Transformers: Age of the Primes Thread: ll First Post All Listings II Update : April 12th, 2027 Bonus Wave: Repaint fun, Beast Wars, G2, Machine Wars

[Platypus Prime]

BAH! *I* remember when internet translations were crap, and someone mis-interpreted the ladder length of Fire Convoy's Car Robots announcement for the Robot Mode height and we thought there would be a Fortress Maximus sized Optimus Prime! Or the multiple times we heard a G1 name used in Beast Wars and everyone went nuts expecting G1 transformers to show up! Or the utterly bizarre mistranslation of a Minicon team as "Hopper, Bumper, and Burrito" and-

-and the saddest part is I'm not making any of this up.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

I remember when we wouldn't know new product was coming until it hit the shelves, unless we bought a printed magazine that told us about it.

 

[Sabrblade]

BAH! *I* remember when internet translations were crap, and someone mis-interpreted the ladder length of Fire Convoy's Car Robots announcement for the Robot Mode height and we thought there would be a Fortress Maximus sized Optimus Prime! Or the multiple times we heard a G1 name used in Beast Wars and everyone went nuts expecting G1 transformers to show up! Or the utterly bizarre mistranslation of a Minicon team as "Hopper, Bumper, and Burrito" and-

-and the saddest part is I'm not making any of this up.

"Hyper Goldfish! GOLFBALL!!!"

 

[Stepwise]

I'm old enough to remember in 2014 when Hasbro was going to wind down Generations, and those upsized Legends we saw at the end of Beast Hunters were the future.

Then Combiner Wars got revealed.

It'd be cool if we had another big line like Combiner Wars. Or a big new series like Armada.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Christ, I absolutely loved combiner wars (cause the combiners are my jam. The only thing better than a big assed combiner is a SMALL assed combiner.)... and it was 12 years ago. Feels longer and shorter than that...

 

[Undead Scottsman]

I will say we are definitely due for a shakeup. Prices are knocking people out of the hobby while they've already done 30 trillion versions of all the big name characters, and the number of smaller named characters that might still sell is decreasing every year. At some point they're going to want to find an excuse to make people buy yet another set of the big name characters and "more G1 accurate" is a well that is increasingly running dry. Especially when the people who will be willing to buy these toys are the ones who likely already own twenty different versions of Optimus Prime and related characters, the toys increasingly pricing themselves away from nostalgic impulse buys.

Transformers isn't going away anytime soon; we'll see it sputter out with a bunch of different attempts to revitalize the line before that happens. (See G1 going through the Head/Targetmasters, Pretenders, Micromasters and Actionmasters before they finally put it on ice for a year). If the end comes, it will not be sudden.

 

[LordGigaIce]

I will say we are definitely due for a shakeup. Prices are knocking people out of the hobby while they've already done 30 trillion versions of all the big name characters, and the number of smaller named characters that might still sell is decreasing every year. At some point they're going to want to find an excuse to make people buy yet another set of the big name characters and "more G1 accurate" is a well that is increasingly running dry. Especially when the people who will be willing to buy these toys are the ones who likely already own twenty different versions of Optimus Prime and related characters, the toys increasingly pricing themselves away from nostalgic impulse buys.

Transformers isn't going away anytime soon; we'll see it sputter out with a bunch of different attempts to revitalize the line before that happens. (See G1 going through the Head/Targetmasters, Pretenders, Micromasters and Actionmasters before they finally put it on ice for a year). If the end comes, it will not be sudden.

I think something like CW, TR, or PotP is the way to go. Not doing those again exactly, but find some gimmick that can unify a line.
Because I don't need another G1 Wheeljack, the ER one I have is pretty much all I need on that front. But I may be inclined to buy G1 Wheeljack again if he's part of a larger gimmick that's integrated across the line.

 

[Platypus Prime]

For Wheeljack, exploding could be a gimmick.

