The Random Transformers Thoughts Thread

[Metallikato]

At Oz Comic Con Sydney yesterday I met Hal Rayle, a.k.a G1 Snarl, Shrapnel and Pipes. He was a super-nice guy, and he signed a group shot of the G1 Dinobots for me!

I encourage anyone TF Fan going to Oz Comic Con today to see him and get something signed!

I saw on the news last night the OCC being in Brisbane this weekend (which I completely forgot about), and they Hal Rayle shown with some of the other guests.
I wouldn't have gone just for him (I've seen him at BotCon too), but I would have posted about it for other Brisbanites... and if I had known he was coming to Australia (for the Melbourne and Brisbane Cons), I would have posted about it in the news section a few weeks back.

Missed these posts the other week..

I went to the Sunday Sydney Comic Con just to meet Hal Rayle, a bucket list thing to talk to someone who actually voiced G1. I got a picture with him which he was happy about about because apparently I was the first to do so (this was very late in the day) then went back to the signing thing. He signed my Predator 2 dvd cover and started talking to me in the Predator voice which was interesting.
He was also going to give me a signed card with a bunch of his characters on it (Snarl, Raphael [he filled in on TMNT sometimes], Deep Six from GI Joe which I also grew up with via videos, etc ) but his "supervisor" next to him shot us down (apparently that would of cost me another $30 or something, not being a convention regular I didn't realise), was put off by attitude that went with the shoot down, especially since Hal himself seemed content... Exchanged pleasantries with him for another minute or two then left... realising I'd forgotten to bring up anything G1.
So, meeting a G1 voice actor was cool, but first convention experience, did not enjoy, definitely not my thing.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Yeah, the guests are still people who for the most part want to engage with their fans, but there's the business side of things and money to be made. I guess if you got a freebie then someone else might have a whinge. Sad but true. I'm sure if Hal really pushed it you could've got the autograph though. The supervisor ultimately can't do squat about it.

[GoktimusPrime]

Conventions were much nicer years ago before they got too crowded. Like when I could just stroll up to George Takei and just have a casual chin wag with him. No big queue, no fee to just speak with him (only if you wanted an autograph)... those were great times. Nowadays you're lucky if you can even see an international guest at a big con without waiting in a freakishly long queue that you have to pay for the privilege to stand in.

You can still experience this at smaller and lesser known conventions like Heroes and Villains (which is really more like a collectables market that happened to have international guests). I was able to have a good chat with people like Garry Chalk and Steve Blum, get autographs, take photos etc. - all without paying an arm and a leg!

[UltimateGalvatron]

Pretenders = Robots in Disguise in Disguise

[GoktimusPrime]

Picked up the 3 latest IDW comics today and read them... detected no glaring errors in spelling or grammar! #celebratingmediocrity

[GoktimusPrime]

From here

Man so far this line knocks cw out of the park!!

To be fair, Combiner Wars achieves a very different thing from Titans Return. TR figures don't need to combine, and being able to combine to form a gestalt - especially one that's stable with self-contained connecting joints and interchangeable limbs etc. is a compounded gimmick which the toy needs to accommodate. This will invariably impact on the design/engineering of each figure. The Headmaster gimmick on the other hand is a whole different kettle of Sharkticons. On one hand, the toy must have a cockpit for the Titan Master, but on the other hand it doesn't need to stow the head away in alt mode as it's detachable. Furthermore, those which are based on G1 Headmasters are emulating toys whose original design already catered for this gimmick. e.g. Mindwipe has a big unsightly windowed cockpit in the belly of the alt mode, but this is fine because it's G1 accurate. And for non previously Headmasters becoming Titan Masters, finding a place to stow the pilot isn't as challenging because you don't need to worry about a place to stow the head. It's basically a trade off.

And I may be in a minority here, but I'm personally not thrilled about TR making almost everyone into a Headmaster because it kinda cheapens the idea of being a Headmaster. I see these "Master" gimmicks as a special ability amongst Cybertronians, and as Syndrome from The Incredibles said, once everyone's super then noone will be. For characters who were originally Headmasters, then I really enjoy having them as Titan Masters. But for those who aren't, it either turns me off getting those toys or simply adds nothing for me. I honestly would have preferred it if Scourge weren't a Headmaster. I'd prefer it if he were either a Targetmaster or just no kind of any Master at all (like the original 1986 Scourge). But having him as a Headmaster is easier for me to accept (as I imagine that Fracas has been upgraded from a Targetmaster to a Headmaster) than say a character who was never a ~Master, like Blaster. Even when that toy was $60 at Myer (great value!) I still couldn't bring myself to get one.

For this reason I also have no intention of getting TR Perceptor either. I have Generations Perceptor, and if I desperately want to see him in microscope mode then I have G1 Perceptor for that! (this is the same rationale I had for Blaster) I do plan on getting toys like Sixshot and Broadside, but again, because there are no other Classicsverse versions of these characters. I'm getting them despite being Titanmasters not because of it.

