I was just looking at Mighty Muggs wave 2. Nemesis Prime, Windblade, Grimlock, Ratchet & Soundwave. To me Windblade doesn't fit with the rest. All the characters are G1 except for her. I love the character but I'm really getting sick of her. When we first did the fan vote I thought we would get 1 figure of her & that would be the end of it. I wasn't expecting Hasbro to make so many new molds of her in such a short time. While so many other characters have been totally forgotten & neglected. I'm still waiting for Kickback to be repainted into Ransack.  

And you know what they did with Bumblebee. Bumblebee was non-existent before the 2007 movie. Now he's the face of the entire franchise. Bumblebee is everywhere on everything. You can't avoid him.

The most popular characters are always the ones that get the most screen time. Which really makes it hard to tell if they're actually popular because people genuinely love them or if they're just artificially pushed or forced on us because you see them more than any others. Ask a lot of non-fans who their favorite movie character is & they'll say "the yellow one" or "Bumblebee". You can tell they're just mindlessly following the crowd.

So do you think Bumblebee & Windblade are actually as popular as they seem? 

What if Hasbro started to give Repugnus or Bugly more attention & screen time than Bumblebee? Would they become the new fan favorites?

 

Both, depending on which character. I think Bumblebee earned his popularity over time, though through the push of being the main focus Transformer in the movies. Still, they could have missed the mark in the first couple of films and failed to gain favor with the target audience of the later 2000s, but from I observed back then, kids genuinely loved him, and still seem too as today's teenagers and young adults. So the marketing push worked.

Windblade seems to have more of a obvious push, though seems to be partly from honoring the fan creation aspect, and also probably to make sure they have more gender diversity from the start when potential audiences look at something like "Cyberverse" (though playing Devil's advocate, they could have also done the same by featuring more established female characters like Arcee or Chromia). Maybe we'll see in a few more years if today's children have any attachment to her.

Honestly, I could be wrong about both, just going by personal observation.

 

windblade hasnt really had a lot of figures, at least not new molds

2013: thrilling 30 deluxe
2015: rid warrior, rid legends and combiner force warrior if you want to be picky and count a retool as a new mold
2016: titans return deluxe
2018: cyberverse warrior, cyberverse scout

she has had 2 molds in generations and 2 molds in each of the two most recent kid oriented lines.

 

That's generally the way I see it - Bumblebee earned his initial popularity and Hasbro responded accordingly, while Windblade's been more pushed than popular.

 

As far as Bumblebee goes, I think “pushed” is too harsh a word. But he’s definitely popular because the first live action movies chose to focus on him.

Nobody was begging for more Bumblebee before 2007. Hell, I didn’t even care when he disappeared in ‘86/‘87.

 

Bumblebee- popular
Windblade - shoved down our throats so far a hand is sticking out our butts.

 

Sometimes you have gotta be pushed to become popular.

 

Windblade is pushed.

Bumblebee is sincerely popular - but he was pushed even back in 1984. He wouldn't have been as popular now had it not been for that establishing "push" long ago.

 

Yeah, besides the cartoon, he had some spotlight right in the first Marvel story arc, and was featured in a lot of the first sets of coloring books and children's books. It wasn't a bad choice though, he wasn't childishly annoying or anything like that, just a small and plucky, but still professional bot trying to do his best.

 

Bumblebee is popular, Windblade is pushed.

I disagree with your statement that Bumblebee was non-existent before the 2007 movie. From what I understand, he was quite popular during the G1 era. Bumblebee was absent from several series because Hasbro lost the rights to the name, not because the character stopped being popular. Even then, Hasbro used characters like Cheetor and Hot Shot that were essentially "Bumblebee by a different name". Quite literally in the case of Hot Shot, he was originally intended to be an incarnation of Bumblebee. If circumstances were different, I think Bumblebee would have appeared in those series too. Bumblebee might be over-marketed, but he does seem to be very beloved by children and adults.

