The tortured identity of the collection

Discussion in 'Transformers Toy Discussion' started by Alucard77, Feb 24, 2021.

  1. Alucard77

    Alucard77 Kaon Gladiator Champion

    Joined:
    Dec 3, 2010
    Posts:
    19,094
    News Credits:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    337
    Likes:
    +2,601
    What I mean with this title, is that I torture myself to identify what I want out of my collection. As I collect it changes. One thing that I regret doing is buying 3rd Party toys as I quickly realized I was removing a $300 piece from my display for a Hasbro alternative.

    So with that, I thought, I know, I will show case the original G1 toy, the classic variant and then the MP variant in the way Hasbro / TT intended. This way I can show the history here.

    But then, I am looking Earthrise Megatron, and thinking to myself, humm, I wonder if I can dremel a slit on the hinge of his back pack so I can easily remove the back pack, make him look more like the show counterpart and still keep the transformation, similar with what you can do with ER Optimus.

    Then I start looking at other figures and think, okay, now do I want the toy representation or the cartoon representation. Do I want to keep the Generations Jetfire in my collection which reminds me more of G1, or do I want to showcase the Siege one. But the G1 Jetfire is in the collection, and the third party MP that looks like Jetfire is in the collection.

    And to top it all off, I am not seeing some of the add on filler parts for these Hasbro figures. They are pretty sweet. But then I think, I am going back into third party terrain area. Arghhhh.

    So just wondering, do you guys also torture yourself like this? Now don't get me wrong it's still pretty fun torture.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  2. lordcryotek

    lordcryotek M'Hael

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2003
    Posts:
    9,705
    Trophy Points:
    337
    Location:
    Dumai's Wells
    Likes:
    +38,754
    Right now I'm happy with my display, but unhappy with the wall behind my display. Been thinking about hiring someone to replace it eventually. I wouldn't say I'm tortured by it, but it does bug me.
     
  3. elburrito

    elburrito Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 13, 2011
    Posts:
    684
    Trophy Points:
    207
    Location:
    Canadia
    Likes:
    +1,986
    Sounds like you're in just the right place. Lol
     
    • Like Like x 2
  4. Superquad7

    Superquad7 OCP Police Crime Prevention Unit 001 Super Content Contributor

    Joined:
    May 19, 2003
    Posts:
    52,440
    News Credits:
    16
    Trophy Points:
    447
    Likes:
    +7,310
    Twitter:
    Yeah, I can relate somewhat.

    I had sworn off retail lines of figures in lieu of collecting Masterpiece. Then, a few years later, I became interested in Siege. The next thing I know, I'm all in, reminding myself of how much fun retail toys are.
     
    • Like Like x 4
  5. Strife

    Strife Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2007
    Posts:
    4,447
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    312
    Likes:
    +12,399
    Ebay:
    I think the nature of people's collections, particularly CHUG but also to a lesser degree MP, are changing.

    For a long time, kind of the overall meta-goal for a lot of collectors was to get the "modern updated representation" of a specific character or set of characters. What form that came in was left up to the specific collector, but it meant assembling a lot of figures across a lot of different lines, first and third party. From a CHUG angle, that more or less meant something that looked like this:

    [​IMG]


    Well look at what we have there.... the $550 TFC Herclues, a Toyworld Hegemon, a TF Adventure Frenzy/Rumble, a Henkei Ravage (from Hound) with an upgrade kit, three classics / Universe 2.0 Seekers, Overkill from Titans Return, WFC Soundwave, and Laserbeak from Cybertron. But at least we got them all, right?

    What happened starting in the mid-Prime Wars Trilogy, but really in the WFC Trilogy most especially, is we started to get figures that belonged together because they expressed a cohesive "design language". While series-based lines have long featured this (a Transformers: Prime figure clearly belongs with other Prime figures, an Animated with Animatd, etc), that was never really a feature of Generations. Check out this early Siege shelf:

    [​IMG]

    So just to get the characters of the 1984 Autobots, we have figures from:
    -Universe / Generations 2008 (Ratchet, Prowl, Bluestreak, Sunstreaker)
    -Hunt for the Decepticons / Transformers 2010 (Spec Ops Jazz)
    -Generations 2012-2014 / Thrilling 30 (Gears, Jetfire, IDW Trailbreaker)
    - Combiner Wars 2015 (Mirage, Wheeljack)
    -Titans Return (Bumblebee, Brawn,
    - Power of the Primes (Windcharger)
    -Siege (Hound, Optimus, Ironhide, Sideswipe)
    -Two different Third Party (Huffer, Cliffjumper)

    So for just these characters that's 9 distinct lines, depending how you count. And just before this, it was even more - I had Henkei hound there (Takara Universe) and Classics Optimus. That would be 10 lines total (+2, minus Siege).

