On shelves in like Taiwan and the Philippines, maybe, but the reissues only showed up like last week and the Legacy and Buzzworthy stuff is still coming soon in these parts.
To be honest, today\'s stream was super disappointing...the only real new reveal was SS Sludge...But I understand that they are working hard to keep things coming, so I respect that.
April’s too long to wait, I’m counting on the leakers to succeed where Hasbro failed miserably (yet again as usual) and reveal everything in the next couple weeks Hasbro should’ve made it worth my while and revealed Legacy waves 2 & 3 like I wanted!
There are people who engage with more common social media (Facebook, Twitter). Some of those watch the stream, but probably most of them actually get the follow up information in social media and news outlets generated by the stream. I am talking the actual Hasbro social medias, not the fan groups. Even with those that don't directly follow/like the official socials end up with the barrage of sponsored/ads that are generated by the stream. That is something easy to lose sight of from our perspective. The stream itself is a lynchpin for a media push, but most of the interaction takes place outside the stream in places we often ignore. My toy purchases are not much influenced by the online ads, I've already decided to purchase months ahead of time in most situations. Yet there are a ton of fans that do. Of the dozen or so Transformers fans I directly interact with in physical life, I'm the only one on any boards or dedicated groups. Those people see ads. They are influenced and are informed by them. A small minority have watched the streams. I have one friend who watches some of the streams, but absolutely stays clear of any of the message boards, subreddits, and social media groups.
I think a lot of us find the behind the scenes stuff really interesting, it's just that we are impatient for reveals. I wish they'd just do a quick reveal of everything they are going to show at the begining, and then do deep dives talking about each figure. That way people can go if they aren't interested, and the ones that are can relax now that they know everything that is coming and pay attention to the anecdotes and details.
With the Sludge release, if they don't take the extra bit of plastic they used to make Wheelie and Daniel for Grimlock and Slug to give him an accessory that does this, I'm going to be awfully disappointed:
That I all agree with, and I think they should pivot the messaging a little bit and dig deeper into that aspect.
The funniest part about the vid is that Sludge won't have a stupid character with no articulation sitting on top of him to justify his price (the only reason Hasbro made Wheelie and Daniel to begin with) and yet no one cared or complained about it that I saw anywhere. And he's still the vid's MVP! However..... Would it have killed Hasbro to have Sludge come with 3 swords instead?
Transformers and Pokemon are very different though. I'm old enough to remember when people seriously thought that the original 151 Pokemon were it and there being more was a big deal. Now, they ALWAYS add more. With Transformers though, it's always been slow to add new characters and it's been even slower to keep them. I remember when adding Drift in the late 00s was a huge deal, and he's gotten 1 Generation figure ever (not counting movie Drift or RID2015 Drift). Windblade was a major deal 8 years ago, and has gotten two mainline generations figures ever - one in Generations and one in Titans Return. Impactor, a 30 year old charager getting a toy in Siege was huge. It's not even like it's these designers too. It was this way 10 and 15 years ago. There is just a massive reluctance to add new G1 characters. Take RID2015 Strongarm. She'd fit really well in Generations, but she's another forgotten character. But they've done Arcee in 2020 and 2021, and now they're about to do Arcee in BB in 2022, in Prime/Legacy in 2022 and, if rumors are true, a "better G1 Arcee" either lin late 2022 or 2023. This again, I think makes Transformers close to X-Men. The X-Men spent their first 25 years adding new characters all the time, but since the mid 1990s, starting with Maggot and Cecilia Reyes, everyone whose joined has been a temp at best, and really an accessory to those X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold characters. Like who the heck remembers when Warpath was an X-Man? Or the South Asian "Thunderbird"?
Sadly, I don’t think that will happen. This does beg the question of if there actually we’re any plans for a mini figure, and if there were and it got scrapped, when did it happen? Where did the excess plastic go?
What are you talking about? They've turned remastered versions of the older generations a pillar of the franchise. What do you think Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee are? Hell, every new Pokemon game typically features more *old* Pokemon than new ones. And of those new ones, several of those are often tied back to older gens as well. The current newest game (Legends: Arceus) is literally a prequel that features a ton of callbacks to the Diamond/Pearl generation. How is that any different than what HasTak do with Transformers? WfC and Legacy have a ton of examples of that. You've got your straight "returns" in stuff like Prime, Bee, Soundwave, Blaster...you've got the new takes on classics in stuff like Galaxy Upgrade Prime, Bulkhead, and Arcee, and then you've got your all new stuff in guys like the Fossilizers. And much like Transformers, whenever they put new stuff in you've got a bunch of older fans who get mad because a sentient ice cream cone makes no sense despite their favorite generation included a sentient electric ball. My guess would be the extra materials go in to his neck and tail since one is definitely larger than anything on Slug and I think his tail will end up bigger as well. I get being bored by the BW stuff after the 86 reveals, but at the same time I loved getting confirmation on those and knowing how we'll get access to them. Even though I've been buying a ton of the 86 stuff, it's less because of the "86" part and more because it's been some cool stuff.
Plus people seem to have missed the note that Transformers(and all of their brands) are a marathon, not a sprint. They're going to dole out reveals here and there so that they have something to reveal throughout the course of the year. That's why we didn't get some characters in Earthrise...we got them in Kingdom. That's why we didn't get some characters in Kingdom, we're getting them in Legacy. It's also likely why we won't get some characters in Legacy...we'll get them in whatever the next line is called. Hasbro has no financial incentive to release everything you might want right away. That just means you buy and then you never buy anything else. So they string you along by saying "You'll get that last 84-86 character you've been wanting, but maybe in two years time. Instead here's a bunch of stuff that might be cool that you might want also!" That's how Hasbro got me, a VERY NOT Beast Wars fan, a "truck not monkey" guy, to buy every Beast character because the toys are so goddamn fucking cool I couldn't resist. So in my quest to complete the last handful of characters I need for G1 and get out, I also got into Beast Wars.
I'm gonna guess the neck ratchets and head pieces. That's more substantial engineering than Grimlock or Slag had. It's basically Slag, minus the fill and head, with a new big neck part that articulates.
