The Energon Pub

SJ21 wrote:

GuyIncognito wrote:For example, a Voyager (at US price) is $20-$25 - the price of a dinner at a casual restaurant, or a couple of cocktails. No big deal.

An imported MP is $100-$200 - the price of a night in a nice hotel or a plane ticket to Florida.

Imagine the money you would have to spend to assemble a MP collections including all of the G1 characters we got in the Classics line.

Which are valid points, Guy.
Just to satisfy my curiosity i'm going to research. That way i can determine somewhat if prices around the world are relative or not each other when it comes to daoly expenditure.

As someone who still plays with the figures as an adult, The Masterpiece line is too expensive. I also prefer the updated designs of Classics and its successors.

I wonder if Classics/Generation would ever tackle the Headmaster series?

I'm gonna mix 'em all together and call 'em CHUGMURTS!

A lot of great points from all sides, so hopefully I can throw my humble opinions amongst them.

Is classics dead? Well, in my opinion, yes and no.

How so? Classics is an evolution. It began as a movie filler line, with updated figures from the beloved Gen 1. It gained momentum. It gained speed. So much, in fact, that we relied on repaints of cybertron figures with G1 paint schemes to fill in gaps. Im looking at YOU, Roadbuster... And YOU, Blades. Soundwave, Blaster... You get the point. At this point, the line had a voice... Then Hasbro blew on the dice... And the name on those dice, was IDW. Now, for those of us that dont remember, Saint Don Figueroa of DreamWave helped design some of the original classics. That seeker mold? St. Don. Voyager Prime? Praise be!! Even traces of beloved Cyclonus!! DW had amazing Donwork and it made for great figures ( leave titaniums out of this!!) Anyhow, along came IDW and their posterboy Drift, who somehow is now part of the Ark crew? Great figure for a robot!! But was this classics? Then the mold gets redecoed into... Blurr?? What happened to his head? Why are you prostituting our line!? War for Cybertron?! Thats a cool video game, but I really just wanted Thrust from this wave... Oh man... I really want Soundwave because we dont have him...anywhere... But hes a futuristic soccermom van? Fine, I'll Go-go-Gadget my inner six year old to pretend i can make him look like a boombox if i make him do the splits and vomit out whats left of his pride. Now, Fall of Cybertron is in full swing, which has given us many characters, and we really are spoiled as a fandom, but the line as a whole has evolved. In the original sense of what classics was, it has become watered down. Not dead (Metroplex!!), but severely watered down...

Which brings us to he next big thing... Revamped Masterpiece line!! This is absolutely phenominal, and i think this is where the line comes to a twilight for G1 collectors. They are in their 30s and 40's with the disposable income. I think all lines will come to be modelled after this. 30 year anniversary of beast wars? I see that trend continuing. I just dont think were going to see it as in depth as people are hoping/expecting. The licensing is too much for anyone to expect. If you think were going to see HALF, hell, even a THIRD of the amount of figures the classics line has brought to us, you're crazy. The repaint possibilities just arent there. Look at Sunstorm for example. MP 11 is AMAZING!! but no one wants to dish out 150 for a background (DW forgive me!) character. 10 years ago? When Sunstorm was THE threat to everyone? Sure, maybe. But not now. None of your retailers want to sit on that stock. Mark it down. Give it away. Funpub wont do repaints of these guys unless Ehobby goes in on it, and if Tigertracks doesnt fly off of shelves, it isnt happening. Skywarp would sell. Skywarp would be a license to print money, i just dont see it happening. Masterpiece are great, and I'm going to collect the all, but they dont fit in with classics, and they never will.

So, if you want to make cash, buy up all the dirt cheap prowls and silverstreaks going around, because when people realise they qrent getting a full line, theyre gonna come back for them.

gonna keep with the classics shelf aswell. at the rate Takara is pushing out MPs, it may take 20 years for us to see a full G1 cast. at least with Classics or just various deluxe/voyager homages we may see a full cast in our lifetimes. not to mention Classics arnt as big so they wont take up as much shelfspace as an equal cast of MPs

Kibble wrote:I'm gonna mix 'em all together and call 'em CHUGMURTS!

CHUGMURTS, I love it !

I can only speak for myself, but I know this. The only Takara MPs I'm skipping are the ones which are the more obscure eHobby type exclusives etc. (Sunstorm, Tigertracks, black Prime etc.). All of the others since MP-10 I've either already got or have on preorder and I'll snag each one as fast as Takara churns them out. I'll even get the inevitable SoundBlaster repaint of Soundwave, even if he doesn't come with Ratbat.

I'm all in on this line. I can't say that at all about Generations. I snag all the WfC/FoC figures Takara puts out and I grab the odd figure here and there if it's decent and isn't some character made up in the comics which I never read, but I'm even skipping Metroplex in all likelihood unless Takara does something phenomenal with him (Hasbro's proto did not impress me, and I'm sure their final, extremely paint-lacking/cheap plastic looking version won't either).

But Springer? Blitzwing? Oh hell yes! TG for the win on those guys for sure.

Hell, I even like Beast Hunters better than a lot of the Generations stuff I saw Hasbro showing off at the last show, and I don't expect too many major reveals at Botcon simply because it gets far less media coverage than the 'mainstream' shows like Toyfair, SDCC and NYCC, not to mention the fact that Hasbro's about to be all about Bumblebutt the movies again.

So for me, the MP line has my money as fast as Takara can make them. All the other lines are on notice.

bionic_radical, you're completely right about CHUG, but your take on the Masterpiece line is a bit of a prima facie. The problem is that you're basing it around Hasbro, which is an incredibly flawed approach to take.

With Classics, looking at things from the perspective of Hasbro is spot on as most things are a joint project with TakaraTomy. However the Masterpiece line is a completely different animal, figuratively speaking.

Essentially, the Masterpiece line is a Takara only line, designed specifically to service Takara's main markets, namely Japanese adult fans. Hasbro's wishes really don't enter the equation at all.

Sure, Hasbro releases the odd piece in a limited run, as a tiny (in terms of production run) store exclusive, but let's be honest - that's merely a case of Hasbro deciding they want to use certain moulds of pre-existing figures and getting them released here, whilst creating enough of a difference that they have created a point of difference in their release.

Look at what we've gotten and missed. MP-01 surfaced a year later, there was no Ultra Magnus (the Australian release of MP-02 was literally a direct import from Takara), Starscream and Skywarp showed up but there was no Thundercracker. Megatron was a no-show and Grimlock showed up after that, whilst Rodimus lost his trailer and was given a Targetmaster partner in its place. We got MP-10, in a poorly sourced run, whilst Starscream 2.0 was a no-show and replaced with Thundercracker. We're getting Soundwave and the cassettes, but we've missed Sideswipe and Red Alert and the same will probably hold true for the Datsun trio. In fact the only 2 Hasbro only figures to date are Acid Storm and Thundercracker 2.0.

Clearly Hasbro is merely cherry picking and cashing in on Takara's work as opposed to having an active hand in the design process (or every single MP would have seen a mainstream US release), so suggesting that Hasbro are even remotely in the driver's seat with the direction the Masterpiece line is taking, is a bit of a case of wishful thinking.