Ok, so I picked up Strongarm and was surprised that there were no bios for the new deluxes...instead we have the instructions there. I started to be a little bummed, but then I read the bio of the other figure I picked up...Crosscut. Crosscut is bristling with weapons...4 shoulder cannons, a 2 part riffle, twin guns on his wrists and what looks to be missile pods on his shoulders. Sounds like quite the badass and my son loved his "one man army" look. Clearly this guy is the Chuck Norris of Autobots...just blowing up EVERYTHING and sorting it out later, likely getting reamed in Optimus Prime's office for being too extreme right? Nope... Crosscut's bio begins with how he 'isn't known for his accomplishments in battle' and goes into his work as an ambassador and translator. Now this may very well be his role in the comics or on some Wiki page...but the package helps sell the toy. My son saw the bio and put him right back, that first impression long gone as he looked for someone who sounded a lot more cool. So do bios matter? Did they matter to you as a kid? (A make or break for how cool the toy was) Will you miss them being gone?
If they didn't' appear in the cartoons or comics then yes the toy bio very much matters so. Cybertron rocked with this. I wished we had that level of effort in bios again, like Shortround, Hardtop and Brushgards all having nerdy interests.
...Well Crosscut is a retool of Skids, and is based on an existing character in the IDW comics, whilst the original use of the mold is based on a character who is bristling with weapons. I don't know about being robo-Chuck Norris, but he definitely had a lot of weapons.
For me, it kind of depends on the figure. If it's a figure that (in my mind) oozes personality, then the toy bio is told to screw off, and I give him a personality. Like Dreadwing from the '07 Movie line. He, in my mind, looks really shy & timid, even though his toy bio calls him a "fearsome warrior." As such, I just have him behind some of my other figure, just looking down. However, if it's a really generic-looking character, kind of like a lot of the non-show Cybertron figures, then that bio is an absolute necessity. Like Hardtop, who looks like he could be doing anything, from scouting to sniping to espionage, and even a bit of hand-to-hand combat. The bio cements his look in my mind, and that helps develop his personality into my standard.
Yep. Most of my favourite Transformers were the result of first impressions from bios. For me personality was always as big a draw as the toy, many times moreso.
Nah I always just liked the way things looked, plus I'm illiterate so I can't read the bios anyway Seriously though, as a kid, because I grew up with G2 there wasn't as much media present, so other than the vhs of the movie and several episodes I had, most of the toys I got on looks alone, of course later the G2 comic came out, but aside from a few characters, many were never even brought up, so until beast wars the fiction of the toys who weren't household names meant nothing to me, and that sort of continues today, with one or two exceptions, that I am willing to purchase on name and therefore characterization alone
Bios are tremendously important to me. The short blurb about their personality was always a defining factor for choosing Transformers, and which Transformers became my favourites. In the mid 90s when everybody got 10s on their Tech Specs the whole thing kind of fizzled, however. And keep in mind here in Canada we have a "multi-lingual" packaging, which usually involves much shorter blurbs on the newer toys and no comic book. Boo. //Panjumanju
The funny thing about Crosscut is that he really isn't supposed to be a walking arsenal of destruction. He is only carrying enough firepower to level a small building because the mold is IDW Skids, who is the last kind of individual who should be carrying around that much firepower anyway. Plus, everybody knows that more firepower is necessary to pave the way to peace. Just ask Ghandi from Civ 5, whose notorious AI bug means that if anybody does any single thing to piss him off, he will nuke their faces off;