I would argue Windblade is pushed. I've never seen any evidence that the character is overly beloved or profitable. She seems to be disliked by a large portion of fans, and those who don't dislike her seem to just be ambivalent. I'm always seeing her toys shelfwarming. I'm sure she has plenty of fans, but I find it very hard to believe she has the same level of popularity as Optimus, Megatron, and Bumblebee. Arcee seems to be much more popular and well-known, even among more casual fans.

 

I think she's all right, though when it comes to the newer female characters, I'm more of a Pyra Magna fan all the way.

 

I'd rather see Arcee be pushed rather than Windblade. But I wonder if Hasbro sees the character as tainted due to IDW's handling of her.

 

They didn’t lose the rights in ‘86. If he hadn’t been Spike’s pal then they would have killed him off with the rest of the ‘84 guys. Bumblebee basically got a free pass because they kept Spike. But nobody cared when he faded into the background.

Bumblebee ended up in a lot of early ‘84/‘85 media (due to lack of choices), but I’d be hesitant to call him “popular” at that point. I’m certain he didn’t have any kind of following.

 

Yeah in my experience Bumblebee he was a second stringer. From what I see the guys who stood out and ended up in pop culture where:

Optimus Prime (the good guy leader)
Grimlock (The T-rex!, he also hung out with a bunch of other guys with the exact same "being stupid" character trait, but turned into less cool non-avin Dinosaurs, and a pterosaur so no cared about them)
Megatron (The bad guy leader)
Soundwave (the one with the cool voice)
and Starscream (the one with an actual personality that get's displayed in most episodes)

With a general rule of thumb being at the time Optimus was your favorite because he's the good guy leader, but with non-hardcore fans tending to remember Starscream far more fondly as they grow up, because again, memorial often shown personality. Bumblebee only became as popular as those five because of the Bay movies.

 

Bumblebee was still remembered before the 2007 movie because he turned into a Volkswagen beetle in the original transformers, so he wasn't a complete nobody before.

 

G1 Bumblebee was only notable for being Spike's friend. And I don't think there were any kids in the '80s who tuned into Transformers everyday because they couldn't wait to see what Spike was going to do next.

 

I'm comparing it to the G1 characters that still don't have 1 modern update. I've been waiting & waiting for the rest of the deluxe Insecticons. But instead I'm like "Windblade? AGAIN???". I want Snapdragon & Apeface (might finally be getting Apeface). And I really want modern full sized Pretenders, the main Decepticons Bugly, Finback, Iguanus, Submarauder, Skull Grin & Bomb Burst. And an actual Doubledealer, not a crappy repaint. But "Windblade? AGAIN??? REALLY?" Instead of Windblade I'd really like them to create some brand new females. How bout a new female Decepticon to go with Windblade? Or how bout repainting some of the Windblade toys into Maxima?

 

Windblade is definitely pushed / forced, trying to compare the situation with these two characters is like comparing apples to oranges. It's not exactly the most apt comparison.

They aren't even remotely the same situation, it'd be like saying "Cyclops from X-Men is no different than this original character I drew up."

Bumblebee is an actual character and it makes sense if he's part of the main cast due to the kind of role he fills, Windblade is a badly designed Fanfic OC that is continuously shoved into the spotlight that has done nothing to earn the amount of attention she's being given. She is quite literally the Scrappy Doo of the Transformers franchise.

 

You'd both be wrong. Bumblebee was easily THE Minibot and was featured in almost every year's toy line. He was the only Minibot to make it into all assortments from 1984-86. In 1987, we was given the Goldbug treatment. In 1989, he was a Classic Pretender. In 1990, he was an Actionmaster. Bumblebee has more toys in G1 than Starscream, Optimus and Megatron. And in G2, he got two more toys.

Bumblebee was in all three seasons of the cartoon. He featured heavily throughout the comic run. The picture of GIJoe making him explode in the first crossover comic is iconic.

Bumblebee was one of the first characters kids thought of when anyone mentioned Transformers. So much so that most fans were surprised we didn't get a Bumblebee in Beast Wars (most of us didn't understand how copyrights and trademarks worked back then).

 

Oh wow. THE minibot?! Stop the presses. THE minibot!! Bumblebee was THE minibot, fellas. This changes my opinion of him completely.