point ties heavily into why I have never wanted to start one of those collectors' clubs. The costs have always been way too high to justify something that may or may not appeal to me. It always seem like you're subscribing to a service that sells you barely-changed figures at a higher price than you paid for the original, and you're kind of committed to it even if you don't want a particular figure. I'd only be interested if either the prices were lower (which is probably not going to happen) or the figures were new molds (which would almost certainly drive the prices up even higher). Ultimately, I suppose I'm too "mainstream consumer" and not "collector" enough for this kind of thing.

Glarryg

I would want higher production runs, and lower prices; so that I and others can buy into the collectors club

Glarryg wrote:Ultimately, I suppose I'm too "mainstream consumer" and not "collector" enough for this kind of thing.

I don't think 'mainstream consumer' and 'collector' have to be mutually exclusive - and I assume Hasbro agrees. We've increasingly seen Hasbro walk that tightrope the last 3 or so years.

I think I'd like to see a few different options available for collectors. As we all know, there are many different segments of Transformers collectors. Some of us love G1, some of us just collect modern figures, some of us like cartoon accurate decos, some don't care.

G1 toys

One thing I think that was lost upon BotCon and the Collector's Club of the past decade is that we never got a single "G1" collectible item, excluding Walmart's leftover Seacons set which shouldn't count. With the new "rookie" Combiners, I still think it'd be awesome to reimagine some of the original Scramble City Combiner molds as Alpha Bravo, Rook, Off Road, and give us a brown Slingshot as "Off Blast". That'd be a nice 4 pack of vintage toys done just to breathe more life into some newer characters. Toss in a Beast Wars II Nautilator and I'd be a really happy camper.

Where's a reissue of "blue" Bluestreak after all of these years?

How about G1 Prowl colored like Movie Barricade finally?

e-Hobby type G1 releases?

What do we need to do to get a special limited edition release of G1 Unicron and G1 Arcee from their prototypes? I'd love to not have to wait until the 50th anniversary of the movie for something special like this.


Bonus Accessories

Weapon Packs please! We've got a bunch of toys from the past few years that are missing guns. Maybe some repurposed accessories from Construct-bots or new molds altogether. It'd also be interesting to get some actual "accessory" packs for things like Energon Cubes, the Combiner "matrix" thing from the IDW comics, Vector Sigma, etc.

While I like some of the characters we got through the Club and BotCon over the years that wouldn't have come out at retail, I can easily pass on the extremely obscure characters such as Ferak, though I'm thrilled we're finally getting Scrounge (though I'd argue that Scrounge was a pivotal character or plot device in Marvel Transformers #17 and #18), who also had a very unique Transformers head.


Release of non-retail figures

Over the past decade, there have been quite a few figures that were never released stateside. Molds that are just sitting around waiting for Hasbro to make money on. What about releasing figures that never made it to retail because of parts counts, lack of retailer interest, etc finally being made accessible to collectors. Animated Blackout? United Rumble and Frenzy? Tailgate from the Reveal The Shield Windcharger mold? Animated Wingblade Optimus Prime? AOE Deluxe Stinger? Beast Hunters Simplified Deluxes? Arms Micron Breakdown? Beast Wars Neo Unicron?


I've got some more ideas ... I'll add more as time allows!

Seibertron wrote:How about G1 Prowl colored like Movie Barricade finally?

If they gave us a MP Barricade, they could do nothing ever again and I'd still be happy. Prowl body + Smokescreen head = euphoria.

Seibertron wrote:
Bonus Accessories

Weapon Packs please! We've got a bunch of toys from the past few years that are missing guns. Maybe some repurposed accessories from Construct-bots or new molds altogether. It'd also be interesting to get some actual "accessory" packs for things like Energon Cubes, the Combiner "matrix" thing from the IDW comics, Vector Sigma, etc.

This needs to just happen at retail. There's just too many legends class figures that don't have accessories and others that could use better ones.

Lots of good ideas here already, I'll try not to re-tread too many!

