The Energon Pub

Hell, if hasbro had the guts to retail them at all, I'd look the other way on accurate altmodes, that's how big a stretch it is. The DJD are that kid unfriendly in their original form. That being said, Tarn could sneak by unmodified, being a cybertronian tank, and Vos is a targetmaster in all but name. It's tesarus, helex, and especially kaon that are the problem.

ROTF Devastator says phooey to your notion that Tesarus is a problem. Helex's problem is his bulk and his altmode potentially looking dorky to non-fans. Kaon... His altmode is genuinely problematic, but with his treads Hasbro could easily turn him into some sort of ground crawler that so happens to be configurable into a chair as well.

Really the problem with the DJD is a combination of them being non-80s characters who also haven't been featured characters in any subsequent gens, most of them having oddball altmodes, and half of them being big guys.

The DJD members should be done as Selects characters, aimed at just fans not put out for mass retail. Maybe Tarn could be, but the rest shouldn't. I would love to see them done, even if they're sold as a set.

I'd love to see another go at Bayformers Ratchet in the Studio Series, a new mould Voyager class figure that scales better with Ironhide and the Deluxe Autobots. Ratchet always seemed to be one of the bigger Autobots in the movies, around the same height or a bit taller than Ironhide, so it has always annoyed me that most of the toys he gets are Deluxe, and his Studio Series Deluxe is just an extensive retooling of a (at the time) seven-year-old figure that wasn't particularly good to begin with.

A new and improved Armada Prime with combining / self transforming trailer and at least some type of articulation in combined mode.

That teaser Takara showed and we never heard of again was a good start.

Overcracker wrote:A new and improved Armada Prime with combining / self transforming trailer and at least some type of articulation in combined mode.

That teaser Takara showed and we never heard of again was a good start.

I wonder if that thing is dead in the water or just severely delayed due to the covid scare. If it is gone for good, that prototype is probably worth a fortune. Like G1 Unicron money.

Rodimus Prime wrote:

Overcracker wrote:A new and improved Armada Prime with combining / self transforming trailer and at least some type of articulation in combined mode.

That teaser Takara showed and we never heard of again was a good start.

I wonder if that thing is dead in the water or just severely delayed due to the covid scare. If it is gone for good, that prototype is probably worth a fortune. Like G1 Unicron money.

From the looks of it, it was a concept that didn't go anywhere. It looks fully engineered, but that shouldn't be taken as a confirmation of an eventual release. There are several figures in a similar point of production that were never picked up for release, like the Double Pretenders and the G.I. Joe Crossover figure.

Jelze Bunnycat wrote:

Rodimus Prime wrote:

Overcracker wrote:A new and improved Armada Prime with combining / self transforming trailer and at least some type of articulation in combined mode.

That teaser Takara showed and we never heard of again was a good start.

I wonder if that thing is dead in the water or just severely delayed due to the covid scare. If it is gone for good, that prototype is probably worth a fortune. Like G1 Unicron money.

From the looks of it, it was a concept that didn't go anywhere. It looks fully engineered, but that shouldn't be taken as a confirmation of an eventual release. There are several figures in a similar point of production that were never picked up for release, like the Double Pretenders and the G.I. Joe Crossover figure.

Considering it was teased with the PoTP retool Star Convoy and it got released, I'm going to call it dead in the water.

It's the 20th anniversary of Armada / Micron Legend, and would make a ton of sense to release something like that.

Also, unlike Energon and Cybertron, Armada Prime has not had any nods yet.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Kaon... His altmode is genuinely problematic, but with his treads Hasbro could easily turn him into some sort of ground crawler that so happens to be configurable into a chair as well.

This might not be a popular opinion, but I think they should have repainted Siege/ER Rung into Kaon. The bot modes and head designs are similar enough that it would have worked at that scale, they could have given him blast effects like the ones that came with the Netflix watermelon Rung to be his electric powers, and it means you could do a 3-pack with a Tarn retool of one of the Voyager Megatrons and Battlemasters Vos and Kaon with it being the same price as the Netflix Voyager sets and the Selects Spin-Out and Cordon. Would it have been the most accurate release? No, but it would get the characters out there and let them get a better gauge on interest in the team than just releasing a bunch of non-transforming Tarns and nothing else.

