And why?

I started collecting with Siege and love both lines. I’m curious which people prefer? Siege began a new style with a really solid quality but was marred by an overuse of battle damage. Earthrise delivered some amazing figures but had a LOT of Siege redos. While the ER versions were usually better, they were coming only a year later.

still, both lines ended up with a nice roster of figures that weren’t in the other line.

So all in all, which line did you prefer?

 

I love the siege figures but I prefer the cleaner look of earthrise but I feel that the QC issues were more frequent in earthrise

 

Siege. I liked the Cybertronian aesthetic better and the QC was better. Earthrise had its gems (Sky Lynx, Scorponok) but since a good portion of it was repeats character-wise, I ended up skipping most of the line.

 

Siege.

Until I see what Earth Mirage looks like

 

Seems like Siege had the budget for paint apps, but they chose to use it on space poo.

Earthrise had a lot of QC issues.

As action figures, Siege wins (between the Seekers).

Greebleness on Siege sucked. I found myself hating Siege Ultra Magnus over time.

After opening up like wave one and two of micromasters in Siege, I was like damn, I spent ~$60 on this shit, lol.  

Both had hits and misses. The stand outs and clear winners are certainly both Titans, both Commanders. Netflix Siege/ER wave 1 and 2 is fantastic.

All the Generations Selects during both runs were a lot of fun.

Final verdict: Siege by a thin margin. The QC with Earthrise and the thinner plastic just stands out too much in my brain.

 

ER Looks better, Siege was less of a headache.

 

For me, both lines had a few characters I could personally justify buying (and did, then sold a handfull), which I hadn't done in a very long time.

However, I feel that the biggest failing for Siege was not making the original 84 pilot-spec versions of Bumblebee and Wheeljack.

 

Siege. I liked the new cybertronian modes a lot.

 

Hard to say as I tend to prefer earth alt modes but leaning towards SIEGE for now. Mainly since SIEGE raised the bar and was like a return to form after years of designs compromised by lower budget and gimmicks implemented on characters that didn’t traditionally have them.

Earthrise continued what SIEGE started but you could feel the budget cuts start to creep in when transforming and posing the figures. While some figures in SIEGE definitely seemed like they could’ve been more substantial but were possibly subject to cost cutting, this was more pronounced and evident in Earthrise. It was almost as if Hasbro and Takara went on a high for the 35th anniversary of G1 with SIEGE but for Earthrise said “wait guys...we gotta dial this back a bit...let’s come off that high and settle down...”.

FWIW, I think it’s hard to top SIEGE since it did so many things right. It was also the 1st Generations line in years where things seemed more cohesive, as if the goal was just to be good and leave gimmicks(mostly) to the other lines like Cyberverse. We finally got Apeface. We finally got a fully articulated Ultra Magnus made from a cab robot that combines with trailer armor. We got a Shockwave that transforms very similar to the MP and even has a gun mode. We got a Prime whose gimmick was mainly left to its weapons, after seeing 3 years of Optimi that had gimmicks Optimus wasn’t usually known for.

Plus we finally got a huge cartoon based G1 Skyfire that didn’t try to be anything else but a good toy. Who knows when this intent to just be a pure G1 based, fully articulated mainline figure will hit again? For example we have a rumored earth mode Sideswipe/BW Grimlock set for Amazon but what about the next time a CHUG Sideswipe is made afterwards? Maybe it’ll be Armada Sideswipe. I’m enjoying this G1 approach while it lasts. Yea we get G1 inspired stuff a lot but not an approach as direct to the old designs as this outside of the MP line.

With SIEGE it felt like as good as things were, it closed out on a better note. The SIEGE Seekers are a joy to pose in robot mode. In a mainline you won’t find more poseable Seekers. Then Springer was released and its poseability was excellent as well. Wave 1 deluxes impressed me but Spinister from wave 5 was more surprising.

