So something I've noticed a lot over the past few years is that there seems to be a large number of people whom the moment someone criticizes a figure, yell at them and tell them they are entitled for wanting this, that or the other thing. Or that they entitled if they expect something they paid for to be functioning, or not have QC issues, or paint. Somehow, somewhere, people began using entitlement as a catchall defense for anyone, whether they be a third party company, or Hasbro, to give the big dogs a pass while villifying the person complaining.

Quite frankly, that practice, is as TotalBiscuit would likely say, a load of bollocks. There are Several types of entitlement, one where someone is complaining something they got for free should have this, that, and the other thing. It should be blue instead of black, and red instead of purple, and in some cases that person is in the right. In some cases, that person is right and something should be those things.

Other times they are just wanting something just because they want something, and that is a negative thing. They want it, and it's just because they do, and because of that they should have it. This is a negative version of entitlement.

But the one where the person is almost always right, and is the one most villified on these boards is the person who pays for something and expects, more. They expect their item to transform properly. They expect it to have good paint apps. They expect it to have wrist swivels, and elbow joints. And why shouldn't they? And why are they wrong for expect any of that? Are they wrong at all?

The answer is no, they're not wrong. Are they entitled? Yes. But the thing is, they are entitled in a good way. They're not asking for something for nothing, they are asking to get the value of their currency back in a plastic transforming robot form, or some other good, and if they don't, they damn well should complain. Why? Because it's their money. Someone else wants it, they should be giving out something quality to those whose money they want. The person doing the buying is the consumer, and their the one spending their money. So no, they shouldn't just accept QC issues and take it, nor should they take a reduction in quality and a raise in price.

When someone buys something they are entitled to both praise it, and critique it. Why? BECAUSE THEY PAID FOR IT. Or because someone wants them to pay for it, and in all honesty, it is because of the people critiquing things that things can get better, just silently bending over and letting someone have their way with you is not the way to get a better product. Because if you give someone an inch, they are likely to take a mile, but when they try to take that inch and you stand in their face and tell them to back down or raise a fuss? They'll think twice about it, especially if you tell them you're not going to take their shit any more. They'll do better by you in the future, knowing that you're pissed at them.

So in the future, the next time you bitch at someone for complaining about bad paint apps, bad engineering, or QC issues. Express yourself in a better manner. Don't call them entitled, because you're entitled as they are. You just have a differing opinion, and take a stand for yourself as well. Hold bigger people accountable for what they do, or where they slip up.

Toy collecting is sort of like a relationship in that regard, where whatever company you're flitting about with being your spouse at the time. If you have issues with a figure or others do and you let them walk all over you, they will continue to do so. Buy if you slap them across the face and tell them "Fuck you for kicking me in the balls or other body part of your choice here!" and hit them back, they'll be less likely to strike you again, and may indeed, suck up to you afterwards once they realized they done fucked up. Let them.

 

Ah, someone with reading comprehension skills and a decent vocabulary!!

But seriously, both sides of this argument have extreme proponents, who's comments serve little to advance their own views, and usually equates to a general statement of "I like/dislike this" with literally no further thought into why they have that stance at all, and because of that, when confronted with opposition, the situation usually escalates, as one or both sides is unwilling to accept that others can reach different conclusions

This is why in many boards each side will adopt "evidence" that they are correct, usually presented by those who are more apt at articulating their reasoning, so those unwilling to challenge their own perception of things, internalizes those statements and repeat them ad nauseam, resulting in a large amount of people saying the same thing over and over again, because to change their own view would require more work than parroting whatever an "authority" on their side has said

This happens on both sides of course, and is pretty telling in forums because you can see how things unfold by reading a thread from the beginning

None of this is out of the ordinary or inherently bad, but unchecked this phenomena has caused long term socio-geographic issues, most notably, difference of religious beliefs causing conflict

But whatever I am confident in my own views and confident I can express exactly why I am, if someone has a different opinion, so be it, I have made my argument to the best of my ability, if they still don't understand it's on them

Peace on earth and goodwill towards man and all that stuff  

This is just how I see it anyway

And it's not to say there aren't plenty of those who reach an opinion through their own perception of a situation, just that those who escalate things to screaming, usually don't in my experience have anything positive to contribute in line with critical thinking skills

 

I could argue that this is not what they mean when they use entitlement. Rather that it refers to behaving as if Transformers somehow belonged to them rather than being a toyline like any other. The same thing unofficial third party companies exploit.

