Outside? Inside? No, thinking ABOUT the box: your thoughts on Transformers packaging

Sciflyer

Two arms and one smile
Citizen
Ah...memories! X-9 Ravage was the very first JDM toy I bought, back when it was released. I don't think that any of the subsequent "updates" have been as good as that original release. I still have it and still have a soft spot for it.

Oh yes, the topic, packaging. There has been a lot to like over the years, but regardless of box art, I generally prefer Transformers packaged in alt mode (X-9 Ravage not withstanding). I get that they had to not do that over the years for various excuses reasons, but it's just a personal preference.
 

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
transformers packaged in robot mode goes against god tbh
 

Rustron

Member
Citizen
I feel I'm in the minority when I say I honestly dislike most Japanese packaging for Transformers. Tends to feel too busy and too empty at the same time. I'd never seen the Sonokong package, I like it more than the Takara examples. Feels more synthetic and dynamic, despite the similar style.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
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Sonokong does have great boxes, and the toys are generally okay. The paint is sometimes a step below Takara's, but the plastic feels like the same stuff.
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
One sad facet of Beast Machines is, unique, painted box art died with the Beast Wars (in the West at least), and the most we got was Hope Ya Like Angry Cheetor/Primal Because We Have Some Spare Renders (or, if you picked up the Dinobots -- which got their own logo -- Hope Ya Like T-Wrecks). This was a DISMAL era for box art that didn't end until RID2001 did. It didn't bother me TOO much at the time (I didn't have much Beast Machines stuff) but now I'm very disappointed we never got even Machine Wars-ish edits of old art into Buzz Saw or Skydive. I did really like the shades of blue they used on the backing card/box, which contrasted surprisingly well with most of the toys. Didn't realize until checking the wiki that this blue would go a shade darker (and have a yellow in-bubble spark background) with the Battle of the Spark subline; most of the BM stuff I have in my collection I acquired loose from lots, and internationally, because I don't think we even got that here.

You can kind of see how the era ended with the packaging equivalent of a whimper, despite some great toys and nice designs; I don't know if laziness or a budget situation or both (or maybe just knowing this was a last gasp and choosing not to sink more cash into it) led to the bland work put into packaging what was otherwise a pretty neat toyline (especially toward the end with BftS and the somewhat surprising Dinobots additions).
Beast Machines, I feel, REALLY suffered from Hasbro/Kenner's divided attention during that time. Beast Machines, of ALL of Hasbro's products of 1999-2001, felt the most "farmed out". I say this as a strong advocate for the brand! Compared to the other brands in their action portfolio, a lot of them required less "involvement" to continue along (Hasbro had a near decade of assets to pull from for Action Man, GI Joe 12" and Batman), than Transformers.

I don't think it was a situation of "laziness" so much that, given the pressures of the time, there was a sentiment of "good enough". Beast Machines could be summed up as "unguided ambition" :p
Kenner was busy on Batman and Star Wars, so Draxhall Jump got pulled in to contribute design work. Aside from some minor changes (like Nightscream) Bob Skir was seemingly given a pretty open hand during the production of the cartoon. Mainframe was seemingly left to do what they wanted for the cartoon (including character and color changes). With most of the existing design team sucked into Star Wars and Batman, new guys were left trying to pick up the slack and try to make functional toys out of the conflicting mode designs. Takara was so disinterested they subcontracted engineering work out to BEE-CRAFT. Issues in design work lead to the toys falling behind, so in addition to being late 5-6 months from the cartoon's premiere, Kenner had to "fill in" the line with Dinobot redecos, all the while many major characters either ended up not looking much like their onscreen counterparts, or arriving absurdly late (it took nearly a year and a half for a toy of Rattrap to appear, despite being a main character from the start).

The product packaging was likely victim to this as well, it was pretty "Kenner standard" and seemed to have been done fairly quickly using standardized assets. But like the toys, there didn't seem to be anyone really "steering the ship" so everyone was just pitching in to make sure the boat didn't sink.

Just for some historical context for those too young or international, or just don't remember:
Star Wars Episode I was a HUGE deal. Go to a given Target, take ALL of the retail space for Action figures and ALL the cars/vehicle sections (including RC), and you'd have the MINIMUM some stores had for Episode I. I still remember Walmart having, end to end, two FULL (aka, grocery section length) aisles of Star Wars stuff, more than half of which being the Hasbro toys. It was clearly a "all hands on deck" project in 1999, which meant all the top talent was directed to support that effort.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
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That's probably exactly what went wrong. Star Wars was going to be everything. If a B team could throw together something for Transformers, it would be nice but whatever.

