The Energon Pub

Recently I've seen a small amount of talk about either watching or skipping the transformation section of video reviews.

Some people use them as instructions.

Some people feel they are spoilery.

I enjoy the reviews and insight, but skip the transformation. I like to "crack the nut" myself.

What do you think?

I've left transformations out in my video reviews....but only because it would take too much time with the limited equipment that I have to work with! + there are tons of better reviews of the same figures out there....as well as reviewers with far better video equipment & some have even built a platform or reviewing area to review them....like for instance....Optibotimus.

Cool cool, thanks. I guess I should have stated I'm also curious as to what reviewers think as well and the feedback they receive.

I watch a video review mostly for the transformation.

Objectively, I think a videoreview without transformation is incomplete, because a Transformer has always three features: robot mode, alternative mode, transformation.

I skip transformations. I really don't care to sit there for 10 minutes and watch someone drone on relentlessly about a step by step description of what they're doing. I'll figure that out myself if I get the figure.


The only exceptions are Emgo if he's doing a quick to transform figure, because he actually puts in some personality (though I still skip if it's something involved) and Vangelus, whom I never skip. Because his transformations are done as a short montage where he gives an overall impression of the transformation, rather than a step by step account, but he'll focus on something that impresses him or is rather nasty, and takes less than a minute. If all reviews were done like that with the transformation, I wouldn't skip.


As for my own videos, I just say "On to robot mode!" or alt mode if I'm going that way, and just do a straight cut to it with the transformation noise.

when doing reviews i prefer to animate the transformation rather than go through a tutorial. some things are best left a mystery

I always watch the transformation if I haven't seen it transformed before. The viewer (and potential customer/buyer) can learn a lot about a specific model by how it transforms (ease, difficulty, caveats, things to watch out for, details they might miss), provided the reviewer does it well.