Energon and Armada did quite well. And even Armada, while it mades the toys more dynamic, stuck pretty close to the look of the toys. Hell, they even featured a lot of the action features of the toys! Then there's RiD in which the anime looked very much like the toys, which did pretty well. So yeah, when the animation actually reflects the product being sold, the kids do stay interested. Probably moreso, since they're not being lied to.

That's definitely a case-by-case basis, but Dery undeniably oversimplified the designs when translating the toys for animation. Would I want a straight 1:1 translation, probably not. Would I want more of the distinctive detailing of the toys to have been carried over in most cases? Hell yeah! I never cared for either the toy or animation models for Megatron. But MP36+, which takes the best elements of both? Awesome! Similarly, I prefer MP10's rendition of Optimus over MP44, which is a good balance of toy and toon, and features more of the actual truck kibble in robot mode. I wouldn't want a strict translation of toy Ironhide to the cartoon, but given how fiddly attempta to expand the robot into a van has been, I'd love to see a MARB incorporated into future attempts - a mix of toy and animation for the best result. The Hot Soldiers Legends class version did that, and it's the best Ironhide I own in any scale.

Basically, I think there'd have been even more magic if the cartoon hadn't simplified the designs so much. Maybe keep the animation designs for Ironhide and Ratchet, but the rest? A step or two closer to the toys, while retaining the more anthropomorphic proportions, wouldn't have been a bad thing.

 

I don't have a problem with faux parts as long as it's done right. If the faux part is hidden well in vehicle mode or the faux mode prominent with the actual part hidden in robot mode, I'm 100% fine with that. It's when there is no effort to hide the faux part that bugs me like the pic of that Jazz a few post ago or with Siege Mirage with the faux front end also visible at the back of his vehicle mode.

 

I hate fake parts. The obsession with 100% cartoon accuracy often results in pulling random bull that shouldn’t have been necessary. Like Kingdom Rhinox, for example. Since his rhino jaw gets wider when it goes on his chest, they decided that they had to cheat and give him a fake one. I’ve been intending on collecting all of the season 1 Beast Wars characters from Kingdom, but that fake jaw ruined it for me so much that I’ve decided to just buy a T30 Rhinox online.

Giving toys fake parts makes them feel cheap and more fake. I like to imagine that, sitting on my desk, I have a tiny representation of how the character actually works. When you take out the functionality that the character has, it doesn’t feel like that character.

Even if there was a certain case where giving a character a real part would make them look silly (like if someone has the roof of their car mode on their chest, and using the real roof makes them have an overly big torso), there are still plenty of times that using the real part would not have ruined the toy. Like MP-44’s windows. There is nothing about his actual windows that would look bad as his chest. The only reason they gave him fake windows was so that they could replicate the shitty, low detail look of a cheap cartoon’s animation model.

 

I would argue that with Kingdom Rhinox, his chest armor was never supposed to use the rhino jaw. It looks like it because that was an artistic choice to make it emulate the animal form. From that point of view, it’s not even a faux piece.

But really, you gotta look at the big picture and the end result. With Kingdom Rhinox, giving him the real Rhino jaw would have resulted in a really shrunken and ugly looking chest design that didn’t reflect the animation model. Or, you could have sacrificed the rhino mode and given that mode a huge rhino mouth. Either way, the “faux” mouth gives you a pretty good robot and rhino modes.

It comes down to what you prefer and I prefer “cheating” if it results in good looking final designs. I could understand if faux parts didn’t really add much in contrast to the real parts but that’s not the case. We have plenty of examples of wonky proportions because real parts are used. If that’s your preference, have at it. I really dig the better proportion style we’ve been getting.

 

Faux parts are an excuse for designer circlejerking.

Designer: Hur dur! I made a robot car with nine wheels, two hoods, and three windshields!
Me: And how does that make it a fun toy?
Designer: Toy? Fun?

Something else I miss about GoBots. Remember when you could actually play with them and not spend 10 minutes carefully moving seven clear plastic doors around to shave a millimeter off the shoulders? Even as recent as AEC/Classics they were actual action figures that didn't just sit on a shelf in between poses. Modern design is lazy lazy lazy.

Edit: It's like the explosion in backpacks that we had. Look at T30 Swerve, a $5 toy from almost 10 years ago, and tell me there's nothing they can do about backpacks.

 

I’m against faux parts. I prefer a robot mode that accommodates the vehicle parts rather than hide/replace them. The main issue for some people is having two of the same “part” visible in either mode, but it’s actually the transformation that concerns me. I like seeing how a part of the vehicle translate to robot mode and vice versa, so faux parts sort of ruin that allure to me. It’s the same reasoning for why I dislike partsforming that’s just straight up removing a piece of the altmode and putting it back for robot mode.

