Aaron Archer

[kup]

My main issue with Archer is that he does not seem to understand the toy line he is in charge of.

Like Goks said:

- Archer started if by doing TM2s and Beast Machines with the whole technorganic (cyborg creatures) is better than the traditional robotic angle and was in his view a good development path for Transformers. WTF?? ON top of that many of the BM toys were atrociously simple 'transformers' only requiring a head swap and twisting of limbs to change form.

- Unfocused and shameless repaints that feel very random as if they are spinning 3 game show wheels (1 with released mold names, 1 with avaliable colors and 1 with Transformer names) and then the result from each wheel is used for the next repaint.

- Putting ahead flashy gimmicks and boxes over toy design and quality. You get this huge boxes covered in art that take an hour to open but the toy is either badly assembled or with peeling paint.

- Related to the above, Hasbro seems to not give a damn about customer satisfaction, only that you give them your money. If you feel disapointed at the quality of the toy after you bought it, who cares. This also causes many of Hasbro's toys to smack of cheapness and production cost cutting despite the high retail prices with higher emphasis on packaging.

- Again related to the previous points, Hasbro does not give a crap about improving on past mistakes or listening to the customer base. They seem to only consider the retailers as their customer not the end buyer. Therefore when you see them making a big mistake that results in a toy becoming a shelf warmer (stupid repaint, over expensive gimmick toy, etc) its not unusual for Hasbro to make the same mistake for several following toy lines. Takara on the other hand is no stranger to making mistakes (MP Greenscream is one of the biggest mistakes in TF history) but you do see them trying to compensate or make an effort on correcting a mistake in future toys. That can be clearly seen with MP Skywarp.

-Crapstacular toy release priorities: Why do we need millions of fabs, Real gears, merchandise and endless repaints of unpopular molds when there is only a limited production runs for toys representing popular characters? Instead of a stupid repaint of an unpopular molds, why not rerelease the toy that its high on demand? You limit the possibility of shelf warming toys that way but Hasbro doesn't seem to get it.

- Crapstacular Toy distribution: Although Titaniums were by default not very good toys, a lot of people wanted the War Within molds but had a very hard time finding them retail. One of the big reasons that the line failed was that it was a humongous effort to acquire the toys, even in the US!

I am sure that I can think of more negative stuff but I could just go on so its only fair to end this post with something that Hasbro did excellently well and that is MP Starscream in G1 colors. That figure was superbly done and although some like myself do not like battle damage/grime in toys, I have to admit that it was realistically executed. Hasbro has proven that they have the capability to excell and execute focus on their toy lines and that is why the clearly lazy/cheap stuff is inexcusable.

Aaron Archer is the guy in charge of the Hasbro Transformers line as a result many of its failings have happened under his watch and leadership. This may be a coincidense but Hasbro's downwards spiral when it comes to toy quality also begun in force when he took over.

Edit: My god, corrected so many spelling mistakes :O
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