The Energon Pub

Imagination = playability

Toys have had to evolve to meet user’s expectations, just like everything else has over the past quarter century. Comparing G1 to Cybertron, Movie line, or Animated is like comparing Atari 2600 to xBox 360.

I think we tend to confuse playability with durability and design. The G1 line was very durable but had limited articulation and were fairly crude. As the years have passed, we’ve gotten figures that are far easier to pose and look great, but some have suffered from weaker materials and hyper-complex transformations, especially the movie line. So are the newer lines as durable and designed as well? Some are, and others are not. Have they lost or gained playability-well that’s just up to the individual user’s imagination.

These newer toys are much more playable than the old ones.

Auto Bot wrote:These newer toys are much more playable than the old ones.

Sorry, but that's opinion, not fact. It all depends on your imagination and your expectations.

EDIT: Articulation makes a toy easy to pose, not more playable.

DevastaTTor wrote:

Auto Bot wrote:These newer toys are much more playable than the old ones.

Sorry, but that's opinion, not fact. It all depends on your imagination and your expectations.

EDIT: Articulation makes a toy easy to pose, not more playable.

Seconded to the opinion. I don't find many of the movie toys very playable at all, and my imagination is in acceptable working order. They might be more articulated, but their transformations are crummy at best......when did TFs become nothing more than a system of interlocking tabs for shoulders and fitting car parts together? SOME newer toys are more playable, IMO: Cybertron for example, and just last night I was looking at Energon Mirage and thought to myself, "Wow, Energon was a fun toyline."
I find the movie line to be rather flimsy, and sometimes whilst transforming a toy or two I fear that I might break it. To me that lowers playability, because if a toy gets broken it ain't much fun to play with. Cyberton/Energon/Armada were built sturdily, RID and some of the BW era were less so, like the Car Brothers were kind flimsy to me, G1s were bricks with next to no articulation, but they were built super tough. That's why twenty five years later you can buy G1s that are still in good condition. 74 BBs were breaking on people right out of the package, and everyone and their moms complained about stress marks on Blackouts. 10 years from now you'll find Car Brothers that are all busted up but will still stand a chance of finding G1 Starscreams in good or decent shape.
Personally, I'd rather play with a G1 Ironhide than a movie Ironhide. Just my opinion. I don't really like the whole balljoint TF idea like some of the Beast era/RIDs, and while I have a stress mark free Blackout and don't mind shouldertab 'issues', I don't care for the flimsy and cheap feeling movie toys. Really though, it's just the Deluxes, and the newer ones at that.

Depends what you mean by "playable." If you mean "it's got loads of bits to fiddle with" then yes, the modern stuff is generally better. BUT, and it's a J-Lo-after-three-weeks-eating-nothing-but-lard sized but, that doesn't make them more playable to kids.

Imagine you're seven years old and playing with your TFs. Optimus Prime prepares to lead the Autobots into battle. So you shout "Autobots, transform and roll out!" and start transforming the five toys. If you're using the G1 figures, you're done in about five minutes, and your attack force is off to kick Megatron's aft. If you've got Cybertron figures, you'll probably get bored/pissed off halfway through transforming Smokescreen. So, by that standard, G1 would be far more playable.

DevastaTTor wrote:

Auto Bot wrote:These newer toys are much more playable than the old ones.

Sorry, but that's opinion, not fact. It all depends on your imagination and your expectations.

EDIT: Articulation makes a toy easy to pose, not more playable.

Yeah. It's my own opinion. From my own experience.

When i was playing those toys back in the old days, i'm really bothered that i can't move his legs, or lift his arms in a particular way. I'll have to depend on imagination most of the time. And i would usually just play them in car mode.

If i were to have the present articulated toys in the old days, it will be like WOW! I'd be playing them everytime i come home from school.

I had this plastic/rubber Popeye which can be posed, twisted, make him sit down, crouch, posed like running, and so on. I'd be playing him all the time. Mainly because of his playability. I'm not even a fan of Popeye.

And that's why you should preface your opinions with a phrase such as "I think." That way, it doesn't seem that you're presenting a highly subjective view as gospel truth.

Nobody is speaking of gospel here.

This is forum. Not encyclopedia.

Everything here is opinion. If you've got "gospel truth" to say, usually, you put it in "quotation marks". Like so.

Forum is discussion. For me, it's a fun discussion. It's not a courtroom for presenting facts and evidences.

Are you ok?

Maybe the next time i see a fantastic artwork or kitbash, i'd better say...


I think wow!

