The Energon Pub

Shockwave7 wrote:Look, the G1 toys may be 'beloved', but let's be frank here. They're bricks. Back then they didn't have the know-how or the technology to do ball/socket joints, bicep/thigh swivels, waist rotation, and all the other things that make the contemporary figures so much better. And I for one do NOT want to 'go back' to those days before those existed.

Most of the G1 figures didn't even have bendable arms, or knees. Heck, you were lucky if the lazy-@$$ designers would even bother letting you separate the legs instead of leaving them welded together, forcing you to 'hop' your figure around. And don't even get me started on how many of them simply told you to flip the vehicle over on it's back, revealing crudely sculpted robot-shaped bits. And THAT was supposed to be the 'transformation'.

Why in the world would anyone WANT to go back to that? If you're a collector, that is. Sure, if you're a fat, lazy, el-cheapo Hasbro designer, the idea of stone age transformers probably sounds like a dream come true. For me - not so much.

Certainly, I don't like a figure transformation to be so complicated that it becomes a chore. But with the 2007-2010 Generations figures, they hit a great balance. I say KEEP IT THERE.

The more recent figures bear the mark of the bad economy. The figures are thinner, more hollow, the plastic is flimsy and brittle. All signs of a company trying to cut corners in bad times. They tried to fool us in 2011-2012 by making the figures smaller and charging more for them. That didn't work - we still hated them because they sucked. Now they're trying to fool us by making restoring the figures to the size they should have been, but they're making the figures hollow now.

Well, I understand trying to make do in bad times. But for the love of Pete, DON'T bring back the G1 style 'Brickformers'.

You and others are missing the point. Simpler transformations does not mean going back to G1 bricks. You won't even notice it when the toys are made. They mean the over the top transformations on screen.
For a start the first transformers, didn't have the legs welded together, the orginal transformers like Prime Megatron Soundwave, all had quite good limbs and articulation for the time, and that wa sin the 70s before they became transformers. Prime even had bendy knees ut that was removed in later production runs to reduce costs. The brick transformers were all designed, after Transformers had become established. The brick transformers were designed with health and safety in mind and also money. The original 70s designs were actualy more advanced than the 80s/90s but that was more to do with money than technology.
G1 transformers were bricks due to production and other limitations. Some of the most complicate dtransformers toys are actualy G1. Masterpiece figures are all g1 and they are very complicated. G1 designs have just as complicated designs. The translation between on screen and toy has a process of redesigning, and costs limit what can be done, also look at the variations of movie prime, you hav ethe basic an ddeluxe versions, all the same Movie character but with different levels of trans formation.

G! MASTERPIECE IS THE MOST COMPLICATED TRANSFORMATION. SIMPLER ON CREEN DESIGNS DOES NOT MEAN BRICK DESIGNS. BRICK DESIGNS ARE PRODUCTION LIMITATIONS. G1 WAS NEVER MENT TO BE BRICKS, THE BRICKS WERE A RESULT OF PRODUCTION.

I've quite enjoyed the previous two Gizmodo looks at TFs but the headline on this one is a joke. Reading the full this is even worse. They make out like the Camaro Bumblebee is something special because it looks like an actual car. Plenty of the G1 toys are designed after specific vehicles (although Hasbro didn't play any licensing for the designs back then, just straight up knocked them off from the likes of Porsche, Corvette, Lamborghini, etc) and a lot of them had good robot modes for the time.

Complexity of transformation is definitely cyclical as others have mentioned in this thread before me. Designs and styles have evolved over the years. Some of the Beast Era toys are as complex as the live action movie toys. (some are uber-simple as well, but then so are movie Legends/Cyberverse etc)

Take a look at RID. Not TFPrime RID but the Car Robots line. Megatron was has 10 modes that vary in their ability to successfully look like the things they're meant to, sure, but it's at least as complicated as a lot of more recent toys. Ultra/God Magnus and Optimus Prime (and their combination into Omega Prime) are incredibly complicated, and manage to pull off their various modes whilst including electronics and looking like actual Transformers robots, something that a lot of movie-era toys don't.

There are still TFs that are made with very simple transformations, and some that are more complicated. Neither is necessarily an indication that they'll be a fun toy to play with, or look like their respective media counterpart all that much. I passed on the Animated line because I had no love for the art style, or rather the way it conflicted with my existing collection, but I can't say enough good things about how great the conversion from the cartoon models into physical transforming robots is.

For me, it's not how many steps it takes to transform a figure, but how fun it is. Some TFs I can look at and guess all the steps correctly first time, but that doesn't mean they'll be less enjoyable for me. It's sometimes fun to discover a new way of doing something in a transformation, and I do appreciate that, but its not all I look for. Cyberverse TFP Cliffjumper is a great example of a somewhat simple transformation but it's fun to do and works very well in capturing the character in both modes as well as allowing plenty of poseability. I can't ask for much more than that.

I think the only thing Bay and his films can really be credited with are bringing exposure and money to the TF franchise, and that's appreciated, because its probably the reason we've got so many of the good TFs of recent years, but the designers can and have done just as good, and just as complicated (and the two are completely different, but not mutually exclusive, ideas) before, and will do them later as well.


I think it's worth noting that the cycle of increasingly complex transformations and then the reset to quite basic ones, is likely Hasbro's way of getting new, younger fans into the toys as well as keeping the attention of those who're growing older. They hook a generation with the easy ones, that they can play with easily, and then grow the challenge in the designs more until the point where they'll either stick with the franchise as many of us have done throughout its history, or they'll move onto other stuff altogether. Then bring back the simpler style for the next generation.