Toy Offerings

• Keep the "free figure" concept, but offer memberships at a lower cost that don't include it. Basically, they're never sold separately, only in a package deal, but those that aren't into toys (a growing part of the fan community!) can still join in the fun on other benefits.
• I like the idea from Twincast 142 about keeping a subscription service model but having it be based on a vote. Show some concepts, produce the top voted ideas. This would be more similar to Takara's vote that produced Go-Shooter than the Hasbro app votes that produced Windblade and Victorion, at least in my view.
• Speaking of a subscription, just make it feel like that's actually what it is. These things have not been spaced out to where they feel like an annual subscription, it's more like a seasonal drip of product.
• Absolutely on board with the idea about G1 toys. Honestly, just more 80s and 90s molds in general would be cool.
• Also absolutely agree with the idea about "toys that never made it to retail." Doing the same concept later with a different mold is not the same thing and it's rare that doing so produces truly memorable product.
• Someone brought up "Encore" style things, I like that idea as well. Maybe also a vote thing? Basically, a small run of product that's been off the shelf for a long time. Could be anything from an MP release to a Beast Wars basic.
• Less toys tied to the official convention (assuming this were to be a thing). There's nothing wrong with the Tokyo Toy Show styled model of only having 1-2 exclusives. In theory this could also open some capital to produce a higher run of said figures, thus reducing the cost.
• More new characters and less forcing obscure homages into random redecos (Sorry M'kall!)

Fictional Offerings

• Fiction that does not exist to sell toys.
• It makes sense to keep some fiction going to sell toys, but approach it in a way where that's all in its own little world and doesn't try to shoehorn itself into anything else. I liked Shattered Glass a lot more before 2012, and it just spiraled from there. Let's not do that, it's just confusing.
• Digital availability is an absolute must. Give folks the option.
• Utilize a larger pool of creative talent. Heck, take some of the best fan submissions and see what folks can do if given the opportunity to do more.

Convention

• At least two a year, in two different, but consistent, parts of the country. Ideally, three (West Coast, Midwest, East Coast)
• Some shared pool of guests for those.
• Shared exclusives across all shows.
• Keep it to a weekend - Friday night through Sunday.
• Better cost control. We'll never know the real correlation between Botcon's rising cost of attendance against attendance count, but one has to imagine this as a factor for the (at least in appearance) stagnant attendance.

Other Stuff

• Clear announcements of product availability windows. No more "better stay by your keyboards lolol" announcements. Tell us when stuff is going up, and for how long it will be available. It is only fair to note that FP was getting much, much better at this by the end.
• Priority for long time members whose subscriptions have never lapsed. Give some rewards for those that have been around, even if it's some kind of minor discount or an early window to buy some limited quantity of a new exclusive. Just don't make those perks reach extra-exclusive-product offerings, because this seems to be a bad move that causes resentment.
• Actual outreach to find ways to proactively be more inclusive to the international fan community.
• Can I get an artwork offering outside of the convention?
• Reference material! Some of the stuff in TFCC magazines as of late has been great. Take us behind the scenes of shows and comics and toys of years gone by, especially stuff that existed before the Bay movies that doesn't have the somewhat-persistent internet documentation.
• Work with outside vendors and licensees for production of apparel/etc. There were some downright ugly Botcon shirts over the years.
• Some kind of "Holiday Special" gift set every year. Doesn't have to be toys, doesn't have to be fourth quarter! John Barber's "Super Freedom Transformers: America Edition" trade paperback giftset for July 4th? Spooky Bots Giftset featuring Tarantulas and friends for Halloween? The Transformers Holiday Special Blu-Ray with exclusive Star Wars crossover Ewok Legends class toy? Great possibility for fun stuff.
• Rotating fan council to solicit ideas.
• Less G1 universe. Don't take it out altogether, but for a brand with 30 years worth of history, the first 10 sure get the most attention. Yeah, there's good reason for it, but no need to crowd out other stuff. Think of the appeal the current fan club would have to a super-fan of the Movie universe. You probably can't, because it wouldn't. That's just an example, us Unicron Trilogy fanboys feel left out a lot too (but hey, Armada Starscream repaints without Mini-cons! Oh, well, I guess it works.)

I guess this turned into more of a "things that could have been done differently by the last club" kind of post, but so much of that was honestly done right that looking for improvement and enhancement seems like a wiser road than a complete overhaul of the model.

ScottyP wrote:[*]Less G1 universe. Don't take it out altogether, but for a brand with 30 years worth of history, the first 10 sure get the most attention. Yeah, there's good reason for it, but no need to crowd out other stuff. Think of the appeal the current fan club would have to a super-fan of the Movie universe. You probably can't, because it wouldn't. That's just an example, us Unicron Trilogy fanboys feel left out a lot too (but hey, Armada Starscream repaints without Mini-cons! Oh, well, I guess it works.)[/list]

I wish I could plaster this statement all over our boards. This is something I very much agree with. There are us movie fans, us Prime fans, FoC fans, Animated fans, UT, Beast wars, etc.. I wish those got some more love, cause they sure brought around some awesome and interesting things.

