Vangelus throws down a gauntlet, stating Scrappy Doo has accomplished more than Minya, the Son of Godzilla. What should Seth do about this? Stay tuned, and find out.
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Deadend
Waverider was a Takara thing. And actually yeah, you'd be surprised how it was actually planned that way to leave the fans wanting more and keep them talking to induce demand. It's called marketing. You do understand how cheap it is to do one piece as a new cover for something that small right? It's not like it was a leader class figure and intricate new tooling and engineering. It was a tiny cover plate new piece for Cloudburster for a TTMall exclusive. The same people who did an extensive retooling to make Big Powered. Same as there were concept art pieces drawn up also for more marketing that were requested as such to keep fans talking. Though they were discussed in the very early stages too, but were known that fully doing that would be way too part heavy for costs, but were drawn up anyway cause of why not dream big and random.
That was the point of TMs and PMs, they were really cheap to produce because of how easy they can be retooled. It was known the decoy suits weren't going to be finished for a very long time. Before the first TR even hit shelves or CW ended. Though they are easy enough to do quick toolings of for a set of them later. (Which is why induced demand was needed. Had to push corporate culture forward in showing how strong the demand for these would be. To make sure retailers would want that because of sales data. Same as it also makes for very easy high demand pack-ins in later material too.)
Now arguing with me on this. Is kind of silly. Because I'm the one that picked that pudding mix, brought the milk, and stirred it up to let it set in the fridge. Now what cookies, fruit, and sprinkles, and other things that were added after the fact, or other fingers that dipped into while it was setting in the fridge is another matter. So yeah, the proof is in the pudding. It ran as designed from day 1, including material to make fans create their own narrative about it to keep them talking about it and making narrative leaps without saying much so they stay hyped up. You know, the entire point of marketing which is supposed to induce demand to create sales.
*Edit* On that note to explain a few minor things. PMOP was designed before Orion Evolution conceptually, but also fit the incremental nature(which is why we saw the Kup exclusive redeco but used elite guard stuff to nod animated instead of toon accurate head, so demand would grow for War Dawn Orion, which was a want to do since Superion in CW, which also why it was used as a closing of the trilogy to nod back to Superion's starting the trilogy). Ultra Magnus in CW as well as Megatron in CW were carryovers/filler for the leader slots. Ultra Magnus was planned to do an extensive retool for PMOP. In CW, the leader class were more random picks. TR was mostly fully cohesive, but also built to leave demand for a few extras later, and POTP was designed as fully involved but only at a year run, with additional marketing material to help induce demand for the later stuff. In this kind of business, you have to go incremental to keep demand going and allow room for marketing material to build to further increase demand.
It's like a paint bucket, or painting a model kit. You can't simply drop the kit into the paint bucket or throw the bucket on the wall like in Splatoon. You have to go little by little, so you don't overwhelm your consumer base and do too much all at once. Otherwise you end up with an unsatisfactory mess and paint all over the place people are slipping in and not enough money to go around for projects with shelves clogged up, etc. But with the way modern audiences work with immediacy and their constant talk, you also want to keep the brand being talked about, and building hype inducing further demand, while also pushing sales of material over and over. Also some other factors. Then during all this you also want to grow your audience and market. So the product continually increases in sales too. Which also contributes to more product sales of reusing older product that's already had costs recouped but demand is extremely high on. So company growth stays going forward and upward with demand constantly increasing.
Which was also the point of the trilogy as an "engineering" debut of future implementations that'll become standard. Focusing on key factors like the combiner system. The headmaster system, and the evolution system to show future bots will be able to use this too. The trilogy was solely designed for that, with the additional content of those uses later. Same as the new trilogy has a hidden thing about that too in the 5mm port system and weaponizers/battlemasters. Since that's going to be something else that's going to grow forward in other ways too and increase future product potential.
This incremental system is what's made Hasbro grow from where they were after Beast Machines, restructuring slightly with RID, then AEC, to then Classics, and then the boom of the movies, Animated, to where we are now, and the corporate growth and powerhouse they are now to the tune of 7 Billion and growing with market exposure and demand at even higher levels than it was back during when Classics started. With a goal of reaching higher still and growing even more. Which in a market that's quickly competing with the digital markets, is amazing that this growth is still climbing at the rate it is. So apparently all this marketing stuff is working. Even now, we're talking about it. Still talking about POTP when Siege is around the corner. Still wanting more from CW/TR/POTP which shows demand is there to revisit it later with roars of thanks and applause from the consumer base.
