So, when I heard John Warden was leaving the Transformers brand, I kind of bemoaned his departure because I was worried about what would happen to the brand afterwards. He brought so much energy and knowledge and genuine fan energy to the development of my favorite toy line that I didn't think the brand would ever be the same again.

As an aside, Hasbro has spent a lot more time and effort communicating with the fandom than they used to. They've finally learned the value of social media and they're posting to Twitter and YouTube and holding regular livestream segments to show off upcoming products. We've come a really long way since the days where Aaron Archer would just yell one-word responses on message boards.

Evan Brooks stands out in my mind as my favorite visible presence on the Transformers team now. He's young, but he has a working knowledge of the canon and is openly a fan of Transformers, and he can recite lines from The Transformers: the Movie from memory. I'm not saying that everybody else on the team is terrible, of course. With that said, it's a little embarrassing when they're trying to sell us these products but are either a) clearly reading word-for-word from a script or b) don't even know how to pronounce the characters' names.

Evan recently posted something to Instagram about how Studio Series Hot Rod was supposed to be magenta, but then the Hasbro higher-ups started making noises about how all the Hot Rod toys have always been various shades of red. Evan was right there arguing with them, showing them screen shots from The Transformers: the Movie (in which Hot Rod is clearly magenta in color), but he was new to the team and didn't have much clout, so they didn't listen to him. But I love him for trying.

Something else he said about Studio Series Slag was that he knew Slag's helmet guards are supposed to have grey-colored panels, but they had to reduce the number of paint operations to meet the budget. He said when this happens, he tries to axe paint operations that fans could easily add themselves if they chose to do so. I'm reminded of the pentagonal-shaped spots on Kingdom Ultra Magnus that are clearly meant to have Autobot symbols. It's super easy for me to just put stickers there, though, so it didn't upset me. I love that they're thinking about things like this!

The dedication he shows towards making the brand better is not lost on me. I really appreciate his efforts. And, like I said, the whole team is great, but Evan Brooks is a superstar.

Zob (I imagine they'll make an official Studio Series Core-class Exo-Suit Daniel Witwicky eventually, but I'm impatient so I made my own today)

On Friday, May 20, 2022 at 7:26:55 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> So, when I heard John Warden was leaving the Transformers brand, I kind of bemoaned his departure because I was worried about what would happen to the brand afterwards. He brought so much energy and knowledge and genuine fan energy to the development of my favorite toy line that I didn't think the brand would ever be the same again.
>
> As an aside, Hasbro has spent a lot more time and effort communicating with the fandom than they used to. They've finally learned the value of social media and they're posting to Twitter and YouTube and holding regular livestream segments to show off upcoming products. We've come a really long way since the days where Aaron Archer would just yell one-word responses on message boards.
>
> Evan Brooks stands out in my mind as my favorite visible presence on the Transformers team now. He's young, but he has a working knowledge of the canon and is openly a fan of Transformers, and he can recite lines from The Transformers: the Movie from memory. I'm not saying that everybody else on the team is terrible, of course. With that said, it's a little embarrassing when they're trying to sell us these products but are either a) clearly reading word-for-word from a script or b) don't even know how to pronounce the characters' names.
>
> Evan recently posted something to Instagram about how Studio Series Hot Rod was supposed to be magenta, but then the Hasbro higher-ups started making noises about how all the Hot Rod toys have always been various shades of red. Evan was right there arguing with them, showing them screen shots from The Transformers: the Movie (in which Hot Rod is clearly magenta in color), but he was new to the team and didn't have much clout, so they didn't listen to him. But I love him for trying.
>
> Something else he said about Studio Series Slag was that he knew Slag's helmet guards are supposed to have grey-colored panels, but they had to reduce the number of paint operations to meet the budget. He said when this happens, he tries to axe paint operations that fans could easily add themselves if they chose to do so. I'm reminded of the pentagonal-shaped spots on Kingdom Ultra Magnus that are clearly meant to have Autobot symbols. It's super easy for me to just put stickers there, though, so it didn't upset me. I love that they're thinking about things like this!
>
> The dedication he shows towards making the brand better is not lost on me.. I really appreciate his efforts. And, like I said, the whole team is great, but Evan Brooks is a superstar.
>
>
> Zob (I imagine they'll make an official Studio Series Core-class Exo-Suit Daniel Witwicky eventually, but I'm impatient so I made my own today)

Amazing how times have changed. Do we think that anyone who, for example, snubbed fans at BotCon '95, or unceremoniously dumped a mis-transformed Unicron prototype next to a grocery store cake at BotCon '96 are still around in any capacity?