Funny how things end up working out.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Bob Forward even once said this in an old interview:
HasKen is swamped with the Star Wars toys for 1997. And the new Star Wars movie comes out in 99. So Hasken wanted a new season of BW, but they wanted to hold off until 98, when they had an opening. Mainframe finally convinced them that would be death. So we're doing the 97 season. But in the back of my mind, I keep thinking -- they still have that hole in 98... :)

So, The Phantom Menace could have killed Beast Wars.
 

Anonymous X

Well-known member
Citizen
Thoughts on packaging? Just briefly, I think the current generic design used across SS and AotP is the worst packaging design ever. It’s so empty, so bland, like it should be for generic supermarket own-brand* transforming robot action figures. I’d ever take the Beast Machines design over this.

* or “supermarket private label” as Google tells me is the term in North America.
 

lastmaximal

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The 2000s, 1: Turn Around, Go Forward

East and West of the Transformers world hit pause after the dust of the Beast era settled, with a new series -- Transformers: Car Robots, which would become Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001) -- becoming the turnaround space within which both Hasbro and Takara would start over.

Car Robots would eventually be explicitly declared to be part of the 80s-on Japanese Transformers continuity (an intent also reflected in the production materials), but as a show lacked a lot of the features of such a continuation. In the West, Robots in Disguise (2001) was more clearly a fresh start... but not MUCH more clearly, as there were plenty of reused names and references to older characters and series in dialogue). This, combined with the notion of rebooting continuity still being fairly new to the US Transformers cartoons (the Beast era had continued on from a Generation 1, at least), created a somewhat confused impression at first.

Regardless, these lines had the simultaneous luxury and burden of being their own thing, not necessarily beholden to carrying a brand vibe from earlier series but also having to put in the effort to stand apart as a result. Thankfully, it wasn't solely the job of packaging to do this, as there was a great deal of intrigue from the show (back to 2D animation, and certainly riding the burgeoning anime wave in the west) and toys (a handful of lavish, complex, all-new molds with a greater focus on vehicles, with some redecos and unexpected G1-2 mold reuses). Packaging mostly had to be eye-catching and stay out of the way of what it was showcasing... and it managed that.

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Takara's Car Robots packaging took on a somewhat simpler look with fully-colored cards/boxes with a cool, fire/light-streaming effect radiating from the center (red-orange with red borders for Cybertrons, and green with blue-violet borders for Destron...gers), each having their faction leader's (Super Fire Convoy/Gigatron) head in fading monochrome atop the faction color border (and above the name of the faction running up the package edge. This continued a trend that persisted throughout G1 and the Beast era in Japan, but had gone away in the US since about G2 -- distinct packaging variations between factions. Some packaged samples I found pics of have a sticker highlighting Transformers' 15th anniversary.

The first releases featured window boxes, and carded Basics/Deluxes in a departure from the still-everyone-in-a-box Beast era series. One apparent holdover from Metals was the focus on using character cards as part of the packaging (Takara toylines had tended to have cards, but not used this way), in lieu of packaging artwork. A closer look at the carded figures shows that they did also have character art as part of the cardboard border on the front of the bubbles, just obscured by the large character name text.

Versus packs were gone, but giftsets (such as for the Spychangers and Buildmasters) were still part of the line. The closest we got to a back-of-box mural seems to have been a static-pose group shot, with both factions having a class photo taken.

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Later waves would shift to having more windowless packaging, for which the packaging art was huge renders of the toys in robot mode (and smaller pictures of the toy in altmode) that impressively dominated the packaging space. The larger real estate also allowed the light-streaming effect on the background to be more visible. This effect overall was especially pronounced with the bigger boxes, of which there were quite a few: the JRX gift set, the Baldigus git set, Super Fire Convoy, God Magnus, Black Convoy, Devil Gigatron, and certainly the God Fire Convoy giftset were quite large. None larger, of course, than Brave Maximus.

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Car Robots also made it to Korea, who imported it as Jeonguiui Yongsa: Car Bot. Sonokong mostly brought products over in the same Japanese packaging style with new text. I actually associate some of the windowless packaging a bit more with Sonokong because I saw it so often as that (it became more common and easily-sourced locally in my backtracking years, after the original Japanese releases had dried up). Per the wiki, there were also apparently some wacky steps involved like re-releasing old Beast era product in Car Robots packaging... including repackaging their BW2 "Garba Tron" as "Gigatron Z".

