I like complexity to be within reason. If it gets in the way of transforming the figure you can be sure that it's on the wrong side of the complexity line.

Good complexity is something like the Prime Vehicon where the entire top of the car folds into the guy's legs. It's like creating whole real estate out of nothing but folding panels, and it still walks away with working knee joints.

 

Yeah, welcome to Brainstorm. I don't see a problem with that.

Brainstorm and Arcee look terrific to me. No complaints.

 

Arcee looks like shit because of the backpack and Prime is self explanatory, but if more like Brainstorm show up I won't complain about it too much.

 

arcee kind'a looks like an official release of that Valkyrie toy released 5 years ago, doesn't it?

 

I don't really care how it transforms as long as it's good in both modes if it can flip over and change in 3 steps but is still good in alt mode and as articulated as usual what's the point of making it more complex and up the price more?

How much more complex can the skinny jet be without having tons of mess on him?

 

Something in me wants to say between the Official photos and the case pictures the backpack looks like it's positioned differently for Arcee. I like the figure already but I have the feeling the stock photo is once again goofed as the case pic looks like the two "turbine" things look like they can go slightly more towards the middle. This could cut down the huge "camping backpack" look.

Brainstorm looks to be greatly done. Yes his transformation might not be on the fiddly, rage inducing mess ROTF Rampage was but it looks good to me in both modes. I welcome most of the new Generations.

Prime, as much as I know I probably will snag him I feel weird when I look at the pics. I want to like him but the proportions on him, both in truck and robot just don't look right. That and the fact they are cheating on the chest windows, going so far as to have the truck's being a backpack is just, meh.

 

Damn it, I thought we all agreed the backpack was to be expected. EVERY SINGLE ARCEE-BASED FIGURE EXISTANT HAS A GODDAMN BACKPACK.

 

I'm totally fine with simplistic transformation, complex transformations seems overrated to me (pls refer to MP-9 Rodimus).

 

Brainstorm and Arcee are good as they are. What were you expecting? To overly complicate their transformation to get the same result? Does anyone think Arcee could look as good as now and have all of her alt mode magically disappear into her robot mode? How should that work?

Also Arcee NEEDS to have a backpack

 

Brainstorm is an exception. That's how the G1 toy was and the Headmaster more than makes up for it. HEAD ON.

Optimus, on the other hand, he cheats way too much. Fake windows, bad proportions, the transformation looks simplistic. It has no need to.

Also, where can I find a pic of the Superion silhouette. I haven't seen it yet.

 

Here ya go. Btw I'm kinda worried about those skinny thighs..

 

I really don't care. If the original didn't bother hiding the arms, fine, but I'd expect the update made decades later, with all the advancements of toy technology, to do better.
I mean, damn, we expect a modern Ironhide to have a head, right?

But this is very much true.

 

I fail to grasp the fanbases' continued dig at simplification, considering what the hell we all grew up on.

Generation One is the mother of simple toys, look at the Jumpstarters, the Diaclones, the Throttlebots fer Christ's sake.

Beast Wars introduced ball joints, but none of their transformations were any more complex than G1 figures, they just had more joints for posing.

Car Robots are simple, fast and easy to transform as well.

Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Classics, Animated, Prime, Generations, they are all simple and fast transformations. Hell even the Alternators and Masterpiece figures, some of the most complexly engineered figures out there still have the basic simple transformation steps.

As we grow older we see all of these adult oriented figures with all these panels and we think the engineering has grown leaps and bounds ahead of the times. We perceive an evolution of complex transformations with fifty different steps to go from one mode to the next.

I have no idea what you folks are on, but can I have some?

Kids may have found certain figures too hard to transform (Yeah right, I still say it was the parents trying to help their kids that got frustrated at how long it was taking to figure out the steps.), but at the end of the day my Generations Rhinox still transforms the same way just about every other beast-former has in the history of quadrapedal beast modes. Stand him up on rear legs, rotate a few things/elements around and voila, a transformer in robot mode.

Everyone keeps saying Hasbro's design team is simplifying the transformations, cutting out steps, doing away with the complex stuff... To quote a famous film. 'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.' (Forgive me if I botched that, it's been a while since I dredged it up from memory and it's still early around here.)

Seriously, Complexity has never existed, not to the extent that a lot of you seem to think it has, a few rare exceptions may exist where there are too many steps for their own good, but 98% of all Transformers toys have been cleverly engineered works of art that convert from one mode to another, simple, intuitive basic fun.

Hasbro isn't doing anything different in how they approach making these figures, the processes have evolved and been refined over time, but the same basic process of getting a robot with a car hood front chest and door wings into a car is still there. As we grow older and observe how the different design teams work we simply start to see all of the steps at a glance, because we've gotten so used to how things work we can strip them and re-build them in our sleep like some kind of military gun savant thing.

It is not simplification, it is awe at last giving way to familiarity, to blandness and eventually to disgust because nothing inspires that same feeling of awe we had when we cracked open our first figure back in the day and successfully transformed him for the first time.

 

Superion has always had skinny thighs

 

Yeah but it looks awesome so I don't see the problem  

 

Heaven forbid I expect engineering to somehow improve as time goes on. MMC got theirs to be minimal.

 

Its the concern over poseability and structural integrity of the combined mode rather than aesthetic accuracy to its g1 self.

 

The two leader megs the voyager ops so much fail ill check back for pivs of these combiners

 

Yeah, but all the small hinges and folding panels that they used would probably not pass Hasbro's safety tests.

Granted, there may have been a way to minimize the backpack that would still have passed, but I'm not a toy designer.

Heck, for all we know there might be a way to fold it down smaller and whoever set it up for display just didn't transform it right.

 

I really get the feeling you haven't seen the display case pics. The backpack compresses much more than it looks in the press pic.