Has Hasbro ever officially addressed this? I'd love to see more IDW/MTMTE/Wreckers style figures. I mean I love Ultra Magnus. He's great. But the new Hot Rod seems like a missed opportunity to me. It wouldn't have been too difficult to make him more MTMTE style it doesn't seem like to me. And I would have loved Chromedome to have more of that style as well. Rewind I understand it would be difficult to have such a slim robot mode and still have the 'cassette' alt mode configuration.

anyway, just curious.

 

I agree the toys should reflect the fiction (or vice-versa), but keep in mind that Transformers has a huge worldwide fandom, and that the IDW fandom is a tiny sliver in comparison. The IDW designs are not what everyone wants.

Third Party is showing us right now that an IDW Rodimus is very doable, and I agree it's kind of surprising Hasbro has resisted doing it. But on the other hand, there are many people who think Rodimus' current IDW form is among the very worst designs they've ever come up with.

 

Really? Huh. I hadn't heard that but I've been out of the loop for a while. I guess Chromedome's head sculpt does look IDW'ish.

 

I think, since the Orion Pax deluxe time, most generations figures released have been heavily based on IDW characters albeit in some cases less stylized as taking pure comic artwork and making toys doesn't translate well often.

If nothing else, many characters are released based on their prominence in IDW comics. For example, Overlord would almost certainly not be incoming if not for his featuring as a major character on and off.

 

I know I just found out about that. We're getting an Overlord. So awesome.

 

I don't think Takara would agree with you. We got PMOP/Super Ginrai, who has been no character whatsoever in IDW but is super-important to Japanese fans, and I think an Overlord would have been made to go with him for the same reason, regardless of any IDW appearance.

 

PMOP was based on the Magnus mold which in turn was based on his IDW visage. But let's assume PMOP has nothing to do IDW. I said many not every character.

Overlord has been a prominent character in the comics for several years now. There is very little reason to assume that an Overlord Hasbro release is unrelated to the comics.
It's actually more likely that upon seeing the positive reaction to a niche character being a focal point that they decided to produce an Overlord figure and saw the PMOP figure as not only a counterpart but also a very easy sell to go with it.

 

I don't doubt that the comics played a part, but I think they would have done PMOP regardless. And I think that the effort Takara put forth to turn it into a G1-accurate figure for their fans shows they would have pushed for Overlord anyway. Ginrai and Overlord are a pair, like Optimus and Megatron are.

When you are measuring the different factions of fandoms in the various regions of the world, you have to admit the Japanese G1 fandom is much larger than the western IDW fandom. The Japanese G1 fandom is essentially Japan's entire TF audience, while the IDW fandom is less than 10k people worldwide. And if Takara's G1 audience was 10k or smaller, there wouldn't even be a Masterpiece line, because that's too small a number of consumers to be profitable for them. We've been told by Hasbro that we as a hardcore fandom represent about 10% of their audience, and then the IDW fandom is a subsection of that 10%. I think we're lucky to see as much comic tie-in as we do.

 

I'm not measuring anything.

IDW comics are essentially telling new stories with old characters. They made Overlord relevant again, simple as that.

As for IDW fandom being less than 10k worldwide that's just completely inaccurate. The physical USA only comic stats are nearly 10k for Transformers alone. That doesn't factor in digital sales which are likely several times more than that.

Whether it is 10k or 100k is not the point here.

IDW comics breath new life into character long forgotten about and this only helps us to get those characters on the shelf.
IDW and G1 are the same thing only one took place in the 1980's and one takes place right now.

 

What do you mean? That is entirely the point. You want to ignore how small the number of people who are reading the IDW comics is, because it doesn't fit your narrative? How is this a legitimate way to argue?

I'm not talking about the quality of the IDW comics, which is high, or what they are doing, which is great. I agree with you 100% on that. All I'm saying is that they are reaching a relatively tiny number of people, which is measurable. The stats are not "nearly 10k in the USA." Less than 10k is what IDW prints. That is the total number of physical copies that exist of each issue worldwide. And anyone in the industry will tell you that digital sales are still a tiny fraction of the number of physical sales. We are still years away from digital sales even approaching physical sales, much less surpassing them, much much much less surpassing them many times over. It would be nice, but that's just not reality.