Still waiting for the team to snap and make the Power of Optimus Prime and the Primes, so we can search Ebay someday for Transformers POOPnTP or whatever the next absurd acronym is. Because we've had AOTP, POTP, clearly the whole team is stuck in the COVID era...

 

[LordGigaIce]

I'd be down for Hasbro to just try the PotP "evolving Leader" gimmick again. The budgets and build quality are better now then they were under Prime Wars, and maybe they can actually remember to do Powermaster Optimus Prime in the gimmick line that is his gimmick this time that'd be nice kthxbai

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Christ, I absolutely loved combiner wars (cause the combiners are my jam. The only thing better than a big assed combiner is a SMALL assed combiner.)... and it was 12 years ago. Feels longer and shorter than that...

 

[Platypus Prime]

I had similar thing except my reaction has a forth stage. Anyone have a screenshot of Starscream's ash pile...?

 

[Exatron]

I had similar thing except my reaction has a forth stage. Anyone have a screenshot of Starscream's ash pile...?

My response to all your comments about remembering how things used to be for Transformers? I remember when Transformers didn't exist...

 

[Badgertron]

I do agree that there is a kind of "vibe" in the air of potential change in the line, though I don't really feel like it will be a huge shakeup. Generations as a whole has some momentum right now, with the mainline, Studio Series 86, the Haslabs, comic series, and various store exclusives. TBF though, we are seeing a lot more older figures getting reissued, and we're down to 3 waves a year (less of a blow due to all the other avenues mentioned earlier).

Also, despite getting so many great obscure characters over the last few years, there are still seems to be certain eras that I worry we may never get figures of. Shell-feature Pretenders (for those that need them to be such), Euro G1 (we got Rotorstorm, and a base mold of Skyquake), the new mold G2 characters, Beast Machines (at least give us new molds of the 3 main Vehicons please), Energon (seems to have been skipped over for Armada & some Cybertron, but maybe they'll move onto it). I have faith that the Transmetals will eventually get something, if they can accept metallic paint instead of chrome. Victory was on this list until a few years ago, they've done a great job at making those characters. The Omnibots & Throttlebots could use full releases too, they're just cars. Hasbro loves making cars. I'm sure others here are holding torches for other characters, too.

 

[lastmaximal]

I'm old enough to remember in 2014 when Hasbro was going to wind down Generations, and those upsized Legends we saw at the end of Beast Hunters were the future.

Then Combiner Wars got revealed.

Those were such baffling times. That whole period of Generations/Prime/Beast Hunters/AoE showing the learning process Hasbro seemingly went through about adjusting to their new, smaller budgets...

I didn't quite hop on the "this is what they're doing from now on" theory then, but with the small-play-pattern Cyberverse being so entrenched, it seemed to make sense that upsized versions of those olds would fill a bigger line. Even the new Predaking and BH OP were large, chunkier, simpler versions.

Combiner Wars was a big surprise, in large part because the Archer era had gotten me used to Hasbro doing its own thing with Generations, taking fan desires on in fairly oblique fashion while still being led by other rationales. Suddenly here was this big thing everyone had been clamoring for.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

This is why I'm always confident that things will turn around. The next big epoch-defining thing in Transformers always comes out of nowhere like that.

 

[lastmaximal]

Indeed. Not to repeat myself, and definitely not to imply it was the same situation ... but Botbots was very much out of nowhere too, and that was like twelve shots in the arm.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

The Hasbro Prime toy was released during the Aaron Archer era, a time when Hasbro cared less about media accuracy and more about "what looks cool and appealing to kids" for mass retail toys, even if that meant giving the toys bizarre wacky colors that didn't match the character color schemes at all.

Yeah. When I was a kid, the last thing I wanted was for the toys being sold to me to look like the characters featured in the cartoon made to sell toys to me.

What's funny is, that's basically what they delivered 98% of the time -- and I don't just mean Transformers -- which effectively created such a market for toys that do look like the cartoons today.

