On War for Cybertron - My (Probably) Final Thoughts

Since I'm now highly unlikely to get many other toys from the Kingdom toyline (seen Galvatron, think it's probably shit - I mean, spaceship handguns? Really? - but will reserve judgement till alternate mode photos emerge - ADDENDUM 19/3/21: have now seen the 'leaked' cannon mode images and, yes, it looks like shit), I'll take this opportunity to address one of my gripes about the so-called 'F.O.S.S.I.L. (Fossilized Osteo-Skeletal Shield Integration Loadout) Technology' which supercedes the 'C.O.M.B.A.T. (Cybertronian Omnifunctional Modular Battlefield Assault Tech) System*' pioneered in the Siege toyline.

 

Not that it exists in the first place - on that score, I have reached a state of equanimity.

 

Nor that robots transforming into dinosaur skeletons makes zero sense, particularly when the Beast Machines TV show established that a Cybertronian could develop a full, techno-organic beast mode by scanning a fossil.

 

Nor is my gripe even that someone at Hasbro clearly thought that acronym qualified as a clever and/or amusing pun and doesn't realise (or didn't care) that Osteo-Skeletal is a tautology. Marvel Comics strained credulity with some of their ridiculous acronyms, but the word salad of F.O.S.S.I.L. really takes the cake.

 

My gripe here is that, compared to Siege and Earthrise, this extended, collaborative play gimmick hasn't been evenly applied to all the toys. Optimus Primal has zero ports (despite appearing in the promotional artwork wearing F.O.S.S.I.L. armour), Megatron only two (on the soles of his feet), while Blackarachnia - about the smallest Deluxe in the line - has four (one on each calf, one on the sole of each foot), and Airazor has six (one on each arm, two on each leg) largely due to the intended deployment of her own weapons.

 

By and large, it seems that the more traditional, vehicle-based toys are the ones that feature the C.O.M.B.A.T. ports in a consistent pattern. While it makes marginally more sense for vehicles and fully-mechanical robots to be bolting on additional weapons formed out of parts of other robots, the discrepant application of C.O.M.B.A.T. ports to the Beast Wars reboot toys feels not so much like a considered decision as it does laziness or indifference.

Optimus Primal is a particularly jarring example of this. Sure, he's got his own concealed weapons - shoulder cannons and blasters in his forearms - but if the promotional artwork depicts him with parts of one of the Fossilisers attached to his body as armour, it only makes sense for the toy to be able to reproduce that. Ports could easily have been added to the backs of the fur/armour parts on his shoulders, forearms, the outsides of his thighs, lower legs, and certainly to his chest: the centrepiece of his chest design is a circular indentation, ideally placed to accommodate a socket for attaching armour. And considering that, in spite of his organic-appearing alternate mode, he's still a Cybertronian robot, he should be equally able to make use of Weaponiser and Modulator parts from figures released in the preceding chapters' toylines.

 

Isn't that how you build a play pattern across a three-year toyline?

Megatron - one of the few figures to come close to earning his Leader class pricepoint (and yet still fail, in my opinion) - having only the ports on the soles of his feet is just ridiculous. Granted, the problems here are rather more practical: his right arm ends in his beast mode head, while his left has his beast mode tail attached... but I don't see why they couldn't have made the latter removeable... via a C.O.M.B.A.T. port which could then accommodate alternate parts. There is a port inside his mouth, but that's intended for blast effects rather than additional weapons. I can even understand why ports weren't built into his legs, considering they would have been more difficult to conceal on his rubbery, textured lower legs and his thighs already have a simple transforming weapon attached. Some attachment point could easily have been worked into his chest, or onto the insides of the beast mode shell parts comprising his elaborate backpack. As it stands, the best he can do is wear parts of another figure as platform shoes.

I have no intention of picking up Cheetor or Rattrap, but neither appear to feature the necessary ports for interacting with Weaponisers, Modulators or Fossilisers beyond wielding appropriate components as hand-held weapons. Looking at the various fanmodes and combinations, it looks for all the world as if Fossilisers were designed to interact primarily with each other... or additional copies of themselves. Which makes me wonder, why are they even in a TransFormers toyline, and why as such a significant part of a toyline in which half the figures barely offer any interaction with them?

But all of this drags me back to the topic I'd intended to avoid: the (lack of) reasoning behind alien robots apparently disguising themselves as the petrified remains of long-dead creatures, and whatever strategic advantage these alien robots might believe such a disguise would afford them. Far too often, something is done because someone (often misguidedly) thinks it's 'cool', and that it being 'cool' is reason enough for the necessary expenditure of time, effort and money.

 

And what of the G1 characters? They're attaching bits of robots that look like the petrified remains of long-dead creatures onto their bodies as weapons? Wasn't it grisly enough when they were dismembering robots that looked like robots for that purpose? I mean, the idea of a robot purpose-built to disassemble into modular weapons, armour and tools makes sense from a purely functionalist point of view... But turn that robot into a dinosaur skeleton, and it all gets a bit weird.