Auto Bot wrote:Maybe the next time i see a fantastic artwork or kitbash, i'd better say...


I think wow!

:lol: :lol: :lol:

LOL

Auto Bot wrote:Nobody is speaking of gospel here.

This is forum. Not encyclopedia.

We beg to differ.

Are you ok?

Busta Wolf?

I agree with the person that says that as we get older our imagination sort of leaves us a bit.. I enjoyed playing with the g1 toys immensely. I remember that even after i broke half of snarl's tail he was still so much fun to play with. I'd imagine that he had his tail torn off in battle and make up scenes in my head. The toys nowadays I buy more for display purposes, like it or not I've grown up now and I don't take prime in one hand and megs in the other and bash em together like I used to.
I'm sure if you gave a kid now a g1 toy he'd laugh his head off, but I definitely had more fun playing with the g1 toys because my brain at the time was a childs brain, and the memories stick until now.
Does any of this makes sense? It does for me ..

schizophrenica wrote:I agree with the person that says that as we get older our imagination sort of leaves us a bit.. I enjoyed playing with the g1 toys immensely. I remember that even after i broke half of snarl's tail he was still so much fun to play with. I'd imagine that he had his tail torn off in battle and make up scenes in my head. The toys nowadays I buy more for display purposes, like it or not I've grown up now and I don't take prime in one hand and megs in the other and bash em together like I used to.
I'm sure if you gave a kid now a g1 toy he'd laugh his head off, but I definitely had more fun playing with the g1 toys because my brain at the time was a childs brain, and the memories stick until now.
Does any of this makes sense? It does for me ..

It makes perfect sense to me. I still have the TFs I had when I was little, but I don't play with them like I used to. I used to have them build sentry guns out of Lego, or reprogram Hotwheels as their own personal armies, but not anymore. Now I just fiddle with them a bit by transforming them back and forth from one mode to another, posing them, and setting them up on the shelf with the others, not to come down again until I want to fiddle with them again or change the display.

I think what I'm trying to get at is that the toys aren't less playable now, we are. C'est la vie.

I don't agree that imagination fades as you get older. Maybe yours has, but the popularity of sites such as Fanfiction.net and The Lexicon shows there's a lot of adults with a lot of imagination left. When I can get my arse in gear and actually complete a fic, I can share it with the world, instead of it being gone as soon as I put the toys away.

Personaly i beleive the tf toys were never mor playable than they were around BW/BM/RiD period and laterly Cyb/Classics period. Why?

In these two periods youve had toys that have (generally) good convincing alt modes, and very flexible robot modes (which in my mind equals more posibilities in play). Also they (especilly the Classics/Cyb toys) have a lot of bits that can be removed with out breakage. As i kid, i loved toys you could safly take bits off of. It ment they were damaged (then they got magically fixed in seconds, such is imagination).

Where the BW/BM/RiD tfs lose out on the playability scales is the ease of transfomration, some ere rather difficult.

Now G1, well, later waves were pretty playable, but the early stuff (much like the movie toys) were not. Easy to break, far too many small bits to lose (with no where sencible to put em in one or other mode) and pretty limited to what thye could do (stand up/lie down dead).
Apart from the lose pieces syndrome, the movie toys are the same, they are not in any stretch of the imagnination particularly playable.

Sledge wrote:I don't agree that imagination fades as you get older. Maybe yours has, but the popularity of sites such as Fanfiction.net and The Lexicon shows there's a lot of adults with a lot of imagination left. When I can get my arse in gear and actually complete a fic, I can share it with the world, instead of it being gone as soon as I put the toys away.

Writing fan-fics and playing out battles are two different areas. I can still make up stories and stuff in my head, because I dont' need to have X charcter in hand, or worry about breaking something, or something falling apart.

Still, the Photo Challenges keeps the part of me that wants to play alive somewhat, because I have a clear goal in mind.

How is it different, though? You're using your imagination to create the whole thing. In fact, I'd say the reason I prefer writing about TFs to playing with them is because I can do more. I can create starships, use characters I don't own, do anything at all. Writing stretches my imagination because I can play with the characters anywhere, and have them do anything. I'm not even constrained by only being able to hold two figures at a time.

Redimus wrote:
Now G1, well, later waves were pretty playable, but the early stuff (much like the movie toys) were not. Easy to break, far too many small bits to lose (with no where sencible to put em in one or other mode)

that's actually one of the things I really like about the movie toys, is the way some of them (BBee 76-08, IronHide, Wreckage, Voyager Prime) they can all keeps their weapons in alt mode. Especially the way 08 BB and Wreckage actually hide the weapons inside them. Nothing to lose and the toy and it's accessories all stay together.

