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The distinction was 'we're gunning for that Micro Machines money and we need you to conflate the two'
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Feb 24, 2023 10:25
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Personally I think Micro Masters and other similar "small scale" sub-lines for Transformers are a wonderful concept, but most of the attempts that have been done after G1 end up falling flatter than they should, usually for at least one of two reasons; 1) the line doesn't receive as much R&D attention as it should so the engineering isn't as good as it should be(the more recent Micro Masters are a prime example of this issue), and/or 2) the small scale stuff doesn't receive as much focus as it should and doesn't get enough product made for it resulting in it feeling like a mostly pointless waste of the line's limited resources(this has been the problem with most of the small scale stuff made in the last decade or so since Hasbro canned the Cyberverse subline it used for the DOTM and Prime lines)
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Feb 24, 2023 11:25
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SS ROTBee is not selling as fast in Malaysia. The toys have been out a week and they're still in stock both online and at TRU. Either they overstocking like 2009 again or collectors are not into this one as much; the mold looks great but the paint is getting complaints . SS DOTM Bee by contrast sold out in a couple of days back in December. I might not have to buy him right now. I'm gravitating towards Airrazor instead because I missed the Kingdom version, and now she's bigger with nice shine paint. Also I am obligated to buy a character voices by Michelle Yeoh. The MSJ fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Feb 24, 2023 |
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Feb 24, 2023 11:36
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:Battletrap took me a bit to figure out. The legs are the easiest part but if you do them first you don't have anywhere near enough clearance to get his arms where they need to be... which is a lot simpler than it looks and feels. That actually helped out a lot thanks! I dunno if I've got it just yet but it looks a lot better than my previous attempts haha.
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Feb 24, 2023 16:22
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Anyone want some autobot keycaps? https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/11a0yxm/nicepbt_autobots_with_stepped_grimlock_in_stock/ 
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Feb 24, 2023 22:05
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't really get what the distinction was for micromasters compared to all the other tiny robots G1 had. Figures were way smaller back then in general. A few of the micromaster gimmicks sound interesting, they did end up remaking the micromaster combiners recently. Other posted:The distinction was 'we're gunning for that Micro Machines money and we need you to conflate the two'
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Feb 24, 2023 23:30
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Micromasters also had all the little bases made just for them.
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Feb 24, 2023 23:51
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with Mini-Cons, any figure could be a base for them.
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Feb 25, 2023 00:28
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Just learned Diaclone cockpits and eyes light up under a blacklight. This changes everything
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Feb 25, 2023 02:55
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Droyer posted:Just learned Diaclone cockpits and eyes light up under a blacklight. This changes everything Hell yeah!
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Feb 25, 2023 03:19
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Interesting choice https://twitter.com/tfw2005/status/1629586799973781504?s=46&t=2Vl5mZOAuXyv2LbW1v-6cQ
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Feb 26, 2023 03:21
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Joe Fisto posted:Interesting choice Haha that's awesome, I have the original RID Tow Line, he's got a neat transformation gimmick where he auto-transforms by folding over himself. Edit-- took me a moment to realize that's a Scraphook recolor, it's a good use of that mold. If I didn't already have Scraphook I'd be pretty tempted to pick that up.
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Feb 26, 2023 03:32
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Jinkies! That sure is a colour scheme!
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Feb 26, 2023 04:03
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So something I've thought about in the past, back in G1 the numbers for Autobots vs Decepticons were pretty lopsided in the former's favor over the whole of G1(though on a year by year basis it kind of got a fair bit more even for 86 through 88 or so) from the very beginning, at least for G1's first two years this was definitely due to the somewhat arbitrary policy they had of car and mini-vehicles molds being Autobot only, in a world where they didn't go with that exclusivity policy and instead were more concerned about keeping the two factions more even in terms of characters, which molds from the 84 and 85 cars and mini-vehicles do you guys think would have been used as Decepticons instead? Some feel pretty obvious(Wheeljack, Powerglide, and Warpath all come to mind) though I imagine almost any of them would work with a more villainous paintjob
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Feb 26, 2023 04:09
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Going with Barricade instead of Prowl would make sense, and the headless Ratchet/Ironhide mold could make for interesting drone soldiers to fill out the Decepticons. Hound as a military jeep kind of fits the idea of Decepticons as being more war-related than the Autobots, and Cosmos maybe could have been left behind on Cybertron as Shockwave's assistant or something.
