The Energon Pub

lakebot wrote:

megatronus wrote:

I wouldn't say Transformers is necessarily second tier to Hasbro's licensed properties, like Star Wars and Marvel, but I highly, highly doubt Unicron was the 'first thing' on board. That's the point of this thread - to gauge interest! The Brand Team is legit curious if there's support for a project like this within the fan community. My understanding is that Transformers fans tend to have less expendable income than, say, Star Wars or Marvel fans, so support for or ability to fund a more-expensive-than-Titan project is genuine question.

I wouldn't quite agree with the bolded. I do think Marvel and Star Wars in general have a larger fanbase and with a larger fanbase, the pool is bigger so there may be people(or just more people) out there with deep pockets. That is something I could see being brought up in a discussion about whether or not to produce something.

Diehard Star Wars fans seem to have more to contend with due to the sheer volume of toys that have been made. Some people even dedicate a large portion of their entire home to their collection. So maybe there is a mentality there that exists due to the types of toys made(think of all the big ships and whatnot)and the general state of what exists as far as number of toys goes. You would have to be rich to be a Star Wars completionist. I can't recall a time when I have gone to a toy store and not seen Star Wars toys on the shelves. So I have the feeling that Hasbro knows if they make a Star Wars toy, no matter the cost or size, it has a fighting chance to sell.

Maybe that's not something they feel they can do with Transformers. If they feel they can do it with Marvel, once these movies cool off, we will see how that goes.

You disagreed with my statement, but It feels like you're proving my point. More Star Wars & Marvel product is made because Star Wars & Marvel fans, on the whole, have more to spend. It's likely both a matter of breadth and depth: the fanbases are larger and are demographically older (or at least contain a larger number of older people).

megatronus wrote:You disagreed with my statement, but It feels like you're proving my point. More Star Wars & Marvel product is made because Star Wars & Marvel fans, on the whole, have more to spend. It's likely both a matter of breadth and depth: the fanbases are larger and are demographically older (or at least contain a larger number of older people).

I agree the fan bases, especially for Star Wars, are larger. But not necessarily older. And I don’t think it’s a matter of one type of fan having more money. But I do agree it could be a matter of the fan base as a whole equaling more money in total on products purchased/money spent. The way you made it sound, I guess I interpreted it as a given Star Wars fan has more money to spend than a Transformers fan which confused me.

lakebot wrote:

megatronus wrote:You disagreed with my statement, but It feels like you're proving my point. More Star Wars & Marvel product is made because Star Wars & Marvel fans, on the whole, have more to spend. It's likely both a matter of breadth and depth: the fanbases are larger and are demographically older (or at least contain a larger number of older people).

I agree the fan bases, especially for Star Wars, are larger. But not necessarily older. And I don’t think it’s a matter of one type of fan having more money. But I do agree it could be a matter of the fan base as a whole equaling more money in total on products purchased/money spent. The way you made it sound, I guess I interpreted it as a given Star Wars fan has more money to spend than a Transformers fan which confused me.

Oh, I do think that's true - that the average Star Wars fan has more money to spend than the average Transformers fan.

Actually - I can see why that phrasing would be confusing. What I should have said is: the average Star Wars collector has more money to spend than the average Transformers collector. I've seen plenty of research showing that Star Wars fans spend and earn more than the general population; relating that to Transformers fans is my own speculation.

Oh my. This would be (in theory) awesome. I do love my old Armada Unicron, but depending on how this came out...Well he might be being repurposed as Unicron Junior. The idea of a massive "high end" Unicron sounds amazing.

I'd prefer him to be not too much bigger than G1 Fortress Maximus, if only because much larger and he could become very awkward to handle. That said, I hope he gets the "poseable playset" treatment ala the Armada toy, only even better due to increased size. Give him compartments and hatches everywhere, only this time packed with detail styled after the internal shots from the movie. A "stomach" would be awesome too.

Tiny spaceships to go with him would be awesome too. Specifically Galvatron's Revenge, the Junkion ship, the Quintesson "spiral cruiser" and maybe a few others.

And finally, I kinda wanna see a "voice changer" feature on it like the old G1 toy would have had, had it been made. Kinda childish, yes, but still an awesome idea.

But yeah. I really, really wish I were in a position to be able to buy this. Though that said, by the time the project is live I may be in a different situation. In any event, this is a great idea and I hope we get more from it.

For my money (potentially $500), I'm thinking an overly massive Unicron would be awesome. I'd been thinking about recently how they could engineer a new generations G1 Unicron without using the same transformation as the old supreme class, including smelting pit and eating-capabilities. Then I saw the new IDW Unicron that they previewed(?) recently,

https://static.seibertron.com/images/co ... nicron.jpg

Firstly, the design is a lot more menacing and than previous iterations. With all the detail in it, if it were molded with said detail and as big as they could make it within that $500 price point, I think it could be absolutely incredible. However, for those preferring an older style it could alienate them. (It also already has kibble built in, so they don't have to worry about adding it themselves.)

I dunno, I just think some sort of Unicron would make the most sense for a extremely pricey crowdfunding Transformers themed item. And with that, if they do choose a not G1 style for it, they could always release a more reasonable and accessible titan class. I mean, it wouldn't be likely but also not totally out of the question.

I think for the type of money they're teasing they'd most definitely go with something familiar with long lasting appeal over something new and different. Personally, for the money, I could be convinced to pay $500 for a G1 Unicron, but not for a planet sized Rocklord.

Emerje

Oh yea, I have no doubt the safest and “most-likely-to-produced” would be a G1 Unicron, and I can definitely understand the larger community appeal for that incarnation of said planet-muncher. As a collector that was introduced through Energon however, I’m not very adamant about how a big boy Unicron would be interpreted by HasLab.