OFFICIAL TRANSFORMERS TOYS NEWS

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Clay
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Clay »

Warcry wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2019 7:56 pm Anyone else surprised by how tepid the support has been for this?
Not after the knee-jerk excitement died down after a few days, no.
Skyquake87 wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 am A case of right idea, wrong size and time?
Right idea, wrong a lot of things, I think. We know from the third party market that giant, $500 figures are feasible (if usually combiners and sold piecemeal), so that's not really the problem. I think it's a confluence of a too-short window of time for most people to cough that kind of money on a toy, and also that that particular deadline coincides with the release of the previously-most-expensive-ever transformer, MP Convoy v3, which itself comes within six months of the previously-previously-most-expensive-ever transformer, MP BW Megatron. Oh, and also they limited the crowd-funding to the north american market, which is dumb.

So yeah, they made it a small window of time for the campaign at the same as they limited the buyer pool while also launching the campaign at the same time as the invoices for Convoy 3 would be coming due. Derp.

I should clarify that I fully understand Hasbro wanting to crowd-fund this thing in advance. They're a profitable company, sure, but I take it as them saying, "we're not making this giant thing just for you fuckers to get cheap on us and wait for clearance prices. Money NOW."

I also understand them extending the deadline, because I doubt they spent 18 months designing and prototyping it just to not make it.

I'm still wondering whether to hang on to Titan Trypticon, he's so bloody massive he looks ridiculous in my tiny house. He's bigger than our cats!
Trypticon stays; if you ever have children visit, the giant robot dinosaur will justify itself. :)
The article about tariffs is interesting, specifically Hasbro looking to shift manufacturing outside of China. I'm guessing that might have something to do with the current US/China trade spat,
It started before then, but Trump's toddler-esque approach to economic policy is accelerating it, as hasbro said explicitly.
Denyer wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:00 am Not surprised at all. General lack of certainty over many things doesn't incline most people to drop that amount on a single item that's an impractical size. Whereas done as Titan class size and quality it'd probably sell like hot cakes.
I think it also doesn't help that there is the existing titan class with figures of similar height, even if Unicron weighs three times as much. Transformers fans, generally, seem to equate size with height, and are completely oblivious to other dimensions or mass. I think that wiki thing still remarks about Animated Lockdown and Lugnut as being aberrant, with no acknowledgement that Lockdown is super thin and Lugnut is squat, thick, and weighs twice as much.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Warcry »

I guess I was just overly optimistic about it. There seem to be so many people out there who are willing and able to drop $200 at a time on third-party figures like it's no big deal, and no shortage of people willing to spend $300 on MP BW Megs and $400 on Prime V3. I thought for sure that there'd be at least 8,000 people with more money than they knew what to do with who'd be happy to throw $600 down for Unicron.

I guess what I hadn't thought about was that people have months or even years to plan ahead and save for those purchases, while Hasbro was only giving them a few weeks to pony up for Unicron.
Skyquake87 wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amA case of right idea, wrong size and time? I can't imagine anyone outside the US going for Unicron (the shipping costs would probably add another chunk of change to an already expensive toy) and, to be quite honest, this is asking a lot of anyone interested.
Good point. I seem to recall that people in Canada who ordered it had somewhere around an extra $100 tacked on for shipping/handling, and it sounds like Takara's price was pretty inflated compared to the US one for their preorders. And I'm assuming that any shops in the UK or China that were importing it for their customers would have to tack on at least $100 of their own to make a profit, even if Hasbro is probably selling the thing to them in bulk for less than the crowdfunding price. So for most of the world it's not even a $600 toy, it's more like a $700 or $800 one.
Skyquake87 wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amThe article about tariffs is interesting, specifically Hasbro looking to shift manufacturing outside of China. I'm guessing that might have something to do with the current US/China trade spat, as well as the costs of selling products to an increasingly shrinking market, as consumers move away from physical toys to online gaming and such (the amount of infants and children with tablets and such seems to be increasing, just from what I've seen when out and about).
Hasbro's been shifting production out of China for a while now. I'm pretty sure most Transformers have been made in Vietnam for the last few years, and if memory serves they manufacture some things in India as well. So if the tariffs are actually having an effect (not just being used as a convenient excuse for price hikes that were being planned anyway) then it's just to accelerate what was already happening.