JB

On Friday, May 20, 2022 at 7:26:55 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> So, when I heard John Warden was leaving the Transformers brand, I kind of bemoaned his departure because I was worried about what would happen to the brand afterwards. He brought so much energy and knowledge and genuine fan energy to the development of my favorite toy line that I didn't think the brand would ever be the same again.
>
> As an aside, Hasbro has spent a lot more time and effort communicating with the fandom than they used to. They've finally learned the value of social media and they're posting to Twitter and YouTube and holding regular livestream segments to show off upcoming products. We've come a really long way since the days where Aaron Archer would just yell one-word responses on message boards.

Aaron Archer also brought us Armada, which was new, fresh and different. It wasn't your favorite, sure, and there were some potentially poor choices here and there to recolor toys for the sake of variety in the stores, but I think his era gave us a lot more good than bad.

> Evan Brooks stands out in my mind as my favorite visible presence on the Transformers team now. He's young, but he has a working knowledge of the canon and is openly a fan of Transformers, and he can recite lines from The Transformers: the Movie from memory. I'm not saying that everybody else on the team is terrible, of course. With that said, it's a little embarrassing when they're trying to sell us these products but are either a) clearly reading word-for-word from a script or b) don't even know how to pronounce the characters' names.
>
> Evan recently posted something to Instagram about how Studio Series Hot Rod was supposed to be magenta, but then the Hasbro higher-ups started making noises about how all the Hot Rod toys have always been various shades of red. Evan was right there arguing with them, showing them screen shots from The Transformers: the Movie (in which Hot Rod is clearly magenta in color), but he was new to the team and didn't have much clout, so they didn't listen to him. But I love him for trying.

I'm of two minds on this. If the company is just retreading what has come before, then having someone that knowledgable is a good thing. Black Convoy should actually resemble Scourge, and someone who knows the franchise really well would know that the Nemesis Prime characters have wandered so far from the source that if the toy is meant to be harkening back to the original that the color scheme should too.

But, if they are trying to do something new, it's something of a burden. Sometimes clinging too much to the past would prevent things such as a Megatron who combines with Tidal Wave, and Cyclonus the helicopter. I would really love a new show and toyline that really is for all ages, rather than the current under-12 and over-40 offerings.

> Something else he said about Studio Series Slag was that he knew Slag's helmet guards are supposed to have grey-colored panels, but they had to reduce the number of paint operations to meet the budget. He said when this happens, he tries to axe paint operations that fans could easily add themselves if they chose to do so. I'm reminded of the pentagonal-shaped spots on Kingdom Ultra Magnus that are clearly meant to have Autobot symbols. It's super easy for me to just put stickers there, though, so it didn't upset me. I love that they're thinking about things like this!

That actually is very interesting.

Are consumer applied stickers that expensive? I think the Laser Optimus would have really benefited from the option to add a mural of Optimus burning down a forest... Maybe another set of him dumping oil into a swamp, or running down elephants on the savannah, so you can choose what environmental damage he is doing.
> The dedication he shows towards making the brand better is not lost on me.. I really appreciate his efforts. And, like I said, the whole team is great, but Evan Brooks is a superstar.

> Zob (I imagine they'll make an official Studio Series Core-class Exo-Suit Daniel Witwicky eventually, but I'm impatient so I made my own today)

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 2:23:56 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> Aaron Archer also brought us Armada, which was new, fresh and different. It wasn't your favorite, sure, and there were some potentially poor choices here and there to recolor toys for the sake of variety in the stores, but I think his era gave us a lot more good than bad.

