I must say I had to pick moderately simple. I'm not too big on fiddly bits and lots of panels on hinges all over. What I love about Mini-Cons aside from their small scale and collectibility is their simple transformations. I do like modern figures alot too, such as Tracks & Kup etc. But if I had to pick between Armada Hot Shot or 2.0 Hot Shot I'd go with Armada without thinking twice.
Never been a fan of overly complex Transformers. I don't enjoy lining up a bunch of panels and fiddling with parts until they're adjusted right down to the perfect millimeter for the mode to be done. I can understand how some people enjoy the puzzle elements of TFs like that, but I don't.
Integrated and intricate, blazemaster's actually simpler than it seems, but designed to be excessively tricky and not integrating enough kibble into the aesthetic, making the vital bits like locking the backpack, orientation of the backpack, rotation of the windshields and position of the legs unclear. Thunderwing, on the other side of the spectrum, integrates enough that the simplistic transformation is acceptable. ROTF prime lacks some clarity on vital bits (chest tabs slotting into arms, swords locking in place with straight arms by the shoulder door "hooks" and the shiftable back of leg panels) by being packed in robot form.
Either simple or complex is OK, as long as both modes look like different things. I tend to lean toward the simple side, just because they're quick to transform, and are probably less likely to have the more frustrating, annoying elements, such as: . fiddly, fragile bits and stuff that needs a lot of effort to make 'just so'. . 'busy work' stuff where several steps are taken to achieve the same apparent effect that took only one or two steps on a different toy.
Amen. Complex is fine, as long as once you know how to do it it can be done every time, even after a six month dust-gatehring period. After all, knowing is supposed to be half the battle, right?
Precisely. I'm a big fan of Universe Silverbolt because it reminds me so much of being a kid and transforming his G1 version for the first time. At the same time though I love WFC Prime, which is REALLY complex, but damn good fun. It's all down to how enjoyable it is.
i want an unique transformation that does not take a half hour to transform, and can be transformed in under a few minutes. just like the original which allowed you to play with the toy with the other toys and have prime battle megatron, with out it taking a week to transformer them both to and from their robot modes. UNLESS it is for the bigger masterpiece toys, or alternators, and HA's. THOSE should be a lot more complex because they are supposed to be masterpieces. the basic, deluxe, voyager/mega, ultra, leader, and other classes should remain toys always first and foremost. they are NOT puzzles they are toys. should be fun to play with the toy with the others. kids want to play war with their transformers, like i did when i was a kid, i'd play war with my transformers and all my other toys, and i'd create long story lines that'd often last for days. quite literally. my parents would go "clean up your room!" but i was always like but i am NOT done playing with the toys! optimus prime's still dead! oh yes, prime always died... anyways my point is that these are toys, NOT puzzles, and i think that is the problem with the movie toys, hasbro tried to cater to the fans by making them more complicated, but instead all they did was make it so a 5 year old would break it on the first day of owning a bumblebee, and their parents would take it back, and then buy them a power ranger zord instead, that they DID NOT break on the first day, let alone the first month. toys are meant to be fun, and played with. and transformers are still action figures. they are meant to be collected and then played with, WITH each other. with your average transformer i should be able to pick it up, transformer it to and from robot mode, put it back on the shelf, with out having to detecate a large portion of my day to it. i find my self picking up cybertron, energon and armada toys far more then i do the more complicated movie toys. while i do like the movie toys, i do think they are way too complicated. and complicated while is not all that bad of a thing for me, an adult, they do make it easier for body parts to break off. and then trying to buy said toy second hand at a thrift store, flee market or garage sale is just so much harder. value village has transformers all the time... but they never have any limbs, or sometimes they are just HALF the toy. with g1's the worst i'd find was just a transformer with no parts. now all i do is find a bunch of broken ones. while sometimes i'd find a broken g1 back in the day at value village, like i picked up a slag with one of the dino legs broken, but the TOY it self was still playable. g1's, and even g2's were easy to find second hand. beast wars were ok, normally would find them with out their weapons or tails but still with most of their body parts. and the toys still WERE toys. today i find a movie 1 prime missing everything that'd make it a robot, or a bumblebee with NO head. but at least there is always animated, i find those with all the parts to make it properly transform. how ever i do find that those are rarely found at thrift stores, so i guess the kids either never bought them, or must of liked them. and that is the point, the KIDS must like them before we do.
