Quote Originally Posted by Jellico View Post
It is a hard business case to provide support for a series that has been off air for 10 years and had poor official support to start with.
Animated EARNED its love the hard way. But we are never going to see any characters beyond Lockdown, Lugnut, Slipstream, and Bulkhead.
I don't know if I entirely agree with that. Animated came along at a time when Transformers was already massively popular. Animated toys first came out in 2008 and we know that Transformer toy sales doubled in that year against 2007 sales. There was also a looooot of merchandising for Transformers Animated. Stationery, apparel, games etc etc. And they even pushed the show to begin airing before the toys hit stores to give the line additional exposure and thus boost toy sale potential.

I personally think that BEAST WARS earnt its love the hard way. BW came out at a time when the Transformers franchise had hit rock-bottom. Just think back to what being a Transformers collector was like in the mid 1990s. It SUCKED! So many stores just weren't carrying late G2 toys because retail buyers had stopped ordering stock, while other stores were overflowing with G2 toys because nobody was buying them! I remember searching for ages to find Laser Optimus Prime and finally finding one lone figure at Toyworld, then years later finding mountains of them gathering dust at TRU. They couldn't even give these toys away, and Laser OP is a bloody awesome toy!

And support from Hasbro for BW in the beginning was pretty low. Hasbro even refused to put their name on the packaging, instead they used Kenner's logo! Hasbro was even afraid to put the "Transformers" logo on the packaging, instead they made "BEAST WARS" really big and transformers in smaller font sitting underneath the BW logo. And we know that the cartoon was created and released after the launch of the toy line, which is why the initial toy-canon was so different from the cartoon, and also why Optimus Primal and Megatron started off as Ultras and never appeared in their early Basic toy forms (although this was considered).

We also know that there was a lot of initial backlash and negative reactions from fans, spawning the fan-saying, "TRUKK NOT MUNKY" and early claims of "RUINED FOREVER" and "RUINED MY CHILDHOOD" etc etc. Seriously, remember some of those early online comments? And remember how some of us joined pro-BW groups like BWADL (Beast Wars Anti-Defamation League) to combat all of these naysayers in support of BW? Man, those were not fun times! But all of these critics were eventually silenced when BW won the fans over with its excellent toys and TV show, creating an enduring legacy.

But getting back to Generations, we also know that Generations has touched on characters that Hasbro haven't touched in yonks. As great as BW was, Hasbro's done bugger all with it since 1999, yet we got BW toys in CHUG and we have more coming up. They even gave us BM characters like Tankor! And BM was very poorly received by fans and Hasbro hadn't touched it since 2001. Generations gave us Lioné (Sawback) and Shuffler! Characters that Hasbro's never touched before and Takara haven't touched them since 1987! If they can give us characters as obscure as Shuffler then surely they can do Animated Omega Supreme.

And it wouldn't need to be Titan Class. I'd be happy with a Leader Class. A Titan Class wouldn't be in scale with Deluxes, Voyagers and Leaders anyway -- I'd rather a smaller toy that's well made than some overpriced and oversized Titan Class. And it'd be easier to find space for smaller toys! One reason why I'm skipping LG Grand Maximus is because I just wouldn't have the bloody room for it.