Agreed on both counts, sir. I love the heck out of that T30 Waspinator. As for Rhinox, well, I opted for Takara's TG-31 release and have never regretted it.
Studio Series discussion
- Thread starter Paladin
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Agreed on both counts, sir. I love the heck out of that T30 Waspinator. As for Rhinox, well, I opted for Takara's TG-31 release and have never regretted it.
Yeah this bothered me at the time, and is kind of undermining my memories of then. It was an awkward time when you could kind of notice the stuff they were working through, like when no one says anything after the factory dad works at closes but your birthday gift this year is a toothbrush.
I remember getting that impression you mentioned about so much from that time frame, maybe from even before 2012 but certainly more common by then. Even in DOTM it seemed like they were trying to downshift from the hypercomplex-for-the-sake-of-it ROTF stuff, and make room for Mechtech gimmickry in the budget, all on seemingly smaller budgets (the line was also cut short and the Trilogy subline imprint outright canned). That was a number of things rather than just the gas spikes I'm sure, but things just kept moving in that direction.
2012 on was Prime RID/PRID (the white cards), Beast Hunters, T30, AOE, RID2015. You could point to any number of examples from each line that showed how rough the learning curve for rethinking design approaches from a diminished budget standpoint was.
While some of it was still somewhat extravagant (Skids has way more stuff going on than most, not that it outweighs the flaws on that toy), you could see the compromises get bigger and bigger. PRID had similar "er, we blew a chunk of the toy budget on these spring-loaded gun blobs or this geared gimmick on the main toy, what corners are left to cut" issues as the DOTM stuff; AOE's Leader class Op was shockingly basic -- not helped along by the shift to very unfeasibly low-altmode-kibble character models; they briefly toyed with the idea of upsized Legion class figures as Deluxes in Beast Hunters; Airachnid existed; almost everything in RID2015 was simple AND hollow, and so on.
This isn't to say there were no good toys from those lines, just that the struggle was kind of coming across. I think Hasbro and the newer and newer teams have managed to hit their stride anew in the later 2010s and early 2020s, but the current economic picture is so volatile I don't know where we're going.
I will take T30 Rhinox over Kingdom Rhinox, easy. Like you said, he's not perfect... but he's better.
Waspinator is a weird one, because I had T30 Waspinator and Kingdom Waspinator side by side and I'm not sure I could say which was better. They had their differences, yes, but they're both just slightly different takes on the same design with basically modern engineering. It's kind of weird. Like... you hold Classics '06 Prime and ER Prime side by side, and the differences are very clear. But Waspinator had this weird "sideways progress" energy between T30 and Kingdom. To me anyway.
Regardless, I think the Beast guys made out better in T30 because they were pretty straightforward designs based off of the 90s cartoon. The main bulk of T30, meanwhile, had to deal with trying to adapt IDW's stylized designs on an ever-shrinking budget.
No, I agree there was a sort of lateral move for Waspinator. Which I guess is a compliment to the Kingdom design. Does some unexpected things but is overall neat. The Rhinox was a bit less effective, even after Takara painted it up all pretty for BW Again?!.
(I wish Takara's Dinobot were packed with almost anyone else, because there's really nothing earthshaking added to Tarantulas. But I guess I can just be content with Hasbro's Dinobot then.)
(I wish Takara's Dinobot were packed with almost anyone else, because there's really nothing earthshaking added to Tarantulas. But I guess I can just be content with Hasbro's Dinobot then.)
For me, personally, I see a pretty strong progress starting with Combiner Wars. Those toys were very simple compared to the engineering from T30, and it helps a lot. The budgets probably aren't all that different, but they're doing more with less. It's almost like Armada, where things are scaled back, so everyone can re-adjust and then progress further again in a new direction.
TR and PotP kind of made incremental improvements, but Siege is where things really come together. I remember people who HATED the reveal pics for Siege begrudgingly admitting it was really solid.
The aesthetics have shifted, it took way too long for them to realize that people would prefer if they just didn't with the battle damage decos, but I think that there's been a certain mastering of what can be done with the budgets modern Hasbro affords these things since the WfC trilogy of lines.
But as you said, we're off in crazyland economically speaking and we have no idea how it'll shake out. We may, unfortunately, be seeing the future of Transformers in general in CyberWorld. At least until things stabilize a bit.
Combiner Wars was kind of amazing for what it was. The five loaves and two fish of toyline's, it squeezed a ton of uses out of each mold (iirc they had to show a plan for maxing out the costs so they'd get the line greenlit), some of which weren't necessarily the best use of the molds but it worked overall. I do wish we'd gotten more of a retooling budget for small things here and there, or just more mold variation (like we'd get later on with belated molds like Blast Off and Groove, or in POTP), but the POINT was it would be kind of a masterclass of milking available tooling. And this being pre-unification, Takara worked some nice magic dolling the toys up in nice colors. If we had to do them over I'd rather the same formula with a Leader torso than a Voyager+frame, but we ARE still getting some pretty neat toys.
I think TR was the strongest single showing (partly because POTP was more of what we'd already seen). Still some hollow-feeling ones earlier on, but as the line continued it really started bringing some cool stuff, from the Triggerhappy base mold to a surprisingly decent Overlord.
I'll fully admit to being one of those that were entirely unimpressed with the Siege reveal, but only insofar as there have been far more interesting "Cybertronian" designs. Didn't have any inkling at the time that we were basically looking at Pretool: The Trilogy. Getting the toys in hand did really show a pleasant level of playability and substantial...ness in them that won me over.
