I remember youtube videos of Classics toys were my first contact with G1-style toys. Before that, G1 to me was just some backstory for Beast Wars. Because I never saw the toyline on shelves, I remember being a surprised when I saw pictures of the packaging for the first time many years after the toyline was current, and seeing that it wasn't actually CALLED classics. I love the style of the packaging, and your article has brought to my attention that destroyed (With the colors even sort of suggesting it's burning...) cityscape. It's oddly haunting, honestly. Like that's all that's left after 20-or-so years of the Autobots and Decepticons duking it out on earth. I know the designer probably just put it there to make it look more action-y and attractive for kids, and I think it succeeds at that, but as an adult it feels oddly heavy! It's a great design element either way. I'd also never seen those fold out two packs! They really went all in with the extra flaps on that toyline, love it, top 5 packaging style for sure.
The little joke at the beginning of the Henkei post makes me worried that you pronounce it as henk-eye...
The Japanese monochrome packaging for exclusives I always found equal parts lazy and brilliant. It stands out from the rest for sure, and makes it clear that the product inside is
special.
I miss the "modernised and redesigned, yet still familiar" design ethos of the Classics range, which continued into Universe 2.0, RtS, etc. I mean, it's nice to have modern figures which match the Marvel comics/Sunbow cartoon design templates so closely, but it's all getting a bit too samey, really. (Perhaps Transformers is now too much of a "nostalgia based brand" to have as much divergence from established characters designs as was possible back in 2006?)
I read a comment somewhere lamenting the lack of modern real world alt-modes, and honestly I agree. That comment made me conscious of the fact that the most recent vehicles depicted by Transformers are still almost a decade old, and how that really highlights how much of a nostalgia brand it's become, which is very bad for the future of the franchise and something I personally dislike very much and find very boring, as someone who grew up during the 1996 - 2010 era of Transformers, where new, contemporary, exciting iterations were the norm, not the exception.
I remember even being a bit aprehensive back when Kingdom leaked (which somehow is five years ago already??), fearing they would do the beast warriors as janky 3d animals. Fortunately, they went the realistic route instead.
So I agree that it's cool to have the cartoon accurate G1 stuff, but it's really high time they came up with something new to balance it out.
