I know a lot of people are looking forward to this; but there are a lot of people that would probably have loved a Voyager Bumblebee-without-legs-on-the-back-of-a-truck.
It just strikes me as a terrible choice - the character barely appears in the movie, and doesn't appear in the trailer.
It blatantly should have been Blackout or Starscream - while Blackout is still somewhat of a "minor" character, he is in his own right Iconic because of the trailer. He's also the only Decep that really looks like an "Oldschool" Transformer.
Though I'm not overly fond of Starscream(The design makes absolutely no sense for the character, and no I don't care for "THis isn't
G1 Starscream!" if you're going to use such an iconic name, don't throw it around with chicken legs on it), it's still a decent enough bot that should have gotten a Leader sized toy. Why? First off, he actually IS a "Leader" somewhat in the movie, and is a heck of a lot more important than Brawl.
Also, no
G1 repaint for Starscream. It's grown on me a little, but it's still tacky. Instead, just include the
G1 head with the Voyager and Leader as a sort of apology to the
G1 SS fangirls. I love interchangable heads.
Also - there's a lot of BS around why Starscream looks the way he does. It's been pretty much confirmed that Bay wanted him to look that way - but at least for the toy, they could have fixed the arms up a bit. The problem with the movie design isn't the "mass" - it's the positioning of the arms. They're places at the ENDS of his width which looks like of silly and cartoon ape/troll-like. What if they were placed in further, with the body mass swept back as wings? Much cooler.
Either way, the toy needs it's arms to go in a lot further, and the guns needed to be removable. Having the only good Screamer toy have no hands is kind of bad.
The Alt mode really can't be helped, sadly.
We shouldn't have gotten a Leader Brawl - it's not really needed. We shouldn't have gotten a Voyager either - we should "Just" have gotten a Voyager, for now. If they release a Leader Screamer and Blackout- then they can release a Leader Brawl(good for scaling purposes).
There are just so many bemusing and plain wrong decisions in this line, IMO.
Aside from Leader Brawl, another thing which is odd is Ratchet. Did they really think he was going to sell with that colour? Maybe in the 80s it was okay for the Constructicons, but not only is Ratchet a much "muddier" and "snottier" version of that colour, the door doesn't even match the rest of him.
Ratchet should have been "Masterchief Green" like the original design pics suggested. I love the mould but the colour makes me sick and I'm nowhere near good enough to repaint it, nor do I like the Geewun repaint enough to buy it instead of waiting for the
TF:Animated Ratchet.
Arcee - Shouldn't she have been a Basic/Scout? I do like the Scout Arcee repaint we got, and the Deluxe Arcee. I'm guessing for the sequel they'll use the same design but make her a basic. They also should have used the
G1 helmet for the toy instead of the Nightscream 'do - the early Arcee designs used it(and a slightly more interesting face).
'08 Bumblebee - REALLY should have come with his battle Head. It's sad we're not getting this, at all. Could take some plastic from the gun to make it, or something.
Robot Replicas - Alright, the scale bothers me here. While you can't have them in scale, you could at least have them in sequential scale - Blackout is bigger than Starscream is Bigger than Megs is Bigger than Prime is bigger than Ratchet and Ironhide is bigger than etc.
Basically, around 6.5" for the huge guys 6" for the Leaders, 5.5" for the Voyagers and 5" for the cars. It's scale balancing- Marvel Legends is "6"" but in reality, it's 5.2 inch to 8.3 inch. Charge a little more for the extra size needed to keep the Cars around deluxe size, maybe. Or bug guys come with less/cheaper accessories.They're a great idea but they needed to think them through a bit better.
Bonecrusher - I actually quite like him being a Deluxe, I don't know why. I guess Deluxe Bonecrusher and Brawl, and Voyager Ratchet are kind of inscale with the car LOCs, which is cool. But he needed a Voyager from the get go, IMO.
Leader Prime - I know a lot of people LOVE this figure, but at the same time, it's rather sad when the voyager is considerably more movie accurate. I think that they should have sold Leader Prime as some special gimmicky thing, and had a more movie accurate Leader Prime.
Leader Megatron - A whole load of Ew, Wtf. I've considered buying him on clearance before, he's KIND of nifty, but that alt mode is just bad - just because it's an alien jet and the movie guys drew a blank on it doesnt' mean the toy designers should too - do SOMETHING to make me want this toy. And it's amazing how much more accurate it looks when it's silver - though I appreciate the colour that the movie version needs and lacks too. Whole thing needed rethinking.
Movie Alts! Where are they? Was there really a need to cancel alts when you could use it to work with the movie? A jazz would have been great, especially if it got a
G1 repaint - it would mean we finally get a "Good" Alt Jazz(the Mazda just really doesn't suit him, heck it looks better on Shockwave).
They only needed to release a few - Bumbles, Jazz, and a Barricade. Make these instead of that terrible Ultimate Bumblebee, another bemusing decision - why did they make a toy that's less accurate in the chest than one that costs 9 times less? Bumblebee, Jazz and Barricade would have cost less than Ultimate Bumblebee together and you can bet they would have sold well.
Human figures - should have had a set of miniatures, just to make movie scenes more epic and interesting. After all, they did make up about 60% of the movie. Could have come with accesories to the RRs or the smaller deluxes like Frenzy did.
Anyone got anything else they'd have liked done differently?
