On Crossovers

Just a quick rant, as I'm trying to work on other things at the moment...

Back when the Ghostbusters X TransFormers crossover, Ectotron, was revealed, I figured it was a novelty - a minor feature on the landscape of the continuing TransFormers brand... Even though I already had the two Street Fighter II X TransFormers sets in my collection.

In retrospect, I really should have seen it for what it is.

Recently, and in very quick succession, we've had Back to the Future X TransFormers Gigawatt and Top Gun X TransFormers Maverick revealed... and, in my humble opinion, both look like utter crap, shameless cash-grabs.

Gigawatt in particular is a poor retooling of the mediocre War For Cybertron Sideswipe toy, in a rather more blatant way than Ectotron was a retooling of Combiner Wars Hot Spot/Barricade. Vehicle mode looks cheap, and the entire windscreen shows through to grey structural plastic. Robot mode looks clumsy and blocky, even moreso than Sideswipe. Having been molded in about 80% grey plastic, he looks like a knockoff, or a test shot... and the digitally-printed weathering effect doesn't help in the least.

Maverick looks... vaguely OK? It feels as though the designer was attempting to draw inspiration from Macross toys, but either this is a first draft from someone who's never actually handled any Macross toys, or the intended level of complexity was vetoed by the higher-ups on cost grounds, and the cutbacks were basically a hatchet job. He's also molded almost entirely in grey plastic which, in the early publicity shots, looks alarmingly translucent... and, again, the digitally-printed weathering looks awful.

If I wanted a model Ecto-1, I could get a beautiful scale model with vastly more detail and screen accuracy. I could even build a kit, if I were that way inclined... Eaglemoss have run a partworks Ecto-1, for crying out loud. It wouldn't need to transform and, frankly, I wouldn't want it to. A transforming Ecto-1 is a fan concept, the source and subject of fan art all around the internet, all of which looks better than Hasbro's finished, licensed product.

Likewise, if I wanted a model F-14, there are myriad options available to me. I wouldn't want it to transform because I have many years experience of how shockingly bad aircraft TransFormers tend to be. The pinnacle was reached with MP03 Starscream, which has yet to be improved upon. I know the colour is all wrong, but I'm serious. I had a friend whose husband was a keen model-builder (all military) and, when she first saw Starscream displayed in his jet mode, she refused to believe it could possible be a TransFormer (granted, that was based largely on her own exposure to how shockingly bad aircraft TransFormers tend to be). MP11 Starscream reduced jet mode's realism in an attempt to assuage those fans who prefer their TransFormers to look like a crappy, cheaply made caroon advertisement masquerading as a children's entertainment back in the 1980s. For just those people, we're about to receive a third attempt at a Masterpiece Starscream, following the lead of the hideously over-engineered MP44 Convoy v3.

Likewise, if I wanted a model of the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, there are countless options available in various scales, based on the car's appearance in each of the three movies and, yes, Eaglemoss did a partworks on that, too. I wouldn't want that to transform because the time machine components already make the model too intricate - breaking it up into panels and parts that would have to shift and realign is a task best left to the talented concept and/or comic book artists in the community.

From my point of view, if they need to happen at all, movie crossovers pretty much require an MP03 level of commitment to the concept. I don't understand why Hasbro have courted such licenses, and I certainly don't understand why the movie studios approved them.

Oh, yes I do: Fans'll buy any old crap if you slap the right label on it.

Objectively, I understand the appeal for a certain cross-section of the fandom, but is it really a large enough proportion to merit producing these crossovers as transforming toys? From the point of view of making a quick buck, clearly the answer is 'Yes'.

However, in my opinion - based on video reviews of the Ghostbusters crossover figure and images of the upcoming pair - and from the point of view of producing a worthwhile product, the answer was just as obviously "No, but let's do it anyway!"