And of course alongside that Studio Series -- after some initial uproar about how tiny everything was compared to the older movie toys, which Siege also had to face (I remember so many Ultra Magnus comparisons) -- demonstrated that Hasbro had landed a great working formula for bringing movie designs into toy form under then-modern budgets. Of course, that also meant a lot of clear plastic anxiety; I still wish they'd make some whatever-you-want-to-call-them editions with opaque plastic.
Fully agreed. TR is, to this day, my favourite modern Generations line. It's the only thing since I hit adulthood that has made me feel like a kid again. Setting up a few TR dudes in vehicle mode, around one of the Leader bases, with the Titan Masters all out? Brought back that feeling I had during Armada. More modern lines have more solid construction, but TR was just fun.
Siege is so weird. They sold the idea of the line as being built around those first few scenes from the G1 pilot, back on Cybertron. But none of those designs actually made it into the line outside of the Seeker Tetrajet. Bumblebee, Wheeljack, and Jazz had their wacky alien modes done up in entirely different lines while Siege went with "earth modes, but there's an extra window or headlamp, maybe."
You're right. In retrospect it's clear why it was all done the way they did it... they were all Basically Earth vehicles anyway so they could redo them as those in ER. Cheeky, Hasbro. Just so weird due to the Origins guys all happening elsewhere.
But yeah, Siege was really a surprising leap in overall quality and construction, and I don't think they've ever regressed. Sure, there have been some stinkers since, but I don't feel like things have gone backwards like they did when oil prices skyrocketed in 2012. Here's hoping things don't get so nuts that they're finally forced to undo all of that progress.
Absolutely. I never really got hung up on comparing SS stuff to the earlier movie lines. Honestly, I think there are a lot of rose coloured glasses at work with how people remember the movie lines, often from people who weren't around for them!
Like don't get me wrong, the budgets were very healthy, the gimmicks were plentiful, and those toys were fun! TF '07 Deluxe Bonecrusher might be one of my favourite figures ever.
But if we're being objective about it... so much of that original movie line was Hasbro fumbling going HOW DO I DO THING?
Which is understandable. Going from UT and Classics (which was basically "what if G1 but UT?") to the Bay designs had to have been a trip. It's not a shock it took a few years to nail the Bayverse look in toy form.
Still, it means that there's a lot of movie stuff that, while fun and loaded with gimmicks, doesn't exactly translate the movie design as best as it could. Which is where SS shines.
The reception to the Origins stuff was funny, Bee in particular. At least one dude here was "aha I called it when they announced Siege, they'd make this Cybertronian Bumblebee!" Sure, Jan.
Studio Series was the kind of line that could only have happened when it did. Enough separation from the movies themselves, the movies having been cemented enough to warrant their own Classics revisiting, toys could be based on finished movie looks rather than concept art (for those that were IN the movies), the nature of and expectations at toy retail had also changed, no more need (or, under the new team, inclination) to play the "toys at retail" game of "this can't just be silver or gray, this needs a pop of color, this needs a fun accessory we can build a call-out on", etc.
That Grimlock alone was an amazing introduction to set the tone, but no way would they ever have done that before. The closest they got was TLK, and even there he was two-toned silver and black. And there to just kind of pad out the line. But here, black/gunmetal with some metallic dry brushing, because let Bumblebee and Stinger have vibrant colors, this is a metal tyrannosaurus who looked like this in the movie.
(I do think they "nailed the Bayverse look in toy form" occasionally around ROTF, thanks to what must have been a comparatively comfortable budget. To be fair, that IS "a few years" in. But only for some like the Leader class Optimus Prime, eventually Battle Blade Bumblebee. And even those had compromises, including evoking heavy amounts of wanting to hurl the toy against a wall rather than finish transforming it. They'd never really hit those heights again, to my mind, because of all the streamlining from DOTM on. Studio Series was where that became a consistent thing thanks to a good balance of clever engineering and willingness to faux-parts away a lot of stuff. So many standouts.)
Studio Series was the kind of line that could only have happened when it did. Enough separation from the movies themselves, the movies having been cemented enough to warrant their own Classics revisiting, toys could be based on finished movie looks rather than concept art (for those that were IN the movies), the nature of and expectations at toy retail had also changed, no more need (or, under the new team, inclination) to play the "toys at retail" game of "this can't just be silver or gray, this needs a pop of color, this needs a fun accessory we can build a call-out on", etc.
That Grimlock alone was an amazing introduction to set the tone, but no way would they ever have done that before. The closest they got was TLK, and even there he was two-toned silver and black. And there to just kind of pad out the line. But here, black/gunmetal with some metallic dry brushing, because let Bumblebee and Stinger have vibrant colors, this is a metal tyrannosaurus who looked like this in the movie.
(I do think they "nailed the Bayverse look in toy form" occasionally around ROTF, thanks to what must have been a comparatively comfortable budget. To be fair, that IS "a few years" in. But only for some like the Leader class Optimus Prime, eventually Battle Blade Bumblebee. And even those had compromises, including evoking heavy amounts of wanting to hurl the toy against a wall rather than finish transforming it. They'd never really hit those heights again, to my mind, because of all the streamlining from DOTM on. Studio Series was where that became a consistent thing thanks to a good balance of clever engineering and willingness to faux-parts away a lot of stuff. So many standouts.)
So apparently when Skybound "Go on the Offensive" Prime was announced he was announced at $60. But when he went up on Hasbro Pulse he was $80. Sorry to our British users for the Imgur link, I wasn't sure what else to use for uploading video.
"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."
"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."