Then u sure as hell aren't parting with your $80.  

 

Loving it: the head sculpt is looking better here:
Still wish the car sat farther back into the "trailer" and now the trailer is starting to look a bit oversized to fit the Commander price point.
Wish the head sat JUST a touch higher on the body like Hot Rod's
and the biggest thing is still the UHPS wing - that's just embarrassing at this price point.
not really knocking them, but the full yarticulated fingers seem a little unnecessary at the size and like a prime candidate for QC & Breakage potential.
(Earthrises Prime's thumbs make me nervous too - the specter of broken GIJoe thumbs form my childhood looms over it)
and those rims are screaming for some silver paint.

Super-duper-nitpicky, but the sculpted detail on his underroos seems a tad overdone, in that it feels like it's interacting awkwardly with his articulation seems.

Unlike what we've seen of K. Galvatron though, these are all pretty minor nitepicks (maybe aside from the cab sticking out too far), really loving him!

 

Exactly. The movies just made it more popular. The UT had just ended and Animated was just beginning when the first movie came out with good toy sales. It's not like during the 90's where the G2 toyline was not selling well and the G2 cartoon was just the G1 cartoon with some extra visuals.

 

He’s apparently based on the 1960’s concept GM Bison.

 

Extra pair of wheels doesn't bother me. Lack of painted windshield shape present in the animation model does, but reprolabels will fix that no doubt. Likewise with the wheels being unpainted.

Other than that, he looks accurate while still being CHUG-like, which is what I want from this line. He has cool touches like those hydraulics, the functioning trailer (as much as I know some don't care about this, it evokes an interior groan every time a toy that should have a trailer doesn't come with one nowadays, Earthrise changing that has made me very happy,) and he's a size I can get behind.

This is the definitive (so far) Rodimus Prime in official form for me other than the MP. He and Galvatron shall be mine.

 

Dude what?

The reason Beast Wars saved the franchise back in the 90s was because toys were not selling. G2 was mostly a failure since there had not been a new cartoon on air for several years at that point.

Let’s not kid ourselves. If the toys don’t sell, or there’s a slump, Hasbro changes directions. Happened in the 90s...until Beast Wars came out. Happened again in the late 2000s...until the movies came out. Love him or hate him, Michael Bay was a godsend for the franchise.

Back to Rodimus:

He looks cool. I wish he was a space mobile home or Winnebago or whatever it’s called rather than a sports car pulling a mobile platform. But the robot mode looks cool

 

diggin' it! I think this will be a really safe buy from me.

 

There appears to be no legitimate reason to get that vehicle mode so wrong. But they have struggled a bit with vehicle modes lately - Ironhide and Ratchet are really bad, and Sunstreaker's is unfinished and the engine looks stupid.

It's very disappointing to see such a high cost signature release be so underwhelming. The play features are nice, but it doesn't really matter if it looks like shit.

I thought we might finally get a great Rodimus Prime. It's very clear we didn't, and he's the second highest priced item in the line.

 

He'll likely be a good toy to play with though. Jetfire and Lynx were the same.

 

Beast Wars saved the franchise from complete and total death, yes, but the movies made them a household name again. Hadn't been that since 1984. They went back to G1 to pump sales up during a "filler" time using a filler line until the movie toys came along. They sold out of movie toys so much to the point they had to raid their warehouses to find ANY Transformers product just to get it into stores to sell something with the name on it. I'm a little surprised you don't remember the insanity of 2007. That was one really, really long summer where there was NOTHING on the shelves for months and months.

Absolutely not a myth. One of Hasbro's charts showed non-movie years being in the hundreds of millions in sales, whereas movie years hit the billion-dollar mark in sales. That's one heck of an infusion. That's life-saving for a business and product such as this one.

FFS. Another one. It's a Leader Class figure with higher parts count and ridiculously detailed extra paint apps. The trailer has a bunch of moving parts (including pistons for the lifting feature on the back door of the trailer) and also detailed paint apps as well. The parts count for this figure is Commander level. Ever owned Jetfire or Sky Lynx? (Especially Sky Lynx...) Much, much higher parts count than the figures around 'em. That's what Rodimus is going to be. He's no Voyager, he's no Leader, he's straight-up Commander Class and earns that title with ease.

Selling more DOES equal saving the franchise. The Unicron Trilogy was dead in the water, Hasbro was using a filler line to keep things going because the movie toys (and the movie itself) weren't ready for retail, and those movies sold like gangbusters. The numbers are staggering how well they did. Those are numbers that make or break a business, period. Right now? No, they're not doing much for the franchise because the pandemic has basically killed Hollywood in the short term, but the cash influx they brought over the past decade-plus is staggering. And Studio Series? Still selling at an insane rate. All toys based on the movies. Those figure sales fund other endeavors such as Cyberverse and the WFC trilogy we're currently talking about. The money has to come from somewhere, not nowhere. The movies are that somewhere. You really think Transformers would still be alive at this point if the movies hadn't happened? Action Masters and the death of G1 might've been 30 years ago, but they're worth remembering so people can know that the line died once before and it can happen again, and most likely would have if it weren't for those super dumb and loud blockbusters bringing BILLIONS to the Hasbro bank accounts.

