Maybe i am getting old, feeble and miss the Good Ole Days, but lately, the packaging for the larger TFs- voyager class and so on- just disgust me.

they are flimsy, hard as hell to open (Come on, all those tabs and still couldn't just get Blackout out of the box!) and well, add to it the taped down twisties...i am just not happy with em.

Does a toy need all that plastic window real estate these days?
i am also worried about storing my boxes.

and i can't tell you how many times i was left horrorified and then left a store empty handed by damaged boxes. At three wal-marts over a 6 month period, i never found a leader class Optimus Prime from the Cybertron line that didn't look like it got raped by the Samsonite gorilla.

the old G1 boxes- perfection. well a 9.5 because of that lip/flat piece of cardboard with the logo on top- my Megatron box that part folded down a bit over the years. but those boxes looked good, protected the bots and more manageable than these new ones.

 

Yeah, I don't much care for the way boxes have gotten. Pain in the ass to store, they don't look all that great either. I may not have grown up on G1, but I certainly prefer that style of packaging to the new ones out there. Hell Beast Wars had pretty decent packaging as well (nice art, tech spec, instructions, and even for larger figures the boxes were easier to store).

 

Eh, as long as the figure isn't effed up, I'll take what I can get. Hunting's a bitch enough as it is and internet markups are just bullshit.
DN

 

It is SUCH A PAIN to open figures nowadays. I agree. Getting them out takes 30 min sometimes with all the twist ties and freakin rubberbands that get caught on EVERYTHING! It took FOREVER to take Primus out of the package, let alone anyone else.

 

^ Agreed. I love the packaging on the Takara Collection reissues. Like a little display case all on it's own. Also, the Masterpieces are a joy to open, I'd untangle 500 of those twist-ties to get it out. Like fucking Christmas.

 

i thought hasbro was talking about getting rid of all the twistie ties because it was such a waste of materials?

but yes i love when i get a japanese item and i only have to cut 3 pieces of tape to get my figure out.

 

I have to agree with the tab and twisty issue, the amount they attach to a box these days is just bloody stupid, it takes you 20 mins to get a toy out of the box.

 

yes, but, i actually think it's half the fun, of getting a transformer, brand new, is taking it out of the box, and figuring out how to, i actually enjoy removing the twisty ties.

besides, you got to admit, it'd be pretty hard to steal one those in the store lol.

g1 boxes looked great, but they fell apart, way way easier then the boxes of today, i have beast wars boxes, that still look new, while my g1's which were just cardboard, while beast wars seems to have a thin layer of plastic or something to protect it, lol like the boxes of today have, the g1's were just that, cardboard, they looked great, but they don't last nearly as long. and they probably fall apart more easily.

and about the broken box thing...

it doesn't really matter to me, as long as the toy inside is alright lol.

 

the more elaborate the boxes the less i like them, i hate those die cut? thin card inserts in the cybertron and movie boxes, esp the thin curved one in the movie blisters. the larger boxes look like easter egg packaging. to think that the takara versions of the minibots from the microchange line actually came in tiny little boxes, not on card.

at least the animation boxes seem a bit more simplified and the artwork looks vibrant enough. The BW packages were OK but everything since makes me want to put it in the recycle. I especially despise cybertron and movie packaging, actually energon had nice artwork and the japanese energon stuff had nice rectangle boxes too, as did the BW line, BW cheetor for eg is so much cooler in the box than on card, good for storage to, i hate those big flapping blisters once theyve been cut, so frustrating!!

 

The BayFormers boxes are a pain to me. For one they're a sod to pick up one-handed if I'm trying to move them about - for some reason the curved end is usually the bit I seem to end up grabbing, and that way lies total dropping.
The other thing is the curved bit is usually an extra bit of length that's not even needed to pack the toy safely, and it's always the bit that things just won't fit by when I'm trying to store several boxed TFs in a single storage case. I can spend ages juggling boxes like jigsaw pieces when trying to store several away snugly together.

I can understand the twisties perhaps being a deterrent to people stealing the figure from the box in stores, but usually if someone wants to nick something they'll happily just grab the entire box and scarper than spend time fiddling with ties.
Just looking at some figures and the amount of twisties and elastic bands securing them, it's just crazy how many there can be. Does it really need that many?

If Japan can package their TFs so well, there's no decent reason why the ones I get this end of the world couldn't be done the same way.

 

Twist ties are the devil. Luckily a set of fingernail clippers will cut through them in a quarter of the time it would take to try and untie them all. I don't mind the packagin, I throw most of the boxes away only keeping the card backs from deluxes and scouts. But I can totally understand the frustration of MIB collectors, especially with the odd shapes of the boxes from recent lines. The ones from Cybertron were namagable, but the curved side of the Movie toys, while stylish IMO would be horrible to try to set up a decent display with. I hated the fishbowl Alternators Boxes since they weren't as stackable as the older ones.

 

That's another reason I only keep Japanese boxes. They don't just look nice but having a plastic tray instead of a million twist ties and some cardboard struts means I can be much more inclined to put the toys back into the boxes if needed.

 

Are you guys serious, bitching about toy boxes and twist ties? The ties are there to stop theft also, not just to make adults angry. Do you guys sit around and think of things to cry about or do things as simple as twist ties really bother you?

 

I'm with Taz on this. Sounds like some people have too much spare time on their hands and nothing serious in their lives to worry about. Must say, I'm jealous...

 

You know, I actually like twist-ties. I find untwisting them to be strangely therapeutic. Yeah, I'm a weirdo, I know. Those little clear elastic bands annoy the hell out of me, though, since I often don't see them.

As for the boxes, I don't actually own any movie toys bigger than deluxes, so I wouldn't really know. The boxes on my Classics voyagers aren't a huge problem to deal with.

The thing that annoys me most, however, is blisters (the plastic bubble attached to the cardboard), because I've just let them accumulate in my room so much that I think I'll need to hire a skip to get rid of them.

 

I clip the ties with my nail clippers. I guess it's a pain for anybody who is just a casual toy buyer (like a parent who bought the toy for their child) to open (casual enough not to use nail clippers). On the other hand, there's a lot of hardcore, blazing assholes here in the US who do things like stealing toys off the shelf.
The ties certainly won't stop all of them (like somebody else said, many thieves will just run off with the whole package) but I'm sure it deters some of them.

 

After opening a few 6" Titaniums, I don't think any of the mainline packaging is a pain enough to complain about.

 

i literally tear the boxes open and put them in the recycle bin. as for twist ties nailclippers or wirecutters rock

 

It's a public discussion forum. People can talk about whateverthehell they wanna talk about!