ImmortalStarscream, They're hardly running out of characters yet. But they are short on big names.
D-Maximal_Primal wrote:AllNewSuperRobot wrote:Studio Series is Studio Series. Doesn't really matter what film it is...
And there's a perfectly good G1 centered line called War for cybertron that is cranking out 3 times the number of SS figures per year between waves and exclusives and by extension selects.
Put. Them. There.
WFC only has so much room, especially if the nostalgia is expanding to other franchises. And most of these '86 figures seem to be Voyagers and Leaders, which there are fewer slots available for.. Meanwhile the only non-redeco Leaders left for Studio Series are Devcon (a one-off character with no lines, although he has a cool unique design) and The Fallen, and most of those left who would fill Voyager slots are minor...
But I don't think it's just slots. I think distribution is also playing a big role in this, possibly even bigger than slots. There's no denying that WFC's distribution is a
trainwreck. Meanwhile Studio Series seems to be doing relatively fine distribution-wise, so there's less fear of the milestone stuff getting held up in the pipeline.
Also,
any fifth year is a celebration year anymore. And Hasbro has been celebrating 35th anniversaries across more than just Transformers.
I
do hope that once they get the '86 movie cast out of their system SS goes back to purely Bayverse toys, though.
Autobot N wrote:I wonder if this isn't an attempt to transition Studio Series to something more like Marvel Legends or Black Series. Have Studio Series be the line for accurate, gimmickless figures from all corners of the franchise (G1, BW, Movie, UT, etc),
Oxymoron alert!
Autobot N wrote:and have Generations as sort of a Prime Wars type line where they experiment with new things, and bring new ideas to old characters.
Nah, I'm pretty sure it's just a case of capitalizing on Studio Series' better distribution to squeeze the '86 characters out on time, justified under "Well, that was also a movie so it
totally counts"
If any line would make sense to transition to Marvel Legends style, it's the main Generations line. But A. The G1 characters need the new toys more than the later lines do, at least right now and B. Trying to do a Marvel Legends style line with Transformers is harder, since they're more expensive and take up more shelf space.