 

The chest armor is supposed to use the rhino jaw! The animation model emulated the toy, but tweaked the proportions. But it IS actually the lower jaw of the rhino mode.

 

And that Rhino looks nothing like the animation model. Modern Kingdom Rhinox looks closer to the animation model in both modes (IMO) but the chest had to use a faux jaw to achieve that.

These are simply design decisions because plastic can’t shapeshift like cgi. Like or dislike them, there’s purposely designed to achieve a goal.

 

But T30 Rhinox used the real jaw and it looked completely fine.

 

Then blame Mainframe for their Rhinox design because out of the three Rhinox figures, the Kingdom one uses a faux mouth but looks closest to animation model.

Some fans are happy with the T30 design but it clearly sacrifices the robot chest design to avoid using faux parts. That’s a fair design choice. But the opposite is also true- Kingdom uses faux parts but gets a “better” chest design. It’s completely up to your preference. Neither design avoids making sacrifices.

 

It only doesn't match the animation model because Mainframe chose to differ from it. This is the source material, and both the toy and the animation model based on the toy have the actual rhino jaw as chest armor. Faking it on Kingdom Rhinox wasn't necessary.

My point exactly.

 

You prioritize how closely modern updates emulate the original toys and that's fine. I don't prefer that. I want to get toys that look closer to what we got on screen and Kingdom achieved that. I think Kingdom looks better overall in both modes then original BW and T30 and I have no problem that it 'cheated' to do that.

Mainframe deviated from the original toy design because if they emulated the toy design onscreen it would have looked terrible. Mainframe Rhinox looks great. It would have been a huge mistake if Mainframe stuck closely to the original toy designs in the first season of Beast Wars because the characters would have looked liked toys instead of actual beasts.

 

Honestly I couldn't give a f. If both modes look good then I'm all for it. Same thing with parts forming.

 

If both modes look good to me I'm not too bothered either way by faux parts. I do think it's a bit silly getting really upset about faux parts though.

 

More or less, just not appropriate

 

Very surprised to see such an impassioned defense of Kingdom Rhinox. That was the first figure in awhile that I actively hated. I got so frustrated trying to transform it that I wanted to throw it at a wall and smash it. But the faux parts dont really have anything to do with that...

 

It’s not really that complicated once you get the hang of it it was frustrating when I first got it but after transforming it a few times it grew on me.

 

There is no actual problem with faux parts.

Some people just don't like them, and that's fair enough. But there's nothing wrong with it.

 

If you don't have a problem with faux parts, then I wouldn't go looking for a reason to dislike them. Enjoy the fact that you are immune to it bothering you!

I tend to dislike faux parts because it takes me out of the 'immersion' for lack of a better word. At the end of the day, these are toys, but I enjoy them as a miniature depiction of a 'real' robot. A 'real' robot wouldn't need fake wheels to give the impression that they came from the alt mode, they would either have the wheels from the alt mode or a different detail entirely. They have to use fake parts because they're toys and not the 'real' thing, and so the faux parts basically scream 'I AM A TOY' to me. It's the same reason I usually don't like hollow parts or over-the-top missile launchers - they're a result of it being a toy, not a result of the character design.

That being said, I think I'm also have a stricter definition of faux parts that other's do. If the faux part looks significantly different from what it's faking then I don't really see it as a faux part. For example, I don't see Kingdom Dinobot's chest as a faux-part because it looks so different from the raptor head that I see it as 'inspired by' his alt mold parts rather than the faking it. Same with Kingdom Blackarachnia's lower torso - it's clearly inspired by a spider's eyes, but the color, arrangement, and number of eyes is entirely different from the beast mode.

 

It's a four-way split of what you value - Bot mode accuracy, alt mode accuracy, transformation sense and features. I'm about an equal split between all four.

For a legends I don't mind. Legends Jazz mentioned above doesn't bother me.
For a masterpiece, it should not have faux parts, especially since the prices keep going up. I like how Megatron's legs slim down and other bots chest collapse in.

For the middle ground voyagers and deluxes it has to be within reason and not at the sacrifice of the transformation. I'm okay with what they did with Runabout/Runamuck's wheels. I'd have to go back and think about whether WFC Mirage and Sunstreaker needed to be done the way they were done.

As far as features, adding some removes other engineering freedoms and forces faux parts. How necessary are ankle tilts and waist swivels and wrist articulation? How limiting are they. What about the need to put holes everywhere for the WFC series for weaponizers+? Or the old requirement to have electronics in leaders.

At the end of the day the biggest no-no for me is when the faux parts and alt-part can be seen at the same time such as seeing six wheels in robot form.

Ending note. I've always wondered who had the final decision on making live-action movie bumblebee have his license be his crotch plate.