If this is to happen at all, I think it begins with respect and open communication.

The current Collector's Club is really nothing of the sort. There's no club. It's just an open option to spend money. We have no interaction with them aside from buying their merch.

Don't get me wrong, I want to buy merch, but I would rather there be some honest and open conversation along the way. An example of this is how we pay for the subscription service in October without any real statement that the figures will be shipping out to us after they come in along with the Botcon toys six months later.

If something is not quite right or an opportunity to improve the club comes up, I'd like to know that Hasbro will consider fan input.

Now, when it comes to toys...

Let's assume exclusives are going to happen.

• Reduce packaging
• Devise a means to offer weapon, custom, sticker, or upgrade kits
• Focus on characters that are C tier or lower who might never see actual retail OR
• Focus on cross sell options. For instance, always offer two packs with one popular character and one lesser known character. That way, niche collectors can get their fill either by buying the less popular figures or by selling the more popular ones. OR
• Create new and compelling characters backed by fiction. Give us stories about the bots we don't know and then give us cool toys to support those stories.
• Create figures that represent on screen depictions that never happened in toy form. TF Prime Bumblebee in his black deco. TF Prime Smokescreen in his blue deco. TF Animated Starscream clones, etc.

I'd like if the club offered options. I think it would be great if...

• We could import Takara or Hasbro Asia figures easily.
• Store exclusives were available.
• Current figures were always available to purchase.

I'll try and add some more later, but Scotty had a number of valid points in his post.

What I want more than anything is TFCC subscription service Titans return wheelie with a stupid cape, poop-stained arm that can go in a Garnak pretender shell. MAKE THAT A THING!

Burn wrote:• Affordability for international members (not always the easiest I know)
• Print media sent digitally, that way international members don't need to wait nearly a month after everyone else receives their print media

This to me is the most important thing. Because if there is no affordability and availability to international members, then why bother even thinking of what I'd like. I don't care for early access. I would like things that wouldnt sell well in stores, like G1 reissues, that would be awesome. Designs planned for retail but that didnt make it would be awesome too. For instance, some combiner wars characters using those heads we didnt get (like the seeker head or demolishor). Straight redecos would not interest me (unless it uses molds we never got or G1 toys), there must be something unique about the toy.

Who else has some ideas to share?

I've never been a member of the TFCC, it was really just cost and lack of interest. The deal is I really wanted to be interested, but I wasn't. Other than the figure and the newsletter I couldn't figure out what the draw was.

That's one of my biggest problems with the current site. It's damn near impossible to find info. What I could find wasn't clear enough for me. I had a hell of a time trying to me heads or tails of the various Botcon packages. So clearer and more open communication is something I'd want to see. Why hide info from the people that want to give you money?

Cost is the biggest thing to me. I'm rarely interested in exclusive figures, but I do want to be in the club and maybe buy some stuff. Multiple sub packages would be nice with lower tiers still having to option to buy all the figures or merch.

Subscription figures don't interest me because I like to pick and choose. We're all the figures announced up front before subbing?

I would like to see an option for regular retail figures and maybe a slight discount for members. Or even the option to pre-order. I don't need figures early, I just want to know I can get my hands on them. Which isn't always the case at retail. So maybe have a guaranteed amount on the store just for members.

Weapon and accessory packs would be great. Sometimes I want more of a specific weapon and I like armoring up my bots.

Seibs brought up figures that didn't make retail for one reason or another. Too many parts not safe for kiddies, no problem, mark 'em as collectables and charge me what it takes to make them. Win win.

I agree on having an import section as well. It still maybe easier/cheaper to go through the current channels. Or let's not call them imports but exclusives. Repackage them sort of like the GDO figures from a few years ago.

Conventions, yes! Botcon was an amazing experience and I hope to have the opportunity to hanging with you crazy folks again. Does it need to be exclusively TF, nah; especially if that what it takes to keep them going. Besides I like seeing other stuff too.

Someone already said this, but make it a club. Give me a reason to want to join: Fun things to do, early/exclusive info, various merch to buy, multiple price points of subscriptions (so if I don't want the full monty of crazy figs, I can still be part of the conversation). I know this is harder to expect or ask for, but the prices of those exclusives really turn me off. Maybe it's because I'm still a bit of a noob collector and wacky stuff doesn't appeal to me much, yet. Maybe it was botcon or maybe I'm starting to venture farther doen the rabbit hole, but I'm starting to feel the need for oddball stuff to put on my shelves.

carytheone wrote:Subscription figures don't interest me because I like to pick and choose. We're all the figures announced up front before subbing?

Yes.