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In the US, Robots in Disguise (2001) had packaging that was an intriguing balance of old and new. The design was, on the one hand, different from anything we'd seen -- a gradient from yellow (where the toys would be) to red to black around the edges, a ripple/swirl effect radiating outward, and a sort of 3D/embossed grid texture -- but it was in a sense still quite evocative of the classic 1980s packaging's grid-on-red (except now without the faction variance in packaging). It's like someone took apart the original packaging elements and reassembled them, throwing a new one in there to make it feel different overall (the ripple-swirl being so prominent and high-contrast does keep the eye from just "seeing" the old grid-on-color, especially as the grid itself is so light.)

This also, almost surely coincidentally, seemed to offer a better take on CR's also-mostly-red/yellow Cybertron packaging by grounding it with sharp contrast. Combined with a bold, easily-readable new logo (the "TransFormers" part of which we'd see for the next few years) and the proud return of classic Autobot and Decepticon faction symbols, this was a simple but effective call at the turn of the decade and millennium, when nostalgia for the classic series was percolating even outside the hardcore fandom.

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Carded figures took two forms -- small vertical cards (Basics, Spychanger pairs), and wider-than-tall cards (quite a big change from what was standardized throughout the beast era, for Deluxes). Boxed figures remained standard rectangular prism shapes, with large plastic windows showing off the Rail Racer team, and bigger toys like Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, Megatron, and so on.

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RID2001 also brought back character art... in a fashion. Notably, and most likely due to the line's rushed conception, the line skipped hand-drawn (etc) artwork entirely and instead used edited toy photos, apparently with generous use of the Plastic Wrap filter (just a best guess) and some lens flares. (My own earliest experiments in Photoshop involved trying to imitate this.) This more or less did the trick, for the items that HAD packaging art at least (Deluxes and up). This art would also be used on the cut-out character cards on the back of the packaging; these cards were two-piece, affairs with one panel being the art, and one panel being the motto and Tech Spec numbers. Oddly excluded from being part of the "cards" was the character's bio (some of which, like "Speedbreaker" and the other Autobot Brothers' first releases getting "new spark engines", hinted at the line's rushed production), just printed next to the cards.

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This card-and-bio situation is of interest for a number of reasons: one, this would be the last we'd see of on-package bios for a while, and two, this may be the first line to show the widespread use of multilingual packaging text, which we'd definitely see for years and years to come as the toy industry's production standards grew and changed. We'd find out sometime during Armada (thanks to Aaron Archer as ORSON, iirc) that the latter played a role in the former.

Also of interest are a large, numerical "transformation difficulty scale" from 1-4 (I'd neglected to mention this as something they'd started adding to the card since somewhere mid-Beast era, with varying looks) and a dedicated "button" graphic for Transformers.com (Beast Machines had a "Check us out on-line at hasbro.com" somewhere near the bar code). Ah, simpler internet times.

The line and show were very popular and pushed Hasbro toward an extension, bringing in redecos of molds old (Beast Machines Jetstorm, Mirage, Spy Streak, and Scavenger) and older (Transmetal 2 Megatron) and even older (G2 Laser Cycles) and, uh, newer (unreleased Megabolt Megatron and Supreme class Optimus Primal) to keep it going. Indeed, Robots in Disguise (2001) would live on -- without a subline imprint of its own, and somewhat BECOMING a subline imprint -- well into the midst of the next series as a subline mostly used for store exclusive releases.


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The logo for the subsequent waves would on Armada-themed cards for currentness/continuity, which we can discuss when we get to then, but it started out as a continuation of the RID2001 format, including packaging. Sadly, this would not include Brave Maximus, meaning the biggest representation of this design is Air Attack Optimus Primal... most of whose box was a large window.



Next: A massive undertaking
 
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Gizmoboy

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The Machine Wars concept was an excellent one.

RiD 2001 was great packaging as well. I like the way they kept the feel of Beast Wars but yet modified it and made it feel new.
 

CoffeeHorse

Exhausted, but still standing.
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Thoughts on packaging? Just briefly, I think the current generic design used across SS and AotP is the worst packaging design ever. It’s so empty, so bland, like it should be for generic supermarket own-brand* transforming robot action figures. I’d ever take the Beast Machines design over this.

