Technically, everything is aesthetic in this case. These are toys— there’s no real “function” other than entertainment. Hell, the RED series gets by without even transforming. I still don’t understand the appeal there, but to each their own.

My (quite obviously) unpopular opinion here is that elimination of hollow gaps provides more entertainment value than extra props, blast effects, trailers, etc. That’s my personal perspective and I don’t expect universal or even marginal agreement. I would simply appreciate the option to choose. I have yet to buy any aftermarket filler kits because they’re overpriced. Such things would be far cheaper if integrated into the toy’s production from the beginning.

But if you folks like the accessories, by all means enjoy them. I don’t.

 

Not sure if this would be unpopular, but...

Siege Optimus would have been 10,000 times better if they had gone with the War within version in Voyager class.




Heck, there's no real official version aside this Titanium one with this particular design, which I love except for how flimsy the arms hold, truly bad design when a simply snap would have been easy...

Even 3rd party I don't see much selection aside CW-01 General Grant that's quite a big huge, but appears to be the better one at this point.

Anyone knows of any others ? (aside SparkToys ALPHA PACK that didn't impress me)

Oh also, I painted the jetpack that came with Origin BB.. damn cheap Hasbro.

 

I definitely agree on this. I feel like this would've made Siege feel less unimportant when they switched to ER, I have this same problem with a lot of Siege figures, I know this was to save money on eventual retools but I felt like they could've been much more.

I would've killed to see this in Siege.

 

I agree that the Siege alt modes weren’t Cybertronian enough— generally looking like “futuristic” Earth modes— but I happen to like Siege Optimus far more than ER Optimus. I thought OP’s War Within vehicle mode was awful.

 

I think Siege Soundwave is absolutely gorgeous.

The "battle damage" doesn't look at all like battle damage. It looks like a fancy custom paint job he had done before a hot date, and I love it. He's incredibly pretty. He's my favourite Soundwave.

Ravage spent so many years being shit on for being a beastformer, there is no way that Ravage would ever want a human-looking head.

It's the price hikes that are the dick move.

20 years ago, I paid for a trip to Japan reselling anime toys, but...I set very fair opening bids on them all. I wasn't going to say no if someone wanted to pay me a huge amount to outbid people, but I did it to subsidise my own collecting, not to gouge people.

Of course back then you could really not get a lot of those things without going there or knowing someone who could.

 

I think that earthrise wheeljack is better than sunstreaker. Don't get me wrong, sunstreaker is great and all, but wheeljack is just more fun to mess around with. He's probably one of the best deluxes released in the past 5 years imo.

 

I definitely agree that they're not "needed" for 99% of cases, although there are a few upgrade kits that actually do improve stability and the like that I think do help function a lot. I definitely know a few combiners where I'd be a lot more fearful of a shelf-dive if they were stock standard.

 

Maybe I don't want to hide them with good posing, especially since some of the gappier figures aren't real shelf stable.

 

I don't "pose" my figures, I play with mine.. they only go on a shelve in whatever position fits, some in alt mode as "storage" for the time that I'm not playing with it.

It comes down to the fact that once upon a time, figures used to be "full" and the gaps were minimal... they might "function" being full of gaps, but they look bad for it, they look and feel cheap as hell for it, they are simply incomplete, and at the prices that has increased over and over in the last few years, it's bullshit that Hasbro can't spend a few extra pennies more per figure that makes such a huge difference in quality.

I'm not buying a figure to pose and hide it's severe flaws, if I did that I might as well just get a printout of a picture or a freaking statue/figurine.

Take any "full/complete" figure and put it next to a cheap (full of gaps) one, and the quality is felt, the parts don't bend/warp as you twist/move them. The filler is more than just a filler, it helps solidify the figure... hell, I've ended up fulling some gaps with hot glue because I feared the part would/could break when I rotated it.

I accept that some gaps are part of the game, but some figures it's just taken too far and compromises it and the figures just ends up looking cheap as hell.

I have not regretted a single upgrade/gap filler kit I've gotten, and only regret that I had to spend more money to complete a figure that Hasbro started and should have done right.

Hell, some figures I wouldn't have gotten if not for knowing that there was a gap filler kit, and as my collection is getting so freaking large, I'm slowing down on my purchases and these gaps will have a HUGE impact to my selection.

 

Today's comment brought to you by your local Fried chicken restaurant.

Kingdom "Skywarp" looks more like a chicken than an eagle to me, especially the "robot" head. It looks like someone wearing a chicken costume hat.

 

I don't use gap filler kits and I don't have an opinion on the use of them, but I have a question for those who do. Gap filler kits are often $10-$15 each. Could fans support Hasbro increasing the price of Deluxes to, say, $32.50-ish to avoid the need for gap fillers? Maybe $27.50 with volume pricing?

Logically this requires solid parts or panels to cover the gaps. Solid parts seem unrealistic, but we've had panels in the past - these require glue, pins, hinges, or screws depending on transformation, so extra time and parts for assembly - an extra $5 to the MSRP seems reasonable, more for larger figures.

I am curious on where the desire for gapless figures meets the price fans will pay for gapless figures.