I think we're talking about two different things, though. I was framing it in the context of Hasbro communicating cordinally and openly with the fandom about the product. You're talking about product innovation. Which we can talk about, of course. But I will state objectively that when Orson's World was essentially the portal through which fans were getting official information about Transformers from a Hasbro employee, it was done incredibly poorly. People got annoyed and upset at him, which is the opposite of what a customer relations account is supposed to do.

Beast Wars and Beast Machines was a five-year stint of Transformers that turned into animals, and people kept asking them to bring the vehicles back. So, I feel like Armada was a response to that. Of course, we got Robots in Disguise, but that was described as a filler line to give Hasbro time to fully develop Armada. If you count G1/G2 as basically the same thing, and BW/BM as basically the same thing, then Armada was essentially only Hasbro's third attempt at Transformers.

It was what it was. The toys were oversimplified, but again, Hasbro was responding to consumer complaints that some of the toys had gotten objectively too complicated for younger kids (especially the ones imported from Beast Wars Neo). But, the simplicity felt like a step backwards. At the time, as a fan in my 20's, I didn't want Transformers that felt like they were made for babies. Also, the recycled trademarks annoyed me endlessly. I don't think Hasbro had fully appreciated yet that their vast library of trademarks didn't mean they could slap any existing name onto a product. Names have meanings.

> I'm of two minds on this. If the company is just retreading what has come before, then having someone that knowledgable is a good thing. Black Convoy should actually resemble Scourge, and someone who knows the franchise really well would know that the Nemesis Prime characters have wandered so far from the source that if the toy is meant to be harkening back to the original that the color scheme should too.

Black Convoy still bothers me. The color scheme itself isn't awful, and it's definitely appropriate for an Evil Optimus, but it doesn't remind me of RiD Scourge at all.
> But, if they are trying to do something new, it's something of a burden. Sometimes clinging too much to the past would prevent things such as a Megatron who combines with Tidal Wave, and Cyclonus the helicopter. I would really love a new show and toyline that really is for all ages, rather than the current under-12 and over-40 offerings.

Well, you could argue that a main line like Legacy is for everybody. The fact that it strongly appeals to the over-40 crowd is great, but it's almost incidental. And you could also argue that newer characters getting thrown into the mix like Prime Universe Arcee or Bulkhead aren't meant to pander to the same fans who grew up with G1. The same goes with the under-12 offering. There's nothing stopping adult fans from collecting Cyberverse or whatever.

When it comes right down to it, though, if Transformers as a brand is sufficiently successful for Hasbro, we're going to see less innovation and less creativity. They're going to do a market analysis on what worked last year and apply it to this year. Then they'll look at what worked this year and apply it to 2023. That's just how big companies operate. They won't innovate and get really creative until the brand is flagging and sales are plummeting, and then they'll go, "Well, this is crazy, but at this point what have we got to lose?" That's how we got Beast Wars. (Of course, that's also how we got Action Masters. So, there's that.)

We've entered an era for Transformers that Star Wars was in around the late 1990's. There was a huge adult fan base, and there was a market even for arguably redundant product like, say, a Darth Vader with a glowing battery-powered lightsaber or a a Darth Vader with a removable helmet or a see-through Darth Vader with a visible skeleton under his armor. This was stuff the adult fans were gobbling up, stuff that celebrated the minutae and the obscuria of Star Wars. They produced just about every possible iteration of Darth Vader that you can think of. And it wasn't just him, either.

The Transformers equivalent to stuff like this is when we get Galvatron in translucent purple plastic (representing about 20 seconds of his life) or Dead Optimus (representing about two minutes of his death). These are toys I doubt Hasbro would have even considered ten years ago or so, because Transformers hadn't quite ascended to that level yet. The fan dedication was always there, but not Hasbro's willingness to pander to that fan dedication.

So the flip side of that coin is that we're going to be locked into a certain level of screen-accuracy and a very rigid approach towards innovating, until the performance of the brand falters and Hasbro is forced to reevaluate. Right now, their model seems to be to celebrate screen accuracy in the toys, because that's performing well. It's also a model reflected in third-party toys, which are very expensive and which fans are spending lots of money on. The demand is there, certainly. When the G1 fans age out of collecting and toys like this stop performing, that's when Hasbro will crank the wheel hard to starboard and change course.