    This is what it looks like today.

    [​IMG]


    So the exact same characters. No one new. They are wall WFC Trilogy releases except Windcharge (PotP), Brawn (Titans Return), Gears and Huffer (two 3p). So we've gone from 9 lines to 4, if you could WFC as one continuous 3 year line, which I do.


    So for my part, I'll be more or less done getting the core 1984-1986 characters in their "perfect" forms as a CHUG collector by the end of Kingdom. I'm not sure what a better "Prowl" or "Jazz" would be than what we got. It took over 10 years to replace Spec Ops Jazz. Universe Prowl lasted nearly as long. Is there ever going to be a Jetfire that beats that Jetfire in his G1 form? I think not.

    As I put it just yesterday in another thread, in just a few years we've gone from utilizing the terrible POTP Starscream or *gasp* the Evergreen Cyber Batallion Starscream as our Voyager Starscream, two having two excellent voyager seeker molds, one of which is a scaled up and improved engineered version of the excellent Classics mold. Our concerns have moved from "Voyager Seeker Mold... When?!?!" to "Can we please get a Blitzwing engineered as well as Siege Astrotrain and retire the TR one?". When we're worrying about getting better Blitzwings, we've arrived at a place in our collections. What do you get for the collector who has "perfect" releases already?

    But this has moved a lot of first and third party out of their former privleged positions and into storage. A lot of them are good too. Some of them I put on display, because of mold uniqueness. For example, I keep T30 Jetfire on display in vehicle form (where he looks best) and I've moved the Takara Legends (Titans Return) Movie/1986 characters to their own shelf in vehicle mode, after replacing them on their "definitive 1986 shelf" with WFC/SS86 releases. There is an asthetic value to them.

    But there is just too many to display. Like Generations Brainstorm. He's AWESOME looking, and also goes with nothing else. Of the 4 releases of the Classics Optimus mold I own, I have to choose one (I chose the Age of Extinction 2 pack release).

    As far as expensive third party goes, I've had some better luck there.

    First let's talk Hercules. He's one of the most "important" 3P figures there is (along with City Commander, FT-03 Quakewave, FT-04 Scoria). Those guys collectively more or less created their 3P domains as we know it. Hercules opened the way up to combiners and the (expensive) Combiner rush that followed. Combiner Wars may even conceptually exist in part because of them (Hasbro saw a market for combiners again). Especially with some upgrades, he's great. He's more flawed than a lot of 3P figures to follow, but he certainly has presence. But is he worth the $550 I paid? No. Is he worth the $250 he went for until recently? Probably not. In fact, if you want a Combiner Wars scale Devastator, the $30-50 downscaled KO of CW Devastator is an AMAZING choice. In many ways it looks more true to the character, and costs one tenth the price. That *IS* frustrating.

    So do I regret Herclues? I don't think regret is the right word. I think it informed future buying. I didn't go in for any other 3P combiner until I saw PotP Predaking, decided that it wasn't want I was looking for, and went for TFC Ares as my CHUG scale Predaking. But here's the thing... I got him for about $140. He is absolutely worth $140. I don't think I will replace him.

    So here's a tough case.... the Planet X Dinobots.

    [​IMG]

    (a bit of an old picture but you get the point).

    So if my collection were to have a centerpiece, this would be. My detolfs are across 2 walls - 4 across and 5 across. This occupies the 5 across wall, center detolf, center shelf. This is what... about another $550 of 3P Transformers? And I mean, for good reason. Official Dinobots were hard to come by or suboptimal for years. We got weird redecos of AOE characters. We had FOC Grimlock. We have the great looking but small PotP ones. We are just NOW getting the Leader class Dinobots we always wanted. In 2021. It's pretty much the last frontier of the 1984 characters.

    So will I replace this very expensive shelf with them? Do I regret buying them. Not for an instant.

    First and foremost, these Planet X figures are some of the very best 3P CHUG figures there are. For my money, I think Planet X is the best 3P toy company period (yes, even better than MMC). And all six of these figures are great. Not perfect and certainly fragile... but impressively engineered and fun to Transform.

