Since last year some TFW2005 staff picked Bold Forms Gladius as "Third Party Toy Picks of the year", I stopped taking this list seriously.

yeah, this beats the rest of 2018 3rd party toys...

 

Some solid picks. Been flirting with the idea of getting into some iron factory legends kit. Mostly good news about those.

 

You can almost hear emgo saying "pew pew bang bang" lol

 

This is how I see it, while the gap between official and third party may be debatable (some would argue Takara has come down a notch in quality), in my opinion if there is one it is small and in many instances third party releases are on par with or surpass expectations of official releases. Even the gap between Fans Toys and other third party companies is closing, we see it with companies like X-Transbots and DX9 for instance. Then we had surprises like Transform Element from out of nowhere and blew us away with their first release! I'd say expectations have increased based on what I've learned about the Third Party of yesteryear.

 

I had never bought a 3P item before July 2019 but The XTB Stunticons looked so good it brought me back into collecting. Then I found Magic Square Prime, TE Prime, then into Fans Toys and legends.

All the greatest hits this year have been incredible. 3P is where the party’s at, so much going on with all the competition and options.

 

Dont forget the "Bloosh" he often makes them go "Bloooooosh"!  

 

Very niche figure. I love him, he's in my Top 5 of the year but I can absolutely see that even as a Prime, his appeal would be relatively limited. Same applies to the Banana Force Red Sharpshooter - non-transformable, not G1 or Movieverse.. your audience is automatically smaller.

 

Can you people ever move away from Optimus Prime? It's really getting sickening. It's like every single day there is a new pic of OP on the front page. For fuck's sake, have you ever heard of overkill? Same damn thing with GI Joe & Snake Eyes. You take a popular character & just don't know when to quit. Is it a mental illness or something? There are a million other characters ya know? It's a big franchise. You don't have to be hooked on only 1 character constantly.

 

Flagship character is a flagship character fam. As long as HasTak is making money with this character the 3P companies will continue to pump out iteration after iteration.

 

Why? The thread is about top third party Transformers of 2019, and especially for third party MP class figures, 2019 was easily the biggest and best year for OP in the history of third party figures. MS-01 and TE-01 both surpassed MP-10 and that is saying something, I think. OP is more than popular he's like an icon for TF, even people who know very little about TF recognize OP, he is a major character within entertainment culture.

Btw, Overkill doesn't ring my G1 bell...so I looked him up, Decepticon cassette bot first appeared and only one time in Season 3 episode 26 "Call of the Primatives" a mini T-Rex. Well how cute I cannot imagine why third party companies are not fighting to make the best version.

 

Great choices all round, especally you @Black Convoy   Jaing Xing Metalbeast-01 Winged Dragon would be my pick too, I was blown away by that figure, it can stand toe to toe with any of the BWMPs...and in some ways is more impressive. I can't for JX's Tigerhawk. MS-01 would be my runner up and I'm so very pleased to see it win out over TE-01 which, to my eye, is MP-44 on a budget and without the backpack. For me MS-01 offers a 'true' stylistic alternative to MP-44 for those that enjoyed some of the stylings of MP-10 but wanted it better proportioned and articulated. Both are excellent figures regardless.

A mistake?

 

No surprise here that Road King is at the top or close to it on most of your lists. Amazing figure and only second to the greatest MP figure to date...the imperious and mighty Megatron, MP-36!

 

Agreed. I am not a 3rd party collector but Road King and Magic Square Prime almost pulled into that dark rabbit hole.

 

And what has HasTak done (primarily Hasbro of course) to satisfy its fan customers since the early 2010`s?

NOTHING!!!

 

well at least a few picked roadking and some mentions of TE prime this year. last year it felt like no staff even bought 3p product as the picks were for some toys that were just downright bad.

and while I get that if you just bought one 3p product this year, that is your 3p product of the year. but it just seems like that is not a good sampling of all the product that launched within the year.

it would be the equivalent of a gaming news site reviewing one game during the year then giving that game the game of the year award because it was the only game the reviewer had time to play.

 

My personal choice for 2019

WJ MPP30 Steel Guard (Ratchet), RF (Robot Fantasy) MPP33 Fire Engines (Inferno) & also MS-B04D Transfporter (Delta Magnus. My favorite TF character).



P.S Plus I ordered MechFans Toys MF-48D City Commander V2.0 (Delta Magnus)

 

In celebration of Alonzo's surprise first place nomination!

 

I'm surprised no one picked gigapower grimlock or swoop. Both of them were excellent. But I'm glad somebody had jx metal beast as his top figure. It exceeded my expectations of what a masterpiece can do-die cast metal with that kind of balance, articulation and presence. In a way I think 3p has already exceeded Takara. TE and magic square prime is just a few points of articulation away from being at mp44's level and they're 1/4 the price of mp44 and they've got cleaner backs. Imagine what they could do at the $350 price range.

 

What I notice recently is that fans of other transformer franchises other than G1 usually don't vote on the figure of the year threads or similar.

This thread is more balanced overall due to not having to much "bias" due to the TFW2005 staff having different tastes and collecting habits, thus a variety of transformers choices.

I think that in 2018 Challenger was among the favorites, a movie toy!!!! But it wasn't mentioned (I think) in the thread Figure of the year...

This year will be a Bayverse / Knightverse year