The Energon Pub

thedistinctroom wrote:Not to bash viciously with disdain... However.

If I really have to think about it... I suppose that my other pet peeve might be just the simple lack of details, paint apps, complexity of transformation and other tidbits (hollow Jetfire ) that keep folks like me not feeling so serious about them, as in days past.

To be fair though... Either, I'm getting old (38) and my brain is only concerned with what I can accept, OR the toys these days are... I don't want to say "cheap" (self-censorship!)... But, maybe somewhat more watered-down from past days of yore. Especially when I compare a modern Leader, or Deluxe to a TF in the same range from 7 years ago. It's staggering how things have changed.

The current proliferation of simplicity, within the TF domain, is making my mind numb and weary. I demand more from my robots than just a simple gimmick, with unpainted, snap-on wheels. (Blame the economy? Or children, perhaps?)

I noticed it a lot more when I was doing the MOTUC line. Toys would show up in the mail already broken... when I was a kid they were downright ABUSED and always came back for more. Now at 10x the price I can't let a kid play with it for fear it'll be broke?!?

Something went horribly wrong.


On the other hand, there is a double edged sword. Some of the TF from 7-8 years ago were TOO complex... TOO difficult. We bought a few for the nephews... and they could NEVER get them transformed right, They gave them to their dad... and HE could never get them right either. Eventually they got something close, and they ended up on shelf till the next garage sale...

There has to be that sweet spot where something is 'not watered down' yet 'fun to play with'. I think CW superion is pretty close to that spot.

Noideaforaname wrote:A Mini-Con made a far better bucket-wheel excavator:


Speaking of which, I *hate* when ginormous vehicles end up getting tiny toys. As janked up as scale is, you can usually find at least one or two other figures that kinda fit. What the heck am I supposed to do with this guy?

OMG THAT IS HILARIOUS! XD A Minicon, really?

thedistinctroom wrote:Not to bash viciously with disdain... However.

If I really have to think about it... I suppose that my other pet peeve might be just the simple lack of details, paint apps, complexity of transformation and other tidbits (hollow Jetfire ) that keep folks like me not feeling so serious about them, as in days past.

I can totally get by that. For instance, I find it quite pathetic that Hasbro didnt even paint the beard that was clearly designed and sculpted on Robots in Disguise Drift. Why was that so darn hard to do?!



I know its small in the pic but you can still see it a bit.

I repeat, since I seem to be a lone voice crying out in the wilderness...

Beastformers that don't transform.

How many of them simply stand up, stick their tail in their hand, and flip the animal head forwards or back?

That's not a Transformer, that's a robot on its hands and knees wearing a halloween mask.

Valandar wrote:I repeat, since I seem to be a lone voice crying out in the wilderness...

Beastformers that don't transform.

How many of them simply stand up, stick their tail in their hand, and flip the animal head forwards or back?

That's not a Transformer, that's a robot on its hands and knees wearing a halloween mask.

I read it, I just didn't respond.

I agree, those are not transformers.

I hated how the entire Beast Hunters line was basically just that. And to make things worse they were all bog-standard Western Dragons, too. It was sooooo boring.

The recent trend of having clips instead of pins for the wheels makes things feel a bit "dollar store" to me. Especially when combined with unpainted hubcaps.



For repaints, characters being picked based on alt mode even if the robot mode looks totally wrong. Like Alternators Swindle, for example.

Toys that don't come with any kind of weapon at all, even a built in one. Like Energon Storm Jet or RID 2015 Grimlock. Or, it seems, the Hasbro CW Constructicons.

Any situation where a joint that is supposed to move is more resistant than a joint that's meant to be fixed. Like the shoulders on Generations Blitzwing or Hasbro MP Sunstorm.

On a more meta level, the ridiculous overuse of a handful of characters. Go into a well-stocked TRU in 2013 and you could have seen Platinum Starscream, Generations Starscream, FOC Starscream, IDW Armada Starscream, Prime Beast Hunters Starscream (in two size classes) and probably some Kreon and Constructabot Starscreams too.

Oh, and just to throw in 3rd Parties: the fact that they all draw from the same absurdly limited well. I've come to forgive FansProject, just because everything they've made so far not only seems to fill a niche that HasTak aren't touching, but also they seem to be inspiring HasTak into following fan wants. Would we have a Masterpiece Ultra Magnus or a Generations Brainstorm if FunPub hadn't demonstrated that that **** would sell? My gut says maybe. And even now they're taking on the likes of Quickswitch. Goddamn Quickswitch.

