I find text most useful! That's something I really appreciate about most Japanese instructions (though lately I find that they've emulated Hasbro in cutting down on the text); especially useful with toys like Binaltech, Masterpiece etc. With Hasbro TFs, sometimes I get stuck and I have to go to YouTube and watch a video review to see what I'm doing wrong (e.g. MP Rodimus' hands). But I shouldn't have to -- the instructions alone should be sufficient to let me know how to transform it.

It doesn't help that some Hasbro instructions are really poorly illustrated. Even though instructions now use photographs, I find the quality of the photography on some instructions can be confusing - and sadly recent TakTOM instructions have been like that too. The old Takara instructions were so well illustrated that I think it's possible to follow them purely visually without being able to read the text (as I'm sure some non-Japanese reading folks here may testify w/ their BT and MP instructions ). It also really doesn't help when the toy isn't transformed properly in packaging to begin with (and again I'm finding this to be an increasingly occurring problem w/ TakTOM TFs of late too). Are they assuming that kids are too stupid to read toy instructions? Come on... we grew up with G1 and we were able to read their instructions! Heck, those instructions taught me entirely new vocabulary that I didn't have before reading them, like "pivot," "rotate," and "authenticity" etc.

Part of Hasbro's argument might be that they don't want to exclude their non-English speaking markets by only printing instructions in English. Okay, if you print the text in English that means that only English speaking kids can read it, and non-English speaking kids can't. When you print the instructions with no text, it means everyone can't read it! Hooray, we're all screwed! And honestly, as if Hasbro doesn't print a different set of instructions for their different markets anyway. I've bought a few Hasbro TFs from China before and the text on it (e.g. character name etc.) is in Chinese, not English! So they've clearly printed a separate run of instructions for the Sinophone market anyway. There goes that argument.

And as many have said - it's useful for parents... and the majority of people who buy Transformers are still parents buying for their kids. Kids who may ask for help. I never asked for help when I was a kid, but admittedly the TFs we grew up with were a damn sight easier to transform than some Transformers today. Leader Class ROTF Optimus Prime and Sentinel Prime were challenging for me, so I can imagine non-Transfan parents getting stumped on those toys.