2022 Retrospective

I realised this year that, over the course of the last few annual retrospective posts, it has metamorphosed from a set of lists - highlights, disappointments, etc. - with a brief introduction, into a massive wall of text detailing some events from the year and going off on various tangents, followed by the standard lists...

...This has become increasingly difficult - not to say downright depressing - to work on, even when I start early in the year and continually add to it, because there's often an update to specific information that necessitates great swathes of the wall of text to be rewritten, sometimes more than once. It's been enough of a struggle to work on regular blog posts - writing about the toys I've been collecting since the 1980s - which, over the course of most of this year, I just haven't been enjoying as much as I used to. I managed a decent number of posts in September but, overall, this has been the leanest year since I first started this blog!

As a result, this year, I'm going back to basics, and just presenting the lists. Honestly, if you'd seen the original, full version of this post about this dumpster fire of a year, you'd be thanking me right now.

So, without further ado...

Highlights of 2022

• A Christmas Carol - Courtney and I saw posters for Stephen Mangan starring in this production - an adaptation of Dickens' original story by Jack Thorne (creator of one of my favourite - all-too-short-lived - TV shows, The Fades) at the Old Vic. We tried to book tickets ahead of Christmas, but had to settle for early in the New Year... but perhaps this was fortunate for us, because we were notified on the day that our tickets (for one of the galleries) had been upgraded, and we were then to be seated in the stalls, and in the front-row, no less. While I'm not necessarily a fan of Mangan (most of his TV roles have tended to be as pretty irritating characters, but his Dirk Gently was far truer to the books than the bizarre US version), I thought his performance as Scrooge was perfect, and this show will rank as one of the best theatre experiences I've ever had. The stage layout was excellent, the special effects were clever (the 'snow' had me giggling like crazy), the live music was great and the performances were all fantastic. The gathering of the feast at the end was a fun bit of audience interaction, too. We also got mince pies on the way in, which helped set the mood. On a random note, it occurred to me that Stephen Mangan with his Scrooge beard could pass for Joe Manganiello's substantially less muscular brother...
• Whodunnit [Unrehearsed] - in which Johnny Vegas played the detective. Given the list of actors invited to perform in this role, Vegas wouldn't have been my first choice (had a choice been offered), but he did remarkably well, and his impassioned speech about the importance of the Arts in the post-show Q&A showed me a side of him that I'd never seen before.
• My Dad Wrote A Porno Live - I'd gone into this expecting a simple recording of a podcast episode, but their live shows are apparently all quite different. This one was a 'Choose Your Own Adventures' version of Rocky Flintstone's trash-epic about improbable sexual hi-jinks, and was quite good fun. This year (sadly?) marked the conclusion of the podcast...
• Phantom Peak - Since the first COVID lockdowns back in 2020, I've barely seen my best mate. We finally met up to see Top Gun: Maverick when that hit cinemas in June, but then didn't see each other again till September, when he invited me along to the new-ish 'Open World Immersive Experience' known as Phantom Peak. Located around Surrey Quays, it's a sort of Steampunk Western thing, where you use an app to keep track of your progress on a number of quests based around the small mining town. I'd tried to get Courtney interested months before, with no luck... but she changed her tune when I returned with a glowing review of the experience.
• RetCon - back to June this year, and on a comparatively cool and clement day after about a week of uncomfortable heatwave, this one turned into a sort of unofficial West London SAM Coupé Expo thanks to the presence of Quazar and the programmer behind the SAM version of Treasure Island Dizzy (and hopefully Fantasy World Dizzy, later) along with my usual cohorts. We were even visited by one of the level designers for The Lower Caverns. Considering how much the event has grown since its inception, it went very smoothly and there was a lot of positive feedback throughout the day and on social media in the days after. Naturally, the appearance of the Oliver Twins (or one of them, at least, as the other was ill) on top billing was a significant coup for what had previously been a comparatively small, relatively insignificant local retro gaming event, which featured regular appearances by the former head of Commodore UK and the occasional YouTuber as a guest. Interesting to see where we go next year!