 

Hasbro is being nasty enough already with the more than doubling of prices in many markets in the last few years, and that they do this crappy practice while doing the figures as cheaply as possible. They already ARE 34$ CAD (from 29.99$ CAD just a few months ago, which had jumped from 15-20$ CAD from the Prime (POTP/CW line right before) while the quality had returned to dropping (with a few exceptions).

All they are doing in pushing people away... I'm at the point where I'm getting less and less and in time will really be done except for the occasional figure that catches my attention, and there's many that have stated the same, if not getting out completely. I've seen a unprecedented number of "fans" that have sold off their collections lately, are sick of the price increase and lower quality, and it just feel like it's going to get worst.

Another increase is the worst thing Hasbro could do. Yes I've spend on the kits simply because I wanted a "complete" figure and have zero plans to ever replace them by a "newer and shinier" version, it has been the evil that I had to deal with and hated every time I did the click in purchasing the kits, but the concept that Hasbro needs even a single penny more to fix what they do, is missing the point that Hasbro is in it for the money, and any such mention of "increase to fix", actually translates to "increase the price, not the quality", which they just did twice in just this year alone. With every quarterly report showing massive profits, they are far from being unable to allocate a few pennies more per figure that would eliminate the need for such kits.

As I already stated, I'm not getting every kit, nor the "fancy" upgrade ones either, I've just going for the ones that the figure is absolutely incomplete with huge gaps and missing some of not all of the main accessories that they should have come with. Seriously... even during the Prime trilogy, they stopped providing weapons for the legends, reissued some without the accessories that it originally came with. Heck, another example: Wing Megatron (Thrilling 30 Deluxe Class Megatron Megatron (G1)/Generations toys - Transformers Wiki ) which is a small deluxe, was reissued from a card to a boxed SS after a couple of years at more than double it's price, (bought the original for 14$, and the SS one was priced at 30$) with nothing more than a bit of a different paint job. (Same is happening right now with the Headmasters re-issues)

So no... the notion of giving Hasbro more is one of the worst suggestions that anyone could do, Hasbro doesn't need more money to do things right, they just need to stop milking the fans and the fans that don't get this, need to stop thinking like that. Hasbro isn't a poor friend, it's a company fueled by profit and to them, Transformers is one of their money making products, nothing more.

 

Okay, unpopular opinion: Hasbro's prices right now are quite reasonable.

I may not be ecstatic about their practices (hate the "Voyager packed in with a bunch of stuff you do not want" model [looking at you, Astrotrain, you beautiful figure I cannot justify the purchase of]) but the dollar amount per price point is usually pretty reasonable.

Honestly, the prices of figures, especially Deluxes were kinda criminally low for a long, long time. Hasbro's prices pretty much stagnated since Energon and they were a great deal then, and then quickly turned into a steal during the movie years. Compare the standard 6-inch figures which cost the same as a Deluxe: A TF is usually shorter and may have somewhat less articulation (usually not too much, and not always the case [looking at you, Mattel in years past]). However, they have considerably less parts reuse and a ridiculously increased amount of engineering costs. You just... objectively get more from a Deluxe TF than most figures at the same price point.

Now if (and admittedly when) the price goes up, I'm going to disagree, but I'm (optimistically, or perhaps naively) hoping that they stabilize since it should've been closer to here than where it was a few years back.

 

Here's my... not sure how unpopular this is or even if it's an 'opinion', but Soundwave is... I'm conflicted on his alt mode.

Like @Ravage Stanixa I love his Siege alt mode and feel his original micro-cassette player mode is outdated and not suited for his usual role of infiltration. I also LOVE his form in Prime. However... I also love his interactivity with Ravage, Rumble and his other Cassettes. It was so damned cool and I did love how he deployed them in the cartoon. It made him top-tier in Wave One of the G1 toyline and just overall really cool. And I'm kinda hard-pressed to think of something modern like it. Computers and USB drives or whatever just don't feel... right to me. Or something. I dunno. Is any of this making sense?

 

I’ll echo a lot of this. The rise of extensive waffled-out sections in particular (the shrinkage of overall figure size marginally less so) has led me to only infrequently purchasing mainline TFs these days. Used to be a near-completist; now I’m down to 1 or 2 figures per line, tops.

I absolutely understand that materials and production costs have risen a lot in recent years, but as much of the price hikes has come from Hasbro’s need, as a publicly traded company, to maintain margin and increase stock price for shareholders. They’re a multinational business juggernaut. It’s what they do.

Hasbro-owned properties (TFs & GI Joes for this discussion) could be either better or cheaper, since no IP owners are charging license costs on them, and the dollars saved there could be redirected into the product itself. They aren’t, because they’ve gotta keep profit margins up at the expense of all else, so corners still get cut. I get that. From a business standpoint, they do what they have to. But it means a lot less of the product is appealing to me nowadays, and very little of it makes it into my collection anymore.