And on the other end of that ladder I recently got an email from BBTS telling me there was a preorder for a NEW COMBINER MADE OF GREEN AND PURPLE CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE TRANSFORMING ROBOTS.

Also how many not-Dinobots do we really need?

Awkward/non-existant weapons storage in vehicle mode. One of my only peeves with the few CW figures I have is that their weapons look extremely daft when pegged on in vehicle mode (the one exception being my homeboy Alpha Bravo). I'm actually more willing to forgive it on cars, as a car with a giant gun sticking out of the top is kinda cool.

Jetformers with ridiculous amounts of undercarriage junk. Case in point, Movie 2007 Starscream (or in my case Thundercracker). Awesome robot mode, dreadful jet mode.

Combiner kibble that literally does nothing at all outside of combined mode. I don't mind hands and feet being separate parts, but for f*ck's sake make them do SOMETHING! I feel the CW hands and feet actually did a great job in this regard.

Overuse of a particular mold with minimal differences between iterations. Alpha Bravo? Cool figure, one of my favourite deluxes in recent years. Blades? Kinda lazy but it works. Vortex? C'mon Hasbro, can't you at least reshell him ala Dead End into Streetwise? The 2 Victorion copters? FUUUUUUUUUU-

New peeve: people complaining about Vortex not being retooled.
Alpha Bravo is literally just Vortex in white and orange. This has been obvious from the get-go. If anybody should have been retooled, it was Blades.

That Bot wrote:New peeve: people complaining about Vortex not being retooled.
Alpha Bravo is literally just Vortex in white and orange. This has been obvious from the get-go. If anybody should have been retooled, it was Blades.

I can totally get behind that. Glad I bought the Takara Superion then, I wont be repeating that exact mold

Noideaforaname wrote:A Mini-Con made a far better bucket-wheel excavator:


Speaking of which, I *hate* when ginormous vehicles end up getting tiny toys. As janked up as scale is, you can usually find at least one or two other figures that kinda fit. What the heck am I supposed to do with this guy?

Attach him to someone's arm as a bad-ass piece of weaponry.

That Bot wrote:New peeve: people complaining about Vortex not being retooled.
Alpha Bravo is literally just Vortex in white and orange. This has been obvious from the get-go. If anybody should have been retooled, it was Blades.

Agreed. If you did not see that coming, then you clearly need to better elevate your expectations.

...And for Primus' sake. Where on Cybertron did the Tech Specs go?

I think they really add to the overall character of the figures. Why remove them? (Things that make you go "Hmmmmmmm".)

Counterpunch wrote:Attach him to someone's arm as a bad-ass piece of weaponry.

Well in that case he might as well be a hand-held buzzsaw.

Noideaforaname wrote:I hated how the entire Beast Hunters line was basically just that. And to make things worse they were all bog-standard Western Dragons, too. It was sooooo boring.

I honestly prefer the western dragons. Eastern dragons are just fancy snakes.


My pet peeves?

The people who complained about how inhuman a lot of the transformers looked in Revenge of The Fallen.
Some of my favorite figures came out of that movie simply because they look the way they do. Arcee, Demolishor, Scalpel, Rampage, they all look good because they don't bother to have the standard bipedal form. But then people had to ruin that route of character design by whining that they didn't look human enough. Bah!

Transformers with high heels.
It doesn't work. These are robots that are fighting a war, so it doesn't make sense like that, but more over, they're so hard to stand and pose for pictures.

Swords.
So many swords. Give them more interesting melee weaponry. There are so many cool things out there that robots could be smacking each other with. Flails, knuckle dusters, shield-weapons, chainsaws, maces, scythes, tridents, glaives, pickaxes, baseball bats, 2x4's, steel chairs, inner tubes, dead rats tied to sticks! Anything would be more interesting than a sword at this point!

Bumblebee.
F****** BUMBLEBEE!

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I honestly prefer the western dragons. Eastern dragons are just fancy snakes.

There's more to dragons than those 2 types of dragons. At the very least, they could've mixed in a hydra, a sea serpent, a wyvern, etc.. Even better if they'd went with these kinds of dragons:





Or if they absolutely posilutely HAVE to use the 4-limbed winged reptile look, jazz it up a little so it's not so generic:

Noideaforaname wrote:

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I honestly prefer the western dragons. Eastern dragons are just fancy snakes.

There's more to dragons than those 2 types of dragons. At the very least, they could've mixed in a hydra, a sea serpent, a wyvern, etc.. Even better if they'd went with these kinds of dragons:





Or if they absolutely posilutely HAVE to use the 4-limbed winged reptile look, jazz it up a little so it's not so generic:

Hm, I agree, those would have looked better. Mind you, half of the TF:P Predacons didn't look like standard dragons anyway. Darksteel, Laserback, Vertebreak, and Grimwing all had more "alternative dragon" modes rather than standard ones. You could even argue that the regular voyager Predaking wasn't a standard dragon, since he had 3 heads (though two became his weapons in robot mode).