• A wedding in the family - Courtney's sister had been engaged for a couple of years because there were certain specific elements she wanted for her wedding day, and the venue that could accommodate all of them had no availability for weddings till this July. The day went very well, even though they had their boisterous dog as the ringbearer, and it was nice to be away from London for a short while. We travelled there and back via coach rather than train, and found it to be a much more pleasant experience overall.
• A new shower - my old one had been leaking for years, getting very slowly worse, to the point where quite a lot of water was just gushing out of the bottom of the unit and, around October/November, even trickling out around the temperature control dial. This was first noticed by Courtney, who reported feeling a tingle when she moved the dial... which sounded a bit dangerous to me. My folks kindly bought a replacement as an early Christmas present, but it wasn't actually fitted till early/mid December due to Courtney and I both being ill for ages. Now we just need to get the rest of the bathroom re-done.
• A little bit of work - a former colleague of mine recommended me to an organisation that was in need of some roller banners for a presentation in June. That worked out so well, they called me back later in the year, asking me to work on a guidebook. While working on the preliminary stages of that, one of my old contacts mentioned that one of his other clients was looking for someone with my skillset... Didn't get an interview (once the job was described to me by the recruiter, it wasn't quite what had been initially suggested, so that didn't really surprise me) but it's always nice to be remembered and recommended like that.
• Getting my family's old Atari 2600 up and running again - considering how long it had been in the loft - and in pieces, no less - I was surprised to find that the machine was actually fully functional, just not that compatible with contemporary TVs. A quick modification gave it a Composite Video output, but I still haven't solved an issue with a rolling band of noise, which seems to be related to the electrical grounding of the machine.
• Modifying more old hardware - my family have three ZX Spectrums - two 48K models, one 128K +3 - all of which have needed some attention to get them back up and running after some years of being mothballed. This year, I was able to convince my father to allow me to make a simple modification that would allow the 48K models to output Composite Video, since tuning a contemporary digital TV to its RF output proved tricky. He was convinced he'd made a SCART lead for them, that pulled the video signal from the edge connector, but I kept telling him the only lead he made that used the edge connector was for an ancient green screen monitor that was definitely not SCART.
• Some great discounts - I have a nasty habit of preordering toys or ordering them as soon as they become available simply because I don't want to later find them sold out, and only available at vastly inflated prices on the secondary market. In a couple of cases this year, I ended up cancelling preorders because the finally-revealed toy was disappointing. Equally, though, there were a couple of toys I picked up on discount - things like the Jurassic Park crossover set, the Beast Wars reissue Scorponok, Golden Disk Collection Mutant Tigatron, and even the War For Cybertron Trilogy Covert Agent Ravage set - which clearly weren't as popular as Hasbro had expected. In each case, I ended up handing over (at most) half the original RRP... Though, in some cases, that only proved how horrifically overpriced they had been in the first place.
• The O'Donnell's Moonshine Advent Calendar - Courtney bought this for me, and I'd have to say it was the best Advent Calendar I've ever had. Coming with a bunch of miniature moonshine jars in a selection of flavours (doubles of some, which meant we could take some to my folks for Christmas!), one full-size jar of their new Christmas liqueur, a voucher (£10 in our case) and a whole host of (admittedly quite random) merch, it was well worth it for the booze alone, but some of the other gifts were surprisingly cool.
• Finally completing some pixel art - One of the most awkward and embarrassing own-goals in my work on The Lower Caverns was my decision to completely re-do the title screen and provide not just one, but four unique images to be displayed at the top of the final caverns of each set. My first draft of the title screen essentially just downgraded the image from the Game Boy Advance version of Manic Miner, but I soon decided that wasn't good enough. Producing the four final cavern images dragged on, even though I simplified the job by using some pre-existing and otherwise unused artwork for one, and then building another out of blocks of scenery. The image for the first set - essentially the original Manic Miner, but with new graphics - took the longest, because I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, but just didn't feel confident in my own work. Eventually, my determination to just get it out of the way won out over my procrastination and self-doubt... and I'm fairly pleased with the results.