And as far as making him relevant again, he was already still relevant to the Japanese TF audience. That's the point I was trying to make. As much as Ginrai.

 

Personally I'm struggling just to finish up my seasons 1 and 2 G1 MP scale collection. I would be down with going all in one an IDW collection. But first I need to finish what I started.

 

Yeah. I prefer them getting on with updating the G1 and G2 87-94 guys so i can complete my collection.
After that they can do All kinds of IDW, BW, Armada etc stuff.

 

I think the Generations line has some really nice examples of IDW stuff such as Drift, Springer, Stealth Bomber Megatron, Ultra Magnus, Skids, Swerve and even TR Rewind to me seems more IDW than G1. I think they offer a fair amount of IDW styled stuff.

I like everything though. G1 style, IDW, G2 or whatever! A good figure is a good figure.

Something else to consider is that the toy designs are increasingly influencing the comic. Look at all the characters who had their designs updated to their CW appearance in the comics. Not to mention Starscream and his every changing appearance.

 

I will admit that there are a fair amount of IDW designs that fit in just fine with more slavish G1 updates.
I have no problem having generations springer in my collection (would be better if he was a deluxe) but tr blurr effortlessly replaces gen blurr in my collection.

 

I suspect that to a degree at least some of that is mandated by Hasbro. Especially during their event storylines. I think they want the toys to show up in media. But I also think they recognize the overwhelming fan love for what James Roberts and Nick Roche have done and give those guys a lot of flexibility in their projects.

 

Mastermind Creations is doing IDW figures. Impactor, Turmoil, Drift, Wing, Overlord, the DJD, Hot Rod, Roadbuster, Whirl, Cyclonus and some more.

Maketoys has made a great Tailgate with a Cyclonus upgrade kit and Swerve.

You can find them on many of the online sites. If you don't like third party, then you're missing out on outstanding figures that Has/Tak can't compete with unless they go MP with IDW.

 

Amongst other issues, a lot of the problem probably is most of them are so over-designed (milne) and oddly proportioned (Roche) they'd be really hard to translate to plastic, look 'on brand' in Generations (as opposed to looking like the belong in Animated or Prime aesthetically) and actually transform into something that makes sense and is marketable.

 

You can say the same about a lot of the G1 designs that differed heavily from the toys.
There are a lot of the IDW designs i actually like better than the G1 versions:
Chromedome has a much more interesting altmode in mtmte than his original one i think. I could buy such a toyover the tr one provided it was a headmaster. Skids is another one that comes to mind. But i really need my movie design hot rod and galvatron.
Plus when they give g1 characters with cybertronian modes a boring earth altmode there is really nothing good i can say about that. Its like "hey, you know how you love hamburgers" "yeah, love em" "and you love pizza" "sure love me some pizza" "what would you say if we combined them?" "man, that sounds great" "here you go: pizzatoping between two giant buns!"  

Wich is offcourse totally unrelated, but i just cant pass up an opportunity to express my disdain for that ridiculous idea.

 

Here are recorded North American comic sales for September: Comic Book Sales Figures for September 2016

Two transformers comics alone sold over 10k copies. Overlap? Sure. If you're trying to tell me that (let's assume 7k in September was all IDW TF comics sold) there aren't at least another 7,000 people who buy TF comics in digital globally then I think you misunderstand the power of digital distribution on a global scale.
Also let's not forget that unauthorized digital copies of these comics are likely distributed en masse especially when you get to Asia and China.

Anyway, let's leave all the aside, the point I am making here is as follows:

Hasbro releases are with their Western audience in mind. Takara often retool/repaint etc their releases to serve the Asian market who have a greater affinity to the Japanese versions of G1 that did the rounds.

However neither PMOP or Overlord featured regularly in any TF media (in recent years) until IDW started talking up Overlord.
To say this had nothing to do with Overlord getting the toy treatment for a Western non-JP G1 fanbase (for the most part) is just illogical.

If you want to tell me Japan/Asia has a huge fanbase - I agree 110%
If you want to tell me media featuring a character that later got toy treatment for the first time in 20+ years was pure coincidence - I think you're looking at this all the wrong way and we will have to agree to disagree.

 

We need a rung and nova primr toy