RhA wrote:Also- CHUGGUR!
...is, like it or not, technically the most-concise term to convey exactly what I meant there, since this thread did inevitably require a reference to "Classics" as the one-year subline that it was, and therefore cannot be used as an umbrella term for the continuing trend that it started in this context, since I've yet to hear a better collective term for all of those sublines that actually sticks in fandom's consciousness.
...is the end of that sentence.
It's all semiotics. The exclusion principle is a natural law of how language evolves. It's the same reason "seeker" kept persisting when it was thought to be a fan term despite the number of fans who adamantly refused to use it. There are hundreds of TFs with aircraft alts who aren't that body-template, so any synonym that included "jet", "plane", "sky", "flight" etc. couldn't effectively stick, leading to seeker becoming THE term by process of elimination.
If you've got a better term that's usable when one's discussing a group of toys that hail from more than one of those sublines, I'd love to hear it. I don't like being reminded of that Thomas rip-off when discussing TFs either.