What do you consider to be the WORST G1 Toy Concept?

[GoktimusPrime]

I voted Pretenders for two reasons; (i) the outer shell has minimal/no articulation (worse than Action Masters), and

Yeah but the shells are just accessories and not the action Transformers themselves.

(ii) the inner robots mostly contort instead of transform.

^Agree 100%

At least the Action Masters never pretended to be able to transform.

...other than daring to call themselves "Transformers" and being marketed as part of the mainstream toyline.

I'm surprised the Headmasters received any vote at all, as i consider the Headmaster concept the best toy gimmick in mainline TF history, and am hoping beyond hope of this concept getting a Classics/Generations treatment. Having a pilot/trainer figure integrating in such a way just adds so much playability to the main figure, IMO.

I like the concept too.

Well the three groups that haven't gotten any votes as the worst (as yet) are certainly the three I didn't think would because they are so cool! I just thought I had better put them to make the whole thing fair:

Targetmasters: Little Nebulan dudes who turned into guns and could attach to either the vehicle or robot was a great idea! Maybe they got it from Megatron pretty much being treated like a Targemaster in the cartoon. THe one thing I liked about the Action Masters was their targetmaster partners, very cool to have characters like Catgut & Gatoraider (seriously - didn't Michael Bay get alerted to that? Could have made a FORTUNE in cross-promotion in the movies with him in it) turn from animals into guns. And of course it made the smaller Seacons have more play value.

The concept actually came from Koutetsu Jeeg, a Japanese series from the mid 1970s where the main hero character (Hiroshi) is a cyborg who can transform into the head of a big mighty robot called Koutetsu Jeeg. Koutetsu Jeeg is also likely the inspiration for Wheeljack's head.

Combiners: Seriously - who the frag doesn't love combiners? Combaticons, Stunticons, Constructicons, Aerialbots etc etc that combine into giant hulking robots - just fricken cool man! To my mind one of the very BEST TF toy concepts!

It's such a clever way to entice kids to collect an entire set of toys, isn't it?

Pallette-swapped characters: We wouldn't have Skywarp and Thundercarcker - nuff said! Though I would kinda have liked to see with those guys like they did with Ken & Ryu in Street Fighter, make them stay similar but with a little more individuality and difference in each iteration.

They did have more individuality in the toy continuity (which came first) -- their tech spec bios portray them as being different:
+ Starscream: treacherous and cunning, believes in the use of deception over brute force
+ Thundercacker: morally ambiguous. Not fully convinced of the Decepticon cause but supports them only because he disagrees with the Autobots more (kinda like voting for a political party not because you like them, but only because you dislike the other mob more ) <--IMO one of the most interesting characters in G1
+ Skywarp: Total grunt. Absolutely loyal and follows orders without question, but is also completely useless without someone giving him orders.
+ Rumble: reckless punk
+ Frenzy: sadistic
...etc.
And that's one thing I really miss about G1 -- how every toy was a unique character with their own individual quirks. They just don't do that anymore.

I don't mind repaints per se... but they work so much better when they're new individual characters with their own personalities instead of just being random repaints of each other. Can you imagine how some of these toys would have worked out if Hasbro of Today was in charge of early G1?
* Red and grey jet = Starscream
* Blue jet = Night Attack Starscream
* Black jet = Shadow Strike Starscream
...etc.
Real lack of creativity. (of course the creativity from G1 came from Marvel rather than Hasbro - but at least Hasbro at the time were willing to enlist the help of Marvel whom they felt could do a better job of creating a stories and character bios than they could -- and they were right! Imagine if Hasbro of Today allowed IDW writers to come up with new character concepts and write their bios etc.)

[kup]

Over time I have grown to accept and like Action Masters but for the longest time, I hated them. They were just a cop out. Easy to manufacture action figures that don't require transforming.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

you only recognise as the bot mode coz it's got the face. -(due to just turning around as a "transformation" - lame)

Ha ha ha! Yeah, That's so true! I never really thought about it like that (I still like my Firecons though...)

[GoktimusPrime]

I like my Firecons too, but I do recognise that they are some of the worst engineered Transformers in G1. But I certainly don't hate them because:
+ They're such a small sub group (there's only 3 of them), by NO means did they ever dominate the toy line like Action Masters did! If you really hated them, they were _easily_ ignorable.
+ They're so little and cheap... it's not as if Hasbro were ripping us off with these toys that only cost a few dollars each.
+ Let's face it... the sparking gimmick is cool!

But yeah, they're transformation reminds me of the monsters in Monkey (Magic)... cos the demons always appeared in human form first, then they'd spin around and turn into their humans with excessive make up and bad prosthetics^demon forms!
"Born from an pod on a mountain top, the punkiest Firecons that ever popped...."

[Jetfire in the sky]

"Born from an pod on a mountain top, the punkiest Firecons that ever popped...."

*shakes head*

Just on the Firecons sparking toys were all the go at the time so however they got the gimmick into Transformers seemed secondary to Transformation which generally got pretty lazy by series 5. I love Monsterbots though.
Didn't Firecons have a moulded part for where a rub sticker should have gone which then got blocked out? Just asking coz I don't really collect beyond Series four anymore but I'm pretty sure I found it an oddity years ago.

[Jetfire in the sky]

Oh just to back up so many votes against Action Masters my brother, who was born in '86 and the recipient of many a shelf warming Action Master said to me when he was about 10, these should be called Craption Masters! Mainly due to the fact that after years of play they couldn't stand, their arms sagged and the parts broke easily.

[GoktimusPrime]

Years nothing... some of them were already in that condition after a several months!

[Jetfire in the sky]

Years nothing... some of them were already in that condition after a several months!

LOL, out of the pack even!!

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

*shakes head*

Just on the Firecons sparking toys were all the go at the time so however they got the gimmick into Transformers seemed secondary to Transformation which generally got pretty lazy by series 5. I love Monsterbots though.

The Monsterbots weren't bad really. The spark section was catered for quite well and they still retained pretty good transformation for the time.

Grotusque is still a fave of mine.