When it was announced that Siege would be Micromaster-only for its "Legends" pricepoint, more than a few fans were miffed that the Minibot team had yet to be completed. Depending on how you view them, Warpath, Huffer and Pipes HAD been done, but not "properly" (Pipes's colours are way off, the others much closer, but the moulds only loosely work for the characters) while Cliffjumper & Hubcap hadn't been done at all.

(Seriously - what the hell does Hasbro have against Cliffjumper - it's been what 15 years and there's not a single dedicated Classicsverse Cliffjumper mould?!?)

The initial reaction to the Micromasters was generally negative; the characters come from the less popular tail end of G1 and while some got fairly decent characterisation in comics (Roadhandler comes to mind), most were pretty obscure. On top of that, the four-member teams are now two member teams.

Fast forward to Siege being roughly a year old, and it seems the market has spoken with deafening silence. While wave 1 (with, arguably, the star of the show, Roadhandler) was elusive in Australia, wave 2 is still everywhere several months after release. There seems fairly little chance the major chains will be placing too many orders for more Micromasters when Stakeout, Red Hot & the tiny cassettes are pegwarming.

For me, the value for money is terrible for kids/parents/grandparents. A quick comparison with say Lego, you just get so much more for your $20. They do not fill their small packaging. The characters - while personally I love Micromasters - are also too obscure to really excite many adult collectors.

What's your take on the failure of the Siege Micromasters? Characters too obscure? Price too high? Poor value for money? Bad designs? Something else?

Discuss.