All depends if Hasbro cares enough to retell the original story with original characters. If not, only a handful of older G1 toys will carry over any value.

The movie poster industry is a good example. I have a friend who is a dealer and his high-priced older posters are moving slower and slower...but posters from the 70's-90's are picking up sales gradually. People attending conventions don't know or care about a poster from 1936 as much as they want an original E.T. poster now, since that's what the attendees remember and are now nostalgic for.

Much the same way, only the likes of Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee and a few others will be sought after 20 years from now. Unless Twin Twist gets a high-profile place in the line-up of some future cartoon, the likes of Jumpstarters or Throttlebots (aside from Goldbug) and a fair amount of other G1 toys will just not pull int he cash.

 

Wow, what an 80's turn this thread took  

I still haven't read too much to sway my opinion. GI Joe toys go for high prices, but the demand is not there. They had movies (I actually didn't terribly mind them), but nowhere near the support TFs have (even with the 'quality' of the Bay movies). Will this be enough to keep the prices for G1 high in the future, simply for the characters they represent?

Baseball cards can't be compared, really...sports trumps a lot of collectibles.

In the end, I guess it still comes down to what someone is willing to pay. If I won't part with my G1 Prime for less than $500, I guess it's 'worth' that much to me. If there's nobody that finds a G1 Prime worth that kinda money years down the road, I guess that'll be it for the brand (if Hasbro stops supporting it in a big way, that is).

G1, in that case, would then just become valuable due to its sheer rarity...like any other old toy. But will it command HIGH prices down the road? Only if Hasbro continues the fiction and brand, IMO. Without that, they're just antiques with a limited (and over time, diminishing) fanbase.

Good call with the movie posters. Unless you're a poster collector, certain titles will only hold appeal to the minority of collectors. Which is why I mentioned the N64 game that is worth quite a bit on the secondary market: because LOTS of kids are nostalgic now, but for what came before it on the Super Nintendo? Not so much. But since I'm a fan of SNES, I would pay top dollar for an original, sealed copy. Because the demand is lower, the price is lower.

With the reissues and such surrounding G1, it's odd to me how Diaclone is worth what it is. To me, they are the true 'collectible' due to their very nature.

 

To be 100% honest, I won't really care what happens to G1 or my G1 toys once I'm gone.  

I do not see Transformers being as huge in collectability as sports cards or memorabilia. However, I do think there will be a niche there like other toys, especially for those kids who grew up with parents who collected Transformers.

In fact, back in the 80s, I wonder if fans who collected the 60s GI Joes would have had this same discussion if they had the online ability to do so. In TF terms, the 60's GI Joes could be seen as their "G1" and Real American Hero as the current "modern classics" line. Kids collecting Real American Hero talking about their parents GI Joe and wonder what would happen to those older 12" GI Joes once their time had passed. Well, if you look, the older style 12" GI Joes, while they did go away for a while, Hasbro did bring back those older styles back with the GI Joe Hall of Fame line and even then have never 100% gone away even 50 years later.

 

I disagree with this statement when it comes to vintage....Ruth, Cobb, Speaker, Foxx, Young, Mantle etc as compared to the overproduction and general hobby in the 90's - present(minus a few like Jeter, Johnson, Maddux) Unless you are buying that 1:1 refractor, or numbered 1 to 10 signed variant, or something similar, the market is oversaturated. The market for vintage cut sigs or vintage clothes, wood, etc is there and can command high dollars, but the other stuff is a dime a dozen. The vintage that cannot be reproduced will always command $ and be in demand.
I feel the same will happen with vintage TFs especially, high-end sealed/boxed, complete unused G1 examples.

 

I await the day when I can laugh heartily at people with their toys in their clear perspex prisons.

An audience for something will die off.

He mentioned it on the Toy Hunter once, where someone had got a Howdie Doody doll. But he said he didn't want it because it's too hard to shift it as the collector base for 50s stuff is literally dying off.

I guess the difference with Transformers is that it's managed to be a continuing presence, over and over being revitalized. Especially due to the Movies, love or hate em.

Prices go up and down all the time. But eventually everything will succumb

 

Yeah, I think lines like vintage (true vintage) GI JOe and vintage STar Wars show a likely path of where Transformers will go:
There ALWAYS be select pieces that will command a premium, but as the collecting base ages, focus will shift to the next wave of nostalgia (Beast Wars, coming up on its 20th Anniversary, is due for a big nostalgic wave), and newer collectors will likely settle on modern versions of classic characters.