 

The problem is when people throw the "stop being entitled!" argument at perfectly valid and reasonable complaints. I could have sworn there were people that were screaming "entitled! entitled!" when people complained about some of the problems with FOC Bruticus' torso and hands. Yet look at where we are now. (;

What are you rolling your eyes at, my friend?  

 

Pretty much.

The Op has absolutely no idea what people mean what they calls others "entitled." Wanting something is not entitlement, demanding something be custom-made for them with no other factors considered is entitlement.

Then again, considering the title, I'm guessing the Op was recently called "entitled." And this thread is him getting back at whomever said that.

 

Which are ALL valid.

Considering we see first images of figures MONTHS ahead of release, and extensive pictorals from Asia sources WEEKS before it even hits US, I would argue that a well informed collector has more than ample information to decide if a figure meets criteria. I think it IS wrong to expect something that is clearly not going to be present, especially if you pay for it.

Our biggest voice is our money, but when people continue to drop money for (perceived) inferior product, that isn't exactly sending a compelling message to Hasbro.

But what defines a "good" value for the money? That's a HUGELY subjective thing, and can't be defined very well. Most fall back to "it wasn't as good as it was previously", but that itself is even subjective.
The market continues to shift, and I think fans tend to take for granted what Hasbro was able to do under vastly different market conditions and a different state with the brand.

Again, our biggest voice is our money.
If products don't meet our expectations (and, truthfully, we know SO MUCH about a given product so far ahead of release in the west that a LOT of that guesswork isn't necessary), fans shouldn't buy them.

We are consumers, just because we buy a car from Ford, doesn't mean we can dictate to Ford how to make cars or dictate the price to Ford on where the cars must costs. We have our money, if we don't don't feel they offer a compelling product for the price, we move to another source.

Transformers Collectors are HORRENDOUSLY FORTUNATE that we not only have Hasbro, but we also have Takara and third parties as well.

But I think many collectors (ESPECIALLY the ones who've come in in the past 5 or 6 years) need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what Hasbro is doing, what they're trying to do, and what options are available to the collector.
Reminds me a bit of the fuss made in 2002 when Armada, in the interest of appealing to kids, took a number of steps back in complexity compared to Beast Machines and 2001 Robots in Disguise.

We shouldn't take crap (and thus, shouldn't drop money on it), but we also need to realize we aren't the only market for Transformers and expect every single mass retail Transformers toy to be made to (often very high) collector standards.
Masterpiece are 3 times the price of a Voyager for a reason.

 

This, so much more succinctly than I put it  

 

The car analogies remind me of when Homer Simpson was invited by his half-brother Herb to design a new car and when "The Homer" was revealed, Herb's company was ruined.   "The customer is always right" except when what the customer wants ends up bankrupting the company, I guess was the point of that cautionary tale.  

 

Um, fair points to the argument, but it's not so black and white.

In this age of video reviews and early releases and test shots sent a month to the minute a figure comes out, pretty much everybody who has the basic internet access to browse these boards can at the very least familiarize themselves with what is coming out for the next...6-8 months, depending on the time of the year.

With that being said, we are at the fortunate [and at the same time, very unfortunate] position to know what we are buying into.

And at this point, there pretty much is a market for EVERYBODY, from the last G1 purist to the most dedicated neo IDW G1 purist.

At this point in time, with these in mind, yes, certain people do feel very entitled.

I get it when people argue about defects on a 3rd party 100 USD+ figure. No, I do not believe you should be expected to do minor surgery to your figure for it to stand or not crack itself in half after two transformations.

I do, however, through the test of time and figures up to know, expect people to know what they are buying into when they buy a 15 USD generations figure. This is an unfortunate time to be saying this, as reportedly the build quality has gone up.

More than often I think of people with "entitlement" issues when they whine that a figure is not to their perfected standard, pre-release, pre-everything, and even if the figure does not go out of its way in the line it was conceived in to appease to their taste.

Furthermore, sometimes some folk get too generous over what to expect from mass-produced figures numbering in the tens of thousands that are designed to appeal to as broad an audience of "man-children" as possible, for a relatively very low pricepoint considering their features.

But that's just me.  

 

Coming from a place of experience.

This cannot end well.

I will say I agree. Many of the things that I have complained about in Transformers in the past have been slowly fixed by Hasbro and that makes me happy.

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it better then it has been. Yup. Do I think complaining helped. In some ways I do.

 

Rule of TFW: if it doesn't bother me too much or I like it as is, you're just acting entitled...