So tell me, which makes more sense. That it's what I'm telling you is all part of an incremental plan to keep demand high and pushing forward, or that Hasbro in the face of demand cut things short and killed a line that had great sales numbers for no reason. They are not that short sighted. I can tell you that. Not with the kind of company growth they have.
DecepticusPrime
Nice read. However when the main gimmick of 12 primes is the core, and you only release 8 with decoys at retail, that price point was at least cut short. The proof is in the pudding. You don't print up collector cards of powered characters whom you had no intention of releasing at retail. Kids will notice that. Especially when we know waverider tooling exists.
Deadend
They didn't. Evolutions as a line wide gimmick didn't fit within engineering limits. There were early concepts of maybe more combinations, but nothing really sounded or looked appealing enough to go with as yet and were more discarded concepts. So it was only used for leader class figures to highlight the main 3 that were altered by the matrix. Which was the main focus from day 1 on development and it was lucky the fan poll kept it that way. The prime armor and limb modes were there from day 1 of concepts though. That's how the deluxes combined to the leader class in concepts. But at that point the figures were over-engineered and while sorta looking neat on paper, weren't within cost-effective range of production per size class. Same as there was also early talk of Prime masters not needing prime armor, but the concern was how that'd impact the structural integrity of the CW port pegs that rotate out.
POTP feels like it was short because it was a 1 year wave. Still longer than classics was in figures, but did meet all the standard 1 year release's numbers. Because of that, unlike CW and TR that went longer than a year, it feels short. It is the exact length a one year run is on waves. You don't normally notice that because Generations as a whole runs across multiple years and TR/CW ran longer than a year. POTP ran from start to finish as intended with only a few last minute extras thrown in like BattleTrap. It was designed as the endcap to the prime wars trilogy from day 1. Volcanus and Abominus were also day 1s need to get made figures at conceptual stage. It was supposed to be a celebratory finale of geekiness and the lore with an emphasis on the Matrix, while also teasing for what's to come next. Like how Shockwave had been planned for after POTP but wanted POTP to build to that by having part of Elita's team in it.
CW is kind of funny in that regard, a good chunk of it was filler. TR had a few last minute additions too like Windblade. If CW were planned a little better, we wouldn't have needed so many 'after run' boxset combiner exclusives. So really even CW had some "oopsies" but that was the start of finally weening Hasbro off of this concept of vehicle limitations on the toys. Which thanks to how well Groove and others did, we got an actual Microscope perceptor and other accurate bots. Whereas before with Generations, the only reason we got some characters was because of IDW having them in the comics. Same to thanks to how well POTP and TR did, we're getting Siege now. Baby steps forward. And we've come a long way from where classics started where Hasbro felt it had to redesign the wheel with every character leading to messes of characters like the IDW Perceptor Humvee thing. It took a long while to cut through the corporate red tape to get where we are today, but also doing so in ways to keep revenues incrementally increasing and keep fresh material coming that'll get bought. Even comparing today's releases to the T30 releases, and we've seen massive strides forward.
By comparison on yearly waves, look at the one year line up for Siege currently, and POTP is actually more figures than the 1 year leaked numbers of Siege. Right now known siege figures is at lower deluxe numbers but has only one more voyager, while also (so far!) having less Leader class figures. A one year line up isn't as many as people think. So comparing it to previous runs where they ran longer than a year, doesn't really work and that's why it seems off. Though with how positive Siege is getitng reacted to, we might see a bump up in releases there.
Spyne98
Thanks for answering my question! I'm always happy to hear your take on things. I agree that the movie figures seemingly choked out the PotP figures, at least in my neck of the woods. I'm hoping Siege lasts a good while. Thanks again!
DecepticusPrime
Why was this JUST front paged today?
LegoLover58
CURSED IMAGE
TheWarPathGuy
And this relates to transformers how exactly?
R A G G Y !
