Automorph? Gimmick or a new trend for TF

Now the movie toys have been out for over a month or 2 now and the deluxes, voyagers and leaders come with automorph transformations. But what does everyone think of them? Nothing a pure gimmick we'll only see once or something that well help drive Hasbro's sales and will become more apparent in newer TF toys and more in depth automorph technology in the future.

My opinion - gimmick. Idea sounds cool on paper, but overall not exactly exciting. All the automorphs can still be done manually and none look very impressive. Though Leader Prime's is decent. Sure the automorph may skip at least one transformation step, that's all. Now I'm not saying I'm against it and it needs to be scrapped, by heavens no. If Hasbro keeps hell, keep it. Find a way to automorph g1 prime's trailer from anywhere . I just think it may die out like other gimmicks, targetmasters, headmasters etc.

What does everyone else think?

It'll be gone with the Animated toys. Aaron told us at the Product Panel that there wouldn't be anymore line gimmicks (at least in the foreseeable future), but that they'd be focusing on individual toy gimmicks. Part of their plan to promote individual characters.

EDIT: Also, I can't stand it. Movie toy engineering is impressive enough without it, it's probably relatively expensive and included at the expense of more paint apps/accessories/other things I'd rather have, and on most of the toys I can think of offhand, it transforms their feet/lower legs. Color me unimpressed.

Originally Posted by llamatron Seriously, Bryan. is pretty much the coolest person in all of existence and definitely all of GD.

What if it comes to the point where the entire robot automorphs and we are too lazy to transform transformers? That's half the fun!

But small things like the head are fine, like with Leader Class Prime.

Depends on how well it's executed. If you can look at an automorph and say "that's cool" (like Ironhide), then it's worth it.

Its both a gimmick and a way they were able to make the toys as closely possible to resemble the movie versions.

I bent my wookie

I love automorph when it works and dosent bring the figure down (Ironhide, Prime) but I hate it when it brings the figure down (Blackout, Old Bumblebee)

I had to take Blackout apart because of the automorph, Because of that i can't stand it

That doesn't mean it wont be used. The interviews at Botcon revealed a new Blurr would be in the series, I think automorph would be a great gimmick to show his speed, on a simpler Transformer figure it could have a very dynamic effect on how fast he goes from one mode to another. So long as it's done well, like Ironhide's or Starscream's.

Well, I've got all the mainline figures available at retail right now (and have Arcee, 08 Bumblebee & Dreadwing arriving next week from BBTS) and, while I was initially impressed by the automorph features I now find them to be more annoying than anything. It'd be alright if you didn't have to fix half of them, but outside of Leader Megatron, 74 Bumblebee, Jazz and Ironhide I've been agitated by most of them in some way or another so I was very happy to hear that the gimmick would go away with Animated.

From what I may or may not have learned at Botcon, it appears quite possibly that automorph won't necessarily be confined to just the movie line.