For me it depends on the character and occasionally the line. For example, I think movie based toys should have a more complex transformation than most generations toys. But I don't want anything simple either, because otherwise it gets boring after about the first transformation. I'm always happy when I see a big instruction sheet!
Sculpt and articulation over intricacy. I don't care how simple transformations are as long as the robot looks good and can "pose" well enough.
^Word. A toy that takes half an hour to transform into crap is still crap. It needs to look nice in both/or more modes. That's my bottom line. In fact, difficult transformations just deter me from transforming back to the previous mode (thinking of WFC OP....)
My fav TF : ROTF voyager Starscream pretty much sums it up : he's got an innovative transformation, fun and intricate, yet not too complex either and both his modes look GREAT imo. I think transformation problems only arise whenever the clearances between parts are just engineered too tight ; which results in a fiddly transformation proces ; but this can occur with any Transformer, regardless of line or size.
and the biggest problem with movie formers is not just that they are difficult, but they're mostly panel formers which you have to line up everything just right, and that's just boring, draws me away from the movie line. while some of them are great, i tend to dislike panel formers, i don't want a robot inside a car shell, i want the car actually PART of the robot. like how g1 and universe prowl worked, with his legs and chest being actually THE CAR, unlike movie 2 jolt, which basically is just a robot closed up to form a car, and then you unfold it and barely any car parts are showing on the final robot mode. any parts that ARE there are just useless kibble like on the arms. so not only is a transformation that is quick enough to transform to and from robot mode important to me, but also, WHERE the vehicle mode parts go. like starscream's chest being the cockpit. optimus prime's window's being the chest, and his legs are clearly the rear of the truck. but then you got others that barely have any aspect of the vehicle modes at all, like movie 1 and 2 megatron's... i want to be able to TELL what the robot mode turns into FROM robot mode! while leader movie 2 megatron is a great toy, in robot mode if it was not for the treads i couldn't tell it was even a tank! so i want more transformers that you can see what they turn into from robot mode, weather it is a tank, car, jet, truck, fruit bat, or what ever. and i want a transformation that is quick enough, to transform, but still unique, like i don't want it to be like a gobot where the back is normally the legs and the front is always the chest. kind'a like how movie jazz's chest is his front, but movie sideswipe's chest is his back. that to me is a nice change. like one of my biggest complaints about bw cheetor, was that he was basically just going from a robot, to all fours, as if he was crawling. unless i am mistaking all cheetor's did that! and bw primal was guilty of that too, his legs remained in the same spot and so did the arms. at least with cheetor, his arms were made up of his back, instead of just being the beast mode's limbs. that's not very creative at all. so i also want a creative transformation too.
I don't especially care about the complexity of a transformation, as long as toy looks reasonably good in all modes, and the toy doesn't routinely pop apart during transformation. I literally threw away CHUG Silverstreak because his side panels / doors kept falling off at the ball joints during transformation. I didn't care what it was "worth" -- it falling apart made it worthless to me.
As long as they're fun, I don't mind. For example, ROTF Dirge has a moderately complex transformation, but the part that makes me love it are all the neat little touches they threw in, like the head reveal.
I picked moderately simple but I'm really in between moderately simple and complex. I don't mind a little complexity until it takes me toomuch time to figure put or I riske breaking something.
I really liked the level of complexity exemplified by the Cybertron line. the Downshift/Big Daddy mold is one of my all-time favorites, along with Hot Shot, Starscream (voyager-sized, anyway), Vector Prime, Optimus, etc. Almost the whole Cybertron line was perfect, IMO (minus a few exceptions: Thundercracker, Backstop, Override). I also really like G1 Rodimus Prime. I find joy in transforming a toy almost as quickly as the robots transform in the cartoons. At the same time, though, the thing's got to look good, too, and look good in both modes. Most of the movie toys are beautiful in vehicle mode, but I think they look like crap in robot mode. Plus, when a toy is marketed to children 5 and up, it would be nice if a 5-year-old could actually transform it.