Probly not, though if it were to end here I'm close enough to the point where I won't be missing it enough to care.
I rarely ever go down the toy isles anymore and when I do I know there's nothing I want it's just sort of habit and just wanting to see things in person even if I don't plan to buy. The reason for this is now with the MP line soaring and 3rd party filling in the mp holes, I have no desire to buy the cheap, and often repainted toys that are on the shelves, even if I'm tempted at times, it's just not worth it to me. There was a time before I had mp versions of essential g1 characters that I wanted for my ideal collection, I would always buy everything. Looking back I think it was to fill a void I didn't even realize was there. But now that I have the likes of MP prime, apollyon, combiner was dev, ect. I just don't really care for picking up the current figures. I don't care about a weird combiner repaint that sort of looks like iron hide... I've got mp iron hide on pre order. Anyway, that's me. I am curious if this is common though and is behind the decline in tfs at the stores.
If TF is suffering from anything, its piss poor marketing. No commercials, no new cartoon, etc. This is why the shelf space at retailers is minimal
Gee, it's ALMOST like Hasbro cancelling Animated, Prime and RiD before their stories were actually properly finished was a BAD IDEA or something! Who'd a'thunk?
Stores around here have never stocked Transformers. This is nothing new. There were plenty of TF's I only ever saw once (or never saw at all) in the wild. I've yet to see enough limbs to complete a single combiner. Hell, back in the Alternator days it would take months of searching to turn up something like Shockwave or Decepticharge.
There's a difference about producing a few things aimed at a cult audience and "going strong". I'm living in Japan now and I will tell you that Transformers' presence here IS almost like GI Joe back in the States. It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay stronger in the US. Lots of toy places here stock zero Transformers, and most of the places that do (Bic Camera, Yamada Denki, etc.) are limited to a few pegs only. TRU is a little better, but still much smaller than TRU in the States. Anything Generations/Legends I want here, I pretty much have to order from the internet, because most of it will never hit shelves at all. A little bit NuRID and a few lingering movie toys and that's about it on shelves anywhere near me.
I seriously doubt that. However the big buzz this holiday season will all about Star Wars, which is probably why Transformers are receding a bit this year.
No big screen presence next year (or the past year), and the arrival of the deathstar has killed anything not Marvel. It is going to hurt for a while on the TF end, as many other properties are a much easier sell right now. Star Wars is just flooding every display, endcap, etc everywhere.
This. My local stores chopped down EVERYTHING in the blue to make room for a full Star Wars aisle. Still, hero mashers seemed to be the a big failure this year that saw a lot of TF goods relegated to the discount stores, and if my local big boxes are anything to go by RID15 didn't do much better. The CW stuff has been moving faster at least (with the exception of the ubiquitous Armada Megatron).
I love seeing when, for lack of a better term, "newer" members, members who clearly don't remember what Transformers was like, think Transformers is "dying" or "circling the drain." Transformers is still larger than it was pre-movies, and it was still successful pre-movies. We're just so used to the incredible highs that we see these dips as incredible lows when they aren't. There's no movie current coming and AOE is long since passed, of course it's in a lull. Transformers has been "dying" for 30 years now according to fans. It also doesn't help that toys in general are not nearly the empire they were. Even the push with Star Wars TFA seems underplayed in retail compared to what, say, Clone Wars was back in 2008. It's all about perspective.
Yup TFs have been dying a slow death since Beast Wars. We're all here to accompany it to it's deathbed.
THIS. I mean, I remember the time when transformers disappeared from the shelves altogether, and when Argos had two machine wars characters in the book and that was it. It was horrible to see them disappear from toy shops, but now more than ever I think that they're here. I have never seen the amount of TFs in TRU over here in the UK be better since about 87/88. Dying? nope, there will always be interest - parents for kids because they had them, collectors, kids that do what i did and say 'BUT you get two toys for price of one!!'
Why would the absence of death be a bad thing? It's everything Science strives to create, plus extra!
You misunderstood. It's not the absence of death, but the absence of dying. As long as you're dying, you're still alive. Therefor, if you're no longer dying, then you're dead. It's a referance to a Sir Apropos of Nothing novel. The lead character is asked if he's afraid of dying, to which he replies that he's not, because we're all dying from the moment we're born, and we keep on dying until the moment we're dead. Then the dying stops. Being alive is being in the progress of dying. Apropos is thus not afraid of dying (=being alive), but afraid of the moment he's no longer dying (=being dead).
Huh, even with the Star Wars effect, my local stores still have TF sections that extend beyond just a few pegs. I haven't noticed much decline.
I don't think Transformers is dying. In my local area, no matter what store I go to that sells toys, I always manage to find a decent stock of transformers. Heck even my local Walgreens sells Transformers and I'm not referring to the Rescue Bots line. But speaking of the Rescue Bots, I always seem to manage plenty of them when I check them out for the sake of pure curiousity. I admit the line is much more quieter than when AOE first released but that's to be expected since natrully Hasbro would want to use the movies to push forward new toylines. Besides if RiD Mega Optimus Prime can still manage to get sold out easily at all my local stores, I'm sure enough that enough of a sign that Transformers is still doing well otherwise I would have been able to find that figure in a snap.
