The Energon Pub

mooncake623 wrote:

xyl360 wrote:

Tsutsukakushi wrote:

Gauntlet101010 wrote:

Rated X wrote:

Gauntlet101010 wrote:You're just not their target. You may as well not vote.

I voted for Sludge. Guy needs some love.

I dont want to start another debate here, but I gotta point out that their REAL target isnt going to be you or me. Its going to be making money. We saw MMC can the hearts of steel line for classics and look how well they have done since. Im not sure any 3rd party Company is going to spend the next 10 years making characters for a video game that keeps getting older and older ever year. There will be new video games, movies, cartoons, etc. and the next generation of collectors will pressure them to move on to something more current or popular.

Yeah, well, they seem to want to make money by selling toys based off the video game, not the cartoon.

Not that I wouldn't love a cartoon set at Classics size. I'd want that more than ones based off the games. But there's no use in complaining that someone's selling apples when you want oranges (to use a metaphor).

On planet X's face book page on the voting likes pics is a pic of WFC Trypicon not the G-1 version. Planet X is interested in the WFC FOC version.

Yep, they're doing WFC/FOC right now. Once that dries up they'll likely jump over to whatever the new hot thing is or (hopefully) jump to something new that no one else is doing (as they've done with the video games).

As for the comments about the classics bandwagon, I don't think classics will be around in 10 years. I think MP will kill it in short order. I give it maybe 5 considering that just about every single major character has been done by Hasbro already and that the 30 or so third party companies doing TFs right now are mostly focused on classics to fill in the gaps of what Hasbro hasn't done. There's no way this line can keep going for that long unless they get really slow about their releases or something. I mean we don't have too many Powermasters and no Pretenders yet, but those lines weren't that large so it won't take 10 years for that many companies to do that many toys.

The Death of classics! Everyone's always talking about this these days with MP's covering their G1 needs. But I think it'll still be around. Classics these days are IDW comics from HAS/TAK and even when all the characters have been done. HAS/TAK and Third parties will do what they always do make a new version of the same thing..

Classics also offers a way for parents to get their kids something akin to what the parents had growing up, and at a decent price. Classics is not all about collectors, where MP is. Also, for collectors like me, MP is just too expensive (and a larger scale).

Whoops, I shouldn't start the scale debate again.

I also think that as long as the WfC and FoC line of video games remains a good seller that we may see toys from this line. Or at the very least, opportunities for Planet X if they wish to continue. How about a video game Ironhide? How about some of the other figures that looked pretty cool in the game, like Jetfire and company?

TRYPTICON!!!!! that sizes up with generation metroplex. if that's not possible then do the dinobots.

I don't think the Classics Generations toy lines will ever fully go away forever. at best it might go on hiatus for a few seasons or years But it will always return. HasTak when they run out of characters,they will just recreate everything into the current newer classics style of that newer time period.

I think at some point down the road,Classics Generation will get a newer cartoon series. once,this happens,Previous released Classics Generations toys will get revamped redesigned & rereleased in this show & toy line.

If Micheal Bay ever retires from doing the live action TF movies. Perhaps the next director,writers,HasTak & CGI team will want to do a story & CGI robot designs something similar to what IDW'S TF G-1 inspired comics are all about. So this right here could be considered a newer classics verse style live action movie story & toy line.

xyl360 wrote:As for the comments about the classics bandwagon, I don't think classics will be around in 10 years. I think MP will kill it in short order.

I disagree. Ive talked to many other collectors at Botcons who dont like the large MP scale. People think Im just being an asshole when I refer to MP scale as "Barbie Doll scale" or "Coffee Table Centerpieces" but Im being dead serious. Theres a large amount of collectors who think the large size restricts the amount of figures they have room to display. It also increases the price. A higher price limits the amount of obscure characters that 3rd party companies will be willing to take a chance on. Would you spend $165 on a 3rd party MP Erector ? I rather use that money to get 2-3 classics sized figures of obscure characters. I think classics scale will be around forever. (both Hasbro and 3rd party) Little by little Hasbro is going to do more stuff from Beast Wars and Armada. Maybe in 5 years they might jump into Energon and Cybertron characters. And they will mix the waves up with characters from G2 and late G1 Japanese characters. And as Hasbro keeps doing that, 3rd parties will fill in more gaps. And keep in mind that Hasbro doesnt really aknowledge 3rd party stuff so they will release their own versions of characters that already have a popular 3rd party figure (Springer for example) They just wait for the right time. So in my honest opinion dont expect classics to go anywhere.

