I have no idea who the target market for these Cyberverse toys are. They're being pitched at school-aged children but are clearly below their engagement level, yet the engineering is honestly still the level for most preschoolers. To put it bluntly, they're too simple for kids but too fiddly for infants (because they still require a level of fine motor dexterity that's beyond what your typical toddler can do. Infants typically hold a pencil or crayon with a palmer grip - either a simple cylindrical grasp or a primitive digital grasp. Preschoolers will be starting to use a simplified tripod grip but it's not really until school age that most kids have developed the dexterity to even begin learning how to hold a pencil with a proper tripod grip. And it's also more physically exhausting for smaller hands to manipulate smaller parts. This is why toys aimed at infants use larger parts - aside from preventing choking hazards, it's physically easier for smaller hands to manipulate them. Think about when you get a really tiny flat single stud Lego piece that's attached to another single stud piece and you want to separate those pieces. Sometimes it's not easy and you gotta use a strong grip to separate them. This is why Duplo uses larger pieces. It gives more more of a gripping surface that makes it easier for smaller hands to manipulate.

Similarly when we look at Rescue Bots we see that the parts that need to be manipulated for transformation are large and require less precise motor skills. Getting some of the Cyberverse pieces to tab into the slots can be just as tricky as on other Transformer toys. Watch any video review of Cyberverse Warrior Starscream and look at how the leg tabs slot into the chest when going to jet mode. Or Ultimate Optimus Prime's legs when transforming to truck mode. It's not simple! Buuuut it's not really challenging either in a fun way. It's just tricky because it's fiddly. Fiddly toys are not good toys for infants! Yet the toys are still too basic for children. What?!

And you're absolutely right. How are these toys going to bring new collectors into the line? Or how is it going to maintain current collectors to stay and not quit? Actually, the children who grew up with Transformers Prime are now teenagers. I wonder how many of them are still fans today?

Forget style for a moment. In terms of engineering I found that the early RiD toys weren't very strong, but the later figures got a lot better. By the time we got around to RiD Warrior Starscream, Blurr etc., the engineering had become actually very good. RiD Warrior Starscream is one of my favourite of the Aligned Warriors/Deluxes. He's a lot more solid than TFP Deluxe Starscream and he incorporates part of the cockpit into the chest (whereas on TFP it just sits above his butt as kibble). RiD Warrior Starscream turned out to be a better toy than I expected and engineering-wise, was a step up from TFP. Cyberverse Warrior Starscream is jump down.