• Selling my Game Boy Color collection - Courtney found my GBC and 17 games in a box that hadn't seen the light of day in the 8 years she's lived with me, so I figured I may as well get rid of them. I've never been that big on portable gaming, and the system had never impressed me a great deal. I went via a Nintendo-specific Facebook group, and quickly got some excellent offers. Came at a good time, too, as it meant I was able to spend a small amount of what I made on some Hasbro and Third Party figures I thought I was going to miss out on.
• Kew Gardens - I can't even remember the last time I went to Kew, but it was almost certainly when I was a child too young to really appreciated it. Courtney, despite having lived in London for over ten years, had somehow never been to the Gardens, and so prebooked tickets for a visit at the end of her 'between jobs staycation' in early November. It was a chilly day, but a dry and bright one, making it all the more special for falling between long periods of strong winds and torrential rain. Even so, we saw just a tiny fraction of the park, and will have to go back again in the spring/summer to see more of it.
• Re-watching The Sopranos - Since Courtney was far too young to watch the show when it first aired, and I never got to see the final season, we acquired the full series as a DVD boxed set ages ago, and started watching it this year. Having finished watching The X-Files just before we started this, I was a little surprised by the way it quickly became a new 'comfort show' for Courtney, given the frequent graphic violence. For me, it was eye-opening to watch it as a rather more mature adult, finally seeing it as the black comedy it was supposed to be... Though Tony's relationship with his mother reminded me awkwardly of a certain person in Courtney's family, making the first couple of seasons quite difficult to watch. Sad, also, that this year saw the death of Tony Sirico, who played Paulie 'Walnuts' Gualtieri.
• Rediscovering Star Trek - Courtney and I have been watching the original series intermittently since 2020, and finished this year. We also start The Next Generation this year, though I'm mainly looking forward to Deep Space Nine. TNG season 1 certainly wore its heritage on its sleeve... some of it was pretty terrible...
• Getting some counselling - I'd been feeling down and struggling to get anything done for absolutely ages before I even thought to refer myself for counselling. While I was only able to organise six 'exploratory' sessions, and had to miss one to attend the aforementioned wedding, the counselling was a broadly positive experience, which highlighted things that I would like to explore further, when I can afford to pay for regular counselling.
• Calls for Boris Johnson to resign after his office Christmas parties were revealed - in a fine case of the straw that broke the donkey's back, politicians on both sides of the Commons called for the great buffoon to resign but all he offered initially was a blatantly insincere apology and the assurance that the Conservative Party would investigate itself (and, by implication, clear itself of any wrongdoing, if previous scandals are anything to go by). Sadly it didn't seem to make any difference, and the arrogant, entitled moron clung on to his premiership as if it was the only thing that mattered... rather than, you know, having a Prime Minister the party could be proud of and who the country could trust. Worse still, it became obvious how many of his cronies had a vested interest in keeping him in power, likely because their own incompetence would not go unnoticed by a competent leader. Even when he did eventually resign, he dropped the post of Party Leader but chose to remain as Prime Minister, when the role should then have gone to his deputy, however incompetent they happened to be... It was very much a no-win situation...
• Johnson's eventual resignation(s) - while it took too long to happen, was accompanied by a speech that amounted to little more than verbal self-gratification, and the new Tory Party Leader wasn't exactly a stellar choice, the fact that his removal led to several of his cronies departing was a huge bonus that I hadn't considered. Even as Liz Truss took the reins, I strongly suspected she was being set up to fail, giving BoJo the Clown his opportunity to return and - lo, and behold - a mere six weeks later, after a disastrous 'mini-Budget' and some cringeworthy interviews, she stepped down, leading to a (mercifully brief) second leadership race. BoJo did return, but decided not to run... this time...
• Theranos sentencing - The trials of Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani were delayed by the pandemic, but both finally concluded this year, with the former sentenced to 11 years and the latter getting 13 years thanks to being found Guilty of one additional charge. Personally, I think both got of lightly, thanks to the trials being focussed on the financial element, rather than the fact that Holmes' invention put lives at risk.

