I honestly believe that we are in a Golden Age of toy collecting. It is something that I never thought would happen. There are so many companies creating things that I am awed by and more new companies springing up all the time. This is a great thing, but also a concerning one. It is not a concern that more companies are making product, but how it has divided some of our great community. When I first got back into collecting back in 2012, there didn't seem to be as much bickering and fighting as there is now. Some people gave opinions about what changes they thought would make each toy better and people commented on it, but it never got to the level that it has now. Shouldn't we just be happy that all of these companies are trying to make the things we want? There are a few points I would like to address. I am not calling anyone out or trying to belittle anyone in anyway. I am just making observations. I mostly just lurk on these forums and read news and updates. I do not expect everyone to like the toys that I like, and I would hope that others would not expect me to like everything that they do. This is unrealistic. We are all individuals and have different opinions about what makes a toy great or horrible. This is one of things that is great about people, but at the same time the worst. We as individuals can come together and solve very difficult problems because we have unique ways of looking at an issue. Some issues will never be solved because we cannot agree on a solution as a whole (i.e. politics). The first point I would like to make is that it is impossible for a company to please everyone. I honestly believe that they are doing there best, but when you have 50 different people voicing their opinion about how to make a toy better and they are all different, it is guaranteed some people will be happy and some will not. The FT and Giga dino's are the perfect example. We have some members of this community in both camps. I personally love both offerings and am simply happy they are available. I do not understand the need to try to sway anyone to one side or the other. They both make great products and are doing what they can to please us. I would hope there is enough support for both companies to continue to make products we want. My collection has pieces from a lot of different companies, but I am not in a position where I can buy every item from every company. This is where the difference of opinion and the multitude of companies making a variety of different scale and stylized toys becomes a very beautiful thing. I get to buy the things I like from different companies and so does everyone else. My next and last point is that I believe this hobby should be one of happiness. That is the point of my collecting. It induces the 10 year old in me and brings a joy to my life that I couldn't possibly get anywhere else. I hope it does the same for everyone else collecting. I get a smile on my face at times just by looking at these figures. I am by no means trying to make anyone angry or upset. I simply do not like the arguing that sometimes ensues on these forums. I have had the pleasure of meeting a few of you in person and have to say that you are wonderful people, as are the rest of you on these forums. I may not have the right, but I ask each and everyone one of you to have a little patience and understanding with each other. This is an awesome community and am very honored to be a part of it. I found this forum during a very dark time in my life. I was hurt and going through varying degrees of depression and this community, this forum, and these toy have brought a much needed happiness into my life. I love this community and the people that are in it. There are so many great and positive things each of you bring into this forum and I hope you continue to do so. The pictures, comments, customs and reviews. I appreciate them all. I hope everyone gets everything they want. This next year looks to be even better than last year. Thanks you for your time and patience and sorry about the big wall of text 8). Darkace
Agree on all those points you made. Glad the hobby brought you back from the precipice! Til all are one!!
Sadly, the social side of the internet has become a lot of "If I put this person down, I and my opinion look better! Look how awesome I am". Facebook, Twitter, "Selfies" and many other social inputs feed this idea that it's ALL about me only and that carries over into here sometimes with some individuals. Some people really buy into the whole ME thing. If it doesn't match what I think...clearly it must be wrong. I still feel there is more good than bad in this forum or I wouldn't be part of it at all, much as I do not use Facebook at all, well...except to see what Skullface is up to once in a while. I find more good here than I would than not by being part of it and I have met and know some really wonderful people who share my love of these toys...even if I don't really know you at all. Some I might know your first name or vague things that you mention about yourself, but I still am glad to "know" you. I truly believe everyone thinks they really are right in their own mind and some people don't get that your opinion is just that, your opinion. Many times I'll offer my opinion in here and feel I have to predicate it with "IMO" or "YMMV" because I don't want to offend someone with what I feel things should look like. Anyhow, as I said, there is more good than bad here and sometimes you just have to filter what you take in and what you're going to disregard due to the whole "ME" thing out there.