Why did Hasbro choose Earthrise Arcee as a new Kingdom release when we could have gotten a updated Silverbolt (Fuzor) or Tigatron or Rhinox or even Quickstrike or Ravage (Tripredacus Agent). Personally size doesn't matter.

Tigatron and Rhinox are still in the cards for Kingdom. They show up in the Kingdom artwork and in leaks.

Ravage, may see a release in Selects, its an easy Cheetor repaint.

Silverbolt on the other hand is unknown. Maybe a later wave. He's Season 2 after all.

Rogue-Primal wrote:Why did Hasbro choose Earthrise Arcee as a new Kingdom release when we could have gotten a updated Silverbolt (Fuzor) or Tigatron or Rhinox or even Quickstrike or Ravage (Tripredacus Agent). Personally size doesn't matter.

1. Rhinox and Tigatron are already coming as Voyagers.
2. We're getting a Deluxe Shadow Panther, who has a history of questionably being Ravage, does that count?
3. The other characters you mentioned aren't Season 1 characters, which seems to be as far as Hasbro is going with Kingdom, and even then we're still missing 3 Season 1 Predacons, so Tarantulas and them should probably be a higher priority than the Fuzors.
4. Sadly, it seems like if Arcee wasn't there we'd just get a repack of a different figure, not a new figure, repacks just have to be built into the waves evidently. Later Siege waves had repacks from it's earlier waves too, and Earthrise had repacks of Siege Battlemasters, Micromasters, and Astrotrain. The only reason ER didn't also have Deluxe repacks is because it only had 3 Deluxe waves to begin with.

Presumably they picked Arcee specifically to have her on shelves at the same time as the SS86 stuff and because she's in the Netflix show, forgetting that she's a trash figure and is therefore kind of a terrible choice for a repack.

Nemesis Primal wrote:

Rogue-Primal wrote:Why did Hasbro choose Earthrise Arcee as a new Kingdom release when we could have gotten a updated Silverbolt (Fuzor) or Tigatron or Rhinox or even Quickstrike or Ravage (Tripredacus Agent). Personally size doesn't matter.

1. Rhinox and Tigatron are already coming as Voyagers.
2. We're getting a Deluxe Shadow Panther, who has a history of questionably being Ravage, does that count?
3. The other characters you mentioned aren't Season 1 characters, which seems to be as far as Hasbro is going with Kingdom, and even then we're still missing 3 Season 1 Predacons, so Tarantulas and them should probably be a higher priority than the Fuzors.
4. Sadly, it seems like if Arcee wasn't there we'd just get a repack of a different figure, not a new figure, repacks just have to be built into the waves evidently. Later Siege waves had repacks from it's earlier waves too, and Earthrise had repacks of Siege Battlemasters, Micromasters, and Astrotrain. The only reason ER didn't also have Deluxe repacks is because it only had 3 Deluxe waves to begin with.

Presumably they picked Arcee specifically to have her on shelves at the same time as the SS86 stuff and because she's in the Netflix show, forgetting that she's a trash figure and is therefore kind of a terrible choice for a repack.

2. Does not count. I wouldn't want a Ravage from this cheetor though, let's wait for a redo of the transmetal version.

4. I dont think she's a terrible choice given that she isnt being found on shelves at all at the moment and there is still demand for her. Many are more than willing to buy her at retail price and higher on ebay.

william-james88 wrote:I dont think she's a terrible choice given that she isnt being found on shelves at all at the moment

See this line of thought I can theoretically agree with, the problem is:

william-james88 wrote:and there is still demand for her. Many are more than willing to buy her at retail price and higher on ebay.

Considering ER Arcee is a terrible figure that emphasizes everything that makes G1 Arcee a bad TF design, I simply can't believe this to be true, even with Earthrise's crap distribution making ER Arcee semi-hard-to-find. Reissuing any other ER Deluxe from Wave 2 or 3 would have been a better decision.

Nemesis Primal wrote:

william-james88 wrote:and there is still demand for her. Many are more than willing to buy her at retail price and higher on ebay.

