Given that Hasbro have been recycling G1 now for
almost five times longer than G1 actually existed, back in the day, it
became increasingly baffling to me that each new iteration - particularly from
the Prime Wars trilogy onward - that the focus has been wholly on the
G1 cartoon rather than the G1 toys. Sure, the argument rages on,
that the cartoon is the main reason TransFormers exists as a brand, but
that's a particularly American point of view, and has me questioning
whether some of these people are actually TransFormers fans, or simply
fans of a TV show they view through nostalgia goggles, and afflicted with a
compulsion to buy branded merchandise.
However, about 20 years after the Classics reboot, which brought a
fresh new look and contemporary engineering to the old-favourite characters,
Hasbro seem finally to be acknowledging that some TransFormers fans
actually want familiar-looking, contemporary remakes of their old
G1 toys... and so we have the Retro G1 line.
Essentially, it's a mix of latecomers in the grey area of an ongoing line that
is War for Cybertron, Legacy and Age of the Primes, and
including toys which, for whatever reason, are popping up first in the
Studio Series '86 line. Their plastic colours and head sculpts are more
toy-accurate, but it's like something the TransFormers Collectors' Club would
do: a repaint with a new head, packaged under its own brand... only
this is specifically targeted at the 40- to 50-something nostalgia
hounds rather than the Premium Collector bracket. The inaugural pair were -
to no-one's surprise - a repack of the
War for Cybertron: Earthrise Bumblebee (which, having been a Netflix exclusive to being with, has since been
repainted about a billion times already) that kept the animation-style head, and Legacy Gears.
Much as I might have wanted a new G1-style Gears, it wasn't
just the ugly, animation-style head that put me off buying the
Legacy toy... So let's see if this
cynically-marketed re-release is enough to make me change my mind about
an entire mold.
