A pretty good rundown of last year. I have to say, though, 2017 was the worst year in terms of distribution of TF movie figures that I have ever witnessed since I became a TF fan a decade ago. I still have yet to see Cogman or Crosshairs and I managed to snag Hot Rod because he was available online on Walmart’s website. I actually dread the distribution of the Studio Series line.

 

I think/ hope the studio series line will be different since it will essentially be a generations line rather than an actual typical movie line.

 

Love tr, I still need to get the seige on cybertron set. The only thing good about tlk was the nitro Zeus mold becuase I see a lot of unused potential in that figured but I\'m definitely looking forward to more of potp and more like it 

 

BIG movie fan here but underwhelmed so much by last knight. Tlk just seemed to recall the worst treasuring hunting elements of rotf and forgets that the biggest selling point is Optimus....how can u forget to give him any screen time in a boring second act!? I think Bumblebee movie is the fresh content we need. Hell if it’s good and we’ll received maybe Knight can do tf6 and finish tlk storyline 

 

I agree with those who said this was the year KOs overtook Hasbro in terms of quality and price not to mention G1 accuracy.

And like another poster said, if I have to go online to buy toys that should be on the shelf at Target and Toys r Us then I will most likely be looking at 3rd party figures too.

This is going to be the norm going forward as Hasbro continues to release garbage like PotP Rodimus and constant repaints of their combiners.

 

Yeah that TLK toyline....  I found Leader Megatron back in September and was on December 26th able to fond Voyager Megatron and Hound, just after Christmas!  Ridiculous...

 

I hope so. I'm also still hoping for a (re)release of the dotm soundwave deluxe...

 

no mention of mp41 dinobot in 2018?

 

I managed to get the Soundblaster repaint, and to be honest he's not really that good of a figure.

 

Nice Year in Review.

My take... For TLK toys, the upmarket pricing on deluxes was ruinous around here, especially for such simple figures; the box packaging does these no favors, it's hard to see what you're getting compared to blister packs. A multitude of repainted molds in several scales only made things worse. This is the first TF line I've only bought 1 figure from since G2, and while LC Megatron is a good figure, it seemed pretty overpriced at MSRP, I got it for substantially less.

Titans Return was a line I expected nothing good from, and was pleasantly surprised all the way through. Not unlike your yearbook photo, I also didn't get Trypticon, although I am hoping to find him at a discount chain soon. But despite my distaste for the Headmasters gimmick in the past, I found this line had great designs, I enjoyed the Titan Masters as toys at the smallest pricepoint, and the design diversity was incredibly welcome. This line has Brawn able to pilot Brawn! If only Hasbro didn't Hasbro it up and toss the deco budget in the bin on Voyagers for those awful, awful stickers.

Power of the Primes is so far a tough line to end the year on, I only have new-mold deluxes and voyagers so far, but none of them are remotely as pleasing as the TR figures, recalling the compromises and generic-ness of Combiner Wars. Volcanicus, not even remotely a good name, is pretty spindly and hollow, he doesn't even get a weapon.

Masterpiece has finally priced me out of collecting, and even interest.

I feel like that move was trying to push the $80 remote control version on consumers instead, and it backfired since the movie had no impact in the US, causing there to be a glut of unsold product.

 

Titans Returns, terrific line all round. POTP feels like a step down but TR had a lot of fun playability. They took one of my least favourite gimmicks Headmasters and made them fun and practical. The Machinima show though, awful, dull and boring. They wasted a lot of great VA's giving subpar performances than they should be doing and the other half are people that are not cut out to be VA's. I'm mad that MatPat and Wil Wheaton are in this, they're awful.

The Last Knight as a movie was okay, I enjoyed it but it's not good in a conventional sense. Nitro Zeus and Cogman were great but it left a lot to be desired (still liked it more Than The Last Jedi). The toyline was legit terrible. I only bought Barricade, Nitro Zeus and Sqweeks. I still want Cogman but haven't seen one at retail still. They raised the prices in Canada but fortunately POTP is sticking with the TR prices and not the TLK prices.

The comics, all over the place. The Shared Hasbro Universe is a mess and a mistake. Shame, if they spent more time just establishing all these other comics doing their own thing and not have to piggy-back on Transformers it would've worked better. Lost Light sucked a lot in the past year, Anode is a mistake that should never be adapted into any other continuity. The Mutinner Trilogy was solid for the most part. TAAO was the highlight of the main comics and of course it got canned. Optimus Prime was alright but very disjointed. The Life of Sideswipe being the highlight of course.

