Cyberverse - are the toys getting too simple or are people getting dumber?

[FatalityPitt]

The toy commercial in Singapore (that might end up on TV here) probably doesn't help impress people with this toyline, and some of the screenshots of the kid will be meme-fodder for years to come.


"Get more WHOA" with Transformers Cyberverse... as in, whoa, don't buy those.

Nevermind the toys, forget the CGI Bumblebee in the background; that kid's acting is oscar-worthy!

[GoktimusPrime]

While cartoons help, there have been numerous instances of Transformers managing fine or succeeding quite well without a cartoon.

Some examples include:

* Transformers - the non-cartoon years.
As you know, Transformers has never been out of production which is why fans like us have been able to continuously collect these toys since 1984. But we have certainly had years when there were no new cartoons on TV. In the West these would be: 1988-1995, 2002

* 1984 = in the United States the Transformers toyline debuted in early 1984. #1 of the comics didn't hit newsagents until May 8, but the cartoon didn't air until September 17. In spite of this, by the end of 1984 the Transformers toyline had grossed US$1.4 million in the USA alone. I don't know exactly what the pre and post cartoon sales were, but even if we were to attribute half of the sales to the cartoon, that would still mean that the toys alone raked in US$700,000, which would be a lot more if you adjusted for inflation today.

* 1996 = Beast Wars. History repeated itself. The TV series didn't properly begin until September 16, meaning that for most of this year the BW toys had to sell on their own power. By 1997 Beast Wars had become the third best selling action figure line after Toy Story and Star Wars.

* 2001 = Robots In Disguise, Australia. You'll remember when RiD came out here. It was months before the cartoon aired yet these toys were flying off shelves! Heck, how many of us were importing Car Robot toys in 2000 without having seen the anime and despite the AUD hitting record lows like 46US cents to the AUD.

At the end of the day, kids love good toys - with or without a cartoon. Many of us were purchasing G1 Transformers long before they ever appeared on the show. Come to think of it, the cartoon was largely irrelevant when it came to my collecting decisions as a kid. By the time a character appeared in an episode, I would either...
* Already own the toy
* Didn't own the toy but it was already on my want list
* Didn't own the toy but it was already on my skip list
Take Hot Rod and Rodimus Prime, just as 2 examples. I got Hot Rod months before I ever saw him on screen. And Rodimus Prime, being such a terrible figure, was on my skip list. Even after watching TFTM in cinemas I wasn't persuaded to get this toy. Years later I did get one because a friend of mine "grew out" of toys (har!) and gave his to me. But I don't remember ever seeing a Transformer appear on screen and then feeling like I then suddenly wanted the toy.

I guess as a kid without a disposable income I couldn't afford to get toys just because I liked the show character. I got the toy because I liked the toy. I later filled in the gaps as more and more other kids around me "grew out" of Transformers and either gave away their collections or sold them cheaply. There's no way that I would make some of the impulsive purchasing decisions that I do now as an adult. The only real difference that the cartoon made on me was that I'd change the way that I'd voice or act a toy out after seeing them appear on the cartoon. Because before then I'd just give them some 'normal' voice, but then I'd adjust my voice for that character after hearing them on the cartoon. Wow, Seaspray sounds like Mer-Man now? Okay.

Heck, we never had any Lego shows or movies in the 80s, and those toys were immensely popular. Yet so many other toylines with cartoons ended up failing.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Nevermind the toys, forget the CGI Bumblebee in the background; that kid's acting is oscar-worthy!

That’s because he’s an experimental young teen who has just discovered his new toy has a long fiery tongue that forcefully thrusts out and upwards.

Trust me - it’ll be Grimlock wearing the look of shock on his face after that kids parents go out for the day

[FatalityPitt]

While cartoons help, there have been numerous instances of Transformers managing fine or succeeding quite well without a cartoon....

... * 1996 = Beast Wars. History repeated itself. The TV series didn't properly begin until September 16, meaning that for most of this year the BW toys had to sell on their own power. By 1997 Beast Wars had become the third best selling action figure line after Toy Story and Star Wars....

...Heck, we never had any Lego shows or movies in the 80s, and those toys were immensely popular. Yet so many other toylines with cartoons ended up failing.