I could be completely off base, and maybe we'll see an unexpected dramatic shift in their strategy, but I can't think of a valid reason for them to do so right now.

The popularity of Star Wars eventually petered out, and now the toy line is on life support. A strong part of it was the shift towards the current Disney films, I suspect. Just because it's a toy that says "Star Wars" from a movie with "Star Wars" in the title doesn't automatically mean consumers will gobble it up. But, Star Wars also began as a 1970's property, so the original fans are probably about ten years older than me and a lot of them are selling off their collections now. There are so many collectibles that used to be a hot commodity (like the infamous "Mynock Hunt" three-pack) that are now selling for pennies on the dollar. Star Trek was a 1960's property that saw a similar decline.

So, as a 1980's property, interest in Transformers could eventually fade. One thing that differentiates Transformers, though, is that it's not just a celebration of media but also a puzzle toy in its own right. You introduce a fad toy and it has one good year, and then it's part of the collective consciousness for pretty much forever. Yo-yo's, hula hoops, Rubik's cubes, and Elmo dolls all belong in this category. There's a good chance Transformers could endure just by merit of being a clever toy.
> Ar consumer applied stickers that expensive? I think the Laser Optimus would have really benefited from the option to add a mural of Optimus burning down a forest... Maybe another set of him dumping oil into a swamp, or running down elephants on the savannah, so you can choose what environmental damage he is doing.

Laser Optimus: The hero we neither need nor deserve.

Zob (I wonder if he ever tangled with Captain Planet in the 90's...?)

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 12:37:50 PM UTC-7, Zobovor wrote:
> On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 2:23:56 AM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
> > Aaron Archer also brought us Armada, which was new, fresh and different.. It wasn't your favorite, sure, and there were some potentially poor choices here and there to recolor toys for the sake of variety in the stores, but I think his era gave us a lot more good than bad.
> I think we're talking about two different things, though. I was framing it in the context of Hasbro communicating cordinally and openly with the fandom about the product. You're talking about product innovation. Which we can talk about, of course. But I will state objectively that when Orson's World was essentially the portal through which fans were getting official information about Transformers from a Hasbro employee, it was done incredibly poorly. People got annoyed and upset at him, which is the opposite of what a customer relations account is supposed to do.

I was definitely latching onto the "Hot Rod should be magenta" portion, because ultimately I care more about the finished product than the social media updates.

As an aside, we have also basically lost the tech specs and bios that fill the lumps of plastic with character. I would call the bios (or lack thereof) a part of the finished product as well -- and something that I would much rather see Hasbro spend their time and money on than a lot of social media outreach.

Coddle me the right way, motherfuckers! (Ahem)

Yes, bios require translation and either box space or a website or something. There is a website -- HasbroPulse -- and they could live there if there isn't box space. And translation is honestly not that expensive. At my last job we were getting a paragraph or two of text translated for about $20 per language. There are costs, but they shouldn't be prohibitive. (I would absolutely trade Optimus Prime's axe or fan or whatever for a bio, and I know who Optimus Prime is...)

> Beast Wars and Beast Machines was a five-year stint of Transformers that turned into animals, and people kept asking them to bring the vehicles back.. So, I feel like Armada was a response to that. Of course, we got Robots in Disguise, but that was described as a filler line to give Hasbro time to fully develop Armada. If you count G1/G2 as basically the same thing, and BW/BM as basically the same thing, then Armada was essentially only Hasbro's third attempt at Transformers.

I think there are very fuzzy boundaries. Beast Wars wasn't that different from G2 other than a gimmick of animals, and Armada wasn't that different either. There are major story shifts, but the toys are basically different variations of "robot transforms into X, with/without gimmicks".

Late G2 gave us a couple of different methods of articulation (Laser Rods, with the mid-limb swivels, and Cyberjets with the ball joints, adding to the hinges and shoulder swivels of G1), and those were just taken up by everything that came after, with ball joints being dominant during the beast era.. Given a G1 brick, G2 Laser Optimus Prime, a Cyberjet, and BW Torca (multiple gimmicks!) you can pretty much derive every transformer that came after.. And the BW gimmicks usually have predecessors in other toy lines (I want to throw the Autorollers in there as precedent, even though it was a very different gimmick)

> It was what it was. The toys were oversimplified, but again, Hasbro was responding to consumer complaints that some of the toys had gotten objectively too complicated for younger kids (especially the ones imported from Beast Wars Neo). But, the simplicity felt like a step backwards. At the time, as a fan in my 20's, I didn't want Transformers that felt like they were made for babies. Also, the recycled trademarks annoyed me endlessly. I don't think Hasbro had fully appreciated yet that their vast library of trademarks didn't mean they could slap any existing name onto a product. Names have meanings.

