Yeah, this is what has kept me from getting NA figures starting with the Seeker jets. I could justify Reflector and Soundwave as they were technically sets of multiple figures, but paying more than $50 for a Legends figure is not justifiable to me. I just paid $90 for MP Crosscut. A Legends figure shouldn't be CLOSE to that, let alone more.

Also, pretty tired of companies prioritizing cartoon-accuracy to the point where the figure only looks right from a narrow range of angles. Great, cartoon chest for Prime! ...if you look at it from straight on and straight on only. Just like MP Bumblebee 2.0

 

That's what I believe applies to the majority of us.

There will always be people bitching about TF figures's flaws like they're the worst offenders, but in the end most of us who collect Legends - as much as we notice things that look not-so-good (if not plain bad) - are inclined to positively deal with that, and appreciate the overall shelf presence.
I never had a single problem liking my MST Seekers, Cliffjumper or Lambros, as well as NA Bee, Megatron or Ratchet/Ironhide, while seeing with absolute clarity where they could've been better designed.

 

i'm more bothered by the lack of concealment of the double chest with the separation, and particularly the obvious wider gaps at both sides from the front bumper, than the actual fact it's a double chest. if they could manage to make it more seamless and less obviously noticeable with an extra panel or flaps to cover/fill that area, i'd have less of an issue i think.

my photohacks for reference to demonstrate my point…

 

Honestly if we just got a decent Toon Optimus in any capacity, I'd imagine the fandom would be slightly less angry and we'd move ahead. Considering the primary toon accurate options are a Optimus that while doing all the parts naturally (Magic Square 1.0), doesn't seem one to one with the character ref sheet, which is basically what the toon fans want, a very good contender but then it seems that for some the proportions with the body look off (Transform Element), a subpar figure that has too much QC issues, rubbery plastic and lackluster posability (RED), figures sold in limited quantity with a low count that they basically create small windows which when missed is almost as bad as Haslab Unicron's aftermarket (Super 7), MP-44, and the Re-Action Optimus Brick, honestly the picks for the better looking Sunbow Prime are slim and tend to not be satisfactory for a good portion of the fandom, yet it seems for the more realistic crowd they at least have Magic Square 1.0, leg engineering be damned.

The toon crowd may have options more than the realism crowd now, but honestly the picks range from actual trash to figures that tend to compromise what the toon crowd want.

I can get that we are in a state of fatigue and really we need to move on, though. If we keep continuing this trend of focusing on Optimus and only Optimus, we'll get nowhere faster than we already are

Pretty good digibash, but we still need to completely get those extra roof lights gone.

 

Nowhere in the actual show does he have a chest that thick.

 

Different things just bother different people. I can totally see why the double chest would bother some people even if you're not always going to be looking at the figure from that angle. Others might find this issue incredibly minor. Like me, I'm not buying the Studio Series Grimlock because the tail looks more like a boat or banana than an actual tail. If you look around, pretty much nobody cares about the way the tail looks. It is what it is.

 

Animation consistency doesn't always match official refs. Remember when Prime initially had rounder head shapes in early G1 and got boxy from there?

 

When's this guy going up for PO is all I wanna know.

 

with those Weibo comments and how NA reacted to ppl complaining about Mixmasters legs its gonna be a minute lol

 

ShowZ has preorders up. But it’s just a $2 USD deposit.

 

Rather conservative by their standards as ShowZ has a tendency to put up $2-down POs for some items before they've even been conceived  

 

At least they pay you interest   How many other places take deposits and give you a buck or two off.

 

I never had an issue with it. It’s not like I’m throwing my $2 away since it’s subtracted out of the final price. Plus I save a good chunk of money because I’m not buying domestically.

 

Those shapes still appeared onscreen. I don't recall seeing that in the show anywhere, that's thick enough to fit a second head inside.

 

Regardless of whether this shape appeared or not in the show doesn't dismiss the fact that it has appeared in the franchise and is official art from the reference sheet, which tended to result in some moments that are more artistic liberties for anatomical correctness (Namely the thick spot to leave room for a second head). If anything, the design aspect we primarily see and associate as the correct one is the actual animation error, and is more representative of the toy and the eventual hyper-toon MP-44, which while very based in Sunbow Modeling to a fault, is also vindictive of the fact that it took some design liberties. Technically that fat backpack everyone complained about is partially accurate, but then it's a case of the head positioning being too far forward that it looks like a fat back when it should match to the ref sheet with a further back head.

It's like how Takara fought for MP Prowl having the Shoulder cannons appear in the cartoon with that picture and they technically did... On A Bluestreak with Prowl's colors.

 

The determining factor of show accuracy is that it has to have appeared in the show. Lineart and animation guides take a back seat to what is actually shown on screen, and if it's an error that is shown on a majority of the show, then that is more important.

 

Optimus booba is best booba.

 

That's like saying by the logic of the show, Rumble should just always be the blue one when the franchise and original notes had him as Red more often.

And by that logic also, MP-44 didn't mess up since there are more instances of Fat Back Optimus than there is the thin body people lord Magic Square and Transform Element for. Those thin-back and thin front Optimi we lord and treat as the superior are the real accurate ones with the proper animation models than the flat back we associate the Sunbow model for. If anything, the technical case is no Optimus truly can be screen accurate since we have as many records of the fat back Optimus as much as we do the thin back.

 

Err… yes? In the show, Rumble was the blue one. No doubt about it.

Therefore, If I were a third-party company making a toon-accurate Rumble toy, I’d make it blue.

Likewise, if I were trying to make a toon-accurate Prime, I’d design him to look as close to how he appeared on-screen as possible.

This is because millions of fans the world over watched that old cartoon, and watched the Movie, whereas only about a thousand people on a niche forum really care about character models that were never even seen by the public until 15 years after the show ended.

It seems reasonable to try to match what was on the screen, what millions of people remember watching as kids, rather than try to recreate a behind-the-scenes production document.

I’m baffled that anyone would suggest otherwise!

Yes there was the occasional production glitch or animation error - tiny Constructicons or miscoloured Jazz or whatever. But surely the aim should be to re-create the most common or most iconic on-screen form of the character, not go by cherry-picked, isolated examples where he looked slightly different?

 

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here; the thing with the bolded statement is that what was shown on screen from week to week and what people remember fondly don't always go hand in hand. I'd go so far as to say that the best G1 has ever looked has been years after the fact in memories softened by time and nostalgia. Given its purpose to sell toys, it's no surprise that the original cartoon was by no means a masterstroke of animation. Even discounting the truly egregious moments of incompetence still leaves us with a series that can only be described as consistently inconsistent with how its characters were drawn. In contrast, the models (despite being far lesser known to the general populace) stand unequivocally as how the characters were supposed to be portrayed under ideal circumstances. If the goal truly is pure accuracy - a nebulous goal to be sure - then I would argue those should take precedence given that they're basically the iconic designs everyone already knows minus pesky things like human error or time crunch.

EDIT: Personally, I like the Hasui method myself. Strong screen influence without being 100% beholden to it.