Fifteenth Anniversary

This post is, to be perfectly honest, a bit of a rush-job. I'm writing it just three days before the date, and I just want it out of the way.

I've not bought anything new for most of this year, largely because of a lack of funds... But I honestly think that if money had been no object, I still wouldn't have bought much. Legacy continues to limp on, presenting horrifically bastardised versions of fan-favourite characters, Studio Series continues to degenerate in terms of engineering/build quality and fidelity to the movies.

The cinematic release of Rise of the Beasts - at least one year later than originally planned due to reshoots and the rumoured editing issues - should have been a ray of hope, but the movie pretty much ignored all the lessons that should have been learned from the Bumblebee solo movie and spiralled back into Bayverse Lite: marginally better character development (in that... it was there... I guess?), but the same tired Quest for the Next World-Ending McGuffin formula. I've been meaning to give it a proper write-up since I saw it back in June, but get fed up just thinking about it, and the assertion by the Director that "the Studio don't care about continuity" is an insult to the fandom.

TransFormers deserves better than Paramount. 

Frankly, these days, TransFormers deserves better than Hasbro... but that's a whole different rant.

The RotB toys have been mediocre, with several Studio Series toys revealed as minor retoolings of the mainline figures, inaccurate and lacking paint, while the mainline figures fail to adequately reflect the movie CGI, but often present a better in-hand toy experience.

So, here we have an anniversary post where there's precious little good to talk about.

I'll start, as has been the tradition, with the Dishonourable Mentions:

War For Cybertron: Kingdom/Golden Disk Collection Mutant Tigatron
Don't get me wrong - Kingdom Tigatron is a great mold, and deserved its top-billing on last year's list...
But this is an unimaginative and underachieving repaint. The fact that it uses the original toy's 'mutant'
head makes it a curiosity rather than a must-have, not least because his existence is not
acknowledged in the War for Cybertron Netflix show. Were it not for a 50% discount,
I just wouldn't have bought it.

War for Cybertron Trilogy Covert Agent Ravage/Decepticons Forever Ravage
A figure I might have looked forward to more had it been a reworking of Tigatron rather than
Cheetor, this ended up in my collection largely because of a 50% discount, and the fact that the
original Beast Wars Metals toy is so expensive, despite not being great. While it's very well articulated,
transformation is oversimplified, and his beast mode - while largely redundant - is poorly realised.
The inclusion of G1 Ravage makes it at least somewhat more worthwhile, but it's another pretty lame
'special edition'.

Buzzworthy Bumblebee: Creatures Collide 4-pack
Another offering I only picked up because of a massive discount. I'm pretty much refusing to buy any more Bumblebee figures,
but Hasbro cleverly included Goldbug in this set. As a fan of the G1 Throttlebot, my interest was piqued... However, the rest of the set
was of very limited interest. The Generations Waspinator mold is vastly superior to the Kingdom version used for Skywasp,
Ransack should have been more than just a Kickback repaint, and not even a repaint paying homage to the original Beast Wars
toy would normally have been enough to get me interested in Kingdom Scorponok. I pity anyone who paid the RRP for this set, 
because it was disappointing at half price.

While I managed to scrape together a Top 9 last year, we'll have to make do with a Top 5 this time round, and this post basically now covers everything I've bought since October of last year. Three of the figures are Third Party, and the two official Hasbro figures have fairly significant caveats...

5. APC Toys Night Countess
Noone would ever suggest that the Deluxe class version of Airachnid was a satisfactory interpretation
of the character from TransFormers Prime, but I doubt anyone would have expected them to do better.
When APC Toys started releasing knockoffs of old TFPrime toys, they seemed to focus on the superior
First Edition toys to start with... but, even then, I don't think anyone would have expected anything
special when they got round to Airachnid (assuming they were bothered). However, when it transpired
that they'd picked up the amazing garage kit version of the character produced some years go,
and made a full production version, I was intent on getting one. It's not perfect by any means -
vehicle mode looks pretty terrible and neither her robot mode nor her 'predator mode' peg together
securely - but it's still a vast improvement on the official toy.

4. Studio Series #91 The Fallen
The idea that this is basically just a redo of the 2009 toy initially put me off this toy, but when I started
to see reviews, I realised that there were (just) enough improvements to make it worth a look. It's still
not perfect - the paint job is severely lacking - but the improvements to the sculpt and its overall fidelity
to the movie, coupled with the gorgeous translucent plastic used for most of the figure made it worth
aquiring, even though its 'vehicle' mode is still utter nonsense.

3. Studio Series #93 Hot Rod
Much maligned though the character from The Last Knight is, his design was pretty solid. I'd already
bought DX9's La Hire before this toy was even announced, but it was impressive enough to warrant
acquiring for my official movie toy shelves. The engineering is perhaps a little over-ambitious for
the Deluxe class size, and some parts will occasionally pop off during transformation, but it's proof
that the designers and engineers at Hasbro/Takara Tomy can perform miracles... when they're allowed.

