Jackpot makes good points here acknowledging that the club was always up against something, in addition to the uneven spread of good and bad choices they made on their own. Sometimes the problem was that the bad ideas got greenlit, but sometimes the good ideas weren't feasible, or the support wasn't there. But IDK about the alternate box set suggestions. There were verbal riots over making the Seekers exclusives to the convention; I can only imagine the hilarity of "they're charging convention prices for FLIPCHANGERS?!". (Then again, the GI Joe convention charged convention prices for 80s tooling for years, who knows.)
They did use a flip changer mould as an exclusive in 2006 for the Dawn of Future's Past set. I don't think it was from the actual box set, but wasn't the MW Thundercracker/Skywarp mould used for pre-Earth Waspinator?
I think it could work, if it was leaned into as the point of it all. Then again 2013 was a bit before Machine Wars started getting reevaluated in the fandom as a whole so... maybe not... but I do think if it was sold as a conceptual follow up that could augment an existing collection that was dirt cheap on the aftermarket at the time that it may have had a shot.
I think branding that year "Machine Wars" was the error, but if they hadn't built expectations with that and instead had a different theme that happened to feature MW-homaging designs, it could have helped. I liked the stories (between the convention comic and the subscription service promoting one), once I shrugged and decided not to hang my expectations on it delivering on whatever I thought of as "Machine Wars". That, or make more of the year's stuff actually Machine Wars-heavy or made other choices (then again, idk what was feasible). Why was Electro made instead of Hubcap? Where was Prowl? Funny enough, we could have gotten a Machine-Wars-Starscream-out-of-Prime-Skyquake a decade early, and the head sculpt would even be a bit closer. Would absolutely change the story up though.
Funnily enough I didn't mind Stryka and Obsidian being shoehorned into MW conceptually. Everyone had sort of fan canon'd MW as fitting somewhere between the end of G1 and the Beast Era, and Stryka and Obsodian broadly fit in with that. In a world where FP had better moulds to use and actually finished the MW homages they wouldn't be that out of place. I even appreciated the fiction committing to making them Autobots.
The problem was that FP miscalculated and planned on rounding out the MW cast via subscription services and future convention sets. I'm convinced the BotCon 2013 MW comic had Optimus sent into a coma so they could have him "revived" in whatever design they chose to homage his MW figure with. I don't know what that would have been... but I can see the narrative sense in it.
Problem is that MW was already a niche thing and the set they offered didn't even get you the full MW cast. The original line was small. Only twelve figures. Doing a convention set of figures that aims to homage the original line could be a one and done package. You could easily do Optimus, Sandstorm, Prowl, Mirage, Hubcap, Hoist, Megatron, Megaplex, Starscream, Soundwave, Thudercracker, and Skywarp in one go between a box set and convention exclusive two packs.
But between the subject matter still being niche at the time and the disappointment in not getting the whole set, the set sold poorly and FP abandoned all plans for future MW homages.
They really should have taken their shot. If you're not going to go digging through old moulds to do "wave two" then give everyone a full set of homages in one go.
As it was, they left things incomplete. Paired with the questionable mould choices? It was just unfortunate.
But ultimately, all of this just reminds me of what I've said elsewhere before: I remain eternally grateful to be in a time of variety and quality tooling, AND a mostly mass-market (store-exclusive and bigger event-exclusive capsules at most) way of getting these collection-expanding redecos and retools out there, especially beyond the US.
Yeah. We've gone from MW being a botched convention set that didn't even sell that well at the time to being slated for mass retail release. That's wild, in the best way. I remember when people would make fun of it, and now? People are looking forward to MW Starscream and Megatron being found at Walmart. Crazy times.
Like we've gotten fully accurate G2 Jihaxus and Dreamwave The Fallen at mass retail. Holy crap. That's cool. Stuff I wouldn't have believed would happen in a million years not even twenty years ago. And now MW? Awesome.
I lived through that entire period of the club wanting to do more homages that would sell, not really ever having a consistently great slate of molds to do that with, and being confined by a comparatively miniscule release venue and format that would inevitably lock out a lot of people (myself included). I do not want to go back to that ever again.
I remember when FP lost the licence... people were understandably worried that we wouldn't see deep cuts anymore. To Hasbro's credit, they stepped up and started doing them in a way that was more accessible than FP ever was. And since it's Hasbro directly they're not limited in mould reuse.
We've also gone from being told Combiners and Headmasters weren't viable to having them both revisited (twice over with Combiners), and gone from being told "we can't confirm or deny that at this time" when asked about future product to having Mark just posting on Instagram "yeah this guy's cool I'm gonna try and work him into the next line if there's room."
We're really spoiled these days and I'm pretty grateful for it as a fan.
I will forever be salty at that one since Hubcap was the one Machine Wars toy I even owned growing up.
He and Megaplex are also the two OCs in Machine Wars. And Megaplex got a figure!