Disappointments of 2022

• TransFormers Legacy - My expectations were low, but the first few rounds of Legacy reveals still managed to disappoint. The only toy I've bought so far - Tarantulas - felt cheap, looked unfinished and would have been more than enough to put me off further purchases even before it emerged that swift discolouration of plastic was endemic in the toyline. Hasbro insisted they had this under control and were taking steps to fix it, but the evidence against continued to appear on shelves. On top of this, the Pulse Con stream at the end of September introduced 'TransFormers Legacy Evolution', an unnecessary sub-brand launching far too early in Legacy's lifetime. The only apparent 'evolution' within the line - what they're calling 'Evo-Fusion' - is the return of the Weaponisers gimmick from the War for Cybertron Trilogy, and the fact that it's been applied to a new Junkion character to kick things off. The frustrating thing is that they're releasing Legacy toys of characters I should be - and want to be - interested in... but they all look shockingly bad. Perhaps my experience with Third Party figures is affecting my judgement, but I think Hasbro's output generally has been declining in quality for well over a decade, so it's now getting to the point where I just can't muster any real enthusiasm for what they're offering... And particularly not at the current prices. The cost/quality equation is now such that, even when Amazon put Legacy TransMetals Megatron up for preorder at a discount, I ended up cancelling once I'd seen some reviews. While I'd agree that it's impressive that the brand is still going, I find myself thinking that no TransFormers would be better than shit TransFormers... For the brand, if not the consumers.
• Studio Series The Fallen - While I would never have imagined buying another toy of The Fallen, given its nondescript, excessively alien robot mode and the laughable attempt at a 'vehicle' mode on the original, the Studio Series version ended up looking fairly impressive... at least in robot mode. However, it soon transpired that it might not be granted a full distribution in the UK, and its availability even via Hasbro Pulse seemed limited, showing as 'sold out' almost the moment it was first listed as a preorder. Naturally, it's abundantly available on the secondary market (most likely imports from the US)... at a vastly inflated cost.
• Boris Johnson dodged all the bullets - I was almost surprised that the Conservatives didn't hang on to him so they could use him as their sacrificial lamb at the next mandatory General Election (end of 2024) in an attempt to maintain power... But the fact remains that he got away with an enormous amount of bullshit without any serious repercussions... and, by rights, it should require a miracle on the Tories' part to make the British public forget their grievous mishandling of everything from Brexit and the pandemic to the sleaze within their own party.
• The Tory leadership race was a joke - The initial line-up was basically all looking to blindly carry on Boris Johnson's legacy rather than even attempt a course-correction that might have a positive effect at the next election... and they were quickly whittled down to the posh boy who looks like the Spitting Image puppet of your local bank manager and a Margaret Thatcher cosplayer. Personally, I don't think either would have been a good choice, but the term 'Ca-Truss-trophe', which emerged little more than a week after Liz Truss took the reins, surprised even me.
• Liz Truss quits after six weeks - It's rather telling of the state of the Conservative Party that someone willing to run for the office of Party Leader and Prime Minister is also willing to resign from that role less that two months into it. Of course, Boris was jetting back to the UK to reclaim his crown even though, while he was Prime Minister, he declined to cut short a holiday to tackle a crisis back home. This tells you everything you need to know about him: it's all about the power and the prestige, not the responsibility or the work. With Rishi Sunak being handed the role - seemingly to prevent a disastrous return to power by Johnson - I expected another swift exit... Especially in the wake of Johnson announcing his withdrawal from the race by ominously stating that it was "not the right time".
• Another completely out-of-touch PM - Rishi Sunak almost immediately drew scorn for some dubious cabinet appointments, and for declining to attend an environmental summit in Egypt (not to mention having the gall to instruct the newly-crowned King Charles against attending), but quickly did a u-turn on the latter... much like Truss after her disastrous mini-budget. As new leader of the party that squandered billions on substandard PPR and nonfunctional 'track and trace' software during the pandemic, he smugly refused to budge on pay rises for NHS staff, leading to some unprecedented industrial action by the healthcare union.
• The Conservative Party, generally, is a joke - Always a supercilious bunch, but the inability to rally behind a leader has been becoming ever more pronounced since Cameron quit in the wake of the Brexit vote. The inability to take responsibility for (or positive action toward fixing) any of their grievous and predictable mistakes has been becoming increasingly apparent as well. I fully expect them to limp on till 2024 before permitting a General Election, because they're too stubborn to risk relinquishing power until it's unavoidable.
• Widespread industrial action in December - while most of the mainstream media did it's usual thing of portraying the striking workers as villains, intent on ruining Christmas for the people (and, sadly, quite a lot of people failed to realise that the striking workers are just as much part of 'the people' as they were), I find myself broadly in support. Sure, it's inconvenient that our postal deliveries and public transport got so badly affected, and the fact that NHS workers went on strike was shocking... but consider the Government's sneering response - starting to develop legal measures to prevent future industrial action, rather than addressing its cause. The Conservative party are showing their fascist colours all too plainly.
