Transformers: Age of the Primes toyline discussion || update: stock renders of upcoming Alpha Trion, Micronus, Flatline, Fireflight, Skydive, ++

Princess Viola

Dumbass Asexual
Citizen
This team's been wise to do this on the neutral turf of Instagram instead of picking a forum. As much as I'd love to have them here, I get why that didn't work out for Orson's World and why it wouldn't work out now.
yeah it's called most of the fandom aren't even on forums these days heyooooooo
 

Platypus Prime

Well-known member
Citizen
Hey, I know EVERYTHING there is to know about toy design, and I learned it all on fan forums! Plastic comes from petroleum, which we get from...petrorabbits, I think...and then that gets cast into steel molds made from a resin prototype which was assembled by elves working at the North Pole, and they do it free so any cost cutting is entirely because Hasbro hates fans, and the product should always be whatever I was thinking of when fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft...no, wait, that figure's not out yet, doesn't count. And plasticizer can't melt cardboard.

I should probably admit that due to Transformers not normally impacting my eating/medical situations, I see the whole thing as entertainment and only tend to pay attention during the fun parts. I may have missed a step or two. Whatever. I still am waiting for those Combaticon preorders to go live.
 

Blot

Well-known member
Citizen
Well, tbf to Aaron, he tried. "Orson's World" over on TFW2005 was him interacting with fans and answering questions about the process and how things worked til, as I understand it, Someone bitched about him doing so and he got reprimanded hard, and had to stop doing that and afterwards he became very tight lipped.

It was due to this, as an example, that Armada's faction symbols got fixed from being just blobs (Hasbro trying to save money) to being outlined since he saw how much feedback there was about it and how long it would take to get fixed (Wave 3, since wave 2 at the time was already in production and too late to change things)
Even beyond Orson's World, the Hasbro Q&As where the sites would submit questions for Hasbro to give wishy washy non-answers weren't exactly better either.
 

lastmaximal

Administrator
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
This reminds me of how people told Hasbro for years they wanted tech specs to be brought back and Archer thought people were talking about the stats and numbers and not the character bios, so he was caught off guard when they added the numbers back and people still demanded tech specs. :D
He did interpret that correctly. The tech specs are the numbers (I say this as someone who also always conflated them, despite reading "bio and tech specs" with my own eyes for years, heh)

I don't agree with the "they shouldn't share anything" take because I think that being as open and approachable as they can be has been one of this team's strengths.
I just think the fandom as a whole needs to realize that they know next to nothing about toy design, and what they do know has been what the team has decided to share. More people just need to accept that reading a few behind the scenes posts about "partials" and "sub-capsules" doesn't mean they know stuff.
I don't think I've ever said they shouldn't share anything. When I say they're well within their rights not to, I'm saying they shouldn't HAVE to share anything. And they do not. They are neither obligated nor expected to. That they choose to do so anyway is what I appreciate.

I'm with you on how "thinking they know everything because of a few inside baseball terms" is annoying behavior, but it's more the sheer general sense of entitlement (which that is a facet of) I'm weary of. And wary of.

None of this stuff is life-and-death information. None of this is relevant to our jobs or lives beyond the added texture it lends this one part of our entertainment landscape. They don't work for us (fandoms routinely get this wrong), and they're not our elected representatives. This info shouldn't even have that big an impact on our spending, which is the most functional link here I can see (unless someone needs to be told Flatline is a partial of AOTP Red Alert rather than see it, or needs the lineup revealed months ahead of when it would be revealed anyway to make plans). Stuff the company IS obliged to make available is down that hallway at the shareholders report.

(Listening to feedback is information going the other way, and boy, they sure don't need to open an official channel for fans to start offering THAT.)

There's no NEED for behind-the-scenes anything, which is what makes it a nice gesture for them to offer it anyway in the first place.
 


Top Bottom