Skritz wrote:ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Nemesis Primal wrote:Skritz wrote:GEEWUN Pandering: The Line....I do not and will not expect anything not from some corner of GEEWUN in this line.
Ah yes, featuring such famed G1 aspects as...police car Barricade and Magnus's RiD alt mode.
The first is just a convenient redeco to flesh out the Decepticon deluxes, the latter is because going with the RiD altmode was the only way to accommodate a Voyager-size cab robot without the trailer getting comically compressed horizontally. He makes up for it with a VERY G1-pandering robot mode.
Yeah I'm pretty sure Barricade was chosen because they needed to have more deluxe 'cons and get their mileage out of some molds.
1. I highly doubt those are the ONLY reasons those two figures exist the way they are. I'm not saying those reasons are invalid, I'm sure they were taken into account, but I also feel like there are other factors involved. For instance, take into account the fact that they chose to repaint Prowl into a popular/media-prevalent Decepticon that ISN'T based on his G1 design rather than just crank out a Smokescreen or Bluestreak. That doesn't seem like just "It was convenient", as it would have been much more convenient for them to just repaint the figure as his canon identical compatriots and call it a day rather than turn it into Barricade, who will need at least a new head. I agree they did it to put more Cons on the shelves, as the Cons are always outnumbered in plastic form, but they could have chosen to repaint Ironhide into Crankcase (they're supposed to be Cybertronian designs, so Crankcase being more van-like than SUV-like could have be explained away) or something if they wanted to stick to perfect G1 accuracy while using existing molds and adding more Cons. Instead, they specifically chose an incarnation of a character that isn't G1, but is popular, probably so he would sell better in terms of the younger audience who would recognize ol' Barry and to try to mitigate people like me complaining abut MORE GEEWUN UGH.
2. That doesn't change the fact that these not fully G1 Barricade and Magnus figures still exist though. If this line was 100% nothing but straight-up G1-with-knees style updates, then Barricade would be a Micromaster F1 racer, Magnus would have the same truck cab as Prime, the Micromasters wouldn't have weapon modes, and Brunt wouldn't have a robot mode, among other things. If anything, I would call this line more a re-imagining of G1/the G1 pilot than GEEWUN Pandering: The Line, and I'm starting to have hope again that maybe Warden wasn't just making stuff up when he said he was going to throw in more references to non-G1 material.
...I could very easily be wrong though, who knows (Hasbro does, but...). That's just my take on topic, agree or disagree as you will.