It's the animated gimmick less toy line verses AEC gimmick toy lines debates thread.

Was animated a better toy line than AEC because it was gimmick free? yes or no?

Was AEC toy lines better than Animated because they had gimmicks? yes? or no?

rather than putting in my 2 cents/opinion first. I'll put my opinion on the debate after a bunch of replies.

 

Wrong section

 

Eh?!

 

please can a mod/adim/owner put this thread in the TF toy section. Sorry i put this in the wrong section.

 

Well I won't say Animated is/was better than the AEC lines, but I liked it a bit more.

I loved the amount of articulation in most the amimated line vs. the blocky nature of the AEC lines. I have never been a gimmick fan anyways, so they are a moot point for me.

That being said, I still love my Cybertron Prime, Armada Jetfire, Tidal wave, and Energon Shockblast as well...bendy Prime.

 

Wrong Forum.

And Animated had a gimmick - the signature Transformation (the head reveals and the way the figures would sometimes transform holding weapons). It just wasn't advertised on the box, although the designers have subsequently made reference to it.

 

Not even close. Animated by miles. The toys had immediately noticeably character and presence, the transformations were ingenius, and it came with the best show we've ever had.

 

1. Toy Discussion.

2. Transforming is the gimmick. The Unicron Trilogy lines simply added on that, and many of them were great toys. Overload is a piece of brickish majesty. I honestly regret selling mine.

I don't think one line was better than the other. Animated simply happened to have been produced in a time where the American Dollar turned to crap and it ultimately meant you got less toy for more money. On the other side, they happened to have come out after the engineering advancements set forth after the Energon and Cybertron lines, not to mention the Movie-1 line.

Was one line better than the other ? No. Each are a sign of their time. "Better" is nothing more than an opinion. And debating opinion is pointless.

 

Can you enlighten me on how that's a gimmick? Usually head reveals are just part of the transformation, and I can't figure out how animated's line was different about it.

 

Too many gimmicks spoil the broth.

 

Mech Alive and Auto-Morph are gimmicks used in the movie lines. Same deal.

 

Personally I feel like I got less with the animated toys in all size levels.

to me the animated toys came off extremly simplistic in design,sculpts,toy engineering & transformations.

With AEC I feel I got more. as some toys combined. key/minicon activated gimmicks added more play value & forced the toys to be more complicated on a inner toy engineering way.

Animated toys felt like a huge let down. similar to how some TF fans viewed armada compared to the super poseable new molds From CR/RID.

I really like how armada,energon & cybertron kept pushing the limits with all the creativity that went on. few examples: armada optimus prime+jetfire+overload trio combined form. armada megatron+tidalwaves weird combined form. armada unicron. energon had all those 2-in-1 & 5-in-1 combiners. cybertron had primus,optimus combining with wingsabre & leobreaker. megatron also combining with nemesis breaker.

To me animated was a step backwards & not a step ahead. the toys seemed to have tons of short cuts due to the live action TF movies toys eating up all the budget money+resources+creativity+bigger toy sizes.

the so called "new age" designs for animated didn't look that great compared to AEC. The animated toy designs looked & felt like they were being geared/catered towards a much younger kid buying age group than AEC & The movie verse had. Sorry I prefer my TF toys to have a sort of DIGNITY in sculpt,non-silly inner non-smiley faces.non-misproportioned body parts. I prefer serious adult TF toy sculpts.

 

I think you need to take a second and think a little bit about what you said right here.

 

It's mentioned in several of the interviews with the designers kicking about on this site. Basically they were often designed so the last thing to pop out would be the head (just like in the series when they transformed), or they'd transform into a specific pose, or come out of transformation wielding their weapon

Here's the relevant question and answer

http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/trans...2394-takaratomy-staff-interview-animated.html

 

Anyway out of the two Animated all the way.

This coming from someone that never really bought into the Animated craze as a whole, but the toys were largely amazing.

 

Hm. Knew that some toys operated that way, but never realized that that trend was pretty darn prevalent in Animated.

Normally I'd leave you to your opinion here, but this is just silly. Animated a step backwards? Hardly. Yes, AEC was more screen-accurate than animated was, but that was solely because the animators were too lazy/too budget constricted to do anything beyond animate the toy designs. And Animated's highly accurate toys still leave us scratching our heads and wondering how the heck HasTak pulled it off. It's hard to process the idea that Animated got the shaft in regards to funding (seriously? movie toys cut into their budget? Hasbro wasn't expecting the movie toys to be THAT much of a success) Yes, AEC had a lot of play gimmicks incorporated into the figures, but they HIGHLY compromised the figure's individual merits. Just look at the comparative poseability between Armada Overload and Animated Blurr. Extreme examples, yes, but the point still stands. I can't fathom how anybody would think that Animated took two steps backwards after AEC in regard to toy design when in fact most of them measure up pretty closely to the standard set by the RiD car brothers.

 

For me I actually prefer AEC over Animated everyday of the week and here's why.

1.As someone pointed out that Animated came out when the economy went down,and when that happened all the figures started getting flimsy,like loose ball joints,paint job flaws,and just general design flaws.

2.Animated also started in with that crappy semi-gloss look to the figures,to me that is so butt ugly I was so ready for that line to be over and done with when they announced its end.

3.The thing that irked me even more than the matte finish on them is the bloody designs, meaning you either had tall skinny bots,or short round and pudgy bots.To me that was just overkill for me.

Finally I will admit the show was okay at times,but then that loud mouth little punk Bumblebee would show up and turn it into the Bumblebee Crappy Time Show,with his teen bot angst.To me he was just annoying to say the least.Also I wish he had died at the end of Animated instead of Prowl,to me Prowl was the best character on that show.

Now a few last words,if it ain't clear from the above statements,I so prefer AEC over Animated as they had the best designs (no matter how much kibble they had),atleast they were built more sturdy.That is all.

 

AEC toys all look like crap to me. I've never had one though.

 

Animated without a doubt.

 

Since this isn't the first time you've made this arguement, I'll use my reply from the last time around.

Are you kidding me?

The Unicron Trilogy toys are mostly crap and it's made worse against Animated, not the other way around. Armada has some of the most unposable, soulless, and aburdly gimmick laden figures that the franchise has produced. Megatron who lacks basic hip articulation, Starscream who has an aircraft carrier sticking out of his back and can't even raise his arms, and so forth, culminating in what I'd nominate for the worst toy in TF history in Sideswipe. 99% of the Energon Autobots are crippled due to the powerlinx gimmick and you wonder if they spent a whole day designing Ironhide. Cybertron is largely better, but there are still many figures with issues, including Overhaul's major design flaws, and so forth.

I don't blame anyone for not liking the character rich designs of Animated, but to call them playskool engineered and AEC richly designed is ludicrous. Even the Japanese engineers who engineered 99.999% of all the toys made in the last 10 years cite Animated as one of their major triumphs.

Besides being fun to transform, highly posable, and chock full of character, they are also the toyline that has really come the closest to the illusion of Mass Shifting. Rodimus Prime, Blurr, Lockdown, and several others just go through this amazing transformation process where they go from tiny cars (or in Lockdowns case, normal sized) to large robots (Or in Lockdowns case, taller then some of the leaders robot mode). The Longarm to Shockwave process has this small robot becoming this leader sized robot while changing every single part of his body.