How was that received by fans? ...I don't collect them; in fact I've never even played with one or seen one outside of of a box in the store. After watching some videos they come across as sort of a simplified Masterpiece figure. Accurate?
They seem to be hit and miss. Sideswipe is a mess while Barricade and Roadbust were alright. But unless you're just a movie TF nut, stick to Binaltech and Alternators.
Their vehicle modes were slightly inferior to Binatech, Alternators and Alternity (unfortunately). Some are better than others, but overall most were superior in detail to deluxe versions of the characters. Personally I think Takara's version of Sidearm Sideswipe and battle blades Bumblebee were superior to the HA versions. Otherwise these tend to be the best versions of these characters made. They scale very well with leader class figures. Many people (my self included) regard HA Jazz as one of the very best transformers ever made from any line.
Well received by most fans I believe. Sideswipe was IMO the weakest but the rest were good to great. Most are a bit more complex than the MP line thus far. All the MP's post MP-10 have had a fairly straight forward transformation where some of the HA's were rather complex... I'm looking at you Mudflaps...
They were actually pretty cool. I only have two (barricade and black bumblebee) and I'm selling them just due to space.. Pm if interested.
I think Human Alliance was a good idea since we got some great figures from it like Jazz and Bumblebee
human alliance was GREAT. even sideswipe was awesome.. just as long as you removed the two screws that held his shell on. his robot mode looks much better without all the kibble. even skids and mudflap look great together. barricade is awesome. jazz was incredible. SOOOO much better than the deluxe version. roadbuster was awesome. it's a shame leadfoot wasn't screen accurate, but even he was pretty sweet. and soundwave was great. the problem is that hasbro is REALLY stupid. i mean.. mudflap didn't receive a wise retail release in the US.. and instead of learning from that, they decided that wave one from dotm was going to be repaints of bumblebee and skids.. i mean.. seriously.. what the hell were they thinking. so, the domino effect begins. no one wants repaints of bumblebee and skids.. so they sit on the shelves forever, which means we don't get the last wave which included the figure that everyone wanted to begin with. pretty stupid. they probably saw sales and figured that no one was buying them because they're not interested in the line, when in fact lots of people were interested in the line, just not interested in a ton of repaints. also, with aoe rather than having a main line, a line for younger kids like fast action battlers, or cyberverse, and human alliance. they decided to go with like 5 different lines for kids and a main line. and judging by the sales so far, that plan doesn't seem to have worked.. like most of us expected.. well, those of us who's main response is always "these are kids toys". they went quantity over quality for aoe. rather than sharpening their focus on making a few things really good, they broadened their focus, cut costs, raised prices and tried to cram out a bunch of shit making the transformers section very confusing for people who don't know what they're looking for. it's such a shame too.. it seems like they have all of the license's for all of the vehicles. i mean, human alliance versions of crosshairs, drift, and ESPECIALLY lockdown would've been awesome. or hey, maybe they would've sucked since the design aesthetic is significantly different. so, who knows.
Sideswipe's backpack actually folds up nicely after a couple of simple mods. He still has the backpack, but it's more aesthetically pleasing. He's actually my favorite of the line. Jazz is a close second. I love the line. Really wanted Soundwave, but too expensive now. If there was ever a time for the HA figures, AoE is that time.
I quite like Sideswipe as well. I had no complaints with him until I picked up takara's screen accurate version of Sidearm Sideswipe and saw that figure actually has a much more detailed sculpt.
Human Alliance was awesome for the most part. Wish it was still going so we could have a bigger Lockdown. He should come with a bunch of accessories like gun face, a wolf, Dark Frasier, and Savoy.
Oh you're absolutely right. The amount of detail left off Sideswipe was borderline embarrassing with what the HA line was supposed to be. I look at Jazz and Sideswipe and the detail on Jazz is incredible. It has to do with Sideswipe's look though. He has a great stance with the mod and actually looks intimidating on my shelf. But I too got a Sidearm version, albeit Hasbro. I took him apart, repainted and added details, then made his blades out of Styrene on my laser at work. I had intended to make the same blades for HA Sideswipe. I think my biggest issue with the HA is the ridiculous blades, otherwise I love the figure. I think my Sideswipe is still in the Radicons if anyone cares to see the blades. EDIT: Yep it is: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/radicons-customs/436897-hftd-sideswipe-blades.html
Human Alliance was great (was just going through my extras to list in lots on ebay today). I think what killed it was bringing out the Black Bumblebee repaint and the Black Skids repaint at the start of the DOTM line. While we got Roadbuster, the clog left us without Soundwave stateside sadly. Barricade is actually my least favorite personally. But the sculpts were great throughout the line, and they make a great set when you put them all together. Sad that they didn't carry it over, because there would have been some great figures from Movie 4 to put into it (as well as ones they missed in the past).
I doubt that's what "killed it", since they were just simple repaints. I mostly think it was just too "premium" line and not really cost effective. Like they should have been more expensive for their complexity but they kinda couldn't charge too much at the same time. Similar to Alternators, the niche just couldn't sustain them.
I think barrelks means, and correct me if I'm wrong, but since the repaints were packaged heavily with little to no variety in the waves it left them as shelf-warmers, thus the later wave that had Soundwave was never picked up by stores. So essentially the line died due to no variety and poor sales. Honestly they should have done all the cars, no matter what: - ROTF Bumblebee - TF1 Barricade - TF1 (HFTD) Jazz - ROTF Jolt <----- I would kill for this!! - ROTF Sideswipe - ROTF Skids - ROTF Mudflap - DOTM Sideswipe (instead of the repaint) - DOTM Bumblebee (instead of the repaint) - DOTM Roadbuster - DOTM Tailspin - DOTM Leadfoot - DOTM Que - DOTM Soundwave *Dino is left out due to the Ferrari issue. You could even add in a DOTM Skids and Mudflap (and not the repaint of Skids we got) I think that would have given them PLENTY to work with and could do larger waves, cause around here they were hard to find, but you could find a ton of the repaints.
Oh, I admit I don't know how heavily they shelfwarmed since they didn't really sell any of them over here. I would have liked Soundwave to have bigger distribution since not only is he a fantastic and fun toy, but it would have made the possibility of some radicon/third party producing an addon set giving him better legs slightly more real, and I would buy that without even thinking.
Oh no kidding! The HA line could have essentially been Hasbro's "Masterpiece" line, in a sense. It's too bad it's gone.
I thought they were okay, but I wouldn't call myself a huge fan. They all looked fiddly and out of scale with my regular collection. The one large scale HA I had was of Leadfoot, and he was a mess. I only got him on sale for Steeljaw and ultimately just gave Leadfoot to my friend. Really, I would have only bought them for their robot partners, like Chromia, Arcee, Frenzy, etc. Soundwave looks awesome, but I just know I would set him aside for Laserbeak if I got him at the crazy insane prices he's going for.