    But here's the thing... I like the look of the FOC Dinobots better than the G1 look. Before the goal of recreating cartoon G1 was a realistic thing, a lot of folks (me included) justified the hodgepodge nature of the collections as "Neo G1"... updated forms. Well, I think this is one case where that principle works very strongly. The FOC Dinobots have better dino forms and mostly better robot forms. And these are figures of them.

    Right now, SS86 Grimlock is with my 1986 shelf, but as his friends arrive, he'll probably get his own. Will it replace this one? Not a chance. It'll exist along side. THey aren't in competition. They represent different takes. And that I think, is the golden ticket, especially when WFC ages.

    Right now WFC is new. It's the hot thing. In a few of years it won't be. It'll be to us then, as what Titans Return is now. While it's unlikely we'll replace many of these guys, our attentions will shift to somewhere else. Us "let's make G1 perfectly" CHUG collectors are all a little bit on the sugar high of being closer to the goal than ever. Really nearly at the point of just replacing great toys with slightly greater toys in many respects. But as that fades, I think our collecting may shift more towards design diversity, this time on purpose. And that may mean a lot of those "retired" toys get unboxed and a lot of "perfect G1" falls down the totem pole.

    Consider Flame Toys Stealth Bomber Megatron:
    [​IMG]


    Imagine if a version of this was released as a Commander class Transformer in a post-WFC line. Does this look like any Megatron outside of a short run in the IDW comics, a decade ago? No. But it looks AMAZING. It's a striking looking figure.

    And that's how it starts. Suddenly Commander class Stealth Bomber Megatron that just LOOKS amazing is on display, and suddenly we get the urge to unbox our Hegemon, our Combiner Wars Megatron, our 7 different WFC trilogy tank Megatrons. Some of us already have an Optimus shelf doing more or less that.

    [​IMG]



    So rather than frustrating, I think that's one of the EXCITING things we'll see in years ahead: collections getting even more diverse, as we go to having many awesome choices.
     
    • Like Like x 12
  6. Cool Hand Lube

    Cool Hand Lube Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2008
    Posts:
    9,034
    News Credits:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    337
    Likes:
    +29,643
    Great topic.

    I've struggled with this in the past but now I'm pretty content with what I've got and I can see an actual end to my collection in the next couple of years with only a few characters I really "need" to finish what I want.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  7. Drohitan

    Drohitan Rogue Decepticon

    Joined:
    Sep 30, 2011
    Posts:
    467
    Trophy Points:
    182
    Likes:
    +488
    Oh boy, im terrible.

    Back when it all (re)started just after the 07 movie split the fan base, and deciding to re plunge into the world of toy 'collecting', the idea was: "Just a few to settle my inner geek"

    My today self laughs at my past self.

    From what began as an 07 Bumblebee, Barricade, Stockade, and the almighty (at the time) MP-04, grew.

    I only had one rule... Scale, and keep it Movieverse.

    **DUN DUN DUN**

    If I could keep it close to the 1:32ish scale I will only get one here and there and not go overboard. Also just the movie lines so the shelf wouldn't look outta whack. MP-04 was the main exception because of sheer Optimus Prime awesomeness. Well....

    So eventually RotF Optimus came home as a birthday present (I think my wife has bought half of my Optimises, lovely lady) and a few carbots through the HftD era, things were going well on the scale front until leader Jetfire came home. Awesome! I can display Optimis in Jetbadass mode as a centrepiece kinda thing! So I did.

    Then that little tickle in the back of my mind.

    'He's out of scale'

    And it bugged me until I decided 'fkit' he is still a win on many other fronts.

    Leader Starscream came home. Yeah sure he was totally out of scale but that robot mode was unprecedented awesome just like Optimus so he was given a pardon.

    Then the Animated era came. Wasn't that an awesome show. It had everything, and was the perfect thing to freshen it up during the Movie era. I loved the heck out of Animated, so much so that I made another exception. Blackarachnia. Utter perfection. The toy matched the cartoon model almost flawlessly, yet was so simple and elegant in hand. Looked so wierd standing with Bumblebee and Barricade but hey, she was a win of that line.

    Then DotM happened. If the RotF/HftD was a golden era, this was the beginning of a great depression. I picked up Barricade for customising but after opening him I noticed the shrinkage first hand. Ironhide was a fail imo, and Ratchet just... yeah. Really wishing I had got them during TF07. I did get Leader Sentinel, and still have him. While not in the best scale for the collection in alt mode he looked beast on the shelf between Optimus and Megatron (shadow leader, I missed the run of grey Megs).

