Are we considered a big fandom or small what do you guys think?

 

I think it’s medium, if not on the small side. There may be a good portion of members involved in online communities, but it’s certainly not to as large of an extent as Marvel or whatever the craze is now. Plus, a good portion of the fandom is in their late 30s and 40s, so some people might be jumping off the ship soon. Finding fans in real life is rare. I’ve met two in the past ten years.

 

I think we are relatively small. At least, I wish we were bigger. Exactly like @Slingshot said,

My friends that were fans before, when we were still kids, are not as fans anymore.
Also, just take the official Transformers page on Instagram as an example, it's only like 200 k followers. For a franchise, I think it's a quite small scale.

What do you think?

 

But on facebook there are 31 million fans and the page related to instagram has 2.3 million and transformers earth wars and forged to fight have over 10 million players

 

I'm not too involved on Facebook. I've noticed the community is pretty active on Instagram. I'm sure it's not large by any means. I'd say medium scale.

I also have one of those creative accounts. I still have a pretty small account, but I can tell you that the people visiting my page are usually between the ages of 35-44. To the surprise of no one, my audience is 94% men.

 

According to IDW writer, Mike Costa, there’s only about 100 of us.  

 

Definitely medium. We were small before the live action movies came out which for better or worse put us on the map. But our fandom is one of nostalgia for all ages. Transformers has proven its ability to go through numerous reboots and transform itself for each new generation. We have maintained the ability to hold yearly conventions since the 90s. But the biggest factor in my mind is just Hasbro and Takara constantly providing us with products making sure that we always have at least something to talk about.

 

Really? Maybe I follow the wrong pages!   Here's mine: TRANSFORMERS (@transformersofficial) • Instagram photos and videos   Send me some links if you could, I want to check it out  

You have a quite decent account! Hm, I've just followed you, at least to make it slightly diverse  

 

For basic fans, I'd easily go with "in the millions", as look at the movies' income (Box office $4.84 billion) as ONE example, but maybe a few hundred thousands that are "active" of actually collecting figures, staying on top of news, etc.

If the numbers were as low as some seem to believe, we wouldn't have the amount of weight to get masterpieces, to have votes for new figures, etc. We have lines and figures that are dedicated to the fandom.

Remember that 1K Unicron youfundme,.. that was a number of 8K pre-orders, and I'd say that only a small fractions of fans participated... and I'd say that was a very tiny percentage of fans that did.

You also have to consider those that aren't with disposable incomes so their hobby is very limited, but that doesn't make them any less than still being fans.

Then look at the 'cons... people go by the thousands (usually in the dozens) for each one, in any city that they happen.

 

I agree with you

 

I need context.

 

There's a lot of fans. Most of them aren't active participants in social media/forums I bet.

1% rule (Internet culture) - Wikipedia

 

Players doesn't equal fans. When I started playing, I didn't give a shit about Transformers. I thought that the "giant-robot MCoC repaint" looked fun.

 

Thank you! I appreciate that!

 

Mike Costa was interviewed as he was leaving IDW’s ongoing TF comic. His tenure hadn’t been a popular one & he endured a lot of unpleasant fans (I assume).
During this interview, he said that the entire online TF fandom- all websites combined, not just the IDW forums, consisted of roughly about 100 people.

Moonbase 2 Podcast: The Underbase Reviews Ongoing 31

 

We're somewhere between Starriors and Starbucks...which admittedly is a pretty broad range...

 

...hold on...

*counts posts, adds self*

...at least 12.

 

It partially depends on how you define fandom. Are we talking about current fans, or do kids who grew up with TF and have nostalgia for it count? Are we counting everyone who enjoyed a live-action movie (which is a huge portion of the population), or only people who have deeper knowledge of the lore? Are we only counting people with an online presence? It's hard to quantify people by "fandom", because it's a pretty vague term. I know lots of people who watched Transformers as a kid and can tell me the names of a bunch of Transformers, but don't actively follow the brand. I knew a girl who frequently wore a TF shirt around college, but couldn't tell me anything about the franchise outside of the Bay movies...and she didn't even seem to remember the names of those. A lot of people call themselves fans, but don't exhibit typical fan traits. And a lot of people exhibit fan traits, but don't consider themselves fans. It's hard to quantify where "fandom" begins and ends.

If we're only counting 'active' fandom members...people who actively follow the brand in a way that casual viewers don't (I feel like this is the usual metric for "fandom")...I'd say it's fairly small. Certainly less than stuff like Star Wars or Marvel. But it's not the tiniest either. It's not an obscure or little-known franchise. I live in a fairly rural area (with relatively few 'nerds'), and I've randomly met several active fans, and have known a lot of casual fans (mostly people who like the movies, but some cartoons too).

 

Thanks,

And I wrote that quickly.

I didn't even remember to mention the games as another source of fans, nor all the Youtube reviewers, and the followers and views that also represent a number of people with interest in TFs, and even if out of those numbers it would be 10%, that's still going to bump thousands more.

One thing that I get the vibe as I read other posts here, is that it feels that some people might only consider a range of people, including from their own countries and not consider how much impact there might be in some countries. Japan, China, many European or South America countries for example, and not just North America... with many that aren't going to be on more local forums, and then all the fans that simply don't do the online thing.

To use other robots fandoms, such as Soul of Chogokins as a comparison, which are from around 100$ to 1,000$ per figures, and the series has been extremely successful as they are making new ones on a regular basis.

The numbers are a fraction of the TFs fandom levels, and that's only with mangas, animes and games as the main appeal, but yet, the numbers are strong enough for the figures to keep being made and selling well enough to continue the series for a good 10+ years now.

And that's with no distribution in (North American and others) major stores outlets.

I'd almost ask, how many members here know about the Soul of Chogokins and if they have any, etc. and if they do, how do they compared in numbers to TFs, and how they get them.

So yeah, TFs fandom is huge.

 

A little related but, are there any YouTubers like Pixel Dan etc who go round conventions or whatever but are actually into Transformers stuff? I still enjoy watching the videos but it seems all the 'big' toy related content creators I follow all seem to not really care about TF stuff.   It's annoying when they see a pile of cool TF toys at a convention or store and skip pass it to go look at Star Wars or He-Man.