I think Transformers have been prevalent enough to create waves of new collectors (much as STar Wars has been able to do), so I don't think we'll see a situation like 60s Joes (or Howdy Doody) where the fan/collector base is literally dying off.

 

Perhaps my knowledge was a bit faulty when I made that statement. I was never a sports collector so I was unfamiliar with the exact market, only that I have seen more sports collectibles stores, more periodicals for them, and seen sports memorabilia featured on shows and sales more than I have toys in the past.  

 

Quoted for fact.

Indeed.

 

I highly doubt G1 fans are going to die out.

Heck there's proof of it going on right now with the Generations line, kids get these characters they've never heard of and can easily check online to find where they're from which leads them to those series which some will become fans of.

 

Isn't it kind of like asking when original Trek fans die out? New fans are created with every rerun and revamp.

 

What's a G1?

Signed, the 8 track, cassette, CD, Atari 2600, boom box, 8 bit, non-politically correct, Compaq, Netscape, CompuServe using old fogey.

I suppose the other answer would be that sadly, no one would remember that Optimus was ever a snub nose Peterbilt with a warriors heart and a passion to protect all life, and everyone would think that Movie Optimus is a face wanting substitute savior, Shia LaBeouf was some random old unmemorable actor, and we all love boobs.

Oh, and when I outlive everyone, I'm going to replicate me a sweet MISB G1 Black Zarak onboard my starship along with a cup of Earl Grey. Hot.

 

The whole "toy collecting" thing is still relatively new, like video game collectors.

Sports and brand memorabilia (Coke, Pepsi, etc) are simply more established with legacies stretching back nearly a century.
The toy "brands" are still relatively young (Barbie, GI Joe and Hot Wheels are the foundation of modern toy brands, and they are only 50 or so years old), so I think it's simply going to take time for them to become as accepted as other genres.

 

I think more than anything else, it is important to stress that while G1 fans aren't "dying out", there HAS been "age out" of the hobby. There are hundreds of fans (the guys active in the 90s with G2 and Beast Wars/Machines) who've stepped away from the hobby due to various factors.

I'd argue we're well into a third or fourth gen of fandom at this stage. We've simply been fortunate subsequent Transformers series (and especially the movies) have ignited sparks to keep the fandom going (compared to Masters of the Universe and GI Joe)

 

I think the future depends on those of us who have a strong attachment to G1. I think there will be a strong following in the future if the following happens in the present; we watch the cartoons and 86 movie with our kids, let them see and enjoy playing with G1 toys or reissues, then let them see MPs later on. If the next gen isn't introduced to G1s rich characters then I doubt it will survive the ages.

 

Engage

 

Transformers, as big as they are, are literally a speck compared to the vast amount of fans worldwide for Star Trek, so it's an unfair and unrealistic comparison in my opinion.

Trek memorabilia goes far beyond their toy lines; one could guess that the toys are just a small fraction of the actual worth of Trek stuff being traded and sold at cons.

TFs get new fans, but like the 'other' Trek series, they generally don't do as well as the original series (with the exception of TNG and the movie reboot). Before the Bay movies, TF fandom wasn't nearly as huge. Which to me only proved the value of the G1 lineage.

You know what I'd love to see...a reboot of the Sunbow cartoon with an alternate storyline. Make it a modern-retro cartoon: same basic art styles of G1, same characters, but more modern stories. And not what IDW is doing (what they're doing is cool, but I'm thinking more retro), but basically a reboot of the cartoon.

Sure, kids would love it. But the adults and fans of the MP lines will literally eat it up...I know I would.

If fans out there could only find a way to do it themselves. I thought of this while watching the awesome latest installment of that stop-motion youtube clip that took six months to make.

Regardless of the size of the fandom and marketshare, I really think it would be successful. And an amazing marketing tool for MP line.

 

I don't think G1 fans will ever wholly die out as new ones seem to be created on a somewhat frequent basis thanks to older fans, Netflix - it's not on now but I'm sure that will change at some point - and channels like the now defunct Hub network.

 

I'd like to think I'm not the only teenage G1 lover, but I'm probably not common either.

 

You have people like me who kind of grew up with G1 despite growing up in the 2000s. Libraries and the Internet are wonderful things.

 

This my boys became instant g1 fans when the generation's line came out.After an awesome unicron trilogy it was the only logical transition in 07