Continued from here
Quote Originally Posted by Lint View Post
Badly engineered is pretty harsh.
Don't forget that the fandom in general was quite critical against Armada. Remember that this was the line that followed Car Robot/Robots In Disguise, a line saw awesome that it went on to inspire Binaltech/Alternators and Masterpiece. Armada on the other hand was so bad that it gave rise to this running joke:

...which was in reference to Armada Hot Shot's abysmal upper body articulation (or relative lack thereof) because it was compromised by the Mini-Con activated gimmick. And this was fairly indicative of how many of the Autobots and Decepticons were designed in Armada. As figures they really felt like a great leap backwards, especially after the awesomesauce that we'd experienced throughout Beast Wars and Car Robot. And don't forget that 2002 was a pretty dry year for Transformers with mostly just repaints and reissues coming out; the only new moulds we had were Air Attack Optimus Primal and Megatron Megabolt... and even they were just abandoned Beast Machines toys, they weren't new designs that Hasbro had created for that year. I remember buying toys like RiD Galvatron despite already having CR Gigatron as well as RiD Optimus Prime despite already having Super Fire Convoy simply because there was literally nothing else to buy. Even Japanese fans were whinging about how they had no new moulds since 2000 (remember that unlike RiD, Car Robot only lasted for one year in Japan) other than G1 reissues. 2002 was one of the most frustrating years as a TF fan since the mid 1990s. When Armada came out, I started lapping it up... the Mini-Cons really impressed me, they are by far the strength of the Armada line... but boy did the Autobots and Decepticons leave me feeling disappointed. And I really, really desperately wanted to like these toys.

Hasbro has even made a small acknowledgement of the critical reception that Armada received. When they released Universe Hot Shot in 2008, they used proper contemporary engineering and didn't bother implementing a Mini-Con activated gimmick. The result was what Armada could've been if they'd never bothered with the Mini-Con gimmicks -- just a solid and decent action figure! But Hasbro's nod to the criticism of Armada can be seen on Universe Hot Shot's licence plate which reads: JAAM. This comic is even funnier when read aloud and you shout for all of Hot Shot's upper-case letters but lower your voice to normal for all of the lower-case ones.