I recall reading that Hasbro stopped including as many accessories with the new Joe line, not because it was unduly expensive for that line, but because all the extras hurt the perceived value of their OTHER lines (ie, Star Wars and Marvel Legends). If you see a Joe loaded with extras next to a Star Wars toy with very little for the same price, the Star Wars toy “seems” to be poor value (because the average consumer doesn’t think or care about things like license cost), and Hasbro doesn’t want to cultivate that perception on parallel lines. And so the short version is that we get fewer Joe accessories because they might harm sales on other lines. Which also means margin goes up on Joes, because less cost is going into the actual toy.

I’m sure the calculus is slightly different on TFs (more costly engineering, higher parts count, higher unit assembly prices, etc), but I doubt it’s RADICALLY different. Look at the number of parts, accessories, paint apps, and sheer plastic companies like Neca and McFarlane can squeeze into similarly-priced figures. It CAN be done, but at the expense of margin/stock price (someone correct me, but I believe both are privately held, and thus not subject to similar shareholder pressures).

It makes me a little sad - going to the TF section of a toy aisle used to be an exercise in, “oh man, how do I choose just one,” and now it’s, “oh man… do I even want ANY of these?”

 

personally id like it if hasbro went in and repainted the kingdom BW guys to be 100% cartoon accurate, i'd definitely buy them

 

In a way, I kinda agree with some of your points. The rising price sure wasn't ideal, but even then I could say that most of the mainline Transformers stuff was an incredible value from a playability POV compared to pretty much any other collector-oriented toyline out there. Frankly, some TF fans could be a bit out-of-touch in terms of how mainline Transformers stuffs fairs against any other collectible figure toylines out there, most of which have an even worse price to value ratio than what you could get from a single mainline Transformer figure.

I have a couple of Robot Damashii Gundam figures such as the Robot Damashii RX-78-2 Ver. A.N.I.M.E, and while it's a fantastic figure with a ton of accessories, great posability, and far sturdier than its Gunpla counterparts in the long run; it doesn't change that the RD RX-78-2 Ver A.N.I.M.E. I mentioned has an original MSRP price of $48, for a figure who size-wise was barely larger than your average Deluxe-class without its vast array of accessories), and that's not even going into the Metal Robot Dmaashii or Metal Build figures, where the price can range all the way to over hundreds of dollars.



Even the MPs, which I wince at the pricing of, are infinitely a better value than most of the Metal Robot Damashii and Metal Build figures, which while I love how they look but I can't bring myself to pay the cost. $20-$30 for a good-looking functional transforming robot isn't a bad value/price given the larger market.

 

legacy would be the best place to do a new animated helicopter megatron

 

I feel like there's other ways to do that? Obviously I'm very into his interactivity, especially with Ravage. But s/he doesn't have to live in his chest to be interactive with him, and neither do the others, because he's a telepath. There's no reason they can't all have a mindlink that allows them to work together. This would allow them to have instant communication and integration without having to be all in one place or give up their individuality, like a combiner. I also think that if Soundwave is TIC and in charge of communications and logistics for the whole movement he probably shouldn't be jumping into the middle of combat, though, and none of this is something you can make into a toy mechanic. On the other hand, if he's shown being interactive with them all the time, and using them intelligently (birbs as spies from above, Rav as a saboteur/assassin, the twins as muscle, and back up for the others) kids will still want the whole sound-team.

TFP made Laserbeak part of his armour. I've read TFP fics where they all were, but due to the war, a lot of them were dead.

Admittedly...the altmode is only part of why I love the Siege toy of him. I love it because it's gorgeous. It he looks like he had himself done up in this really pretty silver paint wash that enhances his look, and it's not a secret that I think G1-style (IDW/Siege/Bumblebee) Soundwave is a sexy character, which is obviously a highly personal opinion that I don't expect to be widely considered either here or at Hasbro. (TL;DR I have a crush on Soundwave)

 

I can't say "reasonable" and hate seeing that word used because it's the way Hasbro likes to see fan's devotion and in acceptance to whatever they'll do.

Ironically ... I would say "acceptable" is a better term.

Why? Because this is not an actual collector line, it's marketed as a TOY line with children as the main target. It's something that I see many in the fandom forgetting or set it aside.

When I see children interested but parents taken back by the prices, it's a problem. When you have fans that state that they can't keep up with getting the figures they want due to prices or availability, it's a problem.

You just can't compare them to any line that's targeting collectors as the main target... Instead you should compare the Masterpiece line.

So, as I stated, "acceptable", because it's hitting that ceiling, even passing it by a bit and more and more fans are calling it quits or having to be very selective.

I can also state that the profit margin is a lot larger than most can understand or even accept. One example of late is someone that scanned a Rodimus and due to my experience and knowledge of the market and manufacturing, I am convinced that the price was the back-end retail pricing, which was less than a tenth of what it sells for.

I also believe that stores never take a true loss with their liquidation prices, so when I calculated that deluxe where being sold/produced at around 2-3 dollars by Hasbro and then Walmart selling their liquidations for around 5$, it was within the range of what I had estimated, so they are barely making anything, but even if it's fifty cents, it's still something and gives a perspective about costs. And each larger class was no more than a few dollars more. Heck I got Apeface for 5$…. So even Voyagers aren't much more to produce. And that's in CAD $ by the way.