Like, someone's been taking some heavy drugs kind of weird.

 

Ideas that should have stayed in someone's head kind of weird.

 

Inspired by a David Cronenberg movie kind of weird.

Because, let's really think about this: Are the Fossilisers from the present day, but potentially displaced in time back to the Beast Wars era? Or are they actually disguised as sun-bleached, picked-bare, but otherwise fresh carcasses in the Beast Wars era? It has to be one or the other.

The more I think about it, the less I want to have ever thought about it.

 

So much for my equanimity.

 

To end on a tangent, then, I can't deny that the War for Cybertron toylines have had their highlights... but, as I've said before, there clearly wasn't enough thought put into the individual parts of the trilogy, or the progression of the trilogy as a whole. War for Cybertron could - and, perhaps, should - have been a toyline dedicated to reimagining all the old G1 favourites as they would have appeared on Cybertron at different points in the war.

 

OK, perhaps it would have been difficult to please all the die-hard fans of the rubbish G1 cartoon because the few Cybertronian vehicle modes we saw - such as the Tetrajet Seekers, hovervan Wheeljack, flying saucer Bumblebee and... whatever Jazz was (a Reliant Robin as designed by Tesla?) - would not be able to transform into the expected robot mode without extensive cheating - as evidenced by the terrible Siege Tetrajets. 

 

Just taking the catalogue of toys available in the UK in 1984, the first couple of waves of Siege could have given us Cybertronian forms of Optimus Prime, Jazz, Bluestreak, Ratchet, Hound, Mirage, Sideswipe, Cliffjumper, Bumblebee, Huffer, Brawn, Windcharger and Gears, opposite Soundwave, the bulk of his more common Cassetticons and the three Seekers. That same year, the US additionally received Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, Ironhide, Sunstreaker and Prowl, as well as Megatron. Of those, Siege actually gave us all the Datsun-analogues we could have hoped for (and more), Ironhide and Ratchet (easy and obvious repaints, just like their G1 ancestors), Hound, Mirage and Sideswipe for the Autobots, with Soundwave, most of the same Cassetticons, (seemingly infinite repaints of) the Seekers, and Megatron. Earthrise was then essentially a reboot of G1 and Classics rolled into one, with the bulk of its characters being the same as those in Siege. How did anyone at Hasbro sign off on that? How did anyone think it was a winning formula, coming so close after the G1 fest that was the Prime Wars Trilogy?

 

By constantly tying themselves to G1, and particularly to the G1 cartoon, Hasbro force themselves into a corner every time. Power of the Primes got cancelled prematurely, having offered very little in the way of new features or characters. Hasbro's ill-considered solution this time was a crossover with Beast Wars, rather than actually offering a decisive conclusion to War for Cybertron and then launching a dedicated Beast Wars reboot in time for its 25th Anniversary this year. Siege could have offered new and unique vehicle modes for all its characters, but it certainly should have offered a wider variety of them, just like year 1 of the original TransFormers toyline.

 

Instead of Earthrise - an exceedlingly weak G1 reboot - we could have had a toyline depicting the escalation of conflict and bringing back more of the original characters rather than re-doing most of the characters offered by Siege.

 

Then, instead of Kingdom - a toyline that doesn't seem to know what it is - we could have had a toyline set in the final days of the war, with the Autobots making their last ditch efforts to reclaim their homeworld from the Decepticons, against overwhelming odds.

 

It's not unusual for Hasbro to botch one current toyline (both RiD2015 and Cyberverse have offered pretty shoddy, supposedly 'child-friendly' toys, many of which are an embarrassment to the brand), but to botch not only the current toyline, but the potential for the next as well, in one brainless attempt to appeal to two distinct sections of the fandom, is Hasbro reaching a new level of dissonance between their stated intentions and their final output.

 

As I write, I have Dinobot on preorder and have yet to complete write-ups for Megatron and Airazor (the latter being the next 'scheduled' Femme-Bot Friday). Unless Hasbro/Takara Tomy reveal something truly mindblowing to close out the line in style, I am done with Kingdom.

 

The really sad thing is that the few Beast Wars reboot toys I bought equate to the quantity of toys I bought from the preceding two chapters of War for Cybertron... When I said I didn't think it was for me, I really wasn't kidding. I've written more opinion pieces related to the toyline than I've posted about specific toys that I've bought. That fact annoys me almost as much as the wacky choices Hasbro made about the toyline. I know I'd predicted that my collecting would slow down, but this is beyond my own expectations.

(* While we're on the subject, the Cybertronian Omnifunctional Modular Battlefield Assault Tech System? Isn't that like humans referring to things as Terrestrial Weapons, or Terrestrial Vehicles? Because we don't tend to, do we? Or are we supposed to believe the characters would go around just calling it the O.M.B.A.T. System?)