Why so much ugly grey plastic in the Movie Line??

Discussion in 'Transformers Toy Discussion' started by SMOG, Oct 24, 2007.

  1. SMOG

    SMOG Vocabchampion ArgueTitan

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    I just picked up Dropkick today from the movie line... a really nice figure. One of the best engineered in the movie line, I'd not hesitate to say.

    But here's the kick, and it's been kind of buggin' me... what the heck is with all the over-use of that drab marbled "metallic" grey plastic as a base colour for the TF decos!? Have they lost the power to perceive colour? Have all the bright coloured plastic stores been used up over the course of Armada-Energon-Cybertron??

    I understand that the line is trying to move away from the cartoony "playskool" kids stuff, but arguably, cars now are more colourful than they've been in a decade and what do we get in place of TF decos... grey, grey, and more grey...

    Let's look at the movie line so far...
    -Protoform Optimus
    -Jazz AND Final Battle Jazz
    -Megatron (both Voyager and Leader)
    -Scorpinok
    -Half the Real Gears
    -Dreadwing
    -Recon Barricade
    -Dropkick
    -the upcoming Camshaft (Swindle Repaint)

    Plus it looks like Night Patrol Optimus (or whatever he's called) and Stockade may continue the trend... and who knows who else. Is it too much to ask for a few more tones of yellow, red, green, blue, orange... or black and white even? Granted most of the figures I mention above are in slightly different shades and hues of gray, but it's pretty much the same thing.

    After Classics Starscream I was kind of hoping I'd see less of that swirly grey plastic. Sigh...

    Okay. Rant over. Dropkick is great other than the above. Whee!

    :) 

    zmog
     
  2. Noisemaze2006

    Noisemaze2006 Banned

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    I'm with you! I was looking at my movie Decepticon poster & they all blend together. Unless you look close Starscream & Blackout look like one big blob of twisted metal. Only the Autobots have color. I understand the vehicle modes all need to look the same as the real vehicles but I don't understand why they can't have some color in robot mode. In robot mode Starscream could have some blue & red.
     
  3. Bryan

    Bryan ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

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    I gotta say, this sounds a little like the ability of the fandom to complain about everything. You even hit on it--for years, things were brightly colored. People had issues with it. Now, they're realistic--every mold you mentioned makes sense in grey--and fans aren't happy.

    I admit, some of the molds could have been done differently and still worked. Like Recon Barricade, or Camshaft. But the others? I kinda feel like they not only work in grey, but that they work best in grey.
     
  4. Nightwind

    Nightwind Aka Dusty Bottoms.

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    I've got to agree with squirrelcar on this one. This line, above all others, has required that the coloring be more realistic. As a result, we're seeing a lot of gray. Personally, I think that Dropkick's color works extremely well with the oversized Decepticon graphic that he has painted on him...
     
  5. Dark Magnus

    Dark Magnus Your opinion is wrong!

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    So light blue is gray now huh? Must've missed when that memo.
     
  6. SMOG

    SMOG Vocabchampion ArgueTitan

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    Er, first of all, that's not really true. The grey IS overused, especially for the civilian vehicles. I don't see how it's more "realistic" in every case? The alt-modes are plenty realistic, but that particular type of gray plastic really adds NO realism to most of them. It's not knee-jerk complaining... it's an obvious trend.

    I can sort of see it for characters like Megatron and Scorponok, who are fundamentally metallic. I don't really mind that it's used for "metal" robot parts within the car mode, either. Even Jazz... the grey is a pretty poor substitute for the tones of his movie incarnation, but what can you do? (well, besides giving us a proper repaint, and not just a battle damaged version of the same old figure)

    Also notice that I didn't lump Starscream (tan) and Blackout (a solid military grey-blue, rather than that pearly stuff) into the same group.

    What gets me are characters like Recon Barricade, Camshaft, Dropkick... after we've already seen a lot of grey decos in the line already, WHO is responsible for choosing these colours? Barricade could easily have used white... Camshaft could have gone for pretty much anything you see on the road now, Dropkick... well, for a tricked-out ghetto lowrider truck, his deco is positively drab. There's a pretty distinct lack of imagination at work here.

