Which iconic Transformers name has led to the most toys over the years?

[griffin]

Which iconic Transformers names (not characters) do you think has had the most toys over the years - Optimus/Convoy, Megatron, Bumblebee/Bumble, Starscream, Grimlock, Soundwave... or someone else?

Or more accurately, which iconic Transformers names have resulted in the most toys homaging them in some way, specifically their name or their appearance?
(like, the 1984 Optimus Prime / Convoy has spawned many toys homaging his original form (or just the iconic head), or toys named after him, either exactly or slightly modified - like Star Convoy, Fire Convoy, Beast Convoy, Big Convoy, Optimus Primal, etc.)

I've counted a few of the contenders in my collection, but I'll wait until there have been some guesses posted before posting up the results.

[FatalityPitt]

I was thinking about this fairly recently too, but mainly pertaining to the Prime Wars trilogy.

Lets see:

Optimus Prime: Had two Voyager figures in Combiner Wars (Battlecore Optimus - White (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:CWVoyagerBattleCoreOptimusPrime.jpg), and Optimus in his regular colours (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:GenerationsVoyOP.jpg)). He had a Voyager (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-Titans-Return-Voyager-Optimus-Prime.jpg) and a Leader (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Titans_Return_Optimus.jpg) class figure in Titans Return, and he had one Leader (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-PotP-Leader-Class-Optimus-Prime.jpg) Class figure in Power of the Primes. In total, Optimus had 5 toys in the Prime Wars trilogy (excluding Takara Legends and Exclusives).

Hot Rod/Rodimus: Had a Legends (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:2015CombinerWarsHotRod.jpg) figure in Combiner Wars, a Deluxe (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-Titans-Return-Hot-Rod.jpg) in Titans Return, and 2x Leaders (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:PowerOfThePrimestoy-RodimusPrimeEvolved.jpg) in PotP (if you count Rodimus Unicronus). In total, 4 toys.

Megatron: Had a Leader (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:LeaderMegatron2015.jpg) class figure in Combiner Wars, and a Voyager (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-Titans-Return-Voyager-Megatron.jpg) in Titans Return. 2 Prime Wars toys.

Starscream: Same as Megatron, 2 toys. One CW Leader (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:CWLeaderStarscream.jpg) and a PotP Voyager (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:PowerOfThePrimestoy-Starscream.jpg).

I'd say, the top two in the Prime Wars trilogy were Optimus Prime and Hot Rod/Rodimus. Surprisingly, Bumblebee only had one toy in the entirety of Prime Wars - the Titans Return legends (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-Titans-Return-Legends-Bumblebee.jpg) figure. Even Brawn had more toys than Bumblebee (a Legends (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Generations-Titans-Return-Legends-Brawn.jpg) and a Titan Master (https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TF-Titans-Return-Brawn.jpg)).

I think if we're looking at all the Transformer lines, then definitely Optimus Prime has had the most toys, followed by Bumblebee.. and maybe Starscream? Surprisingly, there was not a single Megatron in Rid 2015.

[DELTAprime]

It's got to be Optimus.

Bumblebee would probably have the most though if he was as prolific in every line as he is in the movie lines.

[Paulbot]

Would have to think it's Optimus Prime with Bumblebee very, very close behind .

[dirge]

Ox.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Would have to think it's Optimus Prime with Bumblebee very, very close behind .

Yeah Optimus has been in nearly every continuity and usually gotten multiple toys in each new toyline/cartoon/series/whatever. Bumblebee didn't really reemerge after G2 until the live action movies started 11 years ago, then has had hundreds and hundreds of toys and also turned up in all the cartoons again, which means even more toys. I reckon the top four would have to be in order:
*Optimus
*Bumblebee
*Megatron
*Starscream

In my collection my biggest numbers would be roughly in order:
Optimus
Bumblebee
Megatron
Grimlock
Starscream
Soundwave

Megs and Bbee might have to trade places as would Screamer and Big Grim but thats about right I reckon.

[Galvatran]

Am I the only one who read the thread title, saw the poster's username and thought well that's just self serving. :p

Soundwave

[i_amtrunks]

It surely has to be Prime. Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave all would be the next tier down over the course of the full transformers history.

However ever since the movies/Prime/rid, I think the number of Bumblebees has been staggering, all the repaints and different classes.

So I’d go Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, Jazz and Grimlock over the entire history.

[SharkyMcShark]

Overall it would have to be Optimus Prime, closely followed by Bumblebee and Megatron I'd imagine.

In my own personal collection it's Optimus Prime tied with Starscream, at an estimate.

[UltraMarginal]

Am I the only one who read the thread title, saw the poster's username and thought well that's just self serving. :p

Soundwave

haha, yea it crossed my mind, 'is this a rhetorical question?'

I am going to buck the trend and suggest that Bumblebee has had the most toys, prime is very close second but since 2007, which is 11 years ago now, bumblebee has featured many times in pretty much every toy line with multiple repaints in pretty much every size class.

Prime has as well, but I don't think as much.

Starscream has got to be up there with optimus, maybe soundwave but with the exception of animated and the recent RID line, soundwave usually only gets a single representation, maybe a legend scale as well.