    I dabbled into the Prime line, somewhat trying to stick to the scale thing, bringing home Shockwave (best Shockwave ever!), Bumblebee FE, Bulkhead RiD, Cliffjumper RiD, Knockout. Deciding to screw scale again i picked up RiD Arcee because, win.

    From there, with the collection now a bit of a mish-mash things went a bit sideways. I took my first dive into buying online. I was kinda spewin' we didn't get the T30 line on the shelves in Australia (or at least, on the Gold Coast cos i wasn't driving for hours just to buy toys). Thanks to Internet Magic T30 Arcee and Windblade crossed America and the Pacific Ocean and landed on my shore. Oh yeah I checked that tracking like three times a day, getting all giddy every time there was an update. Arcee somewhat scales ok with carbots, Windblade didn't. But I was in the pro-Windblade camp because cool Autobot jet-girl with an Eastern theme.

    I mostly skipped AoE and TLK. I picked up Beserker because he looked cool. But dayum he was small.

    Fast Forward to today and the rise of Studio Series/Earthrise.

    What started with Crowbar, just to compliment Bes**CRANKCASE**erker, turned into a scaled collection of the SS carbots, a few 3P Optimuses, Shockwave (yes I love my Shockwaves) my 'second/updated' movie collection is coming to what I consider completion. There's only a handful of SS figures I intend to chase down to pad it out now.

    Then I saw SS86, and omg childhood nostalgia hit like a truck. Hotrod, Kup, Cyclonus! Then Jazz and Arcee came home.....

    Here we go again :D 
     
  8. Seanprime

    Seanprime Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 7, 2020
    Posts:
    3,500
    News Credits:
    40
    Trophy Points:
    257
    Likes:
    +13,022

    Where’d you get your shelf risers?
     
  9. Boomatronous

    Boomatronous Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 13, 2019
    Posts:
    311
    Trophy Points:
    142
    Likes:
    +952
    Really dig ur read, and now I need to hunt down some Planet X dinobots!!!!

    I came back in to collecting with Titans Return and haven't done much with 3rd party, but the Dino's need to be mine!!!
     
  10. KFGatri

    KFGatri Madman with a Blue Box

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2012
    Posts:
    8,091
    Trophy Points:
    287
    Location:
    Folcroft PA
    Likes:
    +21,073
    Ebay:
    Torture? Nope. I'll let Her Majesty express my feelings about collecting:
    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 1
  11. DanC

    DanC Delightful person

    Joined:
    May 17, 2010
    Posts:
    5,761
    News Credits:
    14
    Trophy Points:
    287
    Location:
    Dún Laoghaire
    Likes:
    +42,706
    So, uh... collecting is your way of running away from problems, when you should be reaching out to loved ones?
     
  12. KFGatri

    KFGatri Madman with a Blue Box

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2012
    Posts:
    8,091
    Trophy Points:
    287
    Location:
    Folcroft PA
    Likes:
    +21,073
    Ebay:
    If you like. It's certainly my happy place when life stinks.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  13. Effigy

    Effigy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2019
    Posts:
    9,819
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    247
    Likes:
    +23,421
    Great post! Fascinating read for someone like me who’s collecting days started during Siege. What 3P Gears is that?
     
  14. EarthGBilly

    EarthGBilly Sucker for a GERWALK Mode

    Joined:
    Aug 19, 2011
    Posts:
    850
    Trophy Points:
    207
    Likes:
    +959
    Since I returned to collecting, I've been a recovering completionist. It has made it easier, but I have struggle with forming a cohesive collection to help guide my spending habits. As such, I sometimes do end up with things I don't really want or need, but I've gotten better.

    A big breakthrough for me was Siege Jetfire. It looks like a great toy. It seems to be the near-perfect version of Jetfire from the cartoon. I had the opportunity to get it on sale several times... and I never pulled the trigger. I really had undue turmoil over this, until I realized... yeah, it looks like the cartoon, but that was never really my Jetfire. I loved the G1 toy, the old Macross VF-1S Valkyrie. I did not want the cartoon version.

    Which led me to realize that there are some figures in my collection that I want to have the toy look, and others that I want to have the cartoon look. Toy look - I prefer my Optimus Prime and Soundwave with yellow eyes. I want my Ultra Magnus to have a white Optimus Prime in that armor. Cartoon look - I want my Bumblebee to transform into a VW Beetle and have a big goofy grin most of the time, not a battle mask. I want my Ratchet and Ironhide to have actual heads.

