This’ll sure to be a fun question, but what do you think was the best decade for TF toys? I personally think that honor goes to the 2000s (2000-2009), having unmatched plastic quality, the best gimmicks to come out of the franchise, and the arguably best TF toyline of all time (Classics).
Hard one for me, I’d say 2020-now, for good figures and accuracy, but the 2000-2009, were good as toys, and plastic quality
I can't say any 10 year increment is better than another. I would say there are just lines that aged better than others. But, I will say 2000-09 also, because it gave us the Unicron Trilogy (aged amazingly well), RID2001, Animated, Alternators, ROTF, Takara/Hasbro reissues galore, intro to MP... but minus Classics Besides Optimus Prime, Seekers mold, and Henkei Astrotrain, none of Classics figures aged well IMO or have any charm (maybe Megatron and Jetfire) and got replaced hard with WFC. I felt during this era toys were super affordable and you never felt much buyer's remorse buying at MSRP. But that's just my opinion.
Damn this is a pretty hard one, but looking over my collection, the majority seems to be from the 2010-2019 range. This time period gave use some of the best Masterpiece figures and saw the launch of Studio Series! Of course none of that could’ve happened without the prior decades coming first. 1980’s gave use G1, 1990’s Beast Wars and the 2000’s had Car Robots, Unicron trilogy, Animated and the first two Bay movies. So much originality and diversity in those first 30 years. The brand just kept reinventing itself. I suppose 2010’s was the decade of redoes and this trend has continued into the 2020’s. This has given us many of the best figures based on prior iterations.
We all have our preferences, but to be honest, objectively speaking it's gotta be the 2000s. The Franchise had two major explosions in popularity, first with Armada in 2002 and then with the first Bay movie in 2007. The plastic quality was top-notch, the majority of the toys were incredibly fun, they were toys that created new fans while homaging the toys of yesteryear, and it seemed like everyone involved in the franchise was letting their creativity loose which resulted in all these fun toys.
The decade of RiD, UT, Animated and the beginning of Classics of course! Imagination & fun! I remember in the UT days waiting for the reports on what the next line would have - characters (returning and new), action features & theme. The line was kept new and fresh, rather than uniform. Didn't know how good we had it ...
I can't fucking believe I'm saying this but the 2020 and on. Look this isn't to take away from the other years but besides the yellowing issue(don't get me started) the Tformers we've received this year are peak in my opinion. Legit the best version of most characters we've ever gotten so far.
My knee-jerk reaction was to say “all of them”. They were all “the best” in their day. The 80s gave us the beginning of the whole thing…90s upped the engineering and opened up some totally new aesthetics…and the 2000s gave us everything and the kitchen sink (RID, UT, Classics, Alternators, Bayverse, TFA, etc.). Crazy. I look at the 2010s and 2020s (so far) as refinements on the 2000s. There’s still variety, but it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. The 2000s was a great example at throwing tons of shit against the wall to see what sticks…lots of good shit in there too. But, I feel like the 2020s so far are giving us the best toys we’ve had. Not necessarily my favorite toys, to be clear, but technologically the best.
The 2000's because that's when I found Universe Prowl at Walmart for $7.77. That'll never happen again!
That era marked a genuine legitimate interest in actually making kids want to try out the franchise with gimmicks (ie UT), wildly different aesthetics (Animated) whilst trying to please the older crowd with MPs, instead of mediocre collectables with none of the budget or attention which is Generations today and the souless aesthetic of CV and ES.
While I’m partly bias towards the 90’s, can’t deny the 00’s had a lot more going for it. Like so many solid figures from multiple lines with prices we could only dream about these days.
I don't know each decade has something suspect in it, it's hard to say. I think the best individual year though was 2010 Beast era was fun times though so maybe 1990's just for Beast Wars.... and unlike some people I actually like Pre G2 late era G1 as well and I used to say my single fave teams were 1990's ones the Predators and the Skyscorchers... There is a whole lot more toys made in totaly in later years though. But there was few flies in the ointments = for all it's problems G2 is still better than Nu-Rid overall.
2000s were good, but I'd say the 2010s. Had some rough patches due to budgets, there's no denying that, but had much more strong points. Mainline had Prime (especially 1st Edition) and Thrilling 30 which brought us some of the best figures to ever hit retail, followed by the Warden era which saw the return of the "impossible" gimmicks of the early 2000's like Combiners and Headmasters. The introduction of actual price points in Generations, giving us finally Leaders and the introduction of Titan Class. And the decade ended with the introduction of Studio Series and WFC, which brought an attention to detail of sculpt, scale, and articulation from Hasbro that usually was reserved for the company's other "collector" lines but was often lacking and ignored in Transformers. Basically this was the decade Hasbro finally started to take things a lot more seriously. Then outside of Hasbro of course TakaraTomy brought us the rise of Masterpiece by soft relaunching the brand from novelty into a true tentpole of Transformers as a whole. TakaraTomy even during the darker times of the product quality still came out swinging by giving even the worst of the mainline a premium treatment, and was still putting out even some of their own unique original product that gave us a real choice between their version and Hasbro's that I think too many took for granted, and even since brand unification I think their design team is likely a big proponent in pushing Hasbro to take their product much more seriously themselves and to frankly just make better figures. And speaking of choices, we also saw the rise (and possible peak) of 3rd Party TFs which revitalized the brand in a different way, since it was during this decade we saw the major switch over from just upgrade kits for mediocre Hasbro product to full on 3P branding with original figures which gave us more collecting options than ever before. With media we had more movies of course with 2019 sneaking in Bumblebee to end things on a pretty good high note, but also the Prime cartoon which (mostly) saw critical acclaim, two of the best Transformers video games ever made with WFC and FOC, and throughout the decade we had the height of Transformers comics with IDW's run which saw actual praise from the industry and not just from fans but also non-Transformers fans in a way that we never had before and will likely never have again.
Each decade of Transformers has its own charm in but I think there's something to be said for the insane trajectory of the 2000s. The brand had so many stark changes in identity in that period, even moreso than it did in the 90s when, before Beast Wars, it was struggling to stay relevant. I mean, imagine traveling to the year 2000 and showing a Transformers fan Animated Blurr, MP Grimlock, and RotF Optimus Prime. Not only did they come out within that decade, all three toys came out at around the same time. The aesthetic diversity and massive leaps in engineering would be pretty shocking. Don't get me wrong, a Transformers fan in 2010 would probably be astounded by, say, CW Devastator and Siege Jetfire, but I don't think the whiplash would be on the same level.
I voted 2010's but honestly I think 2016 to the present. Titans Return started the current golden age. I love that we've gotten excellent modern updates of lesser known G1 Transformers such as Hardhead, Spinister, Krok and Rippersnapper. Who saw modern updates of Fasttrack and Slammer, where Slammer is given an actual robot mode? Then there's the retroactive addition of characters from modern series into G1 like Barricade, Knock Out and Scourge or Diaclones like Lift Ticket and Cordon. There's also the new characters like Off Road and Slash or characters based on other franchises like Bugbite, Draculus and JP-93. I know people complain about QC issues which there have been, to say nothing about availability but for the most part we really have gotten it good.
