Toys Then and Now

[Ralph Wiggum]

I feel there is definitely something for everybody nowadays and whether you?re young or old, there is a Transformers line to scratch your playing or collecting itch. I feel like there was less choice back then.

I?m not a fan of loot box toys, but looking back there?s been various toy concepts over the years that I?ve tended to think lesser of (like Beybladez...does Yu Gi Oh count?) so really I just move on.

One thing that does make me wonder is the price of toys. Without opening the can of worms regarding quality of toys, the fact that toy prices seem to be rising, whilst wage growth is pretty stagnant, does make collecting certain lines a bit on the nose. Maybe someone can crunch some numbers comparing past and present wages proportional to toy cost.

[UltraMarginal]

Whilst I'm a geewuner at heart, that is mostly due to nostalgia. Bot mode on those toys were mostly pretty clunky.

Ever since Combiner Wars came out, I have loved the direction and quality of the new toys. They feel like upgrades to the old G1 version. Yes there are a lot of repaints and retools but that is needed to turn a profit and I'm not complaining about the variety.

This is a transformers renaissance we are going through. Change my mind?

Note: applying this to Transformers only could probably see this on another section of the forums.

You're wrong.
there, changed it.

No really, I completely agree with you except for when you think the renaissance started. I feel like it started with the Classics/Classics 2.0 line when HasTak started to produce original moulds of classic characters, at the time it was all G1, but since then we've had comics only characters, and representations (generally not many but still some) of almost every stage of transformers history in the main 'generations' toy line.
there have been some dips here and there, the combiner squads that had drones for limbs, the early classics that were just repaints from earlier lines, the heavily budgeted lines from the GFC, there were still many good toys but many didn't have the same feel that we have come to expect from transformers, either previously or since. We're in a golden age of transformers and it's been going for at least 15 years if you ask me.

Actually I tell a lie. Back in the 90's I bought 1 BW figure (Depthcharge), 2 BM figures (Tankorr and Jetstorm) and 0 MW figures, since they were all repaints of pervious figures with almost random G1 names attached. So I guess Machine Wars was the lowest part of my collecting.

Of course since then an adult collector I've bought figures like 10th Anniversary Waspinator, Machine Wars Soundwave etc. But after G2 ended I really didn't start collecting again until RID(01) when I saw all these cool looking vehicle toys in the stores. It really did revitalize my interest.

for me, I lost interest towards the end of G2, mostly because in my local remote township they were really hard to get hold of, and I couldn't get past the biological alt modes either.
The big issue I had was characters of the same names having completely different alt modes and bot modes. (I've since gotten over that stigma, but I still feel like it's a waste of originality and creativity to have a new transformers story/show/character that has completely new character designs but re-uses names that are well established with a different charcter/alt mode)

What got me back in to collecting seriously (I did pick up a couple toys, literally 2 I think, from the Unicron Trilogy) was the Alternators Binaltech line. I love them.

[BigTransformerTrev]

I couldn't get past the biological alt modes either.

The big issue I had was characters of the same names having completely different alt modes and bot modes. (I've since gotten over that stigma, but I still feel like it's a waste of originality and creativity to have a new transformers story/show/character that has completely new character designs but re-uses names that are well established with a different charcter/alt mode).

Yeah the names thing really used to bug me too. I understand now that a lot of it was Hasbro reusing the names in order to maintain their trademarks of them so it irritates me less, but back then it really annoyed me. Silverbolt was a flying wolf thing instead of a jet, Inferno was an ant instead of a fire truck etc etc. And when I saw Soundwave was now a brown crocodile that transformed into a bat and didn't even have a robot mode - that really irked me.

I nearly bought the BW Rampage toy back then but didn't because of the name, although I do have the Timelines version now which is pretty cool.