• Getting COVID, again - I believe this was the second time I'd had COVID, the first having been around March/April 2020, not long after finishing my last Temping role. This time, it started with a slight throat tickle one late September Saturday evening and, 24 hours later, had developed into a stronger cough, a fever which lasted about 48 hours, and 'digestive distress' that lasted through half of the following week. Courtney started developing symptoms as mine started easing - some less severe than mine, some more. Pretty sure I know how we caught it, because we'd only been out once in the preceding couple of weeks... to an event in a small, intimate venue, where no-one was wearing masks, but plenty of people were coughing openly and often. While Courtney's case cleared up within a couple of weeks, my cough lingered, then got worse again a little over a month later... But then, I am prone to chest infections... Speaking of which...
• Developing a chest infection, again - Having been free of chest infections over the last three years (two of which wholly due to the COVID lockdowns), now that people are out and about again, and less inclined to wear masks, it was inevitable that I'd pick up a chest infection sooner or later, even though I'm still not going out a great deal. My post-COVID cough dragged on for about a month and a half, before suddenly taking a turn for the worse, and becoming a full-on rattling cough toward the end of November. Once mine started clearing up, Courtney developed a chest infection.
• Cancellations due to illness - Courtney and I booked tickets to a few different things toward the end of the year, but ended up either cancelling or rescheduling them due to our respective illnesses. Not ideal, but at least we weren't totally missing out in most cases.
• Doctor Who BBC Centenary Episode - Titled 'The Power of the Doctor', it was a typically meandering, nonsensical mess with plot dumps every few minutes in lieu of things actually happening. Frankly, the opening scene typified everything wrong with the Chibnall era, and the closing scene was a grim reminder of what's to come, with Russell T. Davies back at the helm.
• The Bayonetta 3 debacle - I've not played any of the Bayonetta games (though I did consider buying a WiiU and, more recently, a Switch, so that I could give them a try) but I have watched some Let's Plays and some stream play, so I'm fairly familiar with the games and the character. When Hellena Taylor suggested that she'd essentially been cheated out of the role in the third game, it seemed unfair and unwise on the part of the studio behind the series... However, when it later transpired that she'd lied about the specifics of the deal she had been offered, it became pretty clear that something bigger was amiss. Frankly, I started to feel suspicious when I read that she'd "quoted Bible verses" at the game's director. Other suggestions of somewhat toxic behaviour slowly emerged, and Taylor lost all the sympathy she'd initially gained along with pretty much all her credibility... somewhat derailing what may have been the original intention of her protest: to point out that voice actors, generally, don't get a great deal out of multi-million dollar franchise games, and that fairer remuneration was due. After all that, having played the game, some 'fans' apparently got pissy because a romantic relationship between the titular witch and crusading journalist Luka - telegraphed clearly since the first game - was made canon, when they'd presumed a romantic relationship with Jeanne... And, being the kind of fans who presume their personal headcanon supersedes anything the creators intended, were left rather salty.
• Getting taken offline, albeit briefly - One Sunday morning in September, I received an automated email from Google saying the TransForm-A-Blog had been flagged as a 'spam blog', and was taken offline. Naturally, I appealed the decision... and was back up and running in about half an hour. Even so, the fact that all my content became inaccessible to me was concerning.
• My energy supplier - Back in March/April of this year, OVO Energy, increased my monthly Direct Debit to almost £140. Since then, the credit on my account has gone up - on average - about £60 a month. Granted, I switched my central heating on in November, but that didn't have a massive impact on the bill because I was being more sparing in my use of (more costly) electricity. By that point, I was in credit to the tune of almost 3 months payments (or a full quarter, to put it another way), even after a £66 refund. Naturally, I tried to contact them... but they don't accept phone calls unless you're 'vulnerable' or in an emergency, so I had to resort to web chat. The operator acknowledged that I was in credit, but informed me that she would not be able to process both a DD adjustment and a refund on the same day... and that I should wait at least 24-48 hours before making the second request, which then takes up to 10 days to process the funds back into my account... Meanwhile, they're making interest on money that should, by rights, have remained in my account. Barely a week after they agreed to reduce my DD payment, they emailed saying they wanted to put it back up... but only to about £120 this time. I contacted them to say no. It's so easy for them to adjust the DD in their favour, but trying to get money out of them is made as inconvenient as possible.
• Almost, but not quite a White Christmas (Again) - We rarely get a White Christmas in the UK... in fact, over the last couple of decades, we've seen more snow in February and March than in December and January... but, this year, we had a light snowfall in the first half of December as part of a 'big freeze', only for it to switch back to rain in the days before Christmas.
• Theranos sentencing - While not unexpected, I found it baffling that Sunny Balwani's sentence came in two years higher than that of Elizabeth Holmes, since he was (technically) of lower rank while at Theranos, wasn't constantly courting publicity, and sunk some of his own money into the grand folly. It suggested to me that either race or gender - possibly both - played a part in how he was viewed by the jury.