    I'm not asking for a return to the "box o' crayons" approach. I don't need to see 7 different fluorescent colours and translucent energon parts on one figure... which was obviously excessive. It's just unfortunate that so many of the recent molds have been leaning on a fundamentally dull and repetitive colour scheme... when really, there are so many other colours for cars that they could be working with. I mean, it's not even like that plastic is actually all that attractive, or resembles the grays used on real cars either...

    I must have missed your most eloquent point. ;) 

    Only Protoform Prime might be considered "light blue", though it's clearly a grey-blue with the same pseudo-metallic marbled plastic type. After so many movie figs with similar decos, now that they have non-movie civilian vehicles to play with, why are they still stuck in the same limited palette?

    I suppose you could point out that in first-wave G1, 4 out of 11 Diaclone cars were white (if you count Prowl and Ratchet)... but at least they had a pretty good spread of other colours in there too. And nobody can say that the Diaclone cars weren't realistic.

    Meh.

    zmog
     
  7. KA

    KA Well-Known Member

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    grey is the new yellow/neon color apparently.
     
  8. Feralstorm

    Feralstorm Good Morning, Weather Hackers! TFW2005 Supporter

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    If you go back and look at the first couple years of G1 which a lot of people love so much, it's noticeable that the vast majority of toys are one color (usually the color of the vehicle) layered over black, gray, and silver. I've noticed a lot of movie toys are similar in that regard, probably due largely to the realistic altmodes. Alternators was a lot like that too.

    (observation more than complaint, really.)
     
  9. KA

    KA Well-Known Member

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    to be specific in regards to the original TFs, the basic concept was actually tri-color for the characters. i recall this from the interview with the then takara CEO or sumin'. good example of these were:

    prime - red, blue, yellow
    starscream - white/grey, red, blue
     
  10. Rotorstorm

    Rotorstorm Wreck n’ rule

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    i'm not annoyed by the colour, i'm more annoyed by the fact that the plastic sucks for bringing out details and ends up looking cheap. has grey plastic always had this problem?

    (looks at cybertron Prime) No, but seriously, it was the look of the plastic that made me pass on the original Jazz figure, even when i intentionally went out to buy him.
     
  11. RobotoChan

    RobotoChan Nothing to see here

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    I have decided to get a spare nightwatch prime and regular leader prime and airbrush the nasty dull grey parts chrome to make them look more realistic.

    Some of the grey parts are obviously meant to be chromed so my question to hasbro would be - when I pay 40 GBP for a figure, why is there no chrome?
     
  12. REDLINE

    REDLINE longer days, plz? Veteran

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    because he doesnt' go but for half that in the US... there is a ton of money invested in engineering as well as creating the actual molds... when you have as much plastic and as many moving parts and such as a movie leader toy has, its not cheap. they want to actually MAKE money off selling them.
     
  13. KA

    KA Well-Known Member

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    ooh good point. i passed up on regular jazz because of the swirlies too.
     
  14. ckhtiger

    ckhtiger old skool fool

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    where's that comic that said that mcfarlane bought up all of the cool toy colors?
     
  15. Ziero

    Ziero TFW2005 Supporter

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    My guess, silver plastic is crappier to use then grey plastic...and seeing as most bots are supposed to be silver we're getting it all in grey instead.

    I happen to think Dropkick's "grey" and purple paintjob looks great though :thumb 
     
  16. RandomFerret

    RandomFerret Fuzzy Forever

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    Because vacuum-metalised plastic looks tacky and chrome-flecked plastic is expensive and prone to breakage.

    Swirly grey gives the impression of silver without looking like shit or having half the parts come out broken.
     
  17. Batman

    Batman The Dark Knight TFW2005 Supporter

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    My only complaint is they should have painted movie Megs with silver (not chrome, just plain silver is good). The normal voyager one is not too bad because of the ice, but the leader really needs it. Overall though I don't mind grey plastic, no chipping or wear over time is fine by me. I can't get enough of the movie toys and I am sad that we are near the end of the line.
     
  18. Foster

    Foster Haslab Victory Saber Backer #3 Veteran

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    Universe backlash?
     
  19. Rewind

    Rewind Swoosh!

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    I'm just wondering when BROWN is going to get some more love. I want me some nice brown robots, dangit.
     
  20. DorkimusPrime

    DorkimusPrime King of the Squirrels

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    Turdimus Prime totally sold out.