As for the underlined, honestly I don't really see this happening. Aside from having a little kid myself, I'm surrounded by people with young families and all the kids I know play with toys, even into their teens. They play with video games and electronics too, of course, but so did our generation. What has changed is that games are relatively cheaper than they were, while toys have gotten relatively more expensive. When I can buy a Batman video game for a kid for less than a single Batman action figure, something's gone seriously askew in the toy industry. Heck, if your kids have a tablet they can use, a lot of the games they want are free. I think that adds up to fewer toys being bought, but not necessarily less time spent actually playing with the ones that they do get.
Skyquake87 wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amHaving to pay more for general goods and services in the UK post-Brexit (our new PM's gamble to prorogue parliament and reconvene close to the European Summit to force a deal one way or the other and our current preparations mean it's looking ever more likely we're going to leave the EU with no deal and have to set about operating under WTO rules), means toys will be an easy pass for me if they're going to increase again from what I already feel are silly prices (especially where Cyberverse is concerned!).
Serious question -- does the sound of Churchill and co. rolling over in their graves in disgust over the quality of your current political leadership keep you all up at night, or have you all just learned to filter it out? :(

I honestly can't believe that after three years and the same amount of prime ministers, your government still hasn't gotten their shit together. The whole thing probably could have been reasonably painless with competent leadership in place, but hell, I don't think it would even be possible to make a bigger mess of things than what's actually happened. I hope things start to turn around for you guys soon.
Clay wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:18 pmSo yeah, they made it a small window of time for the campaign at the same as they limited the buyer pool while also launching the campaign at the same time as the invoices for Convoy 3 would be coming due. Derp.
Good point! Lining it up exactly with the release of the new Prime was definitely a brain cramp. There's bound to be a big overlap between the people who'd be able to afford Unicron and the people who bought the new Prime, and they were basically being asked to spend over $1000 on Transformers in a single week. And Omega Supreme is also due to release imminently, isn't he? That's getting closer to $1200 if someone wants all three.
Clay wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:18 pm I think it also doesn't help that there is the existing titan class with figures of similar height, even if Unicron weighs three times as much. Transformers fans, generally, seem to equate size with height, and are completely oblivious to other dimensions or mass. I think that wiki thing still remarks about Animated Lockdown and Lugnut as being aberrant, with no acknowledgement that Lockdown is super thin and Lugnut is squat, thick, and weighs twice as much.
I've heard a lot of chatter to that effect, for sure.

I also think the Titans might have hurt Unicron in a couple different ways, too. Even though he's got a lot more mass it doesn't seem like he's that much bigger in robot mode, and the "wow factor" isn't there anymore. The sheer size is impressive, but it's not that impressive anymore. Plus, someone who owns a lot of the existing Titans may have some trouble just finding space for Unicron, let alone actually doing anything with him when he arrives.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Denyer »

Skyquake87 wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:39 amTitan Trypticon, he's so bloody massive he looks ridiculous in my tiny house. He's bigger than our cats!
Mmm, and ours (who isn't a small breed) -- but does look nice on top of a couple of display cabinets with Metroplex and Fort Max in city mode, plus some MMs, etc. Was cheap enough to feel like a good deal. Skipping Omega though, I peg him as about a voyager against the others so went for a reasonably priced 3P one.
Warcry wrote:Serious question -- does the sound of Churchill and co. rolling over in their graves in disgust over the quality of your current political leadership keep you all up at night, or have you all just learned to filter it out?
Churchill did fine as a wartime figurehead but tends to be severely overrated beyond that. The average single-use plastic bag has more value than the shitweasels making up most of the Tory party or current leaders of Labour and the Lib Dems -- there are better people in all of those parties, but those don't have the megalomania / desire to watch things burn / etc. The question's whether they can get their acts together.

(I could actually see Boris turning up in concrete boots after this, after he's out of office, in a way Cameron, May or even Rees-Mogg, Trump or Farage probably won't. Events have got that sort of taste in the air, and it's like Batman -- without superpowers it's a case of having to be lucky every time. He's a shrewd politician playing a buffoon but not as good as he thinks he is, and has just gone further than a lot of his own party would like).
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Warcry wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 5:51 pmI honestly can't believe that after three years and the same amount of prime ministers, your government still hasn't gotten their shit together. The whole thing probably could have been reasonably painless with competent leadership in place, but hell, I don't think it would even be possible to make a bigger mess of things than what's actually happened. I hope things start to turn around for you guys soon.
...I don't even know where to start with Brexit. Right now, I'm just hoping it doesn't turn out too badly.