Previous Predictions vs. Reality

• TransFormers Legacy will continue to disappoint - honestly, my main gripe with this line is how it causes the fandom to present itself as utterly delusional, and exhibiting a totally inconsistent application of suspension of disbelief to the concept of 'robots in disguise'. The number of people willing to accept the absolute botch-job that is Legacy Blitzwing by performing the most insane mental gymnastics to praise its accuracy to the G1 cartoon (spoiler warning: it ain't remotely accurate, not least because the cartoon was seldom accurate to itself from one scene to the next), not to mention the lazy, dull engineering on almost everything thusfar revealed, is just staggering. Worse than that, photos of toys with plastic turning yellow straight out of the box, missing parts, missing paint applications and breakages after minimal use have become alarmingly common. It's bad enough that Hasbro seem to be remaking (by and large) the same toys, over and over again, with any 'improvements' being wholly subjective, but the steadily increasing costs and declining quality are really harming the brand.
• Studio Series will start to cut more corners - while the quality of the sculpts and engineering has been markedly variable since Studio Series began, and the paint jobs have been largely quite miserly, it is becoming apparent that additional corners are being cut, not least with the increased prevalence of ball joints in some of the more recent figures.
• Rise of the Beasts will need reshoots - initially, there was no way to confirm or contradict this, but the fact that the movie's release was postponed to 2023 was certainly not a good sign... Later in the year, it became apparent that they were definitely reshooting parts... but back at the Paramount lot in LA, not on location. Understandable as that may be, logistically speaking, it suggests the movie was a bit of a disaster, and they're desperately trying to salvage something that can actually be released to cinemas, not just Paramount+. Additionally, while the casting of Michelle Yeoh as Airazor is promising, the casting of Pete Davidson as Mirage is not.
• Further Brexit/COVID disasters - of the former, there have been plenty... Almost every week brings us a new understanding of the stupidity of our situation and the pettiness of the thinking that brought us here. Of the latter, thankfully, there haven't been too many... Though the sudden appearance of 'Monkey Pox' on the scene, toward the middle of the year, suggests we're not exactly out of the woods yet. My girlfriend and I both caught COVID at the end of September, despite being fully vaccinated and boosted, but it was probably no worse than the sort of chest infection I would regularly contract around Christmas just a few years ago.
• Venturing out of London - My girlfriend and I finally got back to Lincolnshire, to see her family and attend the wedding, but our planned trip to Canada was upset by my (lack of) employment situation.
• Completing some games, starting some new ones - I was perhaps a little optimistic and a little pessimistic on this score. The game that was 'very nearly complete' is still only very nearly complete, but it's certainly edging ever closer... and at least it wasn't only my fussiness that threw a spanner in the works. Real life has been affecting the programmer, and there was a spare cavern than still needed to be populated because the original concept just didn't work. Things picked up a bit later in the year, though.