Deadend
Oooh. That's a tough question. Scrappy did do a lot in 13 Ghosts and some other material, but exactly which Son of Godzilla are we talking about? Cause if we're talking Final Wars or the original son of Godzilla, I have to agree, but if we're talking the one that was in the Space Godzilla movie through Destroyah, then it gets more complicated, which may have been the adult Godzilla in Final Wars. So it really depends on which Minya. (Minilla and Minya cover different eras. Minilla means only the original son of, while Minya means all sons of. Though is more often a short hand form for Minilla and Jr is used for the other, but now there are three more Juniors, so it gets confusing.)
But I think we can all agree that both are better than Godzooky.
badlander86
Kill Team is very quick to pick up and surprisingly fun but like all games attracts some min-maxing types who will squeeze advantages out of as much crazy builds and combos as they can.
Having fun Waaaghing it out with my Ork warband. Tempted to dip my toe into Drukhari but man thats a heck of a rabbit hole to fall into.
Requiem Prime
I could've sworn they announced it as a trilogy during CW. Didn't somebody bandy about "Prime Wars" back then? I do assume they had zero decent ideas. Just look at the cohesion of the first two compared to POTP
CW – they're all scramble style combiners, except the first combiner!
TR – they're all headmasters (each head gives "powers"), some can triple change and/or be citybots (cause head masters be tiny), one happens to be the biggest headmaster, and another can eat headmasters!
POTP – MORE CW!, Pretenders, Power Masters, find the 13 primes (each prime gives "powers"), leaders evolve, and have a Predaking… and we packed the beast prime with him.
The Prime Masters were a super awkward and comparatively miserable gimmick. From a toy standpoint there was no point. Instead of unlocking things, they tried to play up that "imagine the official power is happening" that was ignored in TR. From a collector standpoint it was kinda cute, but they couldn't even do that right. They ran out of pretenders (and patience with the line) so they packed the last third of them with one limited release. The leaders were good, they were the most excited I got for leader toys in all three lines. As much as I like Abominus and Volcanicus, I wish they skipped the vote and made most of the line evolutions, they clearly had plans.
Cax6ton
RE: POTP running out of steam
Agreed that they decided to make it a trilogy after the fact, it definitely has a Matrix Revolutions tacked-on feel to it. I think part of the problem is that they just ran out of ideas there – the Prime Masters gimmick fell flat, and everyone has forgotten about the Prime evolutions concept of the leader toys – it's only 3 molds, expected underwhelming repaints, and that's it. All the past lines should have taught them that the line-selling gimmick has to be in the deluxe class, not the leader class or the legends class, which is what POTP tried.
It seems like they decided to make it a trilogy too late, then ran out of ideas, and didn't have time to really plan everything out, maybe because of the movie stuff (does this feel like the end of Animated/beginning of ROTF era? It's similar to me). The core evolutions idea was pretty good, maybe if they had the time to work it so more deluxes could snap in to leader rigs in different way then it would have been cool, but POTP definitely feels cut short in a lot of ways, not just the sparse retail presence.
And yes, quantum physicists couldn't figure out lost part bounces. I fucking saw it bounce on carpet over to that corner, but after hours of searching you find it on the opposite side of the room. Like we were taught in quantum physics, measuring it changes the outcome, so looking for the part must change its location.
0ptimus__Prime
It was Godzilla Jr. who was killed in Godzilla vs. Destroyrah.
Minya was only in the Showa era and in Godzilla: Final Wars.
InhumanElm
Ok, no joke: Chris nailed my MP Grimlock knee spring woes. It was a series of searching, regrets, trying to take my mind off it, angry searching, and repeat for 8 hours one Saturday. Finally I decided "Fine. If i clean up a little, maybe I'll find it." So I grabbed the trash bin and somehow the spring was underneath it (you figure that out). And like Seth said, I heard it land somewhere so I was searching that area only to find the piece of the spring I had trimmed off!
Vangelus
WTF @ TFW – 529 – September 18 2018
View attachment 28095647
Vangelus throws down a gauntlet, stating Scrappy Doo has accomplished more than Minya, the Son of Godzilla. What should Seth do about this? Stay tuned, and find out.
– Opening
– Intro
– Listener Question from Spyne98
– Masterpiece Movie Bumblebee Movie Bumblebee Stop-Motion Reveal
– Listener Question from InhumanElm
– Listener Question from The Silver League
– What We Got This Week
– Ending and Outro
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