When they're designing the toys how does their thinking process work? Sticking the gigantic Dinobots in the deluxe size class just seems like something that wouldn't/shouldn't even enter their minds. The Dinobots shouldn't be any smaller than Leader class. But to sell more toys & make them more affordable Voyager would be acceptable.

The deluxe class should be strictly for small shit like cars, motorcycles & small animals. Not planes, space ships or large dinosaurs. When they design the toys do they ever even try to match the character with a size class that makes sense? I know the answer is no but why not? They give us a fucking Voyager rhino & a deluxe triceratops. You can't even play with them together, you have to keep them separate. I don't understand why they can't try to match up the alt mode with an appropriate size class. Why is that so hard? Why is that asking too much? I know scale has always been an issue with Transformers but they could do a lot better with just a little effort.

There's no rhyme or reason to it. How do they decide which character ends up in which size class? What makes them decide a character like Slug or Scorn will go in the deluxe class & Rhinox needs to be a voyager? Does the question even come up or do they just throw names wherever?

 

Probably due to the fact they are releasing the large amount of dinobots into the Toyline of the latest movie and due to the fact that deluxe class sells ALOT more than the voyager or larger classes.

Plus if they did ALL THE DINOBOTS AS VOYAGERS and other voyagers that are already made ...there would be people unable to locate and purchase the missing transformers not carried at their local stores.

Personally, The most voyagers I have seen target or TRU or walmart carry at one time is 4 different types.

 

Dart board

 

i don't know.. but the dinobots NEED voyager molds.. it helps hasbro. especially by releasing the deluxes first. then releasing voyager versions.

i mean.. we have prime, grimlock, galvatron, and hound as voyagers.. who else is there? .. DINOBOTS!.. and i sure as hell hope that slog isn't the only non grimlock dinobot to get a voyager mold. especially since it looks like he won't be in the movie.

i REALLY hope hasbro gives us all of the robots from the movie. but i highly doubt that will happen, which sucks.

we at least need voyager versions of scorn and slug.. it's REALLY not too much to ask. seriously.

 

Still waiting on my bigger cons from the first trilogy, cough cough.........Blackout

 

Perhaps they make more money out of unique purchases of smaller affordable toys, rather than purchases of large expensive items by returning customers?

 

There is a rhyme or reason to it, it's all about sales. It's about what will sell at a given size class, and in the end Hasbro is about creating a product, selling it and getting a profit from it.

 

Coin toss.

 

Yeah, unfortunately I was thinking the same thing.


Right from the beginning in 84 I wish they made a rule that cars would never be larger than deluxe & jets would never be smaller than voyager. The early G1 waves were headed in that direction. The cars were small while Optimus, Jetfire & the seekers were large. They were off to a good start. Now I have bins full of deluxe jets with a leader Jetfire coming up. Pisses me off!  

 

Rolll a dice.

 

These things sell no matter what size class they are. It's not like there's a massive difference between deluxe & voyager anyway. Rhinox would have made more sense in the deluxe class & Slug makes more sense in the voyager or leader class. The FOC seekers or Armada Starscream would have fit better in Rhinox's slot.

Why would they make a huge rhino & a tiny jet? Who looked at that & said "yeah, that's good! Lets go with that". That person is doing his job wrong! Hey Hasbro! Give ME that job, I can do a million times better.

 

To collectors they will sell no matter what. But for kids its a hard sell for the bigger stuff. So it makes sense to make ctmost of them deluxes. Easier to collect them all than have all of them cost 20+.

Edit: Damned crappy keyboard.

 

No way. Rhinox is perfect for Voyager both due to his size and how complex the toy needed to be in order to be screen accurate. He's supposed to go with his Beast Wars brethren, not FOC Seekers. Demoting Rhinox do Deluxe would be doing an awful job.

 

It's less about alt mode scale and more about robot mode scale. Also, we haven't seen the movie, but based on how it appears thus far, the other Dinobots are comparable sizes to Grimlock, so they'd need to be around Leader class. That's not happening. To even make them Voyagers, Hasbro would have to sacrifice slots for other characters. So realistically speaking we wouldn't expect to get Grimlock, Evasion Optimus, or Drift at the very least, in order to get a Voyager class Strafe / Slug / Scorn, but even then we'd be missing Slash and you'd have a very incomplete movie lineup. If you wanted some more Leader Dinobots then you have to give up the existing Leader Optimus, and a Voyager would be out of scale.

You can't have everything. There's only so many slots. Wait, and maybe Hasbro will produce larger toys. Maybe not. Time will tell. I'll be enjoying my awesome toys in the meantime.

 

With all due respect, Catatronic, it appears you know very little about this topic. I have a feeling if Hasbro gave you the reins, you'd drive the company into the ground. No offense, just a colorful way to illustrate how far off from reality your gripes are.

 

How do you guys know so much about how many slots have to be available & how big each figure has to be? You guys act like you know so much about everything. I'm just curious. Do you or have you actually worked for Hasbro?

You say in order to make these characters in this size these other characters have to be sacrificed. Do you have any hard facts to support this? Do you know for a fact that Hasbro has set in stone an actual number for each size class? None of you guys know what Hasbro is up to until the information leaks on sites like these. Yet you are all experts.

