Sabrblade wrote:Cyberpath wrote:Couldn't you have released these like ten years ago?
We all wish that, man. But ten years ago was a different Hasbro team with a different mindset. That team believed 80s altmodes wouldn't sell in today's market and that everything had to be changed, updated, and different in order to be appealing (hence their constant refusal to make Soundwave a tape deck again). In their minds, making new toys based directly on the old character designs was "backwards thinking", and that the toys' real future lay in the live action movies.
The current Hasbro team that's been giving us these proper G1 updates didn't form until around 2014, with their first Generations offerings coming in 2015's Combiner Wars, a mere six years ago instead of ten.
For sure, but even
Combiner Wars was not quite there yet, and while
Titans Return was good to the actual Headmasters, the other characters got stuck with the gimmick. I feel like this new trilogy is on a whole new level: the likeness, the unified scale, the transformations (clever yet easy enough and fun), the articulation (ankle tilts!), special-effects, no forced overbearing gimmicks, the huge selection of characters (they almost completed the TFTM cast, even Quints and their minions. I know some are branded under the Studio line, but still, just technicality.) I don't even hate the ports gimmick and all the Weaponizers stuff, it's actually fun.
Sure there are
still some figures that fall short (jarring part-forming.) And some figures are (for some reason) less screen-accurate than others. But overall it's amazing.
Had they released these a decade ago I'd probably never gotten into MP (just admire them vicariously.) (I don't know, SS Hot Rod looks like it may have even surpassed MP-27.)
WfC takes up less space and cost less and has more characters. It's funny, I have some of the cast as MP and some as CHUG and it's sorta takes the enjoyment out of it because I don't want to keep buying MPs, but I don't want to rid of the ones I already have, yet I don't want to repeat characters (other than Optimus, etc.) So I end up with two "incomplete" and incompatible collections.

'sides, It's all become too much so I decided to just get a handful that really get my attention, Cyclonus & Scourge, for instant. They finally became available yesterday. And maybe it is time to clear out some figures that I care less about. (Just thinking "out loud.")
long story short, I feel WfC has come too late.
It's amazing what power the original cartoon has, still selling toys after 36 years. Bet Hasbro never DREAMED when they commissioned it