* or “supermarket private label” as Google tells me is the term in North America.

"Private label" is corpo speak. Most of the time we just say "store brand".
 

Rustron

Member
Citizen
Thoughts on packaging? Just briefly, I think the current generic design used across SS and AotP is the worst packaging design ever. It’s so empty, so bland, like it should be for generic supermarket own-brand* transforming robot action figures. I’d ever take the Beast Machines design over this.

* or “supermarket private label” as Google tells me is the term in North America.
Couldn't agree more with this. Age of the Primes feels particularly egregious, since, in my opinion, War for Cybertron and Legacy had some of the best packaging in years. If anything, they should've gone the other way and make Studio Series packaging more like the one they used for those two lines.


I never saw RID when it was in stores here (if it even WAS in stores). It's interesting, looking at it, it feels like it was very much the starting point for the visual style of the packaging for Classics, both Universes, and early Generations.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
never saw RID when it was in stores here (if it even WAS in stores). It's interesting, looking at it, it feels like it was very much the starting point for the visual style of the packaging for Classics, both Universes, and early Generations.
In other words, the starting point of the Archer era.
 

Rustron

Member
Citizen
In other words, the starting point of the Archer era.

Yeah, although the style seems to have lived through that era's CHUG specifically, the other series that released during his tenure had their own unique identities. I'm also not sure about how involved he was with the packaging, besides setting certain guidelines about what has to be on it.
 

Sciflyer

Two arms and one smile
Citizen
Yeah but like, some of it is pretty cool, and does a good job of housing TFs if/when they're not on display somewhere. I get it though: I'm working through a collection inventory / purge (haven't done one in about a decade), and I'm parting ways with a lot of packaging I don't want anymore.
 

lastmaximal

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The 2000s, 2: Les Années 2000, deuxième partie/Los Años 2000, segunda parte
(blame Google Translate, sorry)

The pivot from the Beast era was a very interesting time for a number of reasons. The Transformers fandom had gotten introduced to the notion of full-on rebooting and striking out on a new path distinct from what had come before, ruining Transformers forever. With that band-aid ripped off thanks to RID2001, the fandom was now in a true state of "aw jive, what do we do now", with the future being as unpredictable as it had felt just before the Beast era had created its own "new" direction. This combined with the still-fairly-early stages of the shift to full internet era made for a silly, funny time as rumors and innuendo took the fandom to weird places. The next series, Armada, would bring us back to Generation 1 continuity, kicking off right after Rebirth! There would be little helper Transformers called Mini-Cons! One of them would transform into Optimus Prime's Matrix of Leadership! Two truths, one lie: HE TELL ME!

And then the toys debuted via Toyfare Magazine -- to be fair, we saw these via online scans while wearing an onion on our belt -- and hilarity ensued.

However, that's enough context, and the proof would be in the pudding... a fairly popular, strong-selling pudding that had a great shelf presence and eye-catching packaging, which is what we're actually here to talk about. Armada got a ton of energy infused into it, and was more than just an experiment in bringing vehicles back to the line full-time. A commitment to a play pattern infused into every level of the toyline (micro play) was paired with greater co-development involvement from Takara. This continued on from RID2001 in kick-starting what I'm never shy about calling one of my favorite periods in Transformers as a brand and collecting Transformers in particular (although a not-insignificant chunk of that is personal reasons totally separate from the toylines).

[Aside: Armada featured a confusing, thankfully short-lived attempt at renaming price points (Hasbro would continue experimenting with this in Energon, at least in the catalogs), with Mini-Con, Super-Con (Deluxe), Max-Con (Mega), and Giga-Con (Super). Not really a packaging concern, but worth mentioning as an artifact of the era. The first two would be bubble-on-card (which I discovered was made with machines called "skin pack" technology, ew) and the next two (along with the one-offs like Role Play/Laserbeak and Super Base/Optimus Prime, a big gift set, and Unicron) would be boxed.]

This commitment to making a mark on a new late was reflected in the execution, and certainly the packaging. Armada featured some packaging elements that continued on from RID2001's lead, mainly the wider-than-tall cards for Deluxe/Super-Con figures and the logo, which retained TransFormers and replaced "Robots in Disguise" with the new subtitle in the same font as the main (check out the mirrored A on the ends), seemingly framed by a canister/capsule.

