What I mean by that is back in the day the Transformers used to be packaged in their alt-mode and one of the joys IMO of getting the Transformer home from the toy store was transforming him into his robot form for the first time. It was like getting to the surpise at the bottom of a cereal box. Am I the only one that misses that small pleasure?

 

Get Takara instead of Hasbro, lol.

 

Yes, this is a huge thing for me as well, I want to buy a car, plane or camera, etc and turn it into a robot. That's the whole thing about these toys!

 

*looks at Takara MP Autobots*

Still happens.

 

*looks at Takara MP-01 and MP-10*

Not always.  

 

Prime and Magnus say hi. Although they are the only exceptions  

 

I pre-ordered Takara's TR Blurr. *crosses fingers*  

 

That's why I never said Takara MP's as a whole as the Decepticons tend to come in robot mode but there is the odd exception like the tapes and Shockwave.

Point is it still happens, it's not a 'back in the day' thing.

 

I couldn't agree more! This was part of the magic of the original concept of the toy line. It was taken for granted that a toy car or plane (or gun) was a cool thing on its own...the transformation and the hidden robot were just pure bonus to a cool toy jet or whatever.

Aaron Archer talked about this, I believe. The switch to robot mode package lined up with a change form selling cool toys to the marketing of IP. Now the character itself is more important than the toy.

This also might explain why we so rarely get a new character anymore.

 

But you did say MP Autobots  

 

I'm not sure I follow you - no one suggested that you were talking about Takara MP's as a whole. You said MP Autobots and it was pointed out that some MP Autobots do come in bot mode. Now you're arguing from the point of the Decepticon figures.

 

** walks into thread having seen the title......expects to see World's Dullest Sparring match between a Tape Deck and a Datsun.......leaves disappointed **

 

lol I thought the same at first

 

The main fun I had with that style of packaging was that when I was a kid and buying toys from the Unicron Trilogy, I would never read the instructions (Which I didn't even know was included. Don't judge me! I wasn't even 7!) and try to figure out how to transform the figures on my own. Going from vehicle to robot was certainly easier than the other way around since figuring out how to turn a car into a humanoid shape isn't too hard. But then again, figuring out how to transform Energon Unicron's robot mode into a planet isn't as hard as moving the heavily-ratcheted legs when you had weak 5-year old arms. This did lead to some mistransformations and unawareness of certain gimmicks until I found out about them years later, but I didn't care at the time.

Of course, then toys got more complex around the time of the live-action movies, so I pretty much needed the instructions. The instructions still didn't make transforming ROTF Leader Prime any easier, but it probably would have taken even longer to transform the first time (around 2 hours) if I hadn't used them. And unless the instructions screw up, I tend to not make mistransformations anymore unless intentional to make the toy look better.

So in short, I have no need for alt-mode boxing anymore since I actually use the instructions instead of making the puzzle aspect of Transformers toys harder than it needs to be.

 

Buy one of the CW/UW box sets/collection packs, all come in vehicle mode

 

I concur. I like to reveal the robot after I open it up. That's more fun.

 

Well all the currently released Takara TR figures are in vehicle mode with the headmaster in a separate little window so far, so he probably is too.

 

Well they still do it with some figures like Takara obviously as well as some CW sets so it's not entirely gone.