by Spooner » Tue May 22, 2007 9:41 am
Can I rant for a moment? I guess I should have seen it coming when I heard that there would be a non-transforming movie line. Anyway, as more and more of the movie Transformers are released and the masses that comprise the fan base obtain and pass judgement on them, it becomes clear that Hasbro would have had better luck designing the toys first, and making Bay & Co. base their designs from them, rather than vice versa. We already knew that the figures that can actually transform wouldn’t be 100% accurate to either mode, but what we’re seeing are compromises that shouldn’t have been necessary, all for the purported sake of coming as “close to the intense-detail style of the movie” as possible. We’re hearing about all sorts of bad QC and construction, lack of consistency in paint apps, and worse yet, inferior design. Frankly, they haven’t come nearly as close as they’d like to think. The sad part is that this is not a case where Hasbro must churn out whatever they can as quickly and cost-effectively as possible (re: Spider-Man 3); this is their baby, so they have no licenses to obtain nor royalties to pay. In fact, they’re being paid by all the other companies producing merchandise based on this property. Short of greed, there is no reason why they cannot generate significant revenue and still provide a high quality product to the customer.
So, here we have non-transforming Transformers, looking great and being highly articulated and forcing those who really like the movie designs into a compromise – do we sacrifice quality for principle? In other words, do we accept that these are just cool, authentic-looking action figures that can’t do what makes them unique in the first place, or do we accept the other alternative, especially with some of the deluxe class figures, and live with a car that changes into a robot that looks sort of like its namesake in the movie? You can’t do both, because you’ll end up resenting one of them in the end. That said, I don't think many of us would be afraid to purchase or tackle the complicated transformation of one of these high-detail figures if they could actually transform; in fact, for all the money we’ve given to Hasbro over the years, this is the level of quality we deserve. Maybe I’ll change my mind about this when I actually have some of the new movie figures, but I’m just not liking what I’ve heard so far.
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