The problems have been multiple, but to start with, we don't really do referendums as a way of solving complex political/ economic ones, but David Cameron though it would be a good idea. His aim was largely to shut up the part of the Tory party that has always caused problems within his party as a whole, due to their fundamental opposition to being part of Europe (as voiced by Thatcher all those years ago). Like the majority of our politicians, he was convinced that the British people wouldn't vote to leave and that would then be that for any further debate on the issue. He didn't factor on the level of disenfranchisement felt by the population outside of cosmopolitan cities like London and resigned.

The result of the referendum was hardly unanimous, and there's nothing to say that this had to be put into practice (The UK has no written constitution and relies on law and precedent, for one thing), but here we are. MPs stuck with the result of a referendum they don't believe is in the best interests of the country and having to put it into practice - which itself is something some MPs disagree with as this puts the will of the people ahead of Parliamentary democracy.

The problem with the referendum was in its simplicity - it was a question of do you want to stay in Europe? Yes/ No. There was no question of what this would look like and what this would mean, or what people wanted it to be. And no one at all considered what this would mean for Northern Ireland, which has come to be the big sticking point (Nor did it help that our initial round of Department of Exiting the EU MPs rolled up to initial meetings with no plan, strategy or idea of what to do, instead expecting the EU to do all the work).

The deal proposed by May/the EU would have kept Northern Ireland more closely aligned to the EU than the mainland, pending future discussions/ arrangements (known as the 'backstop'). This is to avoid two things; a hard border with the rest of Ireland (which is in the EU) and undermining the Good Friday Agreement. Quite rightly, there are huge concerns that physical border infrastructure could re-open hostilities in Northern Ireland. However, such an arrangement then causes problems when you're trying to arrange trade deals with other parts of the world, as the UK would still be tied to the EU regulations unless and until a solution to the Irish border could be reached.

The proposal by our current government is to rely on technology for border checks, however, we're at least a decade away for even the most rudimentary customs tracking/ checking technology of the kind and type required (and we've not really put much effort into this - why would you when you've had a free trade agreement in place...?), so the EU have insisted on the backstop. Which is sensible, as without it, the border would simply become a smuggler's paradise. Which is amusing, as the current proposals for the UK post-Brexit seem to be to transform the UK into a tax-haven (recent announcements have been such things as lowering the top-tier of income tax, the establishment of 'freeports' where no tax or duties are paid. Our financial centre in London is pretty much a hub of money laundering anyway - a worrying amount of London property is owned by dubious offshore companies whose sources of income and ultimate ownership are obscured - so this is just an extension of that).

Add to that having to undo or absorb 40 years worth of legislation and changes in how agencies operate and co-operate within the UK and Europe within a relatively short time frame to meet "the will of the people" and you've a real headache on your hands. I think even a competent leader would have struggled with this conundrum, which is why we've now got Boris Johnson and his cabal of disaster capitalists to bulldoze us through the process.
Last edited by Skyquake87 on Mon Sep 02, 2019 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Skyquake87 »

Er...back to Transformers... yeah, I'd forgotten too there's a lot of big ticket stuff already commanding money from fans. Unicron is a big financial ask, and it's a toy at the end of he day, it's something you can live without. A more sensible Titan scaled figure would have been more than adequate. And even if that had been done as a Kickstarter, would have likely had more of chance of reaching its target. In a way, it would be sad to see this fail as it may then put the kibosh on any further attempts to do such projects.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Denyer »

As far as Kickstarter-type things go, I'd rather have seen something like those 3P pretenders -- stuff that would probably never justify a big enough retail release but a toy company could make work and come out of at least cost neutral and with kudos.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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That would be a good one - I'd love some modern, articulated Pretenders with a Legends scaled figure inside. That would be cool. And more likely to be something of a goer. Probably.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Here's some rumoured listings for what I'm guessing is the first wave of the next Generations line.

https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/09/25/rum ... ngs-397073

I'll be expecting a ton of fandom outrage if a new F-15 seeker mold is actually geting made the year after a whole bunch of people bought that godawful tetrajet seven times over.

Nothing on the list super excites me, though if the Military Patrol includes Tracer that's pretty cool. And Cliffjumper would be nice if it leads to a Hubcap later.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Clay »

I didn't buy the tetra jet once. Is it bad? From looking at pictures, I can't tell if F15 retool is feasible, but they're good at pre-planning that kind of the thing now.

More generally, have any product listing leaks in the past few years been wrong?
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Product leaks have been pretty accurate lately, for sure.