Noideaforaname wrote:

Fires_Of_Inferno wrote:I honestly prefer the western dragons. Eastern dragons are just fancy snakes.

There's more to dragons than those 2 types of dragons. At the very least, they could've mixed in a hydra, a sea serpent, a wyvern, etc.. Even better if they'd went with these kinds of dragons:





Or if they absolutely posilutely HAVE to use the 4-limbed winged reptile look, jazz it up a little so it's not so generic:

Is that last one a Jabberwock?

You really want a manfaced sixlegged turtle alt mode for a "dragon"?





Or something that looks like a snake had sex with a long haired guinea pig? Yeah, I can see that being a big seller, get on that Hastak, I smell MONAYYYYYYYY

RiddlerJ wrote:

Noideaforaname wrote:

Is that last one a Jabberwock?

YEAH... looks like it! I painted Reapers version of a Jabberwock miniature, and it definitely looked like that!
http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/j ... down/89016

Never seen this picture though! Always wondered where the sculpt idea came from.

phantom1592 wrote:

RiddlerJ wrote:

Noideaforaname wrote:

Is that last one a Jabberwock?

YEAH... looks like it! I painted Reapers version of a Jabberwock miniature, and it definitely looked like that!
http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/j ... down/89016

Never seen this picture though! Always wondered where the sculpt idea came from.

Wiki says that picture is "John Tenniel's original illustration of "Jabberwocky" from Through the Looking-Glass" so it's the original source material, more or less.

The worst thing for me are misplaced elbow/knee joints (Cybertron Hot Shot).

I also hate floppy rubber pieces of any kind. If a figure has a piece that was designed to be flexible, I don't normally like it. Just make the sucker out of hard plastic, and so what if I break it.

Prime Riblet wrote:The worst thing for me are misplaced elbow/knee joints (Cybertron Hot Shot).

I also hate floppy rubber pieces of any kind. If a figure has a piece that was designed to be flexible, I don't normally like it. Just make the sucker out of hard plastic, and so what if I break it.

Unless it's sharp or pointy, then they should make it softer so that kids don't stab themselves. Btw the Gen deluxe Armada Starscream, he has some rubber on the end of his nosecone, but the way they used it, and the way it attached it, I didn't even know it was soft plastic at first. That is the way soft plastic is SUPPOSED to be used. I've said my piece.

I always thought Thrust looked like a toy that was supposed to have flames in his engines and licked in an out as he was pushed along.

I don't especially like that I had to put sticky tape on Beast Machines Cycle Drone's arm to hold it together when the missile isn't used.

I don't like that Beast Machines Nightscream is so tall he fits on hardly any of my shelves and that he's so tall he's got to be in the top 30 tallest Transformers to all time yet the character was the aside from Rattrap the possibly shortest guy on the show.

I also don't like how easy he's can break due to the used of Transparent plastic in parts that are under stress.

His Tommy Copper hands don't impress me much either.

I don't have too many pet peeves when it comes to Transformers and some of them are strictly my own doing, anyway here are a few that come to mind:

Robots without hands! I don't mind if they have one hand and one gun or weapon hand, but I can't stand robots without any hands. the movie Incinerator, and Armada Thrust instantly come to mind.
It also bugs me when the robots hands are surrounded by vehicle parts making them effectively unusable as a hand like RID Strongarm.

Gimmicks that adversely affect the aesthetics of the robot or alt mode! Just look at almost all of the Cybertron line, there were a few that got it right but often the cyber key gimmick led to bulbous or protruding parts.

Passing on a retool/repaint because I think I already have that toy and don't need another in a different color. Happens occasionally, one example is the Generations Kup retool as Swerve. Saw it in the store and passed thinking it was a dumb repaint, and of course now I want it. Same for Generations Sky Shadow, Classics Treadbolt, Universe Darkwind and more.
I almost always end up wanting these repaint/retools and end up trying to track them down for more money on the secondary market.

When there is a figure I really want but it was released in a limited fashion like through the Collectors Club. There are very few of the Club figures I've ever wanted, but every once in a while something like Chromedome will come out and I will really want it, but am not often in a position where I can justify paying 100.00 on a transformer.
I have to wait until Hasbro releases one at mass retail, or eventually breakdown and pay the ridiculous aftermarket price.