Predictions for 2023

Where to start? In a lot of ways, I might as well re-use last year's list, simply because it's as relevant now as anything else I might suggest. Based on the reveals thusfar for Legacy's second year and the so-called Evo-Fusion gimmick, I strongly suspect that it will continue to disappoint... though hints of a new Armada Optimus Prime are perhaps somewhat positive. Studio Series is rumoured to be taking another crack at the War for Cybertron videogames, but I can't imagine they'll be better than the handful of figures that came out back in 2010, even if they make them all in their appropriate respective size classes.

• Switching my focus - while I still have plenty of TransFormers in my collection that I have yet to write about, I suspect I'm not going to be buying much more of Hasbro's merchandise. Finances permitting, I may buy Third Party stuff  instead... Updates to this blog may continue to be quite sporadic, since my enthusiasm is very much on the wane. I've said it before, but I've been an adult collection for far longer than I was a child collector... and I suspect that has made me rather too discerning when Hasbro are more focussed on delivering profits to their shareholders than they are on delivery quality product to their consumers. Maybe it's just a sense of nostalgia, but it feels as though there used to be a better balance.
• A bad year for Hasbro - there's a sense, at the moment, that Hasbro are utterly failing to read the room... and not just with TransFormers. Several of their HasLab projects were dismal failures because they didn't give fans - be they Star Wars, G.I. Joe, whatever - what they actually wanted. The company having its share value downgraded over excessive reprinting of Magic: The Gathering cards is likely to be a bitter pill for their shareholders. In most of these situations, it should have been perfectly apparent that they were making a mistake, but their failure to see that - and their failure to course-correct - shows HasLab up for what it really is: a mainstream means of grabbing even more cash from eager backers with more money than sense, rather than a side-project to push the envelope of what a toy company (sorry, "an intellectual properties company that also makes toys") can offer via alternative methods of finance. Additionally, the TransFormers Collaborative series continues to limp on, offering minor retoolings along with the occasional dated or otherwise sub-par unique figure. I fully expect further price hikes, as soon as Hasbro think they can get away with it.
• Armada in Legacy - companions to the Legacy Armada Starscream are strongly hinted, with a new Hot Shot already revealed (looking awful, and with no Mini-Con - likely to be sold separately as a Battle Master analogue) and Armada Prime appearing in the artwork. I'll be keen to see if Hasbro have learned anything useful from the FansHobby Naval Commander version of Armada Optimus Prime but, frankly, with forums filling up with photos of toys that are broken straight out of the box, or don't survive their first transformation, I suspect any new version of that toy will be simplistic, ugly, and a QC nightmare.
• Rise of the Beasts will be a shitstorm - from the moment it was announced, the idea of a Bumblebee follow-up that - somehow - also includes Maximals and Predacons seemed like a bad idea... The need for reshoots didn't exactly inspire confidence, and the early toy reveals suggested an aesthetic that owed more to Beast Machines than Beast Wars, as well as a hideous new take on Wheeljack. I didn't exactly have a lot of confidence in Paramount's handling of the franchise after the disastrous, yet immensely profitable Bay series... But Rise of the Beasts sounds like it's going to be a mess of a film that has no idea what its audience is, and which pleases neither the die-hard G1 fans, nor the optimistic Beast Wars fans, no doubt hoping for an offshoot. Details from alleged 'test screenings' emerged in December and, if even half of it is true, the movie sounds awful, with Michael Bay's 'influence' seemingly more apparent thanks to the use of a less experienced director.
• I'm not going to like Doctor Who, am I..? - my enjoyment of the show started to take a hit during the end of the Moffat era, when it became apparent that many of the storylines weren't half as clever (or as well thought-out) has he liked to think... It had been a huge improvement over the pantomime nonsense that was the end of the Davies/Tennant era but, for some reason, I was never able to see Peter Capaldi as the Doctor - he seemed to be trying too hard, and ended up being inconsistent. I had some hopes for Jodie Whittaker's turn but, with Chris Chibnall at the helm and some diabolically poor writing, it never stood a chance... Even so, bringing Russell T. Davies back seems like the last act of a desperate BBC that no longer knows what to do with Doctor Who. Everything since the casting of Peter Capaldi is top-tier evidence against giving anyone their dream job... Just as the end of Davies' first turn as showrunner had been. If I'm right, it'll be a real shame, as Ncuti Gatwa deserves better out of his role in this formerly great British institution. Unless it's nothing more than mischievous shit-stirring, Neil Patrick Harris's assertion that Doctor Who is going to get "sexier", and that Gatwa's Doctor will be gay suggests that RTD has truly lost sight of what made the show so compelling to begin with... Either that, or the BBC is cranking its identity politics bullshit up to 11. The only upside is that I'll have to wait till 2024 to see the first proper series with the actual new Doctor. On the plus side, the rumour that his costume would include Wellington boots turned out to be false - it's more like a colourful update of Patrick Troughton's outfit.