I don't think the toys were oversimplified at all. They just emphasized different things. I'm willing to get that if we dissected Armada Cyclonus and Legacy Kickback, we would find Cyclonus had more parts -- just put into the service of gimmicks like the spinning rotor, the missile launchers, the flip out cannons, the gearing to interact with minicons on his nose...

(Kickback is on my desk, and Cyclonus is the first Armada toy I think of)

Also, Cyclonus is a great name for a helicopter, better than for a space jet... because names have literal meanings, in addition to a history of who they have been attached to. But you're right that they often used names badly as well, such as the proliferation of Prowls. https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Prowl_(disambiguation)

> > I'm of two minds on this. If the company is just retreading what has come before, then having someone that knowledgable is a good thing. Black Convoy should actually resemble Scourge, and someone who knows the franchise really well would know that the Nemesis Prime characters have wandered so far from the source that if the toy is meant to be harkening back to the original that the color scheme should too.

> Black Convoy still bothers me. The color scheme itself isn't awful, and it's definitely appropriate for an Evil Optimus, but it doesn't remind me of RiD Scourge at all.

It bothers me because they aren't doing a good job of what they are setting out to do -- which in this case is to pander to the past. Pick a lane and commit to it, weaving back and forth isn't going to please anyone.

> > But, if they are trying to do something new, it's something of a burden.. Sometimes clinging too much to the past would prevent things such as a Megatron who combines with Tidal Wave, and Cyclonus the helicopter. I would really love a new show and toyline that really is for all ages, rather than the current under-12 and over-40 offerings.
> Well, you could argue that a main line like Legacy is for everybody. The fact that it strongly appeals to the over-40 crowd is great, but it's almost incidental. And you could also argue that newer characters getting thrown into the mix like Prime Universe Arcee or Bulkhead aren't meant to pander to the same fans who grew up with G1. The same goes with the under-12 offering. There's nothing stopping adult fans from collecting Cyberverse or whatever.

The quality in Cyberverse is just lacking. I liked the PrimeRID toys, in the warrior class at least, but the quality has plummeted since then.
> When it comes right down to it, though, if Transformers as a brand is sufficiently successful for Hasbro, we're going to see less innovation and less creativity. They're going to do a market analysis on what worked last year and apply it to this year. Then they'll look at what worked this year and apply it to 2023. That's just how big companies operate. They won't innovate and get really creative until the brand is flagging and sales are plummeting, and then they'll go, "Well, this is crazy, but at this point what have we got to lose?" That's how we got Beast Wars. (Of course, that's also how we got Action Masters. So, there's that.)

Actually, I think the shift away from story based lines, and the split to the under-12/over-40 model suggests you're wrong. That was a huge shift in the brand, while it was successful. It happened gradually, with Classics as an experiment, and a few iterations on that until it became the dominant part of the brand. They are kind of running out of G1 to revisit though, so they are beginning to look to their other properties.

> The Transformers equivalent to stuff like this is when we get Galvatron in translucent purple plastic (representing about 20 seconds of his life) or Dead Optimus (representing about two minutes of his death). These are toys I doubt Hasbro would have even considered ten years ago or so, because Transformers hadn't quite ascended to that level yet. The fan dedication was always there, but not Hasbro's willingness to pander to that fan dedication.

Given how many times Optimus has died, it really is surprising that we don't get more dead Optimus toys. We actually got a dead Megatron toy first -- Energon Megatron uses the withered corpse of Armada Megatron as a weapon.

