Well, you don't have to, but it's fine that you have been   And thank you for the praise.

I did find this a very difficult aspect, getting anyone to provide the opposite opinion. I knew I would be more than covered for my anti-irrelevance viewpoint from virtually every quarter of the Internet I frequent but finding someone to oppose that opinion was near impossible. I asked on Twitter, FB, TFW but yeah only one or two people were able to provide me with something I could use that didn't make them feel out of touch or that they were just being ganged up on by the majority. In the end I had to go with the contributions I had, and the result is pretty heavily weighted as you have seen.

Yeah, this is a key theme through a lot of my responses to my articles not going into extremely high detail. I have a word count limit I loosely stick to and occasionally it goes over that - but for reviews I'm given a pass. For opinion pieces or personal pieces I am much more restricted so it's true that certain aspects are given less of an airing than maybe they deserve - that does make the forum here quite valuable to discuss what comes out of the article.

Often, I will try to touch on a subject through a contributor's quote as opposed to talking about it or repeating it myself where I can, to manage the word count and length of the articles.

It was made pretty clear to me that articles of the length I have produced for TF-1 are not what the TFSource Blog will be aiming to emulate. They're never going to be definitive at a length of 1500 to 2000 words, especially on an opinion piece.

All the best
Maz

 

It's an's awesome quality toy that is about $10 more than the disappointing (to me) TR toy. Better purchase imo.
What would have been nice is the TR toy LOOK with the G1 build QUALITY - which is not possible at the TR Deluxe price point (although it still could have been built better at the same price, that is less Q.C bullshit). And adding some different colored paint and minor changes does not make it worth $20 more to me thanks Takara.

I don't know what Transformers are, but please me more of this fighting bear. Is it from Russia?

 

I think this part of the quote from Dan Ghile stuck on my mind the most, and I think I sometimes find myself in this situation...

"Amazing how the most ‘relevant’ releases are often passé by the time they reach consumers’ hands after reviews and the next, unreleased item is the hot thing. If you want to be relevant, collect something that means something to you, that represents something you can talk about passionately. That may cover the latest toys, it may not, but it will provide a constant source of joy for yourself and reduce the hollow buyer’s remorse so many feel when the latest reveal makes their brand new toy yesterday’s news.”

 

So why bother with the TFSource blog at all? I've always preferred the more comprehensive articles you've posted on TF-1 anyway...

 

I guess it depends what they see as their wider readership and customer base. A lot of what allowed me to write lengthy stuff on TF-1 was the kind of nitty gritty moulding/copyright/definitive detail I could go into, sometimes accompanied by over 60 pics and I just don't think the weekly format on TFSource blog works with that. Some of the articles on TF-1 took weeks to write and research, and while I enjoy writing about vintage history and bizarre variants, I just don't think I could produce work of that length and depth on a consistently weekly basis, keeping in mind I do this entirely in my free time outside of my full time job and parenting responsibilities. It's no coincidence that my TF-1 articles have become much fewer and far between in the last 4 years  

All the best
Maz

 

I always enjoy your articles Maz. Great stuff.

This is a fascinating topic to me. It's something we over in Marvel Legends Land deal with all the time as new versions of characters are being produced fairly often, and can be vast improvements over the previous ones from years ago, and in the same style, size and format. Like the jump between MP-1 and MP-10 if they were the same size and scale, but happening all the time. But man, is that easier to swallow when they only cost $20 a pop.