It would be a brilliant long-term strategy, but to borrow a 1985 quote from then-Coca-Cola President Don Keough, they "are not that dumb, and they are not that smart."

my source tells me that for 2027 they are going to cancel all generations and all transformers will be called transformers bricks and they will all be bricks like g1 but also because of budget cuts they won't even have any articulation at all and you 'transform' them by just lying them down

btw my source is that i made it the hug up

Or did you...?

Spoiler

 

[Steevy Maximus]

You got a source for that? The only quote from the brand team I can recall about AotP's two year runspan is that they didn't want it to take 3 years to get all Thirteen primes out.

I may very well have been misremembering the quote on the planned/intended duration of Age of the Primes.

I will say we are definitely due for a shakeup. Prices are knocking people out of the hobby while they've already done 30 trillion versions of all the big name characters, and the number of smaller named characters that might still sell is decreasing every year. At some point they're going to want to find an excuse to make people buy yet another set of the big name characters and "more G1 accurate" is a well that is increasingly running dry. Especially when the people who will be willing to buy these toys are the ones who likely already own twenty different versions of Optimus Prime and related characters, the toys increasingly pricing themselves away from nostalgic impulse buys.

That’s kind of what I was getting at, not “Transformers are dying!”. Probably my biggest disappointment of the year has been Transformers Core being just another flavor of the same old regurgitated Evergreen style, and not simply due to my broad malaise towards those designs in general. My initial hope would be that Core would end up something akin to Rise of the Beasts’ Core assortment, but not constrained by being explicitly based on prior media. Cyberverse/Earthspark/Prime Changers Deluxe figures have been broadly well received, and I would love to see what that product structure (a ”good enough” traditional converting toy that omits complexity and excess articulation to keep prices in check) applied to an “Ultra Prime Changer” in the $35-40 range.

More than any other legacy brand, Transformers has survived and thrived BECAUSE of its “mutability”. Because Hasbro, at one point, was willing to make an Optimus Prime, or a Kup, or a Cheetor that DIDN’T look directly copied from a prior iteration (or adapted to fit the general robot aesthetic of G1/Unicron Trilogy). My comments towards Studio Series was pointing to THAT being a valid venue for the straight-from-media recreations, but leaving the resources for the “Main/Classic” Generations towards something a bit more…creative.

I think something like CW, TR, or PotP is the way to go. Not doing those again exactly, but find some gimmick that can unify a line.
Because I don't need another G1 Wheeljack, the ER one I have is pretty much all I need on that front. But I may be inclined to buy G1 Wheeljack again if he's part of a larger gimmick that's integrated across the line.

Or even a solid “thematic element”. The War for Cybertron Trilogy was very successful in leveraging a relatively “standardized” figure range, but each segment offered it’s own “hook”:
Siege had the Weaponizers to add weapons to Transformers that were showing the wear of battle and the abandonment of their “disguise” nature
Earthrise brought in more “Earthen” modes, but also integrated the space aspect with mercenaries and microbases.
Kingdom introduced Beasts and Fossilizers to “beastify” the traditional figures release with them.

It’s like, does Wheeljack NEED to be a Lancia-inspired sports car ALL the time? Why can’t he be a repair truck, like Rise of the Beasts? Wouldn’t that fit his “engineer” nature better?
(Going back to the above comment about my concept of a “Core” line, if I was doing things, Wheeljack would end up with an Inspector Gadget-like Van mode, MAYBE with the ability to convert to a “sportier” mode with hidden weapon slots/storage)

 

[Platypus Prime]

My favorite Wheeljack IS the Origins space-van thing. Or at least he's supposed to be. The first episode says he's a vehicle of some sort. He's a box.

 

[wonko the sane?]

A HOVER box! With enough room for an entire bumblebee and some power rods inside the cargo compartment.

I should make an origins display when I put away quickstrike and silverbolt...