> The popularity of Star Wars eventually petered out, and now the toy line is on life support. A strong part of it was the shift towards the current Disney films, I suspect. Just because it's a toy that says "Star Wars" from a movie with "Star Wars" in the title doesn't automatically mean consumers will gobble it up. But, Star Wars also began as a 1970's property, so the original fans are probably about ten years older than me and a lot of them are selling off their collections now. There are so many collectibles that used to be a hot commodity (like the infamous "Mynock Hunt" three-pack) that are now selling for pennies on the dollar.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned." It's a little impressive that the terrible Transformers movies didn't hurt the franchise the way the bad-but-not-Michael-Bay-bad Star Wars movies hurt the franchise.

And I think Star Wars needs a new show like Clone Wars or Rebels that can appeal to a wider range of audience. As great as things like "The Mandolorian" are, part of the appeal of Star Wars is that it is morally simple and over the top children's fare, sometimes with more mature themes layered on top (the only woman Luke ever showed an interest in was his sister, we follow the stories of the clones knowing they will turn evil, etc).

On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 4:19:12 PM UTC-6, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:

> I was definitely latching onto the "Hot Rod should be magenta" portion, because ultimately I care more about the finished product than the social media updates.

I think it's an interesting look at the process. I mean, as fans we often speculate about why the final product isn't what we feel like it should be. With regards to Hot Rod, the answer could have been any number of reasons.. Was Hasbro working from the old Kid Rhino DVD with the muddy colors? Were they trying to match the G1 toy? Is there somebody at Hasbro stuck in the old mindset that boys won't play with pink cars? So it was nice to get a definitive answer. They tried to get the magenta look but were shot down..

At the end of the day, yes, the finished product is what's important. But, we got a redo for Kup, and we got a redo for Cliffjumper. Exact same toy, just slightly different (and arguably improved) colors. I don't think a Rodworthy Hot Rod is an impossibility at some point in the future.
> As an aside, we have also basically lost the tech specs and bios that fill the lumps of plastic with character. I would call the bios (or lack thereof) a part of the finished product as well -- and something that I would much rather see Hasbro spend their time and money on than a lot of social media outreach.

I seem to remember them writing a lot of fiction about the characters during Power of the Primes and everybody just poo-pooing those efforts. But, with that said, we do need something resembling tech specs again. Like, I already know who Drag Strip and Kickback and Skids are, so I don't need to be spoon-fed. But, when I was a kid, and these characters were new, I would often read the toy packaging biography and that would frequently inform the choice of which toy I bought. Sure, things like color scheme and alt mode and robot aesthetics were also considerations. But, if I ever had trouble deciding, the character profile was often the tipping point for me.

Kids who don't know that Kickback is a master manipulator or that Drag Strip must win at all costs or that Skids is a daydreamer might be fascinated by these characters. I totally agree that we're missing a key part of the presentation. When the Combiner Wars toys came with comic books, there were these full-page write-ups about the characters, and those were great.

> I think there are very fuzzy boundaries. Beast Wars wasn't that different from G2 other than a gimmick of animals, and Armada wasn't that different either. There are major story shifts, but the toys are basically different variations of "robot transforms into X, with/without gimmicks".

From a toy development standpoint, Beast Wars was the natural extension of what they'd been doing during G2 (ball-and-socket joints, toys that squirted water, auto-transforming gimmicks). But from a marketing standpoint it was a complete revision of what had come before. G2 could be summarized as "what you loved about G1, but better" but Beast Wars was "everybody's an animal." Very different approaches.
> I don't think the toys were oversimplified at all. They just emphasized different things. I'm willing to get that if we dissected Armada Cyclonus and Legacy Kickback, we would find Cyclonus had more parts -- just put into the service of gimmicks like the spinning rotor, the missile launchers, the flip out cannons, the gearing to interact with minicons on his nose...

The internal mechanisms were probably very complex (I don't think I've ever disassembled an Armada toy) but from the consumer end the toys had simple transformations, with limited articulation. Toys like Megatron and Sideways couldn't move their legs. Scavenger was a brick. Now, maybe the lower articulation was a result of the higher parts count due to the internal mechanisms. I don't know. But after several years where Beast Wars style articulation was the standard, reverting to fewer moving parts in robot mode felt like a step backwards.