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Feb 26, 2023 05:04
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All I can think of is that Cliffjumper might be more interesting as like a "bad" Bumblebee. Hasbro made so many big decisions when setting up Transformers, it's remarkable that so many of them are kinda objectively bad decisions from a marketing standpoint. I always thought it was interesting how despite how the Autobot toys outnumber Decepticons, the cartoon starts with the premise that the Decepticons have nearly won the war and the Autobots are reduced to more of an underground resistance. I feel like a lot of kids' shows in the 80s and 90s did some kind of underground resistance thing. I think most later incarnations of the Transformers put the Autobots more in the position of power (I dunno if that represents some kind of cultural turn against underdogs or what), but since they figured out that they could make extra size classes of a main core cast of Autobots, they ended up making more Decepticon characters. Robot Style posted:Going with Barricade instead of Prowl would make sense, and the headless Ratchet/Ironhide mold could make for interesting drone soldiers to fill out the Decepticons. They can't make Prowl a Decepticon when he's literally the face of the Autobots.
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Feb 26, 2023 05:42
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More G2esque colours please
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Feb 26, 2023 06:03
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Non Compos Mentis posted:More G2esque colours please gently caress that, more full-on remakes of G2 bots, please. And preferably new sculpts; I love G2 Leadfoot, but not enough to buy a WfC Mirage recolor.
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Feb 26, 2023 06:08
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SlothfulCobra posted:They can't make Prowl a Decepticon when he's literally the face of the Autobots. I'm guessing in this case they wouldn't base the logo on Prowl, and instead the Autobots might use something closer to the G2 logo. Or they would still have Prowl, and Barricade co-existing would give them an opportunity to do a Good Cop / Bad Cop thing with the two characters.
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Feb 26, 2023 06:25
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Non Compos Mentis posted:More grotesesque colours please Hell yeah, eyemelting colorways are best imo
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Feb 26, 2023 17:15
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Sunstreaker, but keep the fiction that he's Sideswipe's brother. Bam, I just made both their characters more interesting
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Feb 26, 2023 17:23
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Fondly remembering when Takara did a G2 repaint of MP Sideswipe, complete with *that* facial expression. A pity they didn’t do any more of those as they worked through the line.
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Feb 26, 2023 17:29
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Sentinel Red posted:Fondly remembering when Takara did a G2 repaint of MP Sideswipe, complete with *that* facial expression. A pity they didn’t do any more of those as they worked through the line. If we get an MP Jazz I'd bet money we get a G2 deco.
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Feb 26, 2023 18:49
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flavor.flv posted:Sunstreaker, but keep the fiction that he's Sideswipe's brother. Bam, I just made both their characters more interesting So basically IDW Tracks and Needlenose? That'd be cool.
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Feb 26, 2023 21:10
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You guys are way overestimating the worldbuilding they were putting into G1. There were more Autobots than Decepticons because good guy toys sell better. No one expected they toy line to turn into a franchise, it was probably not expected to run more than 2-3 years like MASK, Thundercats, and most of the other original 80's lines.
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Feb 26, 2023 22:41
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flavor.flv posted:Sunstreaker, but keep the fiction that he's Sideswipe's brother. Bam, I just made both their characters more interesting It works because Sunstreaker's character is being racist towards humans. Edit: The plot twist is that Decepticon Sunstreaker is Autobot Sideswipe all along, as per the Botcon Punch/Counterpunch repaint.
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Feb 26, 2023 23:01
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Sideswipe is emblematic of people’s tendency to give more to G1 characters than they actually provided. He is such a nothing character and yet has a massive fanbase.
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Feb 26, 2023 23:22
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I feel like G1 characters having no real inherent personality or nature is fun cause it leads to such wild adaptations. Compare The Headmasters Chromedome to IDW Chromedome
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Feb 26, 2023 23:32
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Knormal posted:You guys are way overestimating the worldbuilding they were putting into G1. There were more Autobots than Decepticons because good guy toys sell better. No one expected they toy line to turn into a franchise, it was probably not expected to run more than 2-3 years like MASK, Thundercats, and most of the other original 80's lines. You're technically correct but it's more fun to speculate about this kind of thing Though it's not always a hard rule, the amount of good guys vs bad guys was pretty even in MOTU(at least when taken collectively and ignoring that the bad guys were split between three factions), and after the first year or two the ratio was pretty even for GI Joe vs Cobra overall(still a bit in the Joe's favor in terms of unique molds but Cobra made up for it with so many of their figures being "army builders" like Vipers or BATS rather than specific characters)
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Feb 27, 2023 00:09
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Knormal posted:You guys are way overestimating the worldbuilding they were putting into G1. There were more Autobots than Decepticons because good guy toys sell better. No one expected they toy line to turn into a franchise, it was probably not expected to run more than 2-3 years like MASK, Thundercats, and most of the other original 80's lines. They definitely were putting in some kind of thought into it. They had all these preexisting toys that they needed to sort out into their new factions, and it does seem like they used the simple reasoning of separating them out by alt-mode. And then all the exceptions to being sorted by alt-mode came out in the second year, with a bunch more decepticons because they could barely function with so few characters. And in the third year they killed most of the older toys in the fiction to make room for the newer toys because they hadn't developed modern ideas on how franchise merchandise works. A lot of Hasbro's worldbuilding decisions were bad or or had relatively little thought, but they were still making them.
