JelZe GoldRabbit wrote:carytheone wrote:I have twice as many Autobots as I do Decepticons, but is that because of preference or what's available at retail? Which dictates which, nurture or nature, chicken or the egg?ZeroWolf wrote:It's all down to what sells better and what sells better in other markets, especially in Takara's home market where baddies don't sell that well (exception to this is when they can repaint a goodie into a nice black paint job) but yeah, good guys sell better than bad guys with the child audience. It is what it is.![]()
I'm not disagreeing, just tossing out a counter point.
A little bit of both. In 1984 Autobot toys outnumbered the Decepticon one, but in the following years both sides got roughly equal amounts of toys. It was a bit of a time of experimenting in what worked in the US market, really.
btw the egg came first, due to reptiles laying them long before birds even evolved.
ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:It's not a unique thing to Transformers either, it crops up in a lot of toylines. Some years tend to have more or less parity, others have an imbalance one way or the other, and it depends on the line.
Within Transformers, the Japanese toylines tend to be really bad about more good guys than bad. Zone (where the only bad guy toys were Metrotitan and the Race Track Patrol) and Return of Convoy were the absolute worst.
It does often resound of confirmation bias. Lines are inundated with "good guys", ergo they outsell "bad guy" toys (female toys suffer the exact same thing). Therefore Good guys are clearly better sellers and lines are inundated with them.
There was an amazing series I adored growing up, Skeleton Warriors. Although only a single line of toys, there were three (of four) heroes (sans female character, of course) and five Villains, one of which was actually female too. Even for 90's toys the detailing and design of the Villains was amazing. Although the heroes were visually detailed themselves, the villains stood out. As a fan of villains since the beginning, this is the ironic truth I've always seen. But, as a villain fan for so long I have accepted toys lines outside of this exception, particularly in Transformers, don't cater to me. I learned a long time ago to make do.