Oh yeah, I totally get that. That reminds me - When I was living in Malaysia in 1996, interest in Transformers had practically died by then, and all that was left on toy store pegs we're the less desirable G2 toys like Road Pig and Staxx. Suddenly these "Beast Wars" toys appeared. We had no idea what they were, except they looked like Transformers that turned into realistic animals. Without knowing a thing about Beast Wars (because the cartoon didn't air until the following year - 1997), I bought my first Beast Wars figure (Terrorsaur) and I thought the toy was amaaazzzing! It had more articulation than a Spider-man figure (thanks to the ball joints), it had weapon storage, and it looked good in both modes. I was instantly hooked, but because I was 10 at the time and my weekly allowance was limited; I bought mostly small basic figures like Iguanus, Rattrap, Razorbeast, etc. I never had the bigger figures like Optimus Primal, Megatron, Rhinox, etc. Even after the show aired, I still didn't have a strong desire to own those characters in toy form. From memory, my favourites (or the ones I played with the most) we're Razorbeast and Clawjaw, and neither we're on the show. I just found those figures to be really fun and they looked great.

I think while the cartoon might help sell toys to certain people, I don't think it's that strong a factor. It might be interesting to see Hasbro try something different where they release a new line of Transformers, but not invest heavily in commissioning a show around those toys. Instead they could try allocating the funds to making the toys better; so good that they sell themselves.

Thinking about it now, there's no shows or movies around Nerf Guns and Magic The Gathering, and yet those brands are still quite strong.

That’s because he’s an experimental young teen who has just discovered his new toy has a long fiery tongue that forcefully thrusts out and upwards.

Trust me - it’ll be Grimlock wearing the look of shock on his face after that kids parents go out for the day

At least the Grimlock toy won't break his heart. Girls can be quite cruel.

[GoktimusPrime]

One point you bring up is that with Beast Wars, the majority of toys never appeared on the show. The downside with the higher cost of CG animation was that only a select number of toys could ever appear on the show. The BW cartoon was only ever a "sample showcase" of the toy line, unlike say G1 where almost every toy appeared in the cartoon until the show's cancellation. Obviously making characters appear in a cel animated cartoon is much cheaper and easier - you just draw the characters. No need to construct 3D models. And with Transformers they had to construct 2 models per character- 1 robot and 1 beast mode. Even Transformers Prime had a relatively limited cast with the Decepticon ranks fleshed out with identical Vehicon clones. Out of all the Predacons released during Beast Hunters only 3 of them ever appeared in the show.

I don't mind having a cartoon - it certainly does give the characters more exposure. But I would prefer if the cartoons served the toys rather than the toys serving the cartoons. Animators aren't engineers and expecting toy designers to work around animation models is a massive constraint. It's a constant challenge for Masterpiece figures, and one of the cool things with MPs is seeing how TakaraTOMY can work their engineering magic to try and make these toys as show-like as possible. But it literally comes at a cost; one that's out of reach for kids (and even some collectors). I would love to see the line just go back to being made as toys for toy's sake. Not toys as avatars of show models.

"That MP's really cheap!," said no-one about an MP's RRP ever.
(except for Hasbro's MP Soundwave)

I've been checking Ben Yee's reviews on Cyberverse which appraises these toys just within the confines of Cyberverse; so he disclaims that he's not measuring them up to the standard of other TF lines which is why some of the toys are given positive reviews. Yet I can see for about half of these toys he's still giving them negative reviews even when restricted to the confines of Cyberverse's standards! So unlike my reviews where I'm comparing them with other TF lines like CHUG, Prime and RID, Ben's avoiding that. He's focusing on just looking at them within the scope of Cyberverse, and even then some of these toys still fall short.

[shockNwave]

I don't mind having a cartoon - it certainly does give the characters more exposure. But I would prefer if the cartoons served the toys rather than the toys serving the cartoons. Animators aren't engineers and expecting toy designers to work around animation models is a massive constraint. It's a constant challenge for Masterpiece figures, and one of the cool things with MPs is seeing how TakaraTOMY can work their engineering magic to try and make these toys as show-like as possible. But it literally comes at a cost; one that's out of reach for kids (and even some collectors). I would love to see the line just go back to being made as toys for toy's sake. Not toys as avatars of show models.

A case in point of animators (in this case live CG) not being engineers is in TLK, where in the case of Infernocus, instead of having the decepticons transforming into the combiner they morph into it.
It's just lazy and disrespectful towards the TF brand.

[GoktimusPrime]

Totally agree.

The designs for most post-AOE Transformers are pretty lazy compared to pre-AOE. One of my pet peeves about the post-AOE designs is how they more or less morph between modes rather than parts-shift. The AOE Decepticons were terrible as "Tetris-formers," but the Autobots weren't a whole lot better either as their robot modes were sparse with alt mode kibble. Comparing the transformations of Optimus Prime...

• Age of Extinction; this is one of the better looking transformation sequences in AOE/TLK and yet it's still relatively lazy as the entire rear half of the truck is literally sucked up into Prime's back. And most of the rest of the truck parts just magically disappear. The end result for the toys is that they have a lot of truck kibble that they need to try and conceal. Early attempts gave us massive backpackformers; the "Calibre" retool just made the backpack detachable (which makes the robot look cool but it's basically cheating); and the TLK Voyager does an impressive job in absorbing much of the truck parts into the body (e.g. legs etc.), but still ends up with a backpack (albeit greatly reduced).

