Opinion: Bottom 5 Moments of IDW's Transformers Run

[BigTransformerTrev]

I love this article on the subject.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai.../legos/484115/

If Lego are right the old Japanese trope of Arcee staying back at base might be the way to go. Of course not as a maid. But if boys play patterns are about the vehicles and girls play patterns are about interacting with an environment like a playset it would be interesting to see how Transformers would have to be modified to facilitate it.

Well, my daughter:

took all my Autobot Fembots the other day and made them have a tea party. She loved the fact that they had working knees so she could make them sit on her dollhouse chairs! It was so cute! She wouldn't have been remotely interested in playing with my Transformers if they were all boys that turned into tanks.

So just make sure the Fembots have knees so they can sit down with each other for a nice chat

Jokes aside, I've often used Transformers to try and show my son there is nothing wrong with, as he terms it, 'girl stuff'. Like he has an eversion to the colour pink so I will dig out my Seacons and say 'Well these are pink and they combine into a giant killing machine!'. I quite liked Strongarm in RID as she really got away from the Fembot stereotype, both with her attitude and her alt-mode. I was really pleased when my son complained the other day the only Strongarm he has is the Happy Meals one.

We really tried not to steer our kids towards gender-specific toys and when they were little made sure the majority of their toys didn't make them conform to the stereotypes. But it soon became apparent when they started daycare at around 18 months that those were the toys they wanted. There were tons of different toys on offer but my son never showed interest in the dolls, he liked the trucks. Conversely my daughter made straight for the dollies and wasn't interested in playing cars.

We are really liking the Marble Run set we gave my son for Xmas as they both play with it and both really enjoy it. It's got a ton of different colours so there are as many pink connectors as blue and it encourages creativity and understanding of the basic principles of cause and effect. It's a brilliant example of a fun non-gender specific toy.

As for how the Japanese treat Fembots, I think they make the best toys by far, but they still market those Fembots to males rather than girls. For instance I love my Megatronia but the comic that came with her showed the rest of the female team soaping Megaempress up in the shower Definitely aimed at male collectors. Likewise Legends Blackarachnia is a great toy, but considering how busty they made her on the boxart, it made it apparent that it was a Fembot once again marketed to males.

How you would market Fembots specifically to girls I don't know, the most I have bought my daughter so far was the My Little Kitty/Transformers crossover toy an I intend to get her some Bot-Bots this Xmas.

[FatalityPitt]

How you would market Fembots specifically to girls I don't know, the most I have bought my daughter so far was the My Little Kitty/Transformers crossover toy an I intend to get her some Bot-Bots this Xmas.

I'm probably generalising a bit, but I think a lot of younger girls like princesses and plush animals. Maybe if Hasbro wanted to market Transformers to a female audience; they could make fembots who transform into cute animals (bears, cats, rabbits, etc) and give them these princess-themed accessories like tiaras, magic wands, etc. I don't have kids so I'm really just guessing.

In the spirit of the thread, one thing I found underwhelming with the IDW run was the Titans Return arc. I thought it was going to tie in with the toy line but the only Titan Master characters I saw during that arc were Infinitus/Sentinel Prime, Sovereign, and that guy who's head turned into a cat who got killed by Galvatron. Besides Chromedome, Brainstorm, Misfire and Krok; I thought a lot of the characters in the toyline like Blaster, Highbrow, Weirdwolf and Mindwipe were underused in the comics. Since most of the Autobot Headmasters (except Hardhead who was dead at the time) were on the lost light, it maybe would have been good if James Roberts did a 2 or 3 issue arc that focused on those characters back when Titans Return toys were still on the store shelves.