All in all, it's been a pretty mixed year... and, sadly, my brain tends to fixate on the negative a lot of the time, despite generally styling myself an optimist. Writing this piece did remind me of a lot of very positive experiences, but they took a lot longer to piece together. Of course, it probably didn't help that a lot of this was written while I was ill...

In terms of TransFormers toys, though, I think I summed it up pretty well in a comment I left on a YouTube video in November:

"For me, Legacy is shaping up to be the toyline that will demonstrate how far and how fast the fandom will bend over to accept whatever rubbish Hasbro deign to present us - both in terms of material quality (breakages, yellowing, etc.) and design. Some of it looks... adequate, maybe? But I really don't foresee myself buying into it a great deal. For me, 2022 is like 1988 all over again: time to step back, look at what I'm being offered, carefully consider what I want... and perhaps leave the (Hasbro) collecting scene for another 15+ years."

As a fan, that's a pretty sad realisation... But it's not as if I haven't been expecting this for several years now. Some people in the forums seem happy to lay the blame for all of Hasbro's ill-fortunes at the feet of Chris Cocks, the former head of Digital Gaming who took over as CEO in February of this year, following the death of Brian Goldner last October... but it's not as if issues like the deteriorating material quality of lazy engineering is a recent thing. Goldner presided over its commencement, Cocks just cranked it up a few too many notches in one go.

And, with a line like Legacy/Legacy Evolution taking elements and characters from every branch of the TransFormers franchise and giving them new interpretations for the 40th anniversary, I would have expected to be far more excited about the brand than I am... Sadly, it feels as though the team behind Legacy are the weakest, most risk-averse designers at Hasbro/Takara Tomy, or they're just not bringing their best to the task. Ugly, low-effort designs coupled with shitty materials and inadequate quality control at the painting/assembly stage means there's really precious little to get excited about... I'm convinced that the majority of people praising Legacy as, for example, "one of the best lines [Hasbro have] ever done" must have missed/ignored everything from Beast Wars up to the the start of the Prime Wars Trilogy... Either that, their expectations have been insidiously and systematically lowered by the lines aimed at younger kids, like Cyberverse, and/or everything from Prime Wars onwards... or they are simply delusional. Whichever it is, as long as people are actually willing to spend their money on that kind of crap, that's exactly the kind of crap that Hasbro will produce. Another example of the problems is the upcoming Battletrap figure from Rise of the Beasts, which looks decent enough in photos, but at least one of the early reviews highlighted some pretty lazy engineering choices, excessive use of soft plastic, and a paucity of paint applications. Some figures, like Legacy Evolution Skyquake, I might have found acceptable 10-15 years ago... But this was 2022, and we've had better. I may be tempted by a Machine Wars Starscream repaint but, even then, it's missing all the gimmicks of the original toy. As Prime Universe Skyquake, it's an easy pass.

And the thing is, while some folks continue to claim TransFormers is a toyline for children - even in the face of product costs that are ridiculous if that were the case - there was a news article on NBC which reported that adult collectors are, indeed, the main market for traditional toys. The reason for this is pretty obvious: parents have, for years, used their cellphones as a quick and easy means to keep their kids quiet, so kids these days are more into that kind of entertainment.

The upside for me is that Hasbro are doing a phenomenally good job of getting me to not spend money and, until I'm working regularly again, that can only be a good thing.