Oh man. You ended up breaking up the wall of text at the end to apologize for making a wall of text. Why didn't you just do that throughout your message? Lol Nice points and all, honestly l though. Not even trying to be sarcastic I think the community is fine and all; it's just the few zealots on the official-only bandwagon (and to a lesser extent, plausibly certain individuals from the 3P side) that give people a hard-er time here. Thankfully that seems to be happening less less also. I haven't had to make my "you seem a little lost, friend" message in awhile.
I agree with you 100% Darkace. It is not just this community that is like that unfortunately. For some reason people get extremely tribal in their beliefs and consider all others wrong. I just skip over the insult posts as they serve no purpose. I am a noob here and I am blown away by the amazing amount of options out there for collectors. I am open to new interpretations of characters because I am in awe of the creativity and engineering I see here daily. TFW2005 is an incredible resource full of passionate people and I am grateful to everyone who posts pics, news and opinions to help me be a more educated consumer. Thank you.
I remember collecting TFs in the 90's was a different thing all together. I had a diaclone black Ironhide that was the coolest thing ever... The third party thing was bound to happen due to all the pent up demand that Hasbro/Takara couldn't meet.
Perfect competition, companies making fan designed toys and competing for market share, with prices falling recently. A lower voyager sized combiner limb used to cost 100-110 USD, now they are 85 USD and QC has gone up, gaining my trust. I remember back in the old days when Maketoys Giant was 500 USD and people were fascinated by it due to its unique styling and didn't mine the 30cm size. It was the same as paying the premium price of a Gundam garage kit due to its rarity. It was definitely overpriced compared to a Bandai diecast transforming super robot. Now, we have Maketoys and Fansproject doing stylised TFs, and Fans Toys and other doing MP-scale toys that aesthetically complement the Takara MPs. These 3rd party wars are too good to be true moments for toy collectors.
Oh yeah. It's a golden age for collecting Transformers all right. But it sure as hell ain't a golden age for my wallet!
I predict the next golden age will be of K.O's . My only concern for this hobby is that I'm going to run out of characters to buy, then what?
I feel like I finally got into collecting Transformers at a pretty amazing time. There's a wealth of good TT and 3P and even KO bots in my chosen scale (MP), and they seem to be getting better with every release. Plus loads of exciting new bots coming up the pipeline with all that fancy tech applied to characters I was starting to think would never get a perfect representation. kk TLDR: k
I wholeheartedly agree, I mentioned in another thread that I don't understand the amount of hate on the board. It's really disappointing to see. It's a great time to be collecting, we have plenty of options to enjoy
sorry, just doing this so i can try to surmount this wall of text all put together... spaces help alot, especially when changing paragraph. "I honestly believe that we are in a Golden Age of toy collecting. It is something that I never thought would happen. There are so many companies creating things that I am awed by and more new companies springing up all the time. This is a great thing, but also a concerning one. It is not a concern that more companies are making product, but how it has divided some of our great community. When I first got back into collecting back in 2012, there didn't seem to be as much bickering and fighting as there is now. Some people gave opinions about what changes they thought would make each toy better and people commented on it, but it never got to the level that it has now. Shouldn't we just be happy that all of these companies are trying to make the things we want? There are a few points I would like to address (Note: I am not calling anyone out or trying to belittle anyone in anyway. I am just making observations. I mostly just lurk on these forums and read news and updates. I do not expect everyone to like the toys that I like, and I would hope that others would not expect me to like everything that they do. This is unrealistic. We are all individuals and have different opinions about what makes a toy great or horrible. This is one of things that is great about people, but at the same time the worst. We as individuals can come together and solve very difficult problems because we have unique ways of looking at an issue. Some issues will never be solved because we cannot agree on a solution as a whole (i.e. politics). ) 1) The first point I would like to make is that it is impossible for a company to please everyone. I honestly believe that they are doing there best, but when you have 50 different people voicing their opinion about how to make a toy better and they are all different, it is guaranteed some people will be