I haven't bought the tetrajet either, but I've heard mixed reviews at best. Apparently it's quite poseable, but it's a kibble-monster with lazy engineering. Even from the stock photos you can tell that the arms and legs just hang under the fuselage in jet mode, and apparently much of the alt-mode is a shell. Which I guess should be expected when you're turning a robot mode covered in F-15 parts into a featureless geometric block. But it's also pretty ugly, IMO, since the half-hollow undersides of the wings are facing foward in robot mode.

Since it's something of a shellformer I'd imagine they could F-15ify it pretty easily, but I'm hopeful they'll do it properly instead and make a new mold that actually transforms cleanly. :)
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Not much there to get me interested, either. Although I'm curious about Hoist. I've likewise passed on the Tetrajet mold. It doesn't look very good to me and the old Cybertron take on that thing looks waaay better. Sometimes, doing everything as it appeared in the cartoon isn't a good idea.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/10/01/397332-397332

Sweet. Oh, and Prime and Grapple, plus the Micros aren't finished even if nowhere seems to bloody stock them.

Image
https://i.imgur.com/CYdGETb.jpg
Image
https://i.imgur.com/1slQtUL.png
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Scotimus Prime »

Optimus and Grapple(hoping for a Hauler repaint) look cool
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Denyer wrote: Tue Oct 01, 2019 6:53 pmSweet. Oh, and Prime and Grapple, plus the Micros aren't finished even if nowhere seems to bloody stock them.
On the other hand, the Micromasters are the only thing that seems to get regularly stocked around these parts. Hoping for some more good ones in the new line, though seeing Big Daddy and Trip-Up basically reusing the same design as the bad one from the Siege car patrols doesn't really inspire.

Ironworks himself doesn't do too much for me, but it's a neat take on the Weaponizer and Micromaster base concepts, and I think the idea has legs. Hopefully they'll make more than three molds with this gimmick in mind!

Grapple seems nice, except for the fact that Grapple has such a dreadfully boring deco. Inferno will be cool though, and so will the potential Artfire or Hauler. Sadly those last two would almost certainly be store exclusives that no one outside the US can get for under $60.

Prime doesn't do much for me. I mean, he seems okay until you notice that just like Siege Prime, he's got a giant cape made up of alt-mode parts. One day Hasbro will realize that they're allowed to use the same grille in both vehicle and robot modes and we'll get a G1 Prime with a slick, straightforward, non-cheating transformation, but not today.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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I like Ironworks, although it'd be nice if he came with a Micromaster packed in. Like Denyer says, nowhere seems to stock the Siege Micromasters. Although I've heard they're pretty awful, so I guess I'm not missing out too much.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Warcry »

F-15 Starscream!

https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/10/03/nyc ... nel-397523

I quite like the looks of this one. Like a Classics Starscream that's maybe decently poseable.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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More pics.

https://news.tfw2005.com/2019/10/03/new ... rse-397565

Hoist is nice. Shame about the black head. Cliffjumper is alright. The Military Patrol is Bombshock and Growl, I think? Wheeljack does nothing for me.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

Post by Clay »

Yeah, new Starscream looks like the 2006 mold revisited with more articulation. Here's hoping the 2020 voyager will actually be bigger than the 2006 deluxe. :|

Also, Lord Zarak / Scorponok's head. Pretty neat way to tease the next Titan, I reckon.
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Re: Official Transformers new/upcoming releases! Hasbro, TakaraTomy and more

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Hoist looks good. Starscream I'm indifferent on, there's been so many seeker options over recent years. Wheeljack's robot looks off to me, can't place why. I like that they gave Cliffjumper his assassination bazooka. Digging the Zarak and thus likely Scorponok
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I know it was inevitable, and I'd long since come to terms with it, but boo to Titan Scorponok all the same. It's just so ill-fitting when he's a regular-sized leader in every single one of his relevant appearances in Western media, and his original toy was half Fort Max's size. Yes it's a thing that happened, but is 45 seconds of The Rebirth really what made any one a Scorponok fan? :(
Clay wrote: Thu Oct 03, 2019 9:36 pm Yeah, new Starscream looks like the 2006 mold revisited with more articulation. Here's hoping the 2020 voyager will actually be bigger than the 2006 deluxe. :|
The Classics Seekers were pretty small Deluxes by 2006 standards, so I think we're safe. It'll take at least five more years for Voyagers to shrink that much more.

Also, it looks like Haslab Unicron just blew past the 8,000 mark with a bit over a day to go. I didn't think it was going to happen, with how slow the progress had been after the first few days. Congrats to anyone here that bought one. I hope it turns out great. :)
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