Yeah, I loved the Car Bros. And I did love the complexity, because it just showed a combination of realism, poseability and attention to detail that we hadn't seen before. (Makes you wonder if they weren't part of the inspiration for the Alternators idea.) You can tell that the designers really wanted to make those figures as awesome as possible. Who knows how they convinced Hasbro to let them have rubber tires...!

 

Actually, I have to give 'em credit for Rid Prime and Ultra Magnus as well. They were fantastic figures, especially Magnus, who redefined for me what he should look like. (They actually made a car carrier work as legs! And they were articulated!!) Too bad almost all of the other figures were repaints -- imagine if they'd done a full-blown RiD line with all-new figures...!

 

Oh wait, the Build Team was new too, and they sucked. Never mind. :tftongue

Yeah, RID car brothers are complex and all..but look at their robot modes...they like skeletal robots with pieces of car parts sticking off of them...that's no fun. Articulation is useless if you can't lift an arm without a hugeass front end bumper restricting its movement. And from thsoe factors you listed from your offspring, the only one that bothered me as a kid was tv accuracy, and it's still my biggest gripe. I like the toys to match the show model identically or, to me, its misrepresenting it. I don't care which come first, because I know the toys do...but most ppl don't accept that they toys are CHANGED AFTER the show is already made, alot of times, making the TOY flawed, not the show....either way, I've been kitbashing since I was 5...And this was the very reason It started...making things tv accurate.

Yeah, RID car brothers are complex and all..but look at their robot modes...they like skeletal robots with pieces of car parts sticking off of them...that's no fun. Articulation is useless if you can't lift an arm without a hugeass front end bumper restricting its movement. And from thsoe factors you listed from your offspring, the only one that bothered me as a kid was tv accuracy, and it's still my biggest gripe. I like the toys to match the show model identically or, to me, its misrepresenting it. I don't care which come first, because I know the toys do...but most ppl don't accept that they toys are CHANGED AFTER the show is already made, alot of times, making the TOY flawed, not the show....either way, I've been kitbashing since I was 5...And this was the very reason It started...making things tv accurate.

Heh -- "offspring." I'd prefer that you refer to him as "fruit of my loins," if you don't mind.

 

Erm... anyway, yeah I do agree about the "exoskeleton" problem, though it's mainly a Sideburn issue. That guy's out of hand. But at the same time, I think he's a great figure. Love the head sculpt and the whole engine-in-the-chest thing.

 

Re: show accuracy, what you're saying is that both the toy maker and the cartoon character designers go off of early, unfinished versions of the products. So is it really fair to say that either one is "flawed?" They're just going in separate directions. What else could they do?

 

But even then, you're only talking about '86 and beyond TFs, where there was *any* coordination at all between Hasbro/Takara and Sunbow (or whoever it was). The Diaclones and Microman toys were out for years before the cartoon was done (though the early character designs were done by Marvel for their 4-issue promo comic). That's why it bugs me to hear people whine about the Ironhide toy (for instance) not being "show-accurate," as if it were Hasbro's fault for not making him look the way he did in the cartoon. But I realize that's not what you're saying.