I lost interest in the movies so I also lost interest in the toys.

 

I purged my collection in recent years to focus on G1 and it's off shoots.

There were movie toys I couldn't part with though such as...
Dirt Boss
Wreckage
the Real Gears
Arcee (blue Energon repaint)
oversized Legend Barricade that is about scout size
Sentinel Prime. One of the best villains in the franchise elevated by Leonard Nimoy's performance. Plus points for killing Ironhide.
One Step Prowl

Even lately I've bought some new ones like 1 step Barricade and Bumblebee and movie Clocker.

The movies are a guilty pleasure and I just focus on the positives.

I'm not a fan of non traditional Transformer designs like Frenzy, Free Trader, Ironhide, Wheeljack or Brains and don't like that they usually tend to be among the main characters.

A lot of background characters like Arcee, Stinger, Canopy and Long Haul have cooler designs and get relegated to the background, usually getting killed.

Likewise a lot of the movie toys who don't appear in the movie like Wreckage and Dirt Boss look great too.

Presently my main criteria for picking up a movie toy are if it scales with the Diaclones and has it been retroactively introduced into some form of G1?

I've discovered that some characters like Dirt Boss and Wreckage have made it into obscure G1 material with Wreckage being spelt Reckage.

Movie Drift was seen among the G1 cast that were involved in the Angry Birds comics and Deluxe Last Knight Barricade had his toy retroactively made G1 as had movie Lockdown. Barricade was also seen among the NAILS in early Robots in Disguise comics.

Movie Bumblebee works as IDW Centurion who believed himself to be Bumblebee.

I fully intend to pick up Nitro who is what I hope to be the beginning of a future trend with Transformers from now on being compatible with Titanmasters especially being able to pilot or drive the vehicle modes.

So really, the movies don't affect my enjoyment of the toys. I do like Barricade, Ratchet, Bumblebee and Sentinel Prime as characters. Even Lockdown and Crosshairs DESPITE their terrible voices.

 

I'm a big critic of the movies. 2d characterizations in a 3d world. they are like action movie versions of the alvin & the chipmunk movies. just bad. and that effects my enjoyment of the movie toys. I have 3 of them total. Nitro specifically for my Thunderwing Headmaster, TLK Barricade because he's about as less of a movie design of a Barricade you can get, and Fallen Bludgeon

 

This is always the case with any TF universe/brand. For me a good toy is a good toy.

 

I still enjoy the first movie a lot, and how terrible AoE and TLK have been really make RotF and DotM seem not so bad by comparison. But I still enjoy the movie toys, and i'm really looking forward to the Studio Series.

 

What's going to make me pass on some of the Studio Series will be figures that I've already got in another size class. For example, the new Voyager Megatron and maybe Brawl look pretty awesome so far, but I've already got Leader versions of both, so I won't have the need to fill those gaps. One caveat will be Leader Blackout because, well, the voyager version of him sucks noodles. The others that are in the same size class, like Jazz, will have to be on a case-by-case basis of whether they're a better mold than the previous version.

On a side note, one real disappointment with SS so far is that the new Ratchet is a deluxe and not a Voyager. We've already had two deluxe Ratchets, and he desperately needs an updated voyager.

 

Nope it's all on the toys back

 

I never let the fiction affect my enjoyment of a toy-if it looks cool and its a great toy, then yeah, I'm getting it. (Non-TF example, Destiny Gundam. I didn't like the SEED Destiny anime, but I like the Destiny's look, so I got the High grade.)
That said i do like the movies. It just so happens I didn't have any disposable income back when the first four movies were showing so I have fewer movie toys than I'd like. Although the studio series is going to remedy that.

 

As a Star Wars fan who owns almost a full tub of prequel figures, I can honestly say that my enjoyment of a film has very little impact on my relationship with its related toys.

 

The question can also be asked, do you enjoy Energon toys

 

I don't watch the movies, generally. I saw the first one and realized I wasn't the audience for it. I did see the one with Mark Walberg in it, too, but that was for free, and I don't really remember what happened in it, and... I might have fallen asleep.

I don't buy a lot of the movie toys. I usually wait until I hear great reviews of the toys and then pick them up.

The aforementioned Nitro is awesome. Evasion Mode Optimus Prime is the bee's knees. So, no, the movies don't factor into my enjoyment of the toys at all.

 

I'm extremely not a fan of the Bayverse, and one of the things I didn't like about it was the aesthetic they went with, where the Transformers look like someone ate a box full of Bionicle figures and threw up all over a General Motors factory.

Some of them have interesting vehicle modes but I can't get over my dislike for the style of the robot modes. With their clawed feet, greebled to hell bodies and gibberish faces. So it's not so much the quality of the movies (which doesn't help), but that the toys are just as unappealing to me as the films for the most part. Even when their engineering is impressive.

The only exception: I've been looking at that Wei Jiang evasion mode Prime, it's such a beast of a thing, looks really well done. I'm in two minds about getting one, it looks really cool but it DOES transform into a Bayverse Prime...

 

If the toy is good, the media version shouldn't put you off.

I've always hated G1 Kup, Wheeljack, Perceptor and Bumblebee as characters but I love the Titans Return/G1 Kup, G1 Wheeljack, TR Perceptor and TR/Encore/Pretender Bumblebee toys.

 

I don't watch the movies or buy the toys. The movie toys are fiddly and faffy, I guess they look ok though.

 

The only way the movies really affect my enjoyment of the toys is making me go nuts about screen-accuracy and scale. Even then, I can still enjoy the less accurate versions of on-screen characters if I like the toy itself. I won't let my anger over how Megatron was handled in TLK stop me from enjoying his Voyager figure, and I still mess with AoE Deluxe Scorn sometimes despite the TLK Voyager being an almost perfect upgrade.