[griffin]

Changed topic title to avoid confusion.

[Galvatran]

There's no confusion. ...Just ratbags with too much time on their hands. Yeah Im looking at you UM. :D

[UltraMarginal]

There's no confusion. ...Just ratbags with too much time on their hands. Yeah Im looking at you UM. :D

POT. KETTLE. BLACK
:D

[BigTransformerTrev]

Changed topic title to avoid confusion.

See, now I DO find it confusing as you have BW/BM Optimus and Megatron who are completely different characters to the G1 versions so I wasn’t counting them when thinking about how many ‘Optimus’ toys are out there etc.

[griffin]

See, now I DO find it confusing as you have BW/BM Optimus and Megatron who are completely different characters to the G1 versions so I wasn’t counting them when thinking about how many ‘Optimus’ toys are out there etc.

It was hard to be exact to what I was intending.... That's sorta why I had character *name* in the title so that it covers all usage of those original names... even if there was a variation like prime/primal, as they were all Optimus like in Japan they were all Convoy.

[Galvatran]

POT. KETTLE. BLACK
:D
Hello kids. I'm Mr Pot. Today, we are going to learn about...

[GoktimusPrime]

Optimus would have to be first followed by Megatron.

Remember that Hasbro did lose the trademark right to "Bumblebee" for about a decade (1996-2005). Granted they did pump out a LOT of Bumblebee toys after 2007, so...

[griffin]

Well... here are the answers.

This is only a rough result, but since I don't focus on or discriminate against certain characters, the stats from my own collection (which is a fairly decent sample size at 6,515 toys and figurines from Hasbro and TakaraTomy), should be pretty close to the percentages you would end up with if you counted all Transformers toys ever made. (the bigger an unbiased sample size is, the more accurate its results would be to the entire populace)

Of the most iconic character names to have existed in toy form since the first two years of Transformers, these were the six that I thought would be the most prolific - Optimus/Convoy, Megatron, Starscream, Bumblebee/Bumble, Soundwave, Grimlock.

Their percentages in my collection (and total number in brackets), in descending order...

8.92% - Optimus/Convoy (581)
5.76% - Bumblebee/Bumble (375)
3.59% - Megatron (234)
2.52% - Starscream (164)
1.83% - Grimlock (119)
1.12% - Soundwave (73)

That would mean, that if you had all of the different Transformers toys ever made, there would be about 9% being some sort of Optimus... and about 6% being some sort of Bumblebee.
That also means, just those six character names, have given us almost 25% of the entire history of Transformers toys.

I was surprised that Bumblebee wasn't yet in the lead after the last 10 years of being the face of Movies and cartoons... but going through each year, 2009 and 2010 were the only years (so far) that had more Bumblebee toys than Optimus toys. Every other year since Gen1 (which only had 3 toys of each character name), it appears that Optimus had more, giving him an unbeatable 200 toy lead (thanks to 11 years of almost no Bumblebee toys, from Gen2 in 1995 to Classics in 2006). But if future toylines have a similar ratio to this year's Studio Series, which has 30% Bumblebee's and only one Optimus to the 7 Bumblebee toys, it might only take a few years for him to catch up.
Actually... if you counted Bumblebee's "stand in" during that 11 year gap (the role of a young, bright yellow character who looks up to the rest in his team, and tries to earn their respect and admiration - ie, Cheetor and Hotshot), if both of those had been called Bumblebee for taking on his "role" during the Beast Era and the Unicron Trilogy, he would have easily been number one.

[shockNwave]

It's really a no brainer that OP would be head and shoulders the number 1 on the list. One need only look at other toy lines such as Star Wars and MOTU respectively to see the pattern that kids will gravitate most heavily towards the leader of the good guys whether it's Optimus, Luke Skywalker or He-man. So it makes sense from a financial point of view for the manufacturer to put such emphasis on such characters/character names.

BTW I know Megatron has more variation in terms of more differing alt. modes he has compared to Optimus (who's mainly a truck) but as stated above, it all boils down to the leader of the good guys.

[Paulbot]

I looked at my collection and have 19 Bumblebees (plus a Goldbug) vs 18 Optimus Prime/Primals/Convoys. Very much neck and neck.

Followed by 11 Megatrons and 9 Starscreams. But I have 9 Prowls and 9 Sideswipes - both several ahead of Soundwave and Grimlock.

[griffin]

During the loooong process of updating most of my collection pages for the first time in 10 years, one of the things I've done is work out who else has the most Transformers toys named after them... to make up a "top 10".
And with an extra five months of toys (the previous numbers were up until the end of July, which was before the Bumblebee Movie toys came out)... I've recalculated the first six, and as expected, Bumblebee went up a bit, but still nowhere near Optimus.