Considering ER Arcee is a terrible figure that emphasizes everything that makes G1 Arcee a bad TF design, I simply can't believe this to be true, even with Earthrise's crap distribution making ER Arcee semi-hard-to-find.

I don't really see how it's about believing something or not. What I wrote can be verified by anyone. It's just fact. And I agree, the toy sucks. By the same token, Elita 1 also sucks but it's selling for even more. I don't think a toy sucking is really related to demand. It's wanting that character in one's collection. The ebay prices for Thunderblast for the past 10 years have thought us that.

I am wondering though, does anyone still seen Arcee on shelves? I havent seen one since the new year began.

william-james88 wrote:I am wondering though, does anyone still seen Arcee on shelves? I havent seen one since the new year began.

I haven't seen Deluxe Wave 2 at all in my area, we went from 1 straight to 3.

william-james88 wrote:I don't really see how it's about believing something or not. What I wrote can be verified by anyone. It's just fact.

Okay, but if it's such an irrefutable true statement then where is the proof of it? I feel like you must just know something I don't at this point, because all of my interactions/observations with/of other people who buy TFs come from the Internet in some way, be that here, Youtubers, or me lurking on other sites, and I've not seen a single person actually say that ER Arcee is a figure they wanted and didn't get (which would therefore make them happy about a repack). The few people who ignored it being a bad figure already got it, and most of them then posted on the Haul thread or in other places arount the Internet about regretting it because the figure is bad and barely transforms. There was basically universal groans when the Arcee repack showed up for the first time in the Kingdom leaks. If anything, I've seen more proof that there isn't demand for that Arcee than I've seen proof that there is, which is why I can't see repacking that figure as anything other than a terrible decision made solely because it's the 86 Movie anniversary and she was in it.

william-james88 wrote:And I agree, the toy sucks.

Glad we can agree on that, at least.

william-james88 wrote:By the same token, Elita 1 also sucks but it's selling for even more. I don't think a toy sucking is really related to demand. It's wanting that character in one's collection. The ebay prices for Thunderblast for the past 10 years have taught us that.

Elita and Thunderblast are more unique situations though, I feel like, since Thunderblast has no other figure period and has an unusual/rare alt mode for a TF (we need more boats/aquatic TFs, honestly), and Elita is a Walmart store exclusive (which immediately lends itself to scalpers with Walmart especially, given the Gigawatt debacle) who has only one other retail figure that a lot of people skipped for having the "wrong" alt mode and being a weird combiner mold. Arcee has had other figures before, even if most of them weren't specifically G1 Arcees, and most of them were and/or are considered to be better figures than the most recent attempt, plus said most recent attempt released alongside a Masterpiece and a Cyberverse Deluxe. It feels to me like demand for TFs seems to be directly based on a combination of the character's popularity, the character's prior availability, and the quality of the figure (and probably like 4 other factors I'm forgetting), barring factors that can't exactly be easily represented like people only buying characters from specific continuities/series/parts of the brand. There's way more quality options available for Arcee and the figure is bad, therefore the demand should be lower.

Also, to make sure I'm not completely derailing the thread, apparently a CD Red Alert from ER Doubledealer is somehow a crazy thought? I was confident after the Selects Hot Shot came and then ER Doubledealer was revealed that we'd get that repaint, as well as a Stalker to oppose Selects Rotorstorm, but Hasbro decided that ER Prime was the only ER Leader mold that they were going to reuse/repaint for some reason, and I am baffled. It's not like Leader Class Selects don't sell, Galactic Man sold out on Pulse I think within a day if not two and never came back, and we already know from leaks that a Selects Galvatron is coming with his toy colors.

Nemesis Primal wrote:

william-james88 wrote:I don't really see how it's about believing something or not. What I wrote can be verified by anyone. It's just fact.

Okay, but if it's such an irrefutable true statement then where is the proof of it? I feel like you must just know something I don't at this point

Like I said, anyone could look it up. On ebay, right now, Arcee sells for retail

https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_from=R4 ... Complete=1

You can look up Elita-1 while you are there, she sells for around the same, sometimes less sometimes more.

