Underrated Transformers Toys Thread

[Golden Phoenix]

I think I'm the only person who likes that little guy, maybe because mine's still unbroken?

Mine is still unbroken.
I love him too, so maybe your theory is right.

[LordCyrusOmega]

+1 Overall the ROTF Scout Class figures were underrated. Except Scalpel, he was a piece of crap!

I've gone through 3 Scalpels so far, refuse to buy any more. Just superglued his legs into place. I really wanted him to, it's just unfortunate that his legs break off taking him out of the package.
Hursticon: How is your's still unbroken?

[GoktimusPrime]

I don't like nor dislike Scalpel. It's not HasTak's fault that Paramount went and designed something so impractical for a toy. But that's what happens when you design Transformers as screen characters first and toys second; I much prefer Transformers being conceived as toys first, as they usually other.

[LordCyrusOmega]

True, thats what they did with BW wasn't it and it shows.
Unfortunately the toy deigners didn't have designs to go off and Mr Bay wasn't forth coming with what was being used due to (Paranoia?) his own reasons

[tinyJazz]

Hey yeah, that reminds me: RotF Dirt Boss/Deadlift. That little guy was heaps of fun, really poseable, good balance, interesting alt-mode and transformation, and then they redid him as a Gobot homage!
Wish they'd released him (Deadlift) over here, along with the Slap Dash/Trenchmouth pack...and Hot Shot etc...*sigh*

+1 Overall the ROTF Scout Class figures were underrated. Except Scalpel, he was a piece of crap!

Yes! I effing love ROTF scouts! They're a fantastic set of figures with great engineering for their size. The sports bikes are the best i think, and they remind me of masked rider too (Backfire looks like the Cyclone!).

I only own scalpel because he's a set completer, and I only display him in microscope mode. sooo ugly!

[GoktimusPrime]

True, thats what they did with BW wasn't it and it shows.

Yeah. The Beast Wars animators actually created the animation models based off 3D scans of the toys themselves! That's why Beast Wars has a pretty good degree of toy-accuracy (especially compared to G1). The majority of Transformers were made as toys first, then comic/cartoon models second. Movie Transformers are part of the exception to the rule...

The inherent problem with designing Transformers as screen characters first is that animators don't need to think about how their designs are going to translate as toys. Sometimes the animators will work in tandem with toy designers (e.g. G1 Hot Rod, Kup, Galvatron, Transformers Animated etc.) - which tends to work better, but still not as good as just making the toys straight up. With the movies they just designed the Transformers purely as screen characters. Hasbro had relatively minimal input into modifying the designs, only stepping on a rare occasion, e.g. with Optimus Prime(movie Optimus Prime design <--note the split tyres and blue chest; changed on Hasbro's behest)

But other than that, Dreamworks designers had pretty much free reign. And tbh, I can see why - because when you're trying to make the Transformers look photorealistic and have them move about naturally without cheating physics by "warping" them (as cartoon and comic artists do), then you have to make them look more complex. But unfortunately for HasTak, it makes it jolly hard to translate as toys; keeping within a certain price/size limit and time frame. The CGI movie model of Optimus Priem in the first movie has10,108 individual parts, 1,830,898 polygons, 27,744 rig nodes, and 2336 texture maps, with the volume of all pieces combined forming 154 cubic metres! That's not easy to translate into a relatively much smaller and simpler toy for kids! And as we can see with ROTF Leader OP, the more screen accurate they get, the trickier the toy is to transform - and arguably less fun to play with because it is so fiddly and tricky.

Unfortunately the toy deigners didn't have designs to go off and Mr Bay wasn't forth coming with what was being used due to (Paranoia?) his own reasons

Hasbro owns Transformers and they have to approve everything, so I imagine that they would have the right to access any of the designs at any time. Transformers is Hasbro's property after all. More likely they had access to early designs... remember that it takes about a year to create a Transformer toy from conception to final product - and during that time it's not uncommon for artists to make changes. For example movie Megatron's head was initially going to look like this:

...but Dreamworks changed it because a lot of fans hated it and complained heaps. But by this stage, Hasbro had already designed a lot of products based on the old head; e.g. Legends Megatron's head is based on the abandoned old head design.

This is another pitfall of creating Transformers as screen characters first -- it's a lot easier to make late changes to drawn characters versus changing the toy. For example, toys like G1 Hot Rod, Blurr, Kup, Cyclonus, Scourge, Galvatron etc. were based on cartoon models made for Transformers The Movie, but the toys look different because they were based on earlier designs that were later changed.

So yeah, with the live action movies, having them as screen-designed characters first is unfortunately a necessity. Having said that, Hasbro can step in if a design just looks too weird and tell them to change it if they wanted to... like Alice... Aaron Archer kept on insisting that Transformers "don't morph" (despite the fact that they did during Beast Machines) and that having alt mode kibble was a defining feature of the Transformers... where the frell are Alice's alt mode kibble when she's in robot mode?? Gee, thanks a lot Dreamworks... she's gonna be a beeotch of a toy to design. Oh wait, Hasbro never bothered!

[Hursticon]

Mine is still unbroken.
I love him too, so maybe your theory is right.

Fingers crossed anyway.

I've gone through 3 Scalpels so far, refuse to buy any more. Just superglued his legs into place. I really wanted him to, it's just unfortunate that his legs break off taking him out of the package.
Hursticon: How is your's still unbroken?

Skill mate, skill.

I only own scalpel because he's a set completer, and I only display him in microscope mode. sooo ugly!

I love him for both of those reasons, he's an ugly microscope.

[Jetfire in the sky]

Ok, so I sped read this thread for most of it, and there are some great TF's picked.
But I reckon an extremely underrated TF figure(s ) is .........................



The Jumpstarters.
Hello, they transformerd themselves while advancing on the enemy
A cheap G1 item even thesedays, and I remember my cousin who didn't have any other TF's had one and I didn't , as much as I longed for some of my input to tranform it, I watched in awe as it did it by itself.

[GoktimusPrime]

And the Jumpstarters were also much better designed than their predecessors, the Battlechargers. While the Battlechargers may have Earth based alt modes, the Jumpstarters had much nicer robot modes. My only gripe about the Jumpstarters was that the gimmick never quite worked like it was meant to -- i.e. the odds of a Jumpstarter landing on its feet and not toppling over was slim, even back in 1985. But conceptually it was a fun gimmick.

On that note, another underrated toy is McDonalds Happy Meal Armada Starscream, which is essentially a Jumpstarter itself... but being a 2003 toy, the gimmick works a lot better on it than on the original Jumpstarters. And for just a cheap $2 Maccas toy, incredibly great value for money.


Above: Happy Meal Starscream using his psychic powers to predict the outcome of the last Federal election.It picked Liberal... so while this toy's psychic powers may suck, its Jumpstarter gimmick works excellently!

[SkyWarp91]

Photographic proof of why Magnaguard is an awesome TF who is also underrated...