RID2015 ended....and that was a show. Toys were improving a lot but of course it's over now and still all these cool designs don't have toys.

2017 was a mixed year all round but worth it for TR.

 

So much this^^! I love TR so much I went back and bought a Generations Metroplex (after initially wanting him I cooled on him for a variety of reasons and passed on him) just so I can have him with Fort Max and eventually Trypticon. And there's still figs from that line I'm still trying to get. So many cool and fun figs to play with and display. I never thought I'd enjoy titanmasters/headmasters as much as I do.

Other thoughts:

I'm a huge TF movie fan and forgave their shortcomings but TLK was the only one where I didn't leave the theater with a big smile on my face. I really didn't like it much. Actually, that's not true. It had a solid start but the middle of the movie hurt it so bad that the rest of the movie tried to recover from that to mixed results. I am looking forward to the Bumblebee movie for sure however. If they reboot from there, I'd be totally okay with it.

I liked a lot of TLK figs. They re-molded Bulkhound, BB (if I can ever find him) and Drift and Nitro Zeus was everything I thought he'd be. Such a great fig, from transformation to design. Lovely, lovely lovely. Megatron (both the Leader and the Voyager) and Barricade are standouts and I have to somehow get Cogman. Still meh'ed on Optimus (any size) however. It's a shame that the movie and distribution hurt this line because there's a lot of good figures in it.

I want that Roddy and Optimus (Roddy more than the latter surprisingly).

Edit: I want the PotP Roddy and Optimus. I was originally going to say something about current line and edited down to that but forgot to put in which Rodimus and Optimus I was talking about.

 

I'm...okay?...with the idea of Transformers sharing the same universe as Mask and other Hasbro properties. My biggest fear ended up being unfounded as the Transformers are still hard to kill bots. I was worried that the other properties, particularly GiJoe and MASK, would have the writers gimp the TFs to favor them but they didn't. So the Hasbroverse I don't mind at all it's more of an issue with how they went about it.

The first crossover? Okay, yeah, fine. That's fine. But then they kept doing these crossovers and it's constantly interrupting the titles. Let the titles breathe away from each other for a year at least. As someone who's not the biggest fan of crossovers to begin with, it's off-putting.

More than anything, while I still love the IDW TF comics, they really shot themselves in the foot releasing all of those TFs books with different titles. Back when the two ongoings were started it was just RiD and MtMtE easy to keep up with even with x-overs. Now with the titles switching around + crossovers, it's hard to get a narrative balance. IDW TF comics are best read in binge it seems by design but if they intend to keep it that way, they really need to take a page out of DC's playbook and make it so that the continuity can be read in order by collection (which was easier to do with the two ongoings).

 

Is this article replacing the staff top toy picks for the year?

 

I don't hate the idea of a Hasbro shared universe but it's execution sucked.

They needed to take their time with it and they rushed it out the door.

also they lacked Inhumanoids, an actual old school Hasbro property that would make a great reboot, it can be Hasbro's slice of the kaiju pie going on in the west right now between Godzilla, King Kong and Pacific Rim.

 

I would say 2017 was the year I stopped collecting movie stuff. Never went to the theater to see the film nor found/bought any of the figures. RID is also a huge disappointed and didn't watch or collect any of it. I have to throw rescue bot on that list as well just to make a point that there is more TF stuff now that I don't collect or watch then stuff I do like and collect.
Luckily TR was amazing and that MP megaton saved the year.

 

The only official TF's I bought this year were a few legends toys and I had a lot of fun with them. The $10 price point there seems to be the magic number where you can still get a good toy without the compromises of the deluxe or voyager lines.

I checked out a bunch of the other stuff but it was all really floppy and hollow and not worth the prices hasbro's stuff has gone up to in recent years. The old $12 a deluxe / $20 a voyager would even be pushing it for the quality of most of the TR line.
I really wanted trypticon but with the hip issues I didn't really feel the $100+ price tag on something I would have to fix myself. So that money went to better purchases instead.

I would have probably quit collecting all together by now if the 3P market wasn't catering to me  
But they are so that's where my money goes these days.

 

For how good the highlight figures of this year were, I just hope 2018 will be better, it kinda has to, to be honest.
Hopefull for the Studio Series;
great PotP Legends so far at least;
excited for the Bee Movie;
curious for the Cyberverse show.

We'll see.