The Other Half 3: The Next Toyline!

Apologies for the abundance of text-only posts... It's almost as if I'm treating this blog as a blog. This one is almost a counterpoint to yesterday's post, and it came together pretty quickly, so there didn't seem to be much point delaying it till after the next toy post (whenever that may be - hopefully soon).

 

On a complete whim, just for fun, and following my screed on the travesty that was the War For Cybertron Trilogy, I asked my girlfriend, Courtney, what she would do if she were tasked with creating a concept for a new TransFormers toyline. She's seen several of the TV shows, and even admitted to skimming through my toy review posts, so she has a pretty good grounding in the brand, and certainly has her own opinions on what has worked and what hasn't as far as the more prominent associated media goes.

 

Furthermore, she has said she likes the concept of 'robots in disguise' - as well as the idea of toys that are essentially action figures, vehicles and puzzles, all in one - and particularly likes the TransFormers toys that were derived from Takara's Micro Change line.

 

So, given free reign, without the need to refer to any existing TransFormers continuity or franchise in terms of characters or setting, what would her pitch be for a future TransFormers toyline?

 

Here's what she came up with...

On Fiction, Part 5: A New Cartoon

It has been announced that a 'new' TransFormers cartoon is in the works, as a collaboration between Nickelodeon and eOne. I'm currently not sure what to make of this news but, for the most part, it feels broadly positive. Hasbro aren't keeping all their eggs in one basket, and with the Netflix War for Cybertron series set to conclude with Kingdom later this year, and the next live action movie supposedly set for release in the summer of next year, they're clearly looking to maintain brand awareness in the visual media.

On Gimmicks, 'Play Patterns' and Fiction

Now that the Prime Wars Trilogy is officially over and the War for Cybertron Trilogy's first chapter, Siege, will be trickling into toyshops, I've been thinking a little about Hasbro's most recently closed line and, with reference to my May 2017 post, perhaps add a few further thoughts on the future of TransFormers toys...

As a collector since the original Generation 1 toys, Prime Wars - mainly in the form of Combiner Wars and Titans Return - was a very familiar concept. First we had combiner teams which were, by and large, remakes of teams from the 1986 portion of G1, but made with today's design nous and manufacturing technology, to the current Deluxe and Voyager size classes. That was all well and good and, aside from a few joint tolerance and general quality control issues, not to mention some rather hollow parts, as vast an improvement on the G1 versions as one might expect. Similarly, Titans Return pretty much amalgamated the HeadMaster and TargetMaster concepts from 1987 into the Titan Masters - small robots that transform into the heads of familiar characters, granting them enhanced stats - but, good as the toys were, something was missing.

On Fiction, Part 4

One thing I haven't mentioned about my recent US holiday purchases is that, yes, I got versions of Rattrap, Waspinator and Skids with IDW comics packaged with them. Having remarked upon their omission from the UK releases, you'd think that would warrant some comment.

In my previous 'On Fiction' pieces, I've stated that my interest in the fiction associated with the TransFormers toy brand is rather limited, so it should come as no surprise that it took me more than a week to get round to properly reading even one of them (Skids). The most obvious thing about it is that Skids isn't very prominent in the story - essentially a documentary, shot by Rewind, about the crew of the Lost Light, on their quest to find the Knights of Cybertron*. He's not the main character in this segment of the story, nor is he especially well-explored. In fact, it would be generous to say he plays second fiddle to any of the other characters. Right at the end, however, it's revealed that Skids is showing the documentary as a presentation intended to gather new recruits for their quest.

On Fiction, Part 3

In my first post on the subject of the fiction associated with the TransFormers brand, I noted that I felt no particular affinity for the comics and, by and large, this has remained true. IDW continue to publish stories, seemingly spanning several continuities, including a 'proper' conclusion to Marvel's efforts from the 80s, and I continue to ignore them. In recent years, I have watched the entirety of TransFormers: Prime, including Beast Hunters and the feature-length finale, Predacons Rising but I didn't bother picking up the comics, the novelisations of any of the movies (even though I gather the novelisation of Revenge of the Fallen actually had the plot that was missing from the movie), or any of the movies' comic book follow-ups.

The fiction just isn't as important to me as it was... I'm well past the age where I might play out variations on the stories using the toys I have to hand, but it's occasionally useful for giving me a context for the toys and, just occasionally, more of a reason to buy them.

Then, this year, I happened to be in Harrow doing some shopping with my girlfriend on Free Comic Book Day, and we found ourselves accosted by a person handing out fliers offering free comics from a local shop, Calamity Comics.

On Fiction, Part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned briefly that I prefer the Beast Wars/Beast Machines TV series to the likes of the Generation 1 cartoon and more recent entries like the Unicron Trilogy. The truth of it is that I didn't watch all of Beast Wars when it was on UK television because I missed some episodes either due to homework or other commitments... or just the extremely patchy showing it got, courtesy of Children's ITV back in the day. It was only a few years ago that I scored a free copy of the first volume of Beast Machines on DVD, but I enjoyed it so much, I tracked down and purchased the full series.

I watched it very nearly in one sitting - ending up forcibly rationing myself so that I could actually do other, more important things and then 'reward' myself with an episode or two of the series.

On Fiction

For a fan of TransFormers, I'm rather indifferent to the attached fiction. To put that in perspective, I watched the G1 cartoon when I was younger, I read the Marvel UK comics, I've always preferred the Beast Wars/Machines TV series to the toys, I've got the first two IDW collections - Infiltration and Escalation - I liked Animated and, what I've seen of Prime has been nothing short of stunning. In fact, without having seen any episodes of TF Prime, I probably would have skipped on the toyline entirely. Oh, and there's those Michael Bay movies... I watched those.

I'm also, let's face it, a member of the Collectors' Club, which publishes a few pages of its own continuity-spanning saga - Timelines - in every issue, filling in great chunks with its BotCon stories. So, when I say I'm 'indifferent', there are a few caveats.