Something I've been thinking about recently. Do you prefer the random, pre CW Generations setup where each figure did its own thing, or the CW onward feel with line wide gimmicks?
I like line wide gimmics because we are finally hitting the home stretch to finishing classics g1 usa and gimmic lines will get us there faster
I like both, can't really decide. Some of my favorites came from Thrilling 30 while a BUNCH have come from Combiner Wars and Titans Return. I do wonder though, what the line wide gimmick of Phase 3 in the Prime Wars will be?
i'm not sure. line wide gimmicks are sweet and encourages more purchases and interactivity, but i also enjoyed getting a wider variety of the multiverse pre cw, like bw rattrap, rhinox and waspinator, bm tankor, orion pax, jet megatron and classic arcee in a single selection..... going with both
I only started around Thrilling 30. I think my first ones were Trailbreaker, Orion Pax, Bumblebee and Megatron. I much prefer the designs of the post Thrilling 30 stuff.
When well executed, wide line gimmicks are better for the overal health of the Transformers brand. Generations 2010 - 2014 featured some fantastic figures, but overal the line ups were narrow. 2010 even lacked voyager and leader class entirely. The rest was filler padded with FoC and Movie repaints as "Generations" toys. The direction of CW and TR has proven to build a really healty brand foundation.
While the older generations lines gave us toys of a variety of characters in a purely random way, CW and TR are much better at giving us updates of figures in a particular subgroup or subgroups and i love that about them. I far prefer this approach over the random approach (sadly TR seems to include some randomness too, but at least we got all the first year Headmasters. Fingers crossed for voyager Snapdragon and Apeface). I understand and in some cases share peoples desire to get updated toys of non G1 and 2 lines but if Has/Tak does it right they can and are mixing those in: RID Ruination is a prime example and i feel we should surely get an Armada Sideways and a TFA Starscream, Sentinel or Bulkhead with Headmaster in TR. But G1 and 2 have a lot more characters that need updates and arent just clones of the most popular G1 characters and the original toys are far more in need of updates than toys of Animated, Prime or the like so i'm gonna be selfish here: i hope Has/Tak quits the randomness and give us updates of complete G1 subgroups in future lines.
I like both. Hasbro was exhausting the 1984-85 lineup of characters and, considering 1986 was the beginning of the widespread use of gimmicks back in G1, it was logical to move in that direction with Generations. It's a tad unfortunate that the Titanmasters are exclusively "Headmasters"...but the line-wide gimmick kind of demands it, I suppose, with Hasbro going full-bore on reusing tooling wherever possible to save a few pennies here and there. Again, my hope is that we hit Micromasters next, with some Pretenders thrown in, that still work with the Titans Return concept (just too fun to cancel this play style after only 18 months). After that, we should go back to non-gimmicks and work on the Beast line-ups.
I pretty much agree with what others have already said- I enjoy both but the linewide gimmick has been fun, has been great for getting more characters updated quickly and has just been a good thing for the brand. Maybe after Prime Wars part 3 we can go back to no linewide gimmicks. I think its something you should give a rest and then bring back. You have to pace it out and let it rest, otherwise fans will burn out or you'll simply put out bad gimmicks for the sake of having a gimmick. Moderation is the key Hasbro!
Yep. I guess i wish the Gimmicks weren't QUITE line-wide, but it's cool given that we've gotten the 86 special teams and the original Headmasters (plus some Targetmasters.)
Really, all of the deluxes so far are "Masters" in one sense or another. The only real deviation from that has been in the voyager and leader class and, even then, you can imagine if G1 had continued past Rebirth, Galvatron, Blaster, Astrotrain, Sixshot and Soundwave might have eventually became Headmasters as well.
Where's the option for I like Generations and I like Titans Return. I didn't like Combiner Wars? I bet Hasbro likes the line-wide gimmicks because it forces people to buy more to complete collections of figures under a certain theme. In Generations, you could pick and choose more.
I typically don't like line wide gimmicks. However, Combiner Wars and Titans Return have given me things I have wanted for years. I love TR so far. I'm in for the haul. Wonder what's next.
I like the line-wide gimmicks to a degree. It helps us to get all ( or most ) of a sub-group. Headmaster for example, were few and far between. Sometimes, they wouldn't even BE a headmaster. Just a regular bot of the character. By doing a line wide gimmick, we can get most if not all of the original headmaster characters WITH the gimmick. Same way with combiners. Even if we'd gotten any, it would have been at most 1 at a time like the FoC Bruticus. Now we have almost all of them. The downside? We can't get updated figures of non-gimmick bots without the gimmick attached. Scourge as a non-headmaster or Sunstreaker as a non-combiner. If they get new toys, they'll have the gimmick as well and thus never be what we really want them to be.
My answer straddles the line. Because I prefer each figure to do and be its own thing. Unless the feature is Headmasters, Powermasters or Targetmasters... so bring on the entire line as Headmasters lol But I'm sure that whenever this Titanmaster thing ends and the new line-wide gimmick starts, I will probably go back to wishing each figure was its own thing again.
Among the latter years of G1 there a bunch of toys who where less gimmick laden and had more earth vehicle altmodes: the sparkabots, triggerbots etc the same is true for the original G2 characters and european G1 (yeah they all had gimmicks, but mean they wherent so defined by them as say the headmasters and pretenders) that might be what we get after prime wars.
