Nice work, once again.
A real shame that we were only 10 short of last year's number of 268.
I'm going to have to try harder next year to get more people voting.
I guess it says something about the Legacy Voyagers if the winner was a reissue toy from another toyline... getting almost double the votes of a new toy (Inferno).
Similarly with the Core class, with reissue Soundwave coming a close second, beating out four of the five new toys in Legacy.
I was a bit surprised about Blitzwing winning the Leader vote, being a mess of kibble or gaps in each mode and giant fist accessories that still make no sense.
On the other hand, I was not surprised with the rating for Metroplex, barely scraping in over the halfway point of 3 by having the average come to 3.2. (since it is not a good idea to have a zero voting option, the mid-point is actually 3 instead of 2.5)
I was also not surprised that the Haslab Victory Saber set ended up averaging at just 3.7... because I just didn't think it was necessary, so needed to be something spectacular or significantly different. With the Masterpiece Star Saber already created, they should have spent the money on creating a Masterpiece Victory Leo to combine with that toy, and then re-release the MP Star Saber with it for those who didn't already have it. Hasbro set the bar high on Haslab with Unicron, and in a way set the standard of this extremely limited edition concept for things that have never been or would never be released. And we now know that Deathsaurus was already planned to be released as a regular release toy, before it was upsized for the Haslab release... so that one also cheapens the concept (it was almost beaten on the fan-vote by an unconfirmed redeco of an older toy, showing just how "special" it isn't rating). A concept that should give us things like Animated Omega Supreme, or some quality playsets/display sets like the Gen1 Ark base, Beast Wars Axalon, Beast Wars Predacon ship, Gen1 Nemesis or the underwater base spaceship (with or without a robot mode like the Kingdom Ark), or what about the Gen1 comic spacebridge with Spanner alt-mode. Or a boxset of several Gen1 cartoon and comic characters who have never had an accurate toy or at all.
Velocitron Deluxe Cosmos getting over half of the votes was not a surprise either, as I had been commenting at the time, it was the only new Deluxe mould, with the other four in that first wave being redecos of toys still on the shelf, and/or characters that were very niche or obscure. My guess as to its short supply was that retailers who saw the set, preferred vehicles they recognised, but since they don't really know or care about what they are buying they wouldn't have noticed the same moulds that would be on shelf at the same time.
It was interesting to see that the Lego Optimus managed to get the highest rating of the various questions asking for a rating... as it is kinda ironic that it is not a Hasbro product, doing better than actual Hasbro products for the Brand.
In regards to the Masterpiece questions... are we as fans, well and truly over the Masterpiece concept now? The vote on most anticipated 2023 Masterpiece toy might have gone to Trailbreaker, but since that was released in the last days of 2022, if you look at the next two toys, they are both just redecos... beating out the new mould Trainbots. And the winner of the 2022 MP toys was also just a redeco, beating out new moulds which mustn't have inspired fans enough to like them more.
(It was unfortunate that Trailbreaker came out in the final days of 2022, being a new mould and one of the last 1984 characters, so it was best to have it included in the 2023 listing, as people here wouldn't get it in the mail until January anyway... and I hope that it is remembered to be included in next year's vote, as I'm sure it will win next year, if we don't have anything else from 1984 released before the end of this year.)
I guess finally, as someone who was able to play with some of the first wave of Earthspark toys, the below average rating the toys got on the fan-vote was not a surprise... and not just a case of older fan-boys being harsh on something new or for a different age-group before they have even tried them. If anything, the rating would probably have been lower if the toys were already out and people had actually spent their hard-earned cash on them, making the customer more critical if it isn't value for money.
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Originally Posted by Paulbot
