I loved the original Transformers: Universe toyline, because it gave us a second chance at buying some of the older toys that came out years before. Sure, they were redecoes, but most of them were awesome, plus, the story was also quite interesting aswell. Which do you like? Universe, or Universe Classics 2.0?
Old bricks vs new, highly effective pieces of engineering designed to update the crap toys of yesteryear into something fun? It's a no brainer. Classics all the way.
2.0 Mainly because I prefer 'proper' decos. Although that doesn't mean some of the repaints weren't quite nice, because they were. I just put traditional colour choices first (if I am forced to choose).
I thought the Universe toyline was neat, but seemed as if most of the really cool figures wound up being Store Exclusives.. It also didn't help that the only fiction it had was through the Collectors Club/3H and tied to their ridiculous wreckers storyline.. And I still am disappointed that the Target Exclusive Motormaster never made it out.. Just because I've got the four big figures in their European Coloring, and their Machine Wars decos.. I'd liked to have had them all in the Universe coloring.. It could have been much better than it was, but it wasn't horrible.. Universe 2.0 I never bought any of the redecos of Cybertron toys.. so it was really just a continuation of Classics to me.
I voted both. I liked Universe-II for obvious reasons, but I remember when Universe-I came out I was actually really excited for it. This was during the time when I was still getting my feet back into the fandom and opening my mind to ideas outside of Geewun, and the fact that several of the better BW toys were now being put back at retail had me hooked. I remember liking all of the figures in wave 1 (though Optimus Primal would end up getting replaced with his Anniversary remold). Razorclaw and Reptilion were just plain awesome, and I loved the idea of getting new characters that were associated with Unicron (and since Iguanas was never really used in fiction, it was easy to believe Reptilion as a whole new character). Silverbolt was probably the most confusing one, but I like to believe he was his BM-show colors in his original body. Blackarachnia was just pretty. (oh wait, after looking at it again, BA was wave 2 and Snarl was wave 1... well, I didn't buy Snarl). I didn't have a lot of money at the time, so I missed out on a lot of the later waves, but I did get the Tankor/Obsidian pack (Tankor was, at the time, possibly the figure that impressed me most. His BM colors were better, but I took what I could get. And Obsidian's colors were great), Depth Charge (possibly the BW figure I was looking forward to the most), Frostbite and Longhorn... and several others, but those were all the ones I was really into. Yes, the Universe-I line was almost a better time for me than its follow-up.
2.0, hands down. The Classics line needed a continuation far more than there needed to be a line of repaints. it also helps that the 2.0 toys weren't painted by color blind people.
The only reason why I didn't say both is that I feel that the first Universe line didn't offer a bit more variety with much older figures. And instead went a bit overboard with the amount of repaints of figures recently released at that time. It was wonderful though when they added some flavor to the mix with Machine Wars, BW Neo, and G2. I really wish they had pulled a bit more from those lines.
Both are pretty good. I have a set of 1.0 toys that I'd love to hunt down (Optimus Prime, Frostbite, etc...) but 2.0 has some really cool new figures. They both satisfy different needs and more repaints are always a good thing. More chances at finding a color scheme you want
Universe Classics 2.0 because it was just more exciting to get new figures that somehow combined the best of yesterday with the best of today.
I am not really a fan of either really. There are a few really good figures in Universe, but many of them are stinkers too.