 

I see it like this, everyone has their opinions on what they like or don't like and that is fine. I have my own opinions and I know for a fact that not everyone will agree with them and on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are some opinions that other people have that I may or may not agree with, but I'm not going to tell them they can't feel that way. I will respond politely if someone is misinformed on a FACT (like a figure has a hidden feature someone might not know about) and that might change an opinion but I'm not going to try change someone's mind just because they dont agree with me.

We are very fortunate to have such info ahead of time to make a sound judgement on whether we want something or not and whether to choose to spend the money on it. The one thing that promo pics don't disclose are quality control issues like the aforementioned Brainstorm's headmaster situation. Collector's made their voice heard and Hasbro listened and released later versions with rubber bands holding the headmaster in place, although it didn't help the availability issue.

I have voiced opinions about how a figure could be better, alot of poeple have. But, while it could be better, it could also be much worse. I buy figures if I like them and I buy Hasbro most of the time because it is more economical than Takara.

If Hasbro decided to give us all these paint apps and added features, the figures would be so much more expensive than what we pay now. The fact of the matter is, materials and paint are not free and the prices rise and fall, most of the time, the former. Hasbro has tried to give us the deluxes that we have been used to and its a delicate balance between sacrifice (i.e. the smaller size) vs. increase cost. Everyone has different opinions, so finding a happy medium is near impossible. We can have figures that are relatively deluxe class for a few bucks more or Hasbro can keep the MSRP at $10 and give us much more scaled back figures (like the current legends figures being the new deluxe class).

But when you get right down to it, our opinions on what Hasbro should or should not do are only a portion of the market. The primary market being kids and parents buying product with not as much collector knowledge like we have. So again that is something else that Hasbro has to balance out and thus why we have three different lines Generations/MP for us collectors, NuRID for older kids, and Rescue Bots for the younger children.

Those are just my opinions and thoughts on the matter based on everything I have learned being a TF Fan. I could be totally wrong on a few fronts, and if I am, I a encourage someone to please let me know.  

 

This.

 

So here is my problem with your argument. People use this to radical extents.

Here are some examples:
- Hasbro makes hollow figures:
Why are you so entitled. You know how much it costs to make a figure. And figure prices only went up slightly. So the hollowness you see is because of that. When you make a transformer or run a line you will see the sacrafices needed.

- Hasbro makes poor QA figures:
Same as above.

Entitlement to me is when some one demands a sepecific color, or something to their aesthetic liking. I would even go as far to say that the whole 1/144 scale argument goes to entitlement, especially since no one complained about it before and how good the figure looks. They just don't like the choice.

So long story short: not liking aesthetic is more entitlement
Not liking cutbacks on cost and QC: makes sense.

I mean, if you don't like how it looks, don't buy it, makes perfect sense to me. The arguement of, I love how it looks, not it is a floppy disaster, doesn't.

 

In general I agree. The use of "entitled!" Has become an easy catch all for quite a few to throw at someone/thing they just don't agree with. It's getting lazy. And in most cases way more annoying or stupid than what it's being aimed at.

That said there are also some classic examples of absolutely ludicrous "what I want or else!" Rants to balance that out.

I also agree this thread is unlikely to end well.

 

Constructive criticism = not entitled.

Destructive criticism = entitled.

Guess which of the two categories "tHanks HazBLOW shit garbage" type posts fall into?

 

I can buy that - but only as no criticism would be considered constructive criticism as Hasbro isn't here to acknowledge posts...which neatly fits the narrative of the users of the term.

Ie, that ALL criticism is "destructive" and therefore entitlement.

 

I agree with OP, and whilst I haven't been active for a while, so you'll have to forgive me if this no longer applies, but seeing a few familiar faces and their position in the matter I strongly suspect that it still does:

The way I see it that term is primarily (mis)used by a handful of people here, and generally speaking, one can tell their stance on most things transformers ranging from third parties, IP theft, the price of ink, plastic and molds and up until a few years ago, how Hasbro could not possibly create combiners.

For the few who don't share these views it is still very rare to see them using this cheap rhetoric in an unbiased way.

Ie, one who uses it against fans who take issue with Hasbro's product are not very likely to do the same when a third party product is found wanting.

It's a toxic term that that antagonizes, polarizes and belittles. It is the verbal equivalent of what lesser primates do with their fecal matter.

By all means, argue facts - but when it comes to someone else's subjective opinion...just state your own. This would be a much friendlier place if you did...and if you REALLY can't break the habit then for god's sake use it in a remark akin to "well, you're entitled to your opinion".