Also lets look at whats NOT selling in the stores. I see those ugly Titan Heroes shelf warming everywhere. Now you're telling me those can't be sacrificed in order to make larger Dinobots? Most stores I go to have hardly any deluxes or voyagers. They can't keep them in stock. The Titan Heroes aren't selling, every store is overloaded. And the Titan Bumblebee looks like a giant wax birthday candle instead of an action figure. Who in their right mind is going to want that piece of shit? And then there's that super sized Titan Grimlock I see everywhere. And then we have those Dinorider things & all the 1 step flip changers that are pegwarming everywhere. So a voyager class Slug or Scorn is totally out of the question because all that other shit, THAT ISN'T SELLING, is way more important right? Now the point of all this is that you're telling me it has to be this way. Changing anything & doing anything differently will drive the company into the ground.

I think the real actual fact is that it wouldn't really make a difference. If they tried to do a better job of matching the character to the proper size class I don't think it would hurt the company or the brand or the franchise in the slightest.

And have you seen what they did with Bumblebee? Every size class, every possible color, a million different (expensive) molds. Now for this movie the Dinobots are the main attraction. They should be pushing the Dinobots over everything else. The Dinobots are the money makers for this round. If they did to the Dinobots what they did to Bumblebee they would probably make more money. Dinobots in every size class & every color because the Dinobots are the stars of this new movie. Everybody is going to see this movie for the Dinobots, not Bumblebee or Optimus Prime. But what are they doing? All the posters & advertisements are still pushing Optimus & Bumblebee. Are they stupid? Are they that clueless? After 3 movies & 8 years they're still pushing Prime & Bee. When The Empire Strikes Back came out who did they push? Luke Skywalker & Darth Vader? NO! The pushed Yoda, Lando & Boba Fett. Because they were smarter back then.

It would be nice if I could ask Hasbro these questions directly because there's no way to get the actual factual answers on a fan site like this. You guys know as much as I do. It's like the blind leading the blind. I don't even know why I wasted my time posting this thread.


Well whatever! I hope everybody is enjoying their Titan Heroes! Make sure you light Bumblebee's head on fire at your child's next birthday party.

 

A lot of it likely has to do with character significance and design choice. You don't make big toys out of nobodies or minor supporting characters, or if the design is something that isn't to exciting like a U-haul truck or something bland, you're not going to waste a larger size class on it.

 

Can you imagine if we made all of the Dinobots(barring Slash) into Voyagers? Aside from the badassery that would ensue, that'd make at least 9 Voyagers including Evasion Optimus, Hound, and Galvatron in this toyline. Assuming there are no toy only characters, that leaves us with Voyagers outnumbering the deluxes we know of. We'd have a hard time completing the Dinobots if they distributed the Voyagers in 2-3 figures per wave, and even if Hasbro distributed more at a time, the more expensive Voyagers still outnumber the deluxes we have. They'll still be bought regardless, but we all have limited budgets, so I'm sure we'd all like to get more characters for less money.

 

Yeah, you have to be trolling, but I'll go on and refute for giggles.

1. I don't know about anyone else but when talking about characters needing to be sacrificed for more / bigger Dinobots, I'm referring to how Hasbro clearly has a set number of products for 2014. This isn't a debate thing, and anybody can plainly see that. X amount of deluxes, Y amount of voyagers, and of those they're further divvied up by film or non-film categories. Thus, if you want to get more voyagers, that would have to come from somewhere (see below before talking about costs again).

2. The Titan figures, among other figures, don't use the same budget as the mainline. That would be so insanely stupid that no corporation would possibly greenlight it. It's an experiment they're trying. It's not "cheapening the figures" or making them use less or worse quality plastic. It's a separate product. This is why Construct-Bots selling or not selling has no bearing on the budget for Generations. They're separate products. They have separate budgets. It's not "all Transformers under one budget". That makes no sense and again, no company has been stupid enough to do that for literally decade upon decade.

3. Them not selling is irrelevant. Hasbro sells to retailers. Retailers order X amount of product. If retailers are not seeing a return on that product, they do not order more, and the line is canceled or shrunk/modified until it does sell. This is basic economics and it's something that Hasbro has been doing for years. You should be rooting for them to not sell, considering that way retailers will be forced to clearance them for extremely low prices just to get rid of them, not order any more, and then proceed on without them. You talk about distribution for the mainline toys, though, and frankly speaking, demand is good. If you can't find the toys, you're either in a spot with a good saturation but not quite enough ordering, or stores that don't order enough, both of which are possible. The distro is admittedly the worst part of toy hobbyist stuff. That said, movie product gets significantly more placement than non-movie product, so...I'm not sure what you're really complaining about. My stores are usually barren and they're full (yes, including of voyagers and leaders and such, not just the subline merchandise).

4. Changing anything will drive the company into the ground?   Clearly that's why G1 eventually faltered and the brand nearly died, why Beast Wars was popular, why Armada made such a significant comeback with simplification and Mini-Con collection, etc. You have to be trolling, you can't possibly be serious.

5. Pushing Optimus and Bee is because they sell. But they're not exactly ignoring the Dinobots. Every piece of promotional material has been infused with dino-y goodness, and the toyline is RIFE with Dinobots. Of the Generations AoE stuff, what, about half of it is Dinobots? You also have Dinobots (at least 2-3) available in literally every subline. They're not ignoring them, you just don't understand how their marketing is working this time around.

Oh well.

 

Exactly what I though.