There's not agreeing with something/someone, and then there's outright denial of facts/reality. You're entitled to do both, but people are going to call you on it.

In the end, I'd say they saved the franchise. All of those movie fans are still spending money and that money gives us WFC and Cyberverse and vice versa. If those movies didn't exist, if those fans weren't here, who knows what we'd be looking at right now.

 

So is that why the Armada was Cybertron toylines were considered a major financial success? Or how Animated was coming out and that they still had plans for if the movies didn't turn out? Cause according to you Transformers were in just as bad a spot as in G2.

You can say the movies brought Transformers back into the cultural spotlight, no one's arguing that, but there was no "saving" happening. Espessially with how people view Transformers thanks to the movies nowadays.

 

Looking closer at the pics, as much as I like the way SS86 Hot Rod looks, I like how much more detailed Kingdom Rodimus looks. SS86 Hot Rod still looks good but looks far more simplistic by way of deco alone. The serious head sculpt is a cool aspect too, can fit the “I’m not Optimus and this situation sucks, but I will try to manage and will accept how this goes and go down fighting” mentality. Like this guy looks determined.

 

They were a success...for that time

Cybertron? Not so much, as much as I enjoyed the figures I did have from my childhood

Classics? Not so much, as much as I liked those initial figures.

The films? I invoke Matthew McConaughey: “Pump those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers!”

 

I can kind of understand why people question the price of this figure, and I agree that Rodimus himself is sticking out too much in the vehicle mode, but overall this figure makes me glad I didn't touch the POTP version at all. To me, this is the definitive CHUG Rodimus, and if they do this figure in alternate colors, I'd be happy to buy those versions as well. They made him a Voyager-sized figure, and they included the trailer and didn't force a gimmick into it, which is what I've wanted for a while now. Should this version of Rodimus have been sold as a Leader class figure? Personally I don't know, and I'm sure this is gonna be quite a debate for many people during the next few years.

Something I wanted to bring up about the subject of price increases in general; it does suck that we either have to pay twice the price for a figure, or pay the same price for something that has less plastic being used compared to the same class of figures of the past, but in general it seems like Transformers toys have gotten more expensive all across the board, and by that I mean whether it's a brand new figure or it's something second hand that could've been released as far as 10 years ago, it seems like whenever you buy a Transformers figure, the prices aren't gonna be that much different from each other, unless it's super collectible. Whenever I go to conventions, comic book/toy stores, and look online for older figures, and I mean figures from the first live-action film, the original Classics line, or the Animated cartoon, the prices are literally a little higher or at least the same as if I were to go to Target and get the Kingdom or SS figures for $20-30. Unless the figure was more collectable or it wasn't very popular, old Deluxe class toys usually cost up to $30 dollars, old Voyagers I would say at least $30-40, and then old Leaders I would say north of their original $50 price. So my question is why are people acting like we are getting ripped off with some of the figures we have gotten in the WFC trilogy, when a previous version of some of these characters would literally cost more, if not the exact same price, if you were to buy it now from a second-hand source?

 

Ooh, new pics. I'm still not wild about the trailer, or the combined alt mode. It's a big box of doesn't do much, and it just looks wrong with the way they've combined the two. But I do kind of like the independent "truck cab" alt mode. Like Hot Rod's car mode got juiced and hit the gym.

I was almost certainly going to buy this anyway. I love me some Hot Rod, and his Rodimus Prime form never seems to get as much love. But the exact moment I was all in on this figure? That shot standing next to SS86 Hot Rod. Matrix w/effects, and some posing and this is going to make the absolute most epic "Arise, Rodimus Prime" display ever. Worth the price of admission all by itself, says my inner 4 year old (I was 4 in 1986, btw).

I love that head sculpt. I love the size. Put him next to Galvatron and I might just need a fainting couch.

 

lol

 

You dodged a bullet there. The knees prone to having the figure fall forward in Rodimus Prime mode and the ugly functionality of the shoulders in Rodimus Prime mode combined with the simplistic look of the trailer(plus lack of functionality beyond becoming armor) and Hot Rod left the toy feeling unfinished as if parts were abandoned due to cost and/or trying to close out POTP sooner than initially planned. There was a lot of wasted potential with that figure.

After seeing how Earthrise Prime’s trailer turned out boxed into the leader class pricepoint, HELL NO!

 

Considering how much more flack he's getting compared to skylynx and jetfire, he very much did not earn that title with ease.

 

Goddammit, I got Hot Rod because I didn't want to get Rodimus. But here I am, about to spend $80 on character I don't care for because it's a really cool toy.

 

Only because of a knee jerk reaction at the fact that he isnt a freaking foot tall