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Feb 27, 2023 00:20
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Also the worldbuilding is arguably what made the brand successful. The pre-Transformers Diakron line didn't do very well in 1983, but the version of the toys released alongside a cartoon, comics, and actual characterization just a year later started a franchise that's lasted for nearly 40 years.
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Feb 27, 2023 00:28
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I've seen folk mention that bad guys sell worse thing before but is there anyone here who actually feels like that and won't pick up characters because they're bad guys? I've just always found it a bizarre notion because all that matters to me is if a character looks cool and fun or not, I can't fathom seeing something neat and stopping because "but it's a bad guy!" Also, Sideswipe turned into a Countach and that's literally enough for a lot of people. If Gears turned into something cool instead of an unidentifiable piece of poo poo, people would probably like the miserable gently caress a lot more.
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Feb 27, 2023 02:02
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Sentinel Red posted:Also, Sideswipe turned into a Countach and that's literally enough for a lot of people. If Gears turned into something cool instead of an unidentifiable piece of poo poo, people would probably like the miserable gently caress a lot more. Hey, Gears just does it for comedic effect. It's Huffer who's the whiner. 
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Feb 27, 2023 02:10
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Nodosaur posted:Sideswipe is emblematic of people’s tendency to give more to G1 characters than they actually provided. He is such a nothing character and yet has a massive fanbase. Sentinel Red posted:I've seen folk mention that bad guys sell worse thing before but is there anyone here who actually feels like that and won't pick up characters because they're bad guys? I've just always found it a bizarre notion because all that matters to me is if a character looks cool and fun or not, I can't fathom seeing something neat and stopping because "but it's a bad guy!"
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Feb 27, 2023 02:39
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Transformers has always been a general exception to a heavily hero-skewed trend in action toys. You can observe that JG1-only years are extremely hero-heavy with only one or two destrons per year.
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Feb 27, 2023 03:11
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It makes sense to me. Consider that the target audience for the toys, aside from arguably generations and definitely masterpiece, is children. Children play pretend with their toys. The more advanced, structured version of playing pretend is role playing in RPGs, and we do have very recent and clear data for that: Most people playing Bioware games do the designated good guy path first, and maybe come back to the designated bad guy path on a later replay. You gotta have something for the good guy toys to swoosh around and knock over, but most kids would rather be swooshing the guy who is sometimes present and owns a jetpack than the exquisitely portrayed and extremely fun guy who gets a full half of every episode dedicated to how he kicks babies
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Feb 27, 2023 03:34
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Sentinel Red posted:I've seen folk mention that bad guys sell worse thing before but is there anyone here who actually feels like that and won't pick up characters because they're bad guys? I've just always found it a bizarre notion because all that matters to me is if a character looks cool and fun or not, I can't fathom seeing something neat and stopping because "but it's a bad guy!" I think it's not so much about how people will actively decide not to buy the bad guys as it is that the fiction usually doesn't promote the baddies in a way that will inspire kids to want to go out and buy those figures. Although I think the early skew of Transformers might've helped to hype up a bunch of individual Decepticons, since the slow trickle of new Decepticons meant that each of them got individual highlight episodes to introduce them as big new threats, as opposed to how so many of the Autobots were just one in a crowd.
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Feb 27, 2023 06:27
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Dabir posted:You gotta have something for the good guy toys to swoosh around and knock over, but most kids would rather be swooshing the guy who is sometimes present and owns a jetpack than the exquisitely portrayed and extremely fun guy who gets a full half of every episode dedicated to how he kicks babies Counterpoint: as a child I wanted the Decepticons because they were cool as poo poo and turned into jets and insects and guns, or had badass voices.
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Feb 27, 2023 08:20
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I wonder if any enterprising third party companies have ever released a "Shitheap"
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Feb 27, 2023 12:05
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Marmaduke! posted:I wonder if any enterprising third party companies have ever released a "Shitheap" does your mom count as a third party company?
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Feb 27, 2023 12:14
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