I'll start by saying that I'm a stickler for cartoon accuracy. Most of the time, I want the paint deco on my figures to match what I saw on the TV screen as a 1980's kid sitting in front of the TV before school or on a Saturday morning or even watching Beast Wars later on when I was in my late teens.

I absolutely appreciate the Hasbro unification with TakaraTomy resulting in more cartoon-accurate decos being released by Hasbro at much more cost effective prices here in the US than having to import the more accurate decos from TakaraTomy in Japan.

But, at the same time, I'll also say that I kinda miss having options. It was pretty damn cool not only just seeing the figures in both toy accurate (Hasbro) and cartoon accurate (Takara) decos but having a choice between the two.

Plus, the TakaraTomy versions always had the added bonus of a more premium paint deco and sometimes they would throw in an extra accessory like the Targetmasters that came with the Takara Legends figures (The Legends Targetmasters were infinitely better than the recent Hasbro ones in the current Prime Wars trilogy which are hot garbage but, that's another conversation.)

This goes all the way back to:

Classics (Hasbro) = Henkei (Takara)

Universe/Generations (Hasbro) = United (Takara)

Combiner Wars/Titans Return/Power of the Primes (Hasbro) = Legends (Takara)

^^^^ Am I missing any?

I know that we are getting some of the more toy accurate decos via Generations Selects but that pales in comparison to the way it used to be where virtually everything had both toy and cartoon accurate figures.

 

I don't. Not really.

Especially after Hasbro bumped up the price points, rather than trying to hold fast to the restrictive rock-bottom prices, I haven't been often been left wanting with any of Hasbro's deco choices in the last several years, other than maybe the odd black hubcap or such.

And it's not like TakaraTomy completely stopped. They just stopped doing premium decoes as a matter of course, probably because it wasn't seeing the greatest of returns for them.

 

I'll also add that I'm shocked that either Hasbro or Takara never reused the molds for the Legends Targetmasters.  

 

I do a bit, but my bank account definitely doesn’t.

 

Honestly, the Titans Returns Battlemasters were way better. Sure, the Legends ones are more articulated, but they're all floppy and fiddly, and barely hold together in weapon mode. The Battlemasters, by comparison, were all rock solid in both modes.

 

I paid far less at the time for Legends Misfire then what TR Misfire was going for.

 

I absolutely respect your opinion but, I strongly disagree. The molds, decos, and articulation of the Takara Targetmasters are light years better. If anything, the Takara ones look much, much better in both modes. And personally, I never had any issue with the way the Takara ones hold together.

 

Not really. I've been happy with the decos we've gotten in WFC and the exclusive Takara versions haven't impressed me.

 

It goes back further than that. Unicron trilogy had a lot of differences. Micron Legend Super Concoy doesn't have the GPS that Armada Prime does, Superlink Convoy has way brighter primary colours compared to Energon Prime.

I like choice. I also like different packaging. UT for example had much nicer full solid box artwork packaging for the first few years, compared to the Hasbro clear window boxes.

 

I do not. Say what you will about the current system, but it saves us money and does a better job (at least) of giving us a close approximation. Don't get me wrong, Legends made for some really impressive and beautiful figures, but they were generally double the price in a lot of places (not always), and sometimes unobtainable due to selling out so friggin' fast.

Now, everyone has equal suffering. lol

 

I do not. During POTP, yes. But since Siege? Hasbro stepped up their game so they had similar paint apps as what TT used to do. I do wish they’d continue with their own Selects, though, for retools like Star Convoy or Super Megatron. I do appreciate they did the POTP combiners with better paint apps, though.

 

I'm glad they improved the general quality of the Hasbro figures. That was really my beef. There were a few cases where I prefered the Hasbro over the Takara (especially in Combiner Wars, by Titans Return I was mostly Takara), but in general, I greatly prefer the increased paint & details, and I personally have been OK with the increased quality of the Siege/Earthrise/Kingdom fingures.

 

The retro packaging releases have narrowed the difference on a lot of things. And now that Commander class Primes are a thing standouts of that era like PMOP will eventually have new iterations.

The added expense (time or money) of getting the TT versions of figures doesn't pan out once the mold isn't as relevant. I thought my Henkie figures would be worth something but my CW G2 Menasor made up for it. Huh, ok.

 

Not one bit. The division and arguing (and entitlement) over which versions were better was honestly one of the most annoying things in the toy section of the forums. Now that they mostly do the same releases a lot of that particular negativity has been diminished, granted it's been replaced by other kinds of negativity in some ways   but at least now we're all arguing about the same toys

 

I miss the separate releases.
It was nice to have the option of a toon accurate release and a toy accurate version. Although Hasbro releases were often a weird updated mash-up of inspirations instead of real G1 toy accuracy.
I do hope if they update the Combaticons we'll get a toy deco version in Generations Selects.

 

That's more or less how I'm feeling toward the "premium finish" versions, though at first I felt that I liked the idea. Now it more seems like an enormous markup for a little bit of extra paint, and without any effort to resolve the difficulties of the underlying mold.

 

Yes, but not because one or the other was clearly superior.

I just liked having options (whether it was toy vs cartoon, US vs JP, or different choices for redeco). I'm really glad we got the '87 Headmasters during the split era so that people could (mostly) get either Rebirth or Headmasters styles for the main characters.

Like others have said, this really hurt during POTP where I know we could have gotten some cool stuff from Japan like Buster and Hydra. We did eventually get a new take on Abominus, but pretty long after the fact. WFC has honestly been pretty good, and most characters have been done in a way where I really don't pine for an alternative (like I did for the Headmasters). Maybe Takara might have skipped the battle damage in Siege? Who knows... Either way, we get loads of redecos and obscure ones too, so I don't feel like we're missing out of redecos/remolds that only Takara would have made in the past (stuff like Black Roritchi, or having Hasbro make half of the seeker redecos and Takara make the others). So I'm not really hurting any more. Plus, Takara still does occasionally make it's own stuff like Super Megatron, although that seems to have slowed down.

It's a bit ancillary to the toys, but I also enjoyed the Legends/CW/etc fiction, so I do miss that too.

EDIT: I also do agree that I am glad the tribalism over Hasbro vs Takara has gone away, although the toxicity is still around in other battles now.

 

I don’t, never cared enough to pay the extra price for the Takara versions. Hasbro stuff was good enough for me and now with it being even better it’s even less desire