> It bothers me because they aren't doing a good job of what they are setting out to do -- which in this case is to pander to the past. Pick a lane and commit to it, weaving back and forth isn't going to please anyone.

They're doing it well for G1, but less successfully for other iterations of the franchise. People are openly dissatisfied with Arcee and Bulkhead, because they don't capture the essence of the characters. Some of the Beast Wars tribute toys have been great (there are in-hand images of Tarantulas floating around and he looks SO GOOD) but others have been worse than previous attempts (Rhinox, Waspinator).

> Actually, I think the shift away from story based lines, and the split to the under-12/over-40 model suggests you're wrong. That was a huge shift in the brand, while it was successful. It happened gradually, with Classics as an experiment, and a few iterations on that until it became the dominant part of the brand.

I'm not saying we haven't gotten a directional shift in the past. I'm just saying that I don't think the current model is likely to undergo a major change as long as it continues to be successful.

Classics was the first time Hasbro was like, "Hey, what if we went back to G1 again?" and it was something good to fall back on between movies, about once every two years, which at the time were their moneymakers. Now that they're not just continuously pumping out movies like clockwork, the focus had to change to something different. And Transformers as a brand has become pretty established, in a way that it wasn't in 2007. People saw that there was a Michael Bay movie in theaters, and thought that Transformers had disappeared in the 1980's and was finally back. It wasn't really part of the public consciousness the way it is now. You can make casual remarks to a truck looking like Optimus Prime or a vending machine being a Decepticon because it stole your money, and most people wil get the reference.

> They are kind of running out of G1 to revisit though, so they are beginning to look to their other properties.

There are hundreds of characters from G1 they haven't updated. Granted, a lot of them are more obscure than others, but there's no reason to think they can't continue to sprinkle Optimus Prime and Starscream and Bumblebee in the toy lines of the future, while eventually getting to Backstreet and Stranglehold and Splashdown and the rest.

I do think revisiting the other iterations is good, because it's more all-encompassing and celebrates Transformers from all eras, which is purportedly what the younger fans want (even though Cybertron Metroplex pre-orders are still not sold out, even though Bulkhead is clogging up every retail store, etc.) but I don't think it will be sustainable if the buying public doesn't respond well to it.

> "Somehow, Palpatine returned." It's a little impressive that the terrible Transformers movies didn't hurt the franchise the way the bad-but-not-Michael-Bay-bad Star Wars movies hurt the franchise.

I'm still trying to figure that out, to be honest.

> Has Star Trek ever been very popular as a toyline?

These things seem to work on 30-year cycles. So as a 1960's property, its heyday was during the 1990's, when Playmates Toys held the license and Star Trek was one of the hottest action figures on the market. The Next Generation was also one of the most popular shows on television, so that didn't hurt either. There was such a demand that they branched out into weird costumes with limited screen appearances, like Worf as a pirate or Captain Picard as a film noir detective or Data disguised as a Romulan.

The toy line was huge for a while. There were role-play phasers and tricorders, ships with electronic sound and lights, playsets, just about anything you can think of. It kind of started to taper off when the theatrical Next Generation movies hit (the toys were inaccurate because somebody changes the costumes at the last minute) and then they tried to change the scale of the toys and that was just a horrible idea. But, by that point it was probably already on its way out anyhow.

Lost in Space was also enjoying a brief revival during this time, another 1960's property.

Transformers has managed to enter into the mainstream consciousness in a way that not all brands manage. I mean, people are aware of who Kirk and Spock are, certainly, and everybody knows what "beam me up, Scotty" means, but for some reason that hasn't translated to consumer sales. For whatever reason, new fans aren't really latching on, even when the movie reboots were a thing. Maybe the movie reboots hurt the franchise too badly.

Optimus Prime's place as a pop culture icon is now cemented in the same way as Batman or Spider-Man or Superman, though. You don't have to be one of the people who read the original Batman comics in the 1930's to be a fan of him today. He's successfully managed to supercede his origins. It's hard to say which direction Transformers will go over time. Maybe it will just always be eternal, like Spider-Man, or maybe it will become culturally irrelevant by about 2044 or so. I guess we'll find out in about two decades.

Zob (hopes they finish off the G1 updates before that happens, though)