FP messed up. They skimmed on the verge of breaking a new frontier by making their version of Blastoff and Swindle, then dropped back down by making the rest of the set a bandaid. They could of continued the initiative and made their versions of Brawl, Onslaught, and Vortex.

They F'd up.

 

Colossus a failure? Hahahaha, never heard that one before. I guess opinion truly knows no boundaries.  

 

How is calling FP literally being innovators in being the first company to produce Standalone 3P figures while using munitioner and explorer to start transitioning themselves into combiners having standalone figures that combine with existing properties and add significant aesthetic differences a "fuck up?" I don't think there's a right or wrong to opinions, but what's going on here seems pretty baseless and generally biased.

 

Wouldn't say I am biased. I happen to be a huge fan of them. I am irate with them though. However, this is all my opinion. We all have them and they will vary, greatly at times.

To me Colossus was a bandaid. A well made bandaid, but bandage nontheless. FP got careless, and throughout the years got even more careless.

 

Why don't one of you guys that are on the fence buy the one in my sales thread and find out how great he is?  

I seriously think he would fit great in a Combiner Wars/Titans Retrurn collection. I think they are still some of the best 3P product produced in that size range. My focus has changed, so I'm letting mine go (or at least, I'm trying to). Plus, I'm running out of space.

 

You can't fault a company for not producing a standard (full combiner teams) that was yet to be a standard. There was nothing BUT pioneering and innovation shown when it came to this set. It's not really a matter of opinion there, regardless of whether you find the set enjoyable or not.

 

Honestly, calling Colossus a failure is not an opinion; it's simply incorrect because it was really really well received. This (the crossfire set), City Commander and the original warbot are pretty much the fundaments of 3p.

If you don't like it, that's fine but then carefully choose your words in expressing your opinion.

 

If FP debuted Colossus as a full up combiner, instead of an add-on kit, the Fandom would have collectively cried out in pains of Ecstasy and then... silence

 

So they would have had the same reaction that they had for the add-on kit?

 

Innovation, yes. In of itself, Colossus' Blastoff and Swindle were friggin amazing. Pioneering? I wouldn't exactly say yes. They put that standard of upgrade kits for sets already released with their kit for Universe Superion (and the Snowman equivalent). Pioneering would have been for them to have made their rendition of Brawl, Onslaught, and Vortex to go with this and even recall seeing requests for this in the Colossus thread way back then by a few (me included. Mind you, we weren't many, but we were there  ). Had they done so, I honestly believe they would have paved the way for more than just their Intimidator set.

Opinions are just that: opinions. No one has to agree with any of them, but it does help if one understands them.

No question that kit was well received (heck, I was hella-excited when I got it). As mention above, in and of itself, Colossus set was well made and innovative as Kuma pointed out above. The failure was with what they were bandaging: a set that desperately need all the help it can get. FP would have been way better off taking the leap by making their version of Bruticus.

  Thx Kuma, you've kinda help me make my point (to some degree). Yvk200, this is, in part, what I mean. Colossus released, people cried in joy, and then it died down. I truly believe Colossus' kit would have skyrocketed to even greater heights were it a fully designed set

 

I have M3, Guardia, Giant, and Quantron. Colossus or CW Bruticus are both pretty good versions to go with these, and I also got Rex standing with them. I really hope they would finish what they started and give us an Abominus and a Superion at the very least.

 

Actually, the Superion kits were literally just a bunch of pieces that just tabbed onto the existing bots. Munitioner and Explorer were literally the second standalone bots done by any company (The first coincidentally, being by Fansproject as well in Warbot 001 Defender which was also a triple-changing piece.) which not only combined with the existing bots, but added upgrades to the existing ones as well. So yes, it was without-a-doubt, inarguably a pioneering set. Hell, if you want to take it a step farther, the use of the thighs and knees of the arm bots to create biceps and elbows is one implemented by the munitioner/explorer set and used to this day. Nothing you're stating about having wished they did the other three bots refutes or negates these points. You're just being pessimistic for the sake of it.

And, the kits sold out everywhere. There's no "further skyrocketing" than that. I'm sure the Rocket Ship would that took Armstrong and co. to the moon would have performed better with today's technology but it makes absolutely no sense to judge it by a standard that did not exist at the time. I do not understand why you aren't grasping this but I'm done humoring it.

 

Different perspective? Point of View?   No one is asking you swallow this pill, TJ. I do understand your PoV (though I may not agree with it at times, but I do understand you).

 

Not only was Colossus NOT a failure, he was a resounding success that sold out quickly, fetched high prices on the secondary market, and we heard some fairly substantiated rumors that its popularity caused Hasbro to re-release Energon Bruticus Maximus in ROTF.

 

Exactly. It's literally the spread of inaccurate information under the guise of "opinion," however the set did release well after the ROTF set and was made to color match it. Are you talking about the United Re-release of the mold?

 

I agree with most of your post, but I also think it isn't fair to compare Colossus to all the combiners that followed. At the time, the 3P scene is still in its infancy and releasing a full combiner would be far too ambitious of an undertaking. While Onslaught, Brawl and Vortex weren't great figures, they at least had the right alt mode, and wasn't in THAT desperate a need for a fix. The Colossus set was ground-breaking for its time and is still quite enjoyable today.

 

Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant. Since the original set increased the popularity of ROTF reissue (which sold out despite having nothing to do with ROTF and being fairly sucky by itself), HasTak then re-released it and there were rumors that HasTak was aware that Colossus contributed to their good sales.

 

Colossus was a necessary step in the evolution of 3rd party. It was not practical for a full 3rd party combiner in that era. The market and engineering wasn't mature enough to support such an endeavor. If Colossus had failed there would not be the wealth of 3rd party figures we see today.

 

Yeah but what everyone is saying and what you seem to fail to grasp is that just because you have the ability to elucidate a point of view, it doesn't give that point of view any inherent worth or value.

Your point, if it can even be called that, is essentially the same as criticising the Famicom or Super Nintendo for not having proper online play, but relying on an alternative that by today's standard seems archaic and outdated.

It's been explained to you that before Colossus there was literally one mass market third party release of a full figure and sporadic releases of upgrade kits, and how it pioneered a lot of design standards and techniques that are now commonplace. Whether or not there was a market for this kind of thing was entirely unknown at the time.

No one is saying that FansProject havent subsequently become a non entity - the last I saw they seem to have sold some of their designs in progress to MAAS. No one is saying that you should get Colossus instead of Zeta's Armageddon or Warbot's Bruticus. No one in this thread is even saying that if FP had made Onslaught, Vortex, and Brawl at the time they wouldn't haven't been amazing - they very likely would have been epic, and would almost certainly have been better than the Hasbro versions.

However, to call it a failure is wrong. In every sense of the word. It sold well, it broke new ground in the market and it pioneered a lot of things that are commonplace today in 3P combiners.

If you're going to participate in online discussion you can't just crap out a point and then defend it purely on the basis that it's your opinion and is therefore for some reason special.

 

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The Broke New Ground bit is making me think of Red Letter Media.