Overrated Transformer Toys

[GoktimusPrime]

I was an infant in 1984

Turbo revvin' young punk!

But I still grew up with Transformers. Perhaps the hype had died over the Optimus Prime toy by 1990 but he was still available due to Classics reissues.

Interest in Transformers was on the decline by 1990. The US cartoon was cancelled 3 years prior and even in Japan the anime series was being canned, with Transformers Zone canceled (and its pilot episode released as a direct-to-video OVA). Toywise things were getting desperate too - the same year Hasbro also gave us Action Masters which dominated the line. Yeah. (-_-) Then the US Marvel Comics got cancelled a year later - and of course, G1 itself got canned in '93. So with 1990 you're looking at the middle of G1's declining years.

He turns into a frieght truck. When all the other Autobots transform into awesome sports cars who the heck would want a freight truck?

I can't speak for others, but I didn't want _all_ my Autobots to be sports cars. I liked the variety of vehicles... and there were plenty of Autobots in 1984 who weren't sports cars, e.g. Bumblebee, Gears, Brawn (my first!), Huffer, Bumblejumper, Ratchet, Ironhide, Trailbreaker... and technically Mirage isn't a sports car. To me having a big truck made sense as a leader of a team of automobiles. He's big, and he could carry the other Autobots inside his trailer too. When I was a kid I used to load up other Autobot cars into Prime's trailer, have him smash into the Decepticons' camp, then unload them into action, then transform himself into battle mode (w/ combat deck & Roller deployed). Soundwave might be able to eject cassettes, but Prime could shoot out cars! And quite literally thanks to the trailer's launch mechanism. And the fact that combat deck's main tower could stick out in trailer mode gave Optimus Prime the first battle ready alt mode (for a civilian vehicle).

Sure I wanted him but on my list of wanted G1 Autobots at the time he would have been behind all the dinobots, just about all the 'deluxe sized' Autobot cars, any autobot flier and any combiner gestalt.

Yeah but imagine a time when there were far fewer Autobot cars, no such thing as Autobot fliers and no such thing as gestalts. Imagine then how much more a lot of kids would have wanted Optimus Prime when he was such a cool toy.

In 1985 we had Omega Supreme, a bigger play set Transformer. We also had flier Autobots (Powerglide, Jetfire and Whirl) and several Transformers that were taller than Prime (Shockwave, Blaster etc). But that all came in the following year -- so in context of the first year of Transformers when none of those toys existed in Transformers, I hope you can see how awesome Optimus Prime would have looked in our eyes.

As for playset value, I was more excited by the Turtle Van.
Micromaster bases and the likes of Metroplex and Fort Max are the only playsets done right in the TF universe.

Yeah but again, none of those toys existed at the time Prime came out. Metroplex and Fort Max might be arguably nicer play sets, but it's always easier to make toys better when they come later because designers are always trying to improve. And as nice as they are as play sets, I don't think they're as nice in terms of being action figures as Optimus Prime -- especially Fortress Maximus. His size makes him an awesome playset, but a somewhat cumbersome action figure to interact with other Transformer toys. And neither of them are really "robots in disguise" since their alt modes are fantasy based, whereas Optimus Prime is a Freightliner.

Now Soundwave I wanted badly. He turned into a walkman, the most sophisticated portable music device of the era, and had awesome articulation and proportions. Whatmore he had an army of transformable cassettes he could store in his chest!

Alas I don't think he was reissued until the noughties?

Yeah, he wasn't reissued until 2002-03. Having said that, Hasbro continued production of Soundwave for a fairly long time... 1984, 1985 & 1986 (he appears in the catalogues for each of those years).

Classics Jetfire. Sure he is a great homage to both the cartoon and the toy with all his nick knacks and what not's, but strip of all that armour and he just a F14 with a rectangular nosecone (that looks unaerodynamic and boxy), and Valkyrie like thruster nozels. Aesthetically I would rather they go for one of the other than make frankenstiens fighter. My other issue with this toy is his simple transformation his arms don't even attempt to hide in alt mode, and he's pretty damn basic.

It's a decent toy and good homage but many classics are, I don't understand peoples obsession with it, and that's from a Valkyrie fan.

The obsession comes from people who wanted a Jetfire to look like the way he did in the comics and cartoon. Marvel/Sunbow had to draw him in a more boxy way obviously to avoid a lawsuit from Harmony Gold (Robotech). Classics Jetfire combines the aesthetics of both the original toy and marries it with the Marvel/Sunbow model in an attempt to please both fans of the original Valkyrie-based toy, and fans of the blockier comic/show model.

I think the cleverness of the toy is that its G1 homage works on two levels like that. Even moreso with the Henkei repaint as the colours are more like the cartoon, yet the helmet has a red visor like the G1 toy (and they even explained the blue eyed robot and red visor mask thing into Henkei fiction )

If you're looking at it from a "Valkyrie purist" (for lack of a better term) POV, then I can see why you wouldn't like it as much... but the toy is attempting to walk the middle road and try to appease both camps. And I think in terms of that, it's well designed. My only complaint about it would be the clearly visible hands in jet mode... otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.