I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but:

In 1996, Beast Wars came out. The line had great figures, with great articulation. Each figure closely resembled his cgi counterpart. With the continuation of Transmetals and Beast Machines, the toys were still nicely articulated and designed.

Fast forward to 2002, and armada comes out. Most of the toys, while not bad, had horrible articulation, and didn't resemble their cartoon counterparts very well. Take Sideswipe and Sideways for example. While still recognizable, they didn't match the cartoon characters as well as the beast wars toys, and their articulation was sub-par. You would figure that 6 years later, the toys would be even better. It was a good line for the most part though.

Was this mabye because hasbro/takara wanted to focus more on gimmicks than articulation? Or was it easier for them to create animals that turn into robots with good articulation?

 

Well, first of all, the show accuracy of BW figures can be a bit shaky at times (look at Blackarachnia for an example )


As for the drop in articulation, the gimmick-heavy nature of Armada definitely contributed to it, but they also probably wanted Transformers to go back to its 'roots', since both the Beast Era and RID had semi-organic animal Transformers. I just think that they went a bit too far, and made the Transformers blocky similar to how G1 was, which made articulation take a hit.

 

Gimmicks are fail.

Unless the gimmick is the fact that it transformers. Then it's all win.

Thank god for the Classics line selling so well. I cringe to think at what kind of crappy gimmicks the movie figures or animated figures would have had if they had not test driven, and had a lot of success with, a gimmick-free retail line here in the U.S.

 

Well, I guess not all of the blocky tranformers were bad. Titalwave and Megatron are great toys, and they don't have much articulation.

 

relook at your beast machines toys, almost none of them were even remotely like thier show counterparts.

 

Mold-wise, yes. Paint-wise, no.

 

I think that a lot of it was in response to RiD. The transformations were way too complex for kids (and some adults), which resulted in returns and complaints from parents. Hasbro responded with the simplified bricks we saw in Armada.

 

That's the way I figured it. Hasbro wanted to bring back the "kid friendly" to Transformers, so toys were designed simpler and sturdier (a lot less pop-off ball joints and lost limbs) with more gimmicks. Apparently it worked at least in part, as Armada was one of the highest selling TF lines.

 

Funny how it now has become the complete opposite and kids are clamoring for complex movie toys and ditching Animated because it appears simpler, sturdier, "babyish", and gimmicky. Damn kids.

 

I also thought this was why. Keep in mind that the addition of the minicons took tooling dollars away from the base figure. That means the actual robots have less pieces in them. Thats why you have less parts and missing points of articulation. I never really thought armada was that different from the toys. The animation models were just cleaned up so they would look better in motion

 

gimmicky animated? ok....... i didn't like any armada figure i touched, beast wars was good for articulation but i didn't like them for much else

 

I asked any kids I new from 14 to 6 and they all would rather have toys that just focused on transforming with gimmicks being second. Anything like animated Prowl's streetlight would seem pointless to them and a hassle of having just be there and not something directly incorporated into the figure. The kids found more fun in transforming the toys back and forth than using their gimmicks.

Animated was gimmicky in the sense that every figure had a UNIQUE gimmick and it wasn't the same gimmick across the entire line (like if every figure fired missiles). There were missile launchers, armor, triple changers, water blasters, grappling hooks, combiners, weapons, moving parts, spring-loaded parts, lights, sounds, etc.

Animated seemed to focus more on each figures unique gimmick rather than showcase their transformations.

The movie line seemed to focus heavily on the "auto-morph" feature as the "big" gimmick. A feature that was practically incorporated into every figure in the line. Many kids I talked to said they would rather do without the "auto-morph" because it transformed the figures for them and they did not want that. They wanted to do the transforming manually themselves.

The first movie line also consisted primarily of complex transformations coupled with spring activated weapons and attacks, companions(frenzy & skorponok), missile launchers, lights, sounds, and motion.
Unfortunately, many of these gimmicks were rarely or never advertised such as deluxe skorponok combining with voyager blackout (this would later be pointed out through the release of a TRU exclusives 2-pack) or deluxe wreckage's blades being able to combine into a double-bladed weapon.

I'm not saying this is true for everyone, but these are just my observations. This is also why I think many kids may have disliked Animated and also why the "Auto-morph" feature is now missing from ROTF toys, replaced with the "mech-alive" feature which is now only moving parts (internal or external) that in no way assists with the figure's transformation process.

I think kids today just want that. Transformers.

 

making them simpler for kids, is the only real reason i can see, as Kids account for most of the toys sales either directly or by toys bought for them, we collectors may drop more at once but inthe long run we are in the short end of income for Hasbro

 

I did like that Cybertron the key didn't really interfere with articulation (must have been a preamble for Classics with a combination of articulation and the whole transformation to vehicle/ alt mode)

 

Whilst BW toys were fairly show accurate, I never found the toys that appealing nor desirable. Mainly cause playing with pretty static animals was something I did when I had a wooden farm at 2 years old . They were never heavily launched / available in the UK either.

I also found the look / style of a lot of them pretty ugly to be honest.

A lot of armada toys were simplified but many were great such as Megatron, Tidalwave, Starscream (+ seekers), Prime, Wheeljack, Jetfire. To name a few.

Oh and did I forget Unicron!!!!! If they failed to make effort woth a lot of the line they didn't with him.  

The toys displayed well and were at least playable with. In fact, Unicron became a frustration for all but the diehard fans as kids found it difficult to transform.

One of the things I remember as a kid about G1 was the simplification of Toy styles that allowed the transformation to occur in seconds giving you two /three modes without the hassle of tweaking body panels and twisting, then re-twisting the arms etc to tuck in under something else .

 

i think the articulation in armada is terrible the worst either blurr or sideways