Elita 1 and Arcee have the same market price right now. So regardless of your reasoning why one would have a higher demand, the selling prices show that it's the same. Both sell at retail prices, both would sell if put on shelves right now. Plus, the fact that Arcee was a wide release (in theory) would mean that there was more of that toy produced than Elita 1. So if the market value is the same and there are more Arcees out there, then demand for Arcee is even greater than demand for Elita since to each the same price the greater supply has to meet a greater demand.

Thanks for letting me know where you got your info, the collector circles. It's not a great way to engage a demand for a wide release product since collectors don't make up the majority of the buying audience. You could ask a bunch of collectors if they'd want more Optimus prime toys and even if they don't, more will wind up on shelves and more will be sold.
It's not just collectors buying toys and it's not just collectors buying this Arcee (quite the opposite). I sell transformers figures on the side, and all my customers are just people who have kids that watched a show and want a character and they cant find that character in their local store.

That's the same reason 1 step fixit from RID sells for $50. I am certain it's not collectors paying those prices on e-bay.

And remember, the best selling 2017 TF toy was this overpriced non accurate bumblebee redeco which no collector wanted in their collection:



It's the same figure Takara spent 2 pages of add space to showcase.



We are not the target audience for any of this so consulting within our circles is not the way to assess demand.

ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:ROTF Devastator says phooey to your notion that Tesarus is a problem. Helex's problem is his bulk and his altmode potentially looking dorky to non-fans. Kaon... His altmode is genuinely problematic, but with his treads Hasbro could easily turn him into some sort of ground crawler that so happens to be configurable into a chair as well.

Ooouu, I like that. Like some mechanical scorpion.

Also, I would not mind if VOX is a different alt mode because an accurate alt mode is not possible, 3rd party companies couldn't do it. Sure they were not bad, but not exact so might as well give him something they can sell.

Man, this reminds me of that issue where they resuscitate Vox only for things to end painfully. I hated that **** so much.

alekese wrote:Hell, if hasbro had the guts to retail them at all, I'd look the other way on accurate altmodes, that's how big a stretch it is. The DJD are that kid unfriendly in their original form. That being said, Tarn could sneak by unmodified, being a cybertronian tank, and Vos is a targetmaster in all but name. It's tesarus, helex, and especially kaon that are the problem.

I wouldn't count on Tarn slipping by. Hasbro had the absolute "perfect" opportunity to release him in Cyberverse as a "Perfect Decepticon" and surely knows of the fan demand for him and it still didn't make the cut for season 3 new character figures.



Emerje

Emerje wrote:

alekese wrote:Hell, if hasbro had the guts to retail them at all, I'd look the other way on accurate altmodes, that's how big a stretch it is. The DJD are that kid unfriendly in their original form. That being said, Tarn could sneak by unmodified, being a cybertronian tank, and Vos is a targetmaster in all but name. It's tesarus, helex, and especially kaon that are the problem.

I wouldn't count on Tarn slipping by. Hasbro had the absolute "perfect" opportunity to release him in Cyberverse as a "Perfect Decepticon" and surely knows of the fan demand for him and it still didn't make the cut for season 3 new character figures.

I was mostly speaking from the perspective of problematic altmodes, which iirc is on the record as a contributing factor to no 1st party djd, stated at one Q&A or another. Both gunbots and scifi tanks have preexisting precedent that makes considering the altmode in a vacuum okay, where 'tank that melts the characters you love down into nothing using acid', 'thank that shreds the characters you love down into small pieces', and 'literally just an electric chair with tank treads' are inherently problematic without considering the characters' history. After that is taken into consideration, it still becomes a matter of 'do we really want to make toys of the serial killer gestapo?'

Or a one-off comic book team?

I'd still love to see some TransTech. Taking the non-humanoid design aesthetic of the Vehicons and applying it to everyone else. Authentic giant alien robots... Sigh

Woah. For some reason I was no longer subscribed to my thread.

And look at what I missed!

AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Or a one-off comic book team?

I'd still love to see some TransTech. Taking the non-humanoid design aesthetic of the Vehicons and applying it to everyone else. Authentic giant alien robots... Sigh

Megs.jpg

I wonder what Bandai thought of one of their gundam kits getting used to be a mock up of a competitors toy

I'd love WFC style versions of Rosanna (preferably Core class) and Minerva, but I know it'll never happen