So this is MP VS Classics now?

Yeah, ok. Sure.

10 years is a long time. Maybe by then Hasbro will have exhausted it's love of G1 and will focus on characters found solely in current cartoons. I mean, it's entirely possible that they'll turn to something else for it's filler lines, those lines aren't fully dominated by "classics line" figures right now to start with. Classics started in *looks it up* 06. That's about 8 years ago. And G1 homages go even further back, mostly with the Energon line, back in 04.

But I don't think MPs will kill Classics "in short order." Especially since the only support Hasbro is giving it is really hard to nab Toys R Us exclusives every year or so.

Gauntlet101010 wrote:But I don't think MPs will kill Classics "in short order." Especially since the only support Hasbro is giving it is really hard to nab Toys R Us exclusives every year or so.

Then there's those of us who couldn't give two shakes about Masterpieces(beyond wanting a few certain characters) or having a Masterpiece shelf/collection. I only own 3(7? Are we counting the cassettes as accessories or individual figures?) myself and don't see any others beyond Soundblaster(you all know why) that interest me in the forseeable future. 2 are on my "I bought you but don't know where to actually put you" shelf(aka, the top of the shelf units) and the last is/are on my Soundwave shrineshelf.

Midnight_Fox wrote:2 are on my "I bought you but don't know where to actually put you" shelf(aka, the top of the shelf units)

Have you considered displaying them on the coffee table ? Theyre so big they make great conversation pieces for the mancave.

Rated X wrote:

xyl360 wrote:As for the comments about the classics bandwagon, I don't think classics will be around in 10 years. I think MP will kill it in short order.

I disagree. Ive talked to many other collectors at Botcons who dont like the large MP scale. People think Im just being an asshole when I refer to MP scale as "Barbie Doll scale" or "Coffee Table Centerpieces" but Im being dead serious. Theres a large amount of collectors who think the large size restricts the amount of figures they have room to display. It also increases the price. A higher price limits the amount of obscure characters that 3rd party companies will be willing to take a chance on. Would you spend $165 on a 3rd party MP Erector ? I rather use that money to get 2-3 classics sized figures of obscure characters. I think classics scale will be around forever. (both Hasbro and 3rd party) Little by little Hasbro is going to do more stuff from Beast Wars and Armada. Maybe in 5 years they might jump into Energon and Cybertron characters. And they will mix the waves up with characters from G2 and late G1 Japanese characters. And as Hasbro keeps doing that, 3rd parties will fill in more gaps. And keep in mind that Hasbro doesnt really aknowledge 3rd party stuff so they will release their own versions of characters that already have a popular 3rd party figure (Springer for example) They just wait for the right time. So in my honest opinion dont expect classics to go anywhere.

I agree with this. What I was referring to when I said classics was basically G1 homages. They're running out, and while they may revamp it with whatever comes out of the comics, I think their focus will largely shift to newer lines/series like Beast Wars and Armada as we go and MP will be the more G1 focused line. If/when 3rd parties follow suit (because classics G1 characters/figures are all covered), they'll then be doing Beast Wars etc. which, while it may fall under the Generations/Classics banner, I don't personally think of it as being 'classics' in the same way. I think of classics as being modernized G1 homages.

Anyway, just as I've said before, I still think that Planet X is doing the right thing right now by focusing on an area of the market that no other companies are paying any attention to rather than trying to compete with everybody else doing classics and having to worry about whether their version of whatever character is as good as/as affordable as/as <insert whatever quality, like scale, show accuracy, comic accuracy etc. here> as whatever other version(s) of the same character/figure are being developed. It's a smart move for a company to find an unexploited niche in the market because there is no competition. This combined with the fact that so far, the characters/figures they've done from the video games really have no 'classics' incarnations at all (officially or from other third parties) means that even some classics collectors are jumping on them to fill in those gaps, so it's a win-win for Planet X.