    To say nothing of the figures I've purchased, knowing they don't really fit the character they are supposed to be, but because of the figure itself. This would apply to most of my Combiner Wars figures and a few of the Titans Returns figures (the CW figures essentially become Voltron-like teams, and the swappability of heads with TR has made army-building so much better, with distinct heads but a united look). I like the figures and have head-canon'd most of them into other characters.

    So I've given up strictly defining my collection other than "head-canon." I try to only buy figures that work within that.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  15. Effigy

    Effigy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2019
    Posts:
    9,819
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    247
    Likes:
    +23,421
    I'm also trying to collect one of every G1 character. And even though I only started in 2019, I've had to replace a bunch of Siege figures. I'm really curious to see what Mirage and Sideswipe look like, because I think both of these are near perfect. Mirage, especially. I was always a bit down on SS's alt mode, but his bot mode looks phenomenal and that's what I keep him in. So this could be an interesting test for me. Am I essentially 'done' with everyone who's been covered in WFC or will I always be attracted to the new and shiny? In addition to already being very happy with SS and Mirage, they both will come bundled with 2 Beastwars characters that I don't want, as I'm not collecting that line. So we'll see what happens.
     
  16. Max Rawhide

    Max Rawhide Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' ... uh, never mind

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2012
    Posts:
    7,719
    Trophy Points:
    287
    Likes:
    +7,593
    In a way, definitely.

    When I started buying TF characters for nostalgia (instead of buying TF and repurposing them as my own TF characters in my own series), I wanted to be an adult about it: not cheap toys meant for children, but figures meant for collectors (more complex, more paint). My neo-G1 collection was a combination of Masterpiece (MP-1 etc), BT/Alt, and the different leader toys.

    Then MP-10 and further happened and my Neo-G1 became at it's core this reboot of Masterpiece, but not strictly so. The idea was a collection about the best representation of the characters. Sometimes this was MP, sometimes 3rd party (MP scale of not) and sometimes even CHUG. I was happy for quite a while.

    But the size differences started bugging me. TW Fortress Maximus was perfect in many ways, but too tiny even for a Marvel Fort Max. And at the same time MP Magnus was too big. And what to do with BT/Alt? And what about the lure of Legends? And what about the wfc figures that seemed so nice? And was I ever going to get characters from the later era of G1 that were special to me?

    The result was splitting the collection in three neo groups (next to collections of old figures): Alt/BT became non G1 characters, MP became restricted to the first two year-ish of G1 (official and 3rd party), and Classics everything G1 beyond the first two year-ish. This also meant that characters would only appear once in the collection (not counting the original figures), save for Legends which would be reserved for alternate deco's (G2, Diaclone).

    And again, I was happy with this. But MP is now close to a dead collection. Dead as in, it's there but nothing gets done with it and new figures are rare (Skids might be the first G1 MP I will buy in a long time, while even 3rd party hasn't been added in a long while). It's just filling in the few remaining blanks and it's done. And at the same time, wfc/ss86 is delivering and keeping collecting fresh.

    I'm currently torturing myself about the continued existence of MP. I will definitely keep some, but do I want to keep them all? It's very tempting to go completely classics with my neo-G1 collection. They may lack the adult collectors item allure, but they're more fun and they're more likely to deliver what I want.
     
    Last edited: Mar 3, 2021
    • Like Like x 1
  17. Strife

    Strife Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2007
    Posts:
    4,447
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    312
    Likes:
    +12,399
    Ebay:
  18. Strife

    Strife Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2007
    Posts:
    4,447
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    312
    Likes:
    +12,399
    Ebay:
    It's Mechanic Studio MS-16 Rocke

    MS-16 Rocke
     
  19. Strife

    Strife Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2007
    Posts:
    4,447
    News Credits:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    312
    Likes:
    +12,399
    Ebay:
    So all those are the base color ones. They are *very* slowly doing a metallic colored release series. Grimock and Swoop are out. The rest haven't been announced yet but will probably arrive at 1 per year.
     
    • Like Like x 1
  20. Venixion

    Venixion Its always the middle of the night in Moonside

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2013
    Posts:
    25,383
    News Credits:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    362
    Location:
    California
    Likes:
    +40,793
    I don't have an identity for my collection. I don't feel the need to collect in specific ways. I buy what I like and can afford, and I ignore what I don't.

    For the most part, my collection does feel harmonious in terms of aesthetic. My CW, TR, PotP, Select, Seige and ER all flow into each other nicely.

    My RB and TH pair well.

    My FoC, G1 and Botbots are their own thing.

    And my RiD15 and CV are a decent match.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2021