I'm mostly keeping up with the movies just for the toys by now, really, so it's all good.

 

Gah...tough one for me. The Bay movies do affect my enjoyment in both good ways and bad ways.

Some of the visuals in the Bay movies are mind-blowing...some of the designs are just amazing. While they're absolutely not my go-to aesthetic (1986 Movie, please), I can sit back and appreciate the insane detail that went into these models, marvel at how they move and transform...and I love the idea of having a replica of some of those in my collection, particularly the RotF era when Has/Tak went crazy with the engineering. My favorite design of them all was Movie 1 Barricade. The Saleen Mustang cop car mode was very sharp and the robot mode with the hulking arms always struck a chord for me. I was psyched to find the Human Alliance figure back in '09 or so and it's absolutely on the "keeper shelf" in my collection. Human Alliance Jazz is just a great design, a plainly beautiful action figure and an amazing Transformer... he's a keeper too. So that's the good stuff for me.

The negative impact from the movies comes from the cynical, vulgar, misogynistic, thoughtlessly violent, lowest common denominator humor, etc. that pollutes these movies...and how it leaves me feeling depleted and gross. When these concepts cross my mind, it makes handling the figures much less enjoyable for me. I guess it's like living in a murder house. Even if you don't believe in ghosts, the association of what happened within those walls can certainly infiltrate your underlying emotional experience...Oh, this is the "give me your face!" Optimus Prime? Yuck. Oh, this is the Soundwave that brutally executed the Wheeljack character in DotM? Uh...pass.

Largely because of this, I have sold my movie collection down to about 6-8 of my favorite designs that I like enough to overlook the garbage...and that's probably where the collection will stay.

Just as a disclaimer; I fully realize and acknowledge that these aspects bother people to varying degrees and that plenty of fellow Transformers fans have their own, equally valid reasons for their own feelings and opinions.

Right on, brother. I respect this position. Regardless of how anyone else feels about the movies, plenty of reasons to love the movies and if it has brought some joy to your life and sparked renewed interest in a hobby, this is just great news.

 

I have watched and .... for the two hours I was looking at them... enjoyed the movies... I mean they do suck but I watch Sci fi original movies and shit the " asylum" puts out to occupy my eyes mindlessly sometimes so ... meh whatever. But the character designs to me are just vaguely even transformers and it gripes my ass that the investors and designer's threw out 30 years of cool lore and fandom to pander to lowest possible not lowest common denominator and lets face it attract the most and dumbest people they could to make a quick cheap buck ( AKA people not traditionally interested in this hobby or sci fi or space or robots or thinking or anything but tits and destruction) ... the masses...mouth breathing celebrity worshiping casuals who will just go along with whatever is happening. When they COULD have made a TRASNFORMERS movie that respected the story, franchise and fans... see GI Joe for another example of "using' in the worst possible connotation of the word a fandom and media property to just make the same crap they turn everything into... meanwhile throwing the people who made and follow the property aside as not being a large enough demographic to compete once something scales up to the major motion picture market. Its insulting and shitty but they do it to everything.

If you have ever seen metalocolypse there's this scene in one episode where a comedian is getting cheap laughs by making silly voices and just saying " hey Remember Masters of the universe MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE GUYS... hey Remember Zoids lol ZOIDS GUYS! RIGHT!!!' with a few old nostalgic things from the 80s... that's the equivalent of what movie studios do when they try and drag up things like Joe and transformers... and battle ship and Gem and anything they think they can pervert and desecrate into a cheap buck or whatever. So yeah I can look at giant robots destroy shit for two hours and be all " hu hu hu hu hu fire guys hu hu hu cars mashed hu hu hu"
but that shit aint really Transformers any more than fucking robot chicken is... and RC is more respectful.

So Ive tried a few times to get toys from that crap if they look cool from 5 feet and the Generations distribution ******ation has me bored and desperate to buy something new enough to pick a movie toy up... I think I have ended up keeping one. They just seem like they always suck in some way... they never look like who they are supposed to but I was going to repurpose them anyway but THEN they are always contrived weird transformations ... seem in material and deco to not have ANYTHING in common with the good Transformer toys, stick out like sore thumbs in the collection from the good stuff, always have flimsy feeling ( I like the chunky solid feeling gen articulation) temperamental joints... they all look like a Sorayama and Geiger rippoffs trying too hard to be "Hardcore" and ' Yo dog that shits just sick and CRUCIAL" ... " dude you don't know what crucial means you just think it sounds cool" or something... WIRES!! PISTONS!! HYDRAULICS!! BLACK!! GUNMETAL GREY SON!!! BLACK!! YO THAT SILVER IS METTALICAL !! MORE BLACK!! HOT RODS BLACK!! EVERYBODYS BLACK AINT THAT EXTREME!!

I'm fuckin over it. It would take a hell of a compelling toy to get me to try it again and I would need to already have a good workable plan of how to fit the character or design into what we play with prior to getting it AND I would need to be caught up and satisfied with not only ALL The generations lines that can build me a good G1 cast of characters but also be tapped out on Joes, Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones, Dinosaurs, generic military figures, Generic civilian and or Emergency response and rescue type toys AND there not be anything my sons are currently looking for or trying to get to play with AND have just extra money to burn before I would ever get another movie transformer to try and use with my other stuff at this point

 

Heck no! I had most of the TLK figures before the movie was released.

 

No, the Last Knight is one example of a bad movie with a solid toy line, thankfully doesnt impinge on my enjoyment of the toys themselves,