Plus with SIEGE, the Battlemasters and Micromasters seemed easier to integrate with other figures than Earthrise and less abandoned compared to Earthrise’s AIRLOCK gimmick.

Visually I think I may prefer Earthrise. However playability-wise, SIEGE wins out for me.

 

What would be nice is if in Kingdom:
* characters actually sometimes transform
* when they DO transform, they do it onscreen
* they get rid of the current "the more expensive the figure, the more likely they are to be killed off within 10 minutes of their first appearance" policy
* they quit using endless recoloured background characters while ignoring large numbers of existing characters
* Megatron and Prime stop... talking... so... slowly...

Sorry, just realised this may be about the toy series and not the show

 

Siege, because while Earthrise delivered a lot of G1 favorites, they are IMPOSSIBLE to get!

 

Earthrise, got excited when they announced Siege would have Cybertronian alt modes but was disappointed when they turned out to be futuristic earth modes was hoping for more WFC styled alt modes. ER had gorgeous 80s alt modes

 

There were some pretty great individual releases in ER, Doubledealer and the modulators hitting for me, but I think overall, Siege was better.

I loved the cybertronian aesthetic and I just felt way more hyped for the diorama reveals

Despite ER having some of my favorite figures ever, there’s just way more Siege figures in my shelf than ER

 

I'm much more of a fan of Earthrise's aesthetic over Siege... though at the same time Siege had great figures like Sideswipe (or in my case, Red Alert), Impactor, and Spinister... though Earthrise has characters I like more... though Siege's accessibility to most of these characters was fairly easy... though Earthrise has the better exclusives character-wise... though Siege reintroduced the Targetmasters and Micromasters... tough call here.

 

Earthrise had more QC foibles, but I prefer its aesthetic over the half-assed Cybertronian modes of Siege.

Kingdom tops both so far though. Lots of examples of some truly great engineering in that line.

 

Siege.

I have absolutely no issue with the battle damage. I like that Siege did Cybertronian modes, even if many were basically just the classic 1984 alt-modes IN SPAAAACE!, but despite that they did make the Seekers as Tetrajets, which wins all for me   And yes, I too lament the lack of a Cybertronian Bumblebee and Wheeljack. Worst missed opportunity I can think of for Hasbro.

 

I don't like battle damage and I don't like the Cybertronian designs. Earthrise all the way for me. But I do have all the Siege Seekers and Siege Lambo repaints. As soon as I could I got all the ER Ironhide, ER Ratchet, ER Datsun brothers, and all the ER Seekers/Coneheads.

 

Siege by a mile!

Earthrise did things right surely, but retro futuristic alt modes to me will be forever more interesting than boring 80s cars we've seen a million times. I prefer the Siege versions of most characters that have both Siege and Earthrise versions.

Only things IMO that are superior on ER are the modulators, but it sucks that there were only 2 molds, and Sky Lynx is a lot funner than Jetfire. (Can't comment on Omega vs. Scorponok because I don't have the latter).

 

I prefer the cybertronian 'season 4' look of the siege figures, but I wish they wouldve released all of them without battle damage and with G1 cartoon accurate colors. I'm not a big fan of the greeble on certain figures either. Earthrise handles those elements much better.

Earthrise on the other hand has so many exclusive that are almost impossible to get in Europe. Selling out almost instantly on preorder. That took away some fun of collecting that line. Earthrise provided some definitive G1 accurate updates of figures which I highly appreciate.

So I guess it's a bit of a tie for me... Leaning slightly more towards siege.

 

Earthrise. But It's distribution was completely devastated by the pandemic. Early shipments went out on time, but then the second round of Earthy shipments got delayed, which pushed back all successive waves into an August->October traffic jam. All to make space for Kingdom and Hasbro hard-resetting the release calendar in 2021.

If you described Earthrise as a mail order-first line, you wouldn't be wrong. Hopefully Hasbro does a second run on some of the rarer molds for folks who missed out.