Redimus wrote:Personaly i beleive the tf toys were never mor playable than they were around BW/BM/RiD period and laterly Cyb/Classics period. Why?

In these two periods youve had toys that have (generally) good convincing alt modes, and very flexible robot modes (which in my mind equals more posibilities in play). Also they (especilly the Classics/Cyb toys) have a lot of bits that can be removed with out breakage. As i kid, i loved toys you could safly take bits off of. It ment they were damaged (then they got magically fixed in seconds, such is imagination).

Where the BW/BM/RiD tfs lose out on the playability scales is the ease of transfomration, some ere rather difficult.

Now G1, well, later waves were pretty playable, but the early stuff (much like the movie toys) were not. Easy to break, far too many small bits to lose (with no where sencible to put em in one or other mode) and pretty limited to what thye could do (stand up/lie down dead).
Apart from the lose pieces syndrome, the movie toys are the same, they are not in any stretch of the imagnination particularly playable.

But again, is this the equations we're going by?

playable = durability

It's obvious this topic is going to be one that we're just going to agree to disagree about as I didn't find G1 figures too fragile. I gauged playbility with on what my mind made them do, the situations I put them in, and for transformers, the ability to transform with a few simple bends and turns.

Yeah, I'm gonna agree on the durability=playability thing. Seems to me the movie figures look very easily breakable, and don't seem like they'd hold up well for kids.

kirbenvost wrote:Yeah, I'm gonna agree on the durability=playability thing. Seems to me the movie figures look very easily breakable, and don't seem like they'd hold up well for kids.

Once has to ask the question, is an overly articulated, more detailed figure the most playable? As I posted last week, that makes it more open to different poses but does that make it actually more playable? First gen Star Wars fans like me didn't have any problems getting hours and hours of play our of the early figures. Same with G1 Tformers.

For adult and older collectors, complex, articulated figures are probably better. For kids, the real target audience, does all of that matter as much? Hell, kids are happy playing with the box.

If I was a kid I would have loved the new stuff more than the stuff I had. Or wanted, since TFs were too expensive for me most of the time.

Prime for instance. Classics Prime has knees. KNEES! I wouldn't have cared about the trailer so much since Id've lost it or broken it within months. But the knees woulda won me. And that's what most modern TFs have.

I suppose I was an odd kid. I LOVED to pose all my toys when I "put the away". All my figures were posed in their bases (the technodrome, the TMNT lair, or Voltron's castle) ... and knees would have helped my TFs in this way.

As for lack of guns, well ... I usually lost the guns, so I made do with the power of imagination.

Durability is also a MUST. Most of my toys wound up broken in some way. And modern toys have parts that are made to snap off if too much stress is applied. It's a wonderful idea!

yeah but then again sometimes pieces go popping off when zero stress is applied.

**continues to look around for bumblebees yellow shoulder**

DevastaTTor wrote:

kirbenvost wrote:Yeah, I'm gonna agree on the durability=playability thing. Seems to me the movie figures look very easily breakable, and don't seem like they'd hold up well for kids.

Once has to ask the question, is an overly articulated, more detailed figure the most playable? As I posted last week, that makes it more open to different poses but does that make it actually more playable? First gen Star Wars fans like me didn't have any problems getting hours and hours of play our of the early figures. Same with G1 Tformers.

For adult and older collectors, complex, articulated figures are probably better. For kids, the real target audience, does all of that matter as much? Hell, kids are happy playing with the box.

However, the G1 lack of posability (and yet, fragility) are also bad. I think the perfect figures so far that meet a happy medium would be the Energon/Cybertron lines or Classics. Enough detail for us nerds (especially the Classics), but lots of fun and posability without being too fragile for the kids.

I look at Concept Bumblebee and wonder how any kid could transform that without breaking it...

Sledge wrote:How is it different, though? You're using your imagination to create the whole thing. In fact, I'd say the reason I prefer writing about TFs to playing with them is because I can do more. I can create starships, use characters I don't own, do anything at all. Writing stretches my imagination because I can play with the characters anywhere, and have them do anything. I'm not even constrained by only being able to hold two figures at a time.

Oh, guess I didn't explain myself. I do that sometimes, typing out an answer without explaining to what I was referring to. I was indeed talking about fan-fics, and how they're easier for my imagination to contend with nowadays. That's what I was referring to when I said I didn't need X figure, cause in fan-fic it doesn't matter.