Once again, this is just using the official toys and figurines from my collection, which totalled 6,698 at the end of 2018, and from that, these were the number of each toy that I had in the collection...
8.898% - Optimus/Convoy (596)
6.032% - Bumblebee/Bumble (404)
3.598% - Megatron (241)
2.568% - Starscream (172)
1.836% - Grimlock (123)
1.269% - Ironhide (85)
1.165% - Ratchet (78)
1.135% - Soundwave (76)
0.970% - Jazz/Meister (65)
0.896% - Hot Rod/Rodimus (60)
0.732% - Prowl (49)
0.582% - Shockwave/blast (39)
0.552% - Jetfire (37)


The thing that surprised me was Soundwave - I see Soundwave as the more significant, popular character in the original series, but he dropped down to 8th, with Ratchet and Ironhide having more toys, thanks to the Movie Universe.
One reason I didn't use the annual toy checklists is because I would have had to include the large number of identical toys that were released in Japan last year (and in some previous years), which wouldn't feel right if they were essentially the same toy in different packaging (like American and European packaged toys).

One thing I found interesting is that I now have over 400 different Bumblebee toys... now THAT would be a big wall of yellow if I ever got them all together.




Well... here are the answers.

This is only a rough result, but since I don't focus on or discriminate against certain characters, the stats from my own collection (which is a fairly decent sample size at 6,515 toys and figurines from Hasbro and TakaraTomy), should be pretty close to the percentages you would end up with if you counted all Transformers toys ever made. (the bigger an unbiased sample size is, the more accurate its results would be to the entire populace)

Of the most iconic character names to have existed in toy form since the first two years of Transformers, these were the six that I thought would be the most prolific - Optimus/Convoy, Megatron, Starscream, Bumblebee/Bumble, Soundwave, Grimlock.

Their percentages in my collection (and total number in brackets), in descending order...

8.92% - Optimus/Convoy (581)
5.76% - Bumblebee/Bumble (375)
3.59% - Megatron (234)
2.52% - Starscream (164)
1.83% - Grimlock (119)
1.12% - Soundwave (73)

That would mean, that if you had all of the different Transformers toys ever made, there would be about 9% being some sort of Optimus... and about 6% being some sort of Bumblebee.
That also means, just those six character names, have given us almost 25% of the entire history of Transformers toys.

[GoktimusPrime]

The number of Bumblebees is even more impressive when you consider that Hasbro lost the trademark for 9 years (1996-2005).

[KELPIE]

The thing that surprised me was Soundwave - I see Soundwave as the more significant, popular character in the original series, but he dropped down to 8th, with Ratchet and Ironhide having more toys, thanks to the Movie Universe.

I suspect that has something to do with the original and still most recognised Soundwave turning into an obsolete object doesn't help. Meanwhile, The Ironhide/Ratchet repaint is always a quick and easy way to pump up figure numbers in a line of fairly popular characters. On that point of repaints, I'm surprised that someone like Skywarp or Thundercracker don't have more releases than Jetfire?

Personally, I have an aversion to popular characters (no idea where this came from however it seems to be the case in all fiction and brands), so out of this list, I like Grimlock, Soundwave and Shockwave.

If I was to think of my favourite characters, just off the top of my head, seems like the common number is 3.

Beachcomber: 6
Flywheels: 3
Dreadwind: 3
Darkwing: 3
Terrorcons: 3
Sureshot: 1
Slapdash: 1

Jeez Prime, share the love!!

I know when I run Hasbro, Beachcomber will have a huge burst of Windblade style cramming down peoples throats to catch up on Prime in most toys released.

[griffin]

I was looking up this listing for a couple of things, and decided to update it with the 3 years of toys acquired since then (2019-2022). With toylines focussing on some different characters since 2018, Soundwave has jumped up three places, while Jazz dropped 2 places (from my collection of 8096 toys, which I think is a good sample size for percentages).
Also, with several Ultra Magnus toys in the last 3 years, it has overtaken Jetfire at the bottom of the list.
One interesting thing to note is that the percentages of the top character names has dropped a bit in the last 3 years, suggesting that there have been a lot more variety in toy characters... which might be due to no Movie since then, as Movie toylines are often flooded with heaps of toys of the main characters like Optimus and Bumblebee.



Once again, this is just using the official toys and figurines from my collection, which totalled 6,698 at the end of 2018, and from that, these were the number of each toy that I had in the collection...
8.898% - Optimus/Convoy (596)
6.032% - Bumblebee/Bumble (404)
3.598% - Megatron (241)
2.568% - Starscream (172)
1.836% - Grimlock (123)
1.269% - Ironhide (85)
1.165% - Ratchet (78)
1.135% - Soundwave (76)
0.970% - Jazz/Meister (65)
0.896% - Hot Rod/Rodimus (60)
0.732% - Prowl (49)
0.582% - Shockwave/blast (39)
0.552% - Jetfire (37)



Optimus/Convoy - 665 (8.21%)
Bumblebee - 467 (5.77%)
Megatron - 279 (3.45%)
Starscream - 188 (2.32%)
Grimlock - 138 (1.7%)
Soundwave - 95 (1.17%)
Ironhide - 91
Ratchet - 89
Hotrod/Rodimus - 73
Jazz - 69
Prowl - 58
Shockwave - 51
Ultra Magnus - 44
Jetfire - 43

[Jetfire in the sky]

Without reading the thread Optimus and Bumblebee for sure, then probably Megs and/or Starscream and maybe Soundwave. Jetfire would be nice too :D