happy and some will not. The FT and Giga dino's are the perfect example. We have some members of this community in both camps. I personally love both offerings and am simply happy they are available. I do not understand the need to try to sway anyone to one side or the other. They both make great products and are doing what they can to please us. I would hope there is enough support for both companies to continue to make products we want. My collection has pieces from a lot of different companies, but I am not in a position where I can buy every item from every company. This is where the difference of opinion and the multitude of companies making a variety of different scale and stylized toys becomes a very beautiful thing. I get to buy the things I like from different companies and so does everyone else. 2) My next and last point is that I believe this hobby should be one of happiness. That is the point of my collecting. It induces the 10 year old in me and brings a joy to my life that I couldn't possibly get anywhere else. I hope it does the same for everyone else collecting. I get a smile on my face at times just by looking at these figures. I am by no means trying to make anyone angry or upset. I simply do not like the arguing that sometimes ensues on these forums. I have had the pleasure of meeting a few of you in person and have to say that you are wonderful people, as are the rest of you on these forums. I may not have the right, but I ask each and everyone one of you to have a little patience and understanding with each other. This is an awesome community and am very honored to be a part of it. I found this forum during a very dark time in my life. I was hurt and going through varying degrees of depression and this community, this forum, and these toy have brought a much needed happiness into my life. I love this community and the people that are in it. There are so many great and positive things each of you bring into this forum and I hope you continue to do so. The pictures, comments, customs and reviews. I appreciate them all. I hope everyone gets everything they want. This next year looks to be even better than last year. Thanks you for your time and patience and sorry about the big wall of text 8). Darkace" Short summary: Read the bold parts.
If it weren't for the many great 3rd party offerings, I probably would have lost interest in toy collecting a couple of years ago. Competition and variety is always a great thing in this hobby. I'll take being overwhelmed with options over a lack of options any day. One thing about message boards you have to keep in mind is that the extreme behavior--the bickering, flames wars, and vitriol--is simply a function of probability that coincides with the number of participants. This is a rather popular and busy message board; more forum members posting messages will inevitably lead to more extreme examples of said bickering and fighting. It doesn't necessarily mean that the atmosphere of the board has gotten more aggressive or contentious in general. It just means that the most obvious and glaring examples of bickering and fighting will be more extreme. A similar phenomenon occurs when one dwells on how depressing and bizarre the news seems to have gotten lately. We have to keep in mind that only the most sensational of news stories are the most likely to attract readers or ratings. When you have an increasing number of sources of news covering an increasing number of news stories involving an increasing population, things are going to seem to get a lot darker and weirder even if the percentages don't change. To get back on topic, I'm extremely thankful that I've had sufficient disposable income to collect some of the many excellent 3rd party figures offered over the last several years. 3rd party prices can put a hell of a dent in a collector's budget. I hope the few signs I've seen that point toward a trend toward more reasonable 3rd party prices are not just isolated flukes.
While I don't mind the giant amount of words that opens this thread, I do think it'd be awesome if we started all "conversation" threads like this to opening with haikus: Golden age of toys Fans now have many options I am quite happy --- I kinda miss the days when you only had one option... I have so many "MP" Infernos. But I also miss the days when Binaltechs and Alternators were my "good enoughs" to stand along side MP-01 and the only third parties I opted for were a handful of PE minibots. Damn this new MP-"Scale" and the doors it's opened.
Another point is that this TF golden age is predominantly supported by people who also grew up in the Golden Age of TFs in the 80's. Let us see if the TF animated and Bayformers appreciate in value or appreciated by the current generation in the future when it is their turn to have disposable income...
Not quite the golden age yet, some companies need to come back from the MP game and dedicate themselves to the deluxe-centered chug collector again for that. And we need more G2, BW, BM, UT, Animated, Prime etc. Then we'll be in a 3p golden age.