I like the Titan Master gimmick just as I like the Headmaster gimmick, but everything in moderation. I feel that they've taken the Headmaster thing and overkilled it. I can understand them doing it with the same base moulds, like Brainstorm and Blurr. And indeed we saw the same thing in Combiner Wars with figures like Hound, Trailbreaker, Wheeljack etc. (which personally didn't interest me and I skipped them all), but I don't fault Hasbro for doing this as they're recouping the costs of developing those original core moulds, as well as reusing them for other figures like UW Lightspeed etc.

Also, Combiner Wars didn't make everyone into a gestalt component, and there were a lot of really good toys from that line that were non-gestalts. e.g. Megatron, Ultra Magnus etc. TR has this obsession with making every single figure in this line compatible with each other, but it's really not necessary IMHO.

Just my 2c.

[prjkt]

I'm going to disagree with a couple of your points there Gok, but because we're all entitled to our opinions, I'll just start out by saying I understand where your coming from.

It might not be neccessary by collectors' standards, but it's an excellent marketing tool, and the way they've made things so that it's not just the heads that are compatible - ie Fortmax & Leaders become "bases" and the Legends interact with other classes, either as a "cassette" for Blaster/Soundwave or as vehicles for the Titanmasters, it takes the CW level intercompatibility to the next stage, without seriously hampering the figures that much - look at Wheelie - quite possibly the best Legends class figure I own, fits a Titanmaster in his canopy, yet transforms into a near perfect replica of his cartoon art.

I like that concept. I find it less an exclusive gimmick as it was back in the G1 days, "This guy here's a Headmaster, and this ones a Targetmaster. Over here you'll see a Sparkabot..." and more and inclusive feature across the line as a whole.

Now as collectors we want the characters for who they are, and sometimes who they've always been (hence why when I saw LG Blurr I got quite excited, even though I already had United Blurr, this guy is almost straight out of the cartoon) but kids these days don't know and probably don't care about the last 30 years of history, they've got a cool new toy, with bits and pieces that can be swapped or played with other toys in the line. It's great from that perspective.

I get you on the CW Autobots who weren't combiners to begin with - I already had each of those two waves of DLX figures in previous Classics-verse incarnations, so like you, I passed them up. But for a newer collector, or *shock-horror* a kid to whom the line is really aimed at, it's a way to get these characters that in some cases hadn't been seen on shelves in 9-10 years. I don't see an issue there. We just won't buy figures we don't want/need for our collections, while others buy them, and help fund future releases.

So far I've bought every TR character released, some Takara, but most Hasbro, but if the time comes and a character is released that I already have in another form and I feel is superior, I'll pass on the new one and that's OK.

On Perceptor, I've already got the Classics-verse release, in the form of the very nice and shiny GDO 3 pack release, but the TR one intrigues me as it's in G1 form... so like Brainstorm I may end up have two versions on my shelf, representing different versions of the character (Gen. Perceptor is my IDW sniper, Gen. Brainstorm is straight out of MTMTE while the TR guys may represent their cartoon forms.)

Apart from lack of shiny paint, which is a weakness I've had since I started collecting the Takara FOC line, I'm finding that so far, Titans Return is the strongest sub-line of Transformers Generations, even the Classics-verse as a whole. Looking forward to the seeing future holds down this path.

[GoktimusPrime]

I agree, and I can totally see the play value of having cross-compatible figures, especially ones that can build a city. Reminds me of Micromasters in G1. And I agree that for people without any pre-existing G1 bias, they wouldn't care at all about any of the stuff I was on about. And the fact that both TR and LG toys are hard to find in Hasbro and TakaraTOMY markets illustrates just how popular these toys are. Everyone's definitely lovin' these toys.

But getting back to ZoonMaster5000's comment about TR>CW I think that both lines are really good, but they just achieve different things. CW toys may be more limited in engineering compared to many TR figures, but that's because they had to be able to combine (with a lot of self contained parts) and be interchangeable as limbs. TR are unburdened by such an intrusive gimmick. But both lines have given fans what they want. CW gave us Classicsverse Devastator, Superion, Defensor, Menasor, Computron, Bruticus etc. while TR is giving us all these other characters.

But yeah, in both CW and TR, I'm more likely to skip figures if they're a "repeat" character. But that's my view of CHUGUR overall. The fact that both CW and TR are doing so well is great news for the brand, which ultimately is great news for us (although there is short term frustration in hunting these toys down ).

[UltimateGalvatron]

I'm hoping to catch Steve Blum (R.I.D Fortress Maximus, Prime Starscream, Rescue Bots Heatwave and many more) at Supa-Nova Adelaide.

[GoktimusPrime]

Awesome!