VS

• "My name is Optimus Prime"; an absolutely amazing and epic transformation. We can see truck and robot parts shifting and realigning as he changes from truck to robot mode. We see windows, doors, wheels, tyres, fuel tanks, mirrors, lights etc. - a place for everything and everything in its place. And the result for toy designers is that this design was much easier to translate as action figures. The 2007 Leader Class Optimus Prime is a brilliant toy - easily the best Optimus Prime figure we had since 1995's Laser Optimus Prime (and that's a high standard to beat!). And as amazed as we were by this toy, HasTak outdid themselves again just 2 years later with the ROTF Leader Class figure, which has since been refined with the Buster Optimus Prime and DOTM Jetwing Optimus Prime retools/redecos. And of course, we more recently had MPM Optimus Prime. But even smaller versions of this toy such as the Voyagers, Deluxes and even the Legends Class figures were all really nice figures for their respective price points.

And this was a deliberate style choice on Michael Bay's part. Because in the earlier part of AOE, Bumblebee (60s Camaro) and Optimus Prime (Marmon 97) still partsformed like in the previous films, but after they scanned their new modes they went to morphing.

And yeah, Infernocus and Dragonstorm were the worst. Just a bunch of generic looking Transformers falling on top of each other to become messy looking gestalts. Looks more like piles of garbage having a ménage à six et ménage à douze respectively. *cough* In fact, let's have a look and compare...
Knights merging to form Dragonstorm ... from a distance... it's a mess
Infernocons merge to form Infernocus ... shrouded in smoke, who can even see what's happening? Cheap and lazy.
Constructicons merge to form Devastator visually spectacular! We know that animating this scene blew up some of ILM's computers! And to put things into perspective, animating the entire first movie took up about 15 terabytes of data. Animating ROTF took up over 140TB. I have long said that despite all of ROTF's flaws as a story, it is if nothing else a very visually spectacular film. The visual effects in this movie are nothing short of breath-taking. No-one can accuse the animation in this film as being "cheap and lazy," especially not the Devastator merge sequence. And I first saw this on the big screen at IMAX. Phwoar.

[Ralph Wiggum]

And let’s not forget that Transformium building block shite they had with Galvatron, Stinger, and the rest in AoE. I’m glad they dropped that in TLK.

This is why I’m looking forward to the BB movie. Good old fashioned transforming...I hope.

[shockNwave]

The Transformium crap has me thinking of The Lawnmower Man (1992). The scenes where he kills people by turning them into a mass of spheres that are then dispersed.
The Transformium sequences are worse than the Dragonstorm/Infernocus morph sequences.

[Magnus]

Back to the toys: a while back I was trying to find a quote that said that Hasbro were deliberately simplifying toys in response to complaints that previous toys were too complex for their target audience. The one I found is from a January 2014 New York Times article about Hasbro that cites among others CEO Brian Goldner and Joshua Lamb, senior design director for Transformers.

But as the brand evolved over the years, the toys became more complex, some involving dozens of steps to complete a single transformation. In the eyes of Brian D. Goldner, Hasbro’s chief executive, they had lost their magic.

“We’ve made incredibly sophisticated robots,” he said, “but it can be like a 1,000-piece puzzle.”

Enthralled by the special effects in three big-budget “Transformers” movies that enabled the robots to convert in a matter of seconds, Mr. Goldner decided the toys needed to return to their roots. So he challenged his design team to reconceive them. Now, on the 30th anniversary of the brand, Hasbro is revealing a new look for the toys, including simple maneuvers that will complete a transformation with the push of a button or flick of the wrist.

Mr. Lamb conceded that the brand had gotten a little off track over the years. “As new designers and engineers continued to work on this brand, it got more complicated,” he said. Hasbro will continue to make complex Transformers for adult fans who have collected the toys since their inception 30 years ago. But the new design is intended to re-engage parents and children, who found the transformations too challenging.

Granted, this was from 2014, but at least it gives Hasbro's reasoning for simplifying toys.

I personally don't care much for the Cyberverse line, but I can't help but wonder if collectors are 'missing the point' of it. It seems like collectors tend to fall into the trap of thinking Hasbro should be catering specifically to them, so when something comes along that is clearly intended for a younger audience, they deride it.

Because Hasbro have likely invested a lot into this line, I find it hard to imagine they haven't done market research - as Galvatran indicated - to try and ensure the line's success or at least minimise their losses.