These are my thoughts exactly! Well, except for the main line Bumblebee. People would still complain about his neck/collar because it's hideous. The only difference there is that it would look bad on the show too.
CGI can cheat the transformations. Toys can't. There should be a clear dialogue between the two without one being overly compromising to the other, as I think that was best exemplified in Animated -- even though that's probably my least favorite aesthetic. The toy engineering is the limiting factor, and while the consistency in Cybertron is nice, the show really looks like a bunch of toys running around.
But if u look at the prime serries it is far more complex than the cybertron serries! They tried! I don't think they or any company can do a perfect transformation with show accurate prime/ movie/ future TF shows! It will be impossible!
Cybertron's mistake in that regard is showing toy-style joints, gimmick switches, screw holes, etc. I want the show to fudge the joints and fill in hollow parts, and I don't need to see the levers for launching missiles, etc., but I don't want them to fudge away the kibble or make up completely impossible transformations like in Beast Wars. Getter Robo styled warping and resizing of parts is an awful idea when there's any plan to make toys. Tfprime32: the OP's point is that they should design the toys first, then base the show designs on the toys, since that's easier than what they've been doing. Like you've said, it's not possible to get it right the way they're doing it.
I'm a bit of a physics nerd. I want to look at a transformer and be able to make sense of it. I want to know that proportions and balance work as presented, and I want as little cheating as possible. Personally, I think that when art comes before the toy, that this step gets increasingly overlooked. These guys just draw whatever they think looks kewl with little to no regard as to how it would translate to the physical world (be it toy or an imagined real life version.) I'm sorry if it's a boring way to look at it, but that's what matters to me.
A joint effort between character designers and toy engineers like you describe is the way to have better toys. That's why Animated is so amazing. Even toy transformation cheats (like the roof and windshield on Bumblebee) are replicated in character designs.
Step 1: Here is what the show designers want the character to look like Step 2: This is how close the toy engineers can get to that Step 3: We will clean up that toy design and use it in the show. Easy.
Since I grew up with G1 it was almost impossible to compare the toys to their on-screen counterparts. It was better if you just didn't think about it, so I don't. I like it when the two match up well, but I don't get bent out of shape if there are differences.
Except the time frame. It takes 2 years to develop a figure, supposedly. Even if that is drastically wrong it still takes orders of magnitude longer for an engineer to discover that a certain design can't work than what a concept artist can produce. So it would grind the production of the media to a halt while they wait 6 months to a year to see if their designs can be made to toy form.
I don't think the toy needs to be fully designed in order for the hasbro team to look at a character design and see if it doable or not they just need there opinion respected and their feedback applied The biggest issue with the prime character designs is they created the robot modes first and worried about the other modes after the fact. That's why you have the designs that can't be translated with out cheating like ratchets chest. Just because something you draw has car parts on it doesn't mean it can transform Hasbro can design great toys even well after a character has been created by a media source ( rotf leader prime) but its up to the media people to actually design a properly functioning transformer or else hasbro's screwed
On one hand, I agree; I'd love to see more accurate toys. On the other hand, I think that things like the movie-verse and Prime have pushed the transformations of the toys to levels that wouldn't have been attempted otherwise. Look at the Vehicon, for example. If Hasbro had been able to say "Hey, we don't think we can do that without some back kibble" and the FE was their best shot at it (and it was a GOOD figure), then that's what the Vehicons would look like. Instead, we got the RID Vehicon, which only has two real pieces of kibble on the hips, and even those replicate onscreen kibble somewhat.