2. Ocular Max/Mastermind Creations Infinite Finity IF-01A Eris: Kultur Subjugation Alternative
MMC decided to make the original version of this figure an event exclusive and, while I missed out on
that version, I was able to order this repaint when it was released some months later. It's a clever idea:
A Femme-Bot who can mimic the appearance and abilities of other characters, giving them free rein to
create a series of Femme-Bots who resemble popular characters from the TransFormers franchise.
As the name suggests, Eris: Kultur Subjugation Alternative is based on MMC's version of the IDW
character Tarn. This was soon followed by a reworking as a Femme-Bot take on Armada Megatron
which, while pretty cool, seems to suggest that future versions of Eris might also reuse the same mold.

1. MetaGate G-01 Haiku
While MetaGate seem to be a new Third Party company, their offerings thusfar bespeak a level of
expertise (and possibly experience) that demands attention. Their first offering wasn't just a high-quality
interpretation of Drift from Age of Extinction, with an excellent vehicle mode - close enough to the
Bugatti Veyron - and a stellar robot mode, they even managed to squeeze in his helicopter mode...
Kind of. It looks pretty bad, doesn't hold together very well, and I doubt anyone will ever choose to
display Haiku in that form, but it showed what MetaGate were capable of and cemented them as
"one to watch" in the Third Party Masterpiece-analogue transforming robot field.

Sadly, there's only one Honourable mention this time round, and it's not even a new toy, technically...

Beast Wars (Reissue) Scorponok
I missed out on the original toy and, to be honest, it wasn't really on my radar when I started buying
Beast Wars toys retroactively, via the secondary market. Hasbro's official reissue - using show-accurate
colours, loosely speaking - was typically overpriced, so I waited till it got discounted to buy.
Even today, it's a fun toy - albeit with some QC issues in its spring-loaded gimmicks - and honestly
puts the Kingdom toy to shame.

So... Really not a great showing for Hasbro, all told. Precious little has been revealed since last year that I have any interest in acquiring. Recent Legacy reveals look awful in and of themselves, let alone when compared to the toys that supposedly inspired them. Animated Universe Bumblebee is an absolute travesty and, while the engineering on Optimus Prime looks at least competent, the plastic colours are flat and dull, making it look cheap. The newer Armada Universe entries might have been worth acquiring if I didn't already have the original Armada toys, with their superior play features.

The Rise of the Beasts toys - both the mainline set and the Studio Series versions - are poor imitations of what was seen in the movie, and it really feels as though Hasbro should have concentrated more on filling out the Bayverse aspect of the line, giving themselves more time to perfect the Rise of the Beasts toys in future. Studio Series '86 continues to produce toys that are of zero interest, either because they're ridiculous (battle-damaged/dead versions of Ironhide and Prowl?) or because they're not sufficiently better than existing toys (Ultra Magnus, versus the Combiner Wars/TF Legends version), and all of them suffer from minimal paintwork precisely because they're emulating the crushingly dull animation models.

The introduction of Gamers' Edition to Studio Series sounded like a positive move when it was first announced (last year), but the first handful of toys have been badly compromised, leaving them no better than the Generations versions released thirteen years ago at best, and substantially worse in some cases. Quality control, generally, continues to deteriorate, with discolouration of the plastics, warped parts, missing parts and breakages becoming increasingly common, straight out of the box. TransFormers toys just aren't worth the money any more - as evidenced by the fact that several of the toys listed above were bought - still somewhat reluctantly - at a significant discount on their RRP.

The only positives aren't even relevant to me: some older toys, such as Studio Series #07 Grimlock, have been re-released due to ongoing demand... But one has to wonder whether distribution will be any better this time around.

This time last year, I insisted that my collecting had only slowed... but now, bar a few upcoming Third Party figures, I'm reasonably convinced that it has finally come to an end, at least until Hasbro's output improves. I really don't see that happening, though.

The market has changed dramatically since the 1980s. It has been proven that kids these days just aren't as interested in physical toys, due to the 'cellphone parenting' techniques that have become increasingly common in the 21st Century, and the growth of 'social media' platforms like TikTok, which give everyone their opportunity for fifteen minutes of fame - or, in the case of many TikTok 'celebrities' and their asinine 'challenges', infamy. Hasbro have been monetising their portfolio so desperately and avariciously that their share price was marked down. Their handling of both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons has earned them page upon page of bad press and the ire of their respective fan communities. Their lackadaisical attitude to the films based upon their IPs has reduced their audience dramatically since the early days of the TransFormers movie franchise. GI Joe has consistently failed to perform, and yet the most recent movie implies a Marvel/DC multiverse-style crossover in the most underachieving and uninspiring way possible.

Nevertheless, much of the fandom will insist that Rise of the Beasts was the best movie so far, and that Legacy is producing some of the best toys ever seen. I'm glad they're finding something to enjoy, but I'd honestly prefer no TransFormers to shit TransFormers... and, right now, as far as I'm concerned, all we're getting is shit TransFormers.

That's the root cause of my loss of impetus for updating this blog. I have another 14 posts at the draft stage, and well over 100 toys yet to be covered... but, until I rediscover my enthusiasm for transforming robot toys, updates will continue to be sparse.