The Energon Pub

doomboy536 wrote:I hate the Real Gear, therefore I hate this. Yuck

Well, I hated the movie, hate the movie toys just as bad... but a working watch Transformer is something I find hard to not love.

Of course, Hasbro didn't make it, but I also find it hard to give a crap at this point lol. (Better) Knock-Offs ahoy!

And what's with the colors? Honestly, it's like they looked at G2 for inspiration on these...

Older. That orange and green one reminds me of Max Calibur (G1 Roadbuster).

wow a mean time ROLEX that be so cool

Everyone is kind of mad at hasbro for not doing this in the first place...but think about it. First, does Hasbro have the facilities to do a working watch? Second, would they have been able to keep the Real Gear price point with a fully functional watch?

The screen doesn't seem to rotate... that's a bit annoying. The blue one looks cool.

Like Dr. Z pointed out, I wouldn't wear this as a watch (even if it did fit on my wrist) because the screen would be 90* off from me trying to read it... I think it'd be quite annoying, although you could probably get used to it after a while...

First-Aid wrote:Everyone is kind of mad at hasbro for not doing this in the first place...but think about it. First, does Hasbro have the facilities to do a working watch?

Watch components and or third party manufacturers for such things are a dime a dozen. If they have them in gumball machines for 25 to 50 cents, it shouldn't be to hard an item to acquire.

Second, would they have been able to keep the Real Gear price point with a fully functional watch?

Maybe, maybe not... but to anyone who knows their stuff, it should (keyword "should") be understood that it's a no-brainer as far as demand goes.
Whether it's a child bringing a transformer toy to school and having a functional excuse to do so, or a dude bringing one with him to the office to sit on his desk and look retro/cute/cool/nerdy... it'd sell at double it's price point, worst case scenario at 150% it's current cost.

There's a reason there were a dozen different Kronoform type guys in the past.
Even more reason that they sold out well even though mass-produced.

Transformers fans grew up... child Transformers customers have grown up... the toys need to too, by adding that valid excuse to have them.

It's 2008... I want to walk into Walmart and buy a transformer wristwatch, a transformer boombox, a transformer mp3 player, transformer computer speakers...
...you know, stuff that isn't merely a toy... something to validate it's purchase in front of those who find it a total lost cause of childishness.
A humorous excuse to still remain a kid.


(and for Hasbro, profit!)

It's a truly untapped market.

You can get a working watch at a dollar store. Thus it falls to reason that a company can get the inner workings of a digital watch for less than a dollar. At most this means if they had designed Meantime from the ground up to be a working watch, it would have added at most a dollar to the design, and that's if they went out and bought real watch mechanisms retail! If they did that AND add a band-extender for adult sized wrists, I'd say LOTS of adult TF fans be wearing working Meantimes right now as a novelty.

Dare I say that one, good, functional, adult-fitting Meantime figure sold at $10 could quite possibly have brought in more profit than all the (yawningly) diverse movie toys put together?

We should be WEARING functional Transformers all over us by now.

We should all have that ONE device somewhere in our lives that we use daily, which transforms into a toy robot.

Yeah, this thing is a little exposing for Hasbro, to say the least.

what?

real gears are just toys designed to mimic every day objects. they were never intended to actually work as every day objects.

they really are just pretend toys for kids.

Those colours are just NASTY! As usual though the KOs do a better job than HASBRO by actually adding the working watch function to this.

I could use that thing for my kitbash project if the price is about $2.

mattyc1007 wrote:wow a mean time ROLEX that be so cool

that's what I'm talkin aboot!!!!!