The packaging's signature look was a very colorful and detailed design, evoking a high-tech sonar display scanning the globe for (presumably) Mini-Cons. The circular element with radiating outer layers focused attention onto the toy by going lighter toward the center (also oriented onto the toy), incorporating red pulse waves as borders, and using energy trail effects and a grid (that I'd honestly taken for granted at the time, but now notice more after all the grid talk in this packaging history) for texture.

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The design was mostly uniform across factions, with the globe/map display behind the figure fading into a red/black gradient, and having an energy backdrop (changing per wave) for the text. This backdrop was refreshing to see on shelves after RID2001's run of warm colors, and it's just a cool design on its own and so recognizable. I loved it when the Armada MTMTE profile books adopted it as a backdrop for the profile pages as well. Later on, the Unicron Battles subline imprint would bring subtle changes to this, with a small inset piece of art showing Unicron explosively attacking a planet (and labeled with the subline imprint name), and the red/black gradient on the outer rim replaced with fiery orange waves on black.

Carded figures were notable for having bubbles that were almost as big as the already-huge card. Insane amount of plastic, housing a big spread that showed off the bulk, the Mini-Con, and the accessories, while also containing the cardboard insert with the toyline logo, the character card, AND a second cardboard insert in a semicylinder containing the instructions and the minicomic.

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The large Transformers Armada logo was prominently featured, along with (for Deluxes/Super-Cons) a character art card (bigger figures would have art printed a bit too small in a corner, and include the card with the paperwork). Yup, character art (as opposed to Everyone Is Cheetor or doctored toy photos) was back on Transformers packaging in trading card form, via a partnership with Dreamwave Publishing. This 2001-starting licensee would produce comics for Generation 1 and the main retail line (Armada, then Energon), and art assets from them would be used on lots of Transformers packaging and publications around this time as well. Mini-Cons didn't get a trading card in the US, with only one Mini-Con per team getting to show up in box art form.

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Mini-Cons were packaged as a triangle of three tiny figures, Super-Cons typically angled upward to the left (and with their Mini-Con partners displayed, in some cases more visibly distinct than others), Max-Cons angled upward to the right, and Giga-Cons in whatever way fit them best into the box. Super Base Optimus Prime and his somewhat awkwardly shaped trailer were nevertheless showcased quite nicely and even a bit luxuriously in the uniquely big packaging afforded to him. (Another one-off featured a gold-cab Super Base Optimus Prime, Jetfire, and the Adventure Mini-Con team, all packed in robot mode, in a large box of otherwise same but non-rounded design).

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Unicron, uniquely, stood tall in robot mode as an individual release, posed holding up his Mini-Con in a simple demonstration of sheer size. For stability reasons, presumably, the box only gave him a window reaching down to barely waist level. This did at least offer a lot of space below to display some excellent box art and a somewhat less flattering picture of the planet mode laying on its side.


Armada was, I think, where the discourse around the multilingual text on the packaging hit fever pitch, probably because this was where the decision -- linked to that requirement -- was made to nix bios and tech specs from the packaging. Even RID2001, which had already needed to deal with allotting real estate to printing the same thing in multiple languages, managed to retain those. This hallmark of Transformers was lost here, to be regained and relost a few times down the line, due to outside factors that were uncomfortably demonstrative of how the toy market, the toy production process, and just the world was different from When I Was Your Age. Nevertheless, the back of the wide cards/boxes still managed to display the toy and its gimmicks (central to this toyline) well, with bubbles providing highlights for key text.

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Also notable for Armada was how... round everything was. Every price point except Unicron (who I guess took all the round with him) featured a rounded or curved packaging element, even aside from the circular motif of the backdrop. The boxes were where this rounding was felt more evidently, although the carded figures did have the semicylinder at the base). For what felt like the first time in a US Transformers toyline the boxes were now not rectangular prism shapes. The front was now an arc, a curve projecting from the flat back of the box (which mercifully still had flat top and bottom). Still a relatively simple change considering how many more multifaceted boxes would be experimented with in the, er, decades since (he said, fingers turning into dust as he typed), but enough to make these impossible to put on their backs and stack.

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On a final US-based note: the Armada sonar-scanning packaging design would replace the RID2001 card design as the base for filler releases and store exclusives. Most (like the Destructicons and the new Ruination and Landfill redeco giftsets) would be under RID2001, but there was a new Transformers Dinobots subline as well (that, upon review, I now remember also had character art cards and went wild with plastic).

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