I miss those Cyber Battalion things. They were better than this.
New Authentics product -- Mini Bot Racers, masks, Cyber Battlers
- Thread starter lastmaximal
- Start date
i get that these are very much meant for the discount market and stuff so kids who's families don't have a lot of money can still get transformers for them
but also those kids deserve better than these bootleg looking-ass things.
but also those kids deserve better than these bootleg looking-ass things.
I think it tends to come down to a few factors, like "what is the current media going for" (Windblade was a product of an era that pushed for new elements, both at Hasbro and in the fandom; Elita is deep in a time when the focus is more on the roots than creating new things) and "what is easily retooled into other characters”. It's actually kind of neat that Elita and Arcee in Authentics seem to be two distinct molds rather than what they got in WFC.
Elita can take that spot instead of Arcee now because in current media she's contemporaneous to everyone else, whereas in G1's heyday she wasn't really seen or used beyond a Cybertron-set guest ep or two and the setting moved forward a lot, leaving her further in the past.
I like that while there tends to be one prominent female character in the brand, it's not always JUST her that gets seen in everything anymore. One side benefit of the mold reuse -heavy paradigm is one female character toy can turn into 3 (Elita, Strongarm, Minerva) with some compromising, and the shows tend to be a fair bit more deliberate in featuring female characters (my general shrugging at Cyberverse aside, i am quite fond of Clobber).
But hey, let's have some more anyway!
I don't really collect the line, but the other Bravo class molds are better than this. Barricade (barring the hilarious Cars-like windshield "eyes") and Ratchet look pretty good, Optimus Primal delivers on the basic design very well, and the first Grimlock mold is passable.
The (somewhat unwieldily) bigger Bravo class toys are pretty neat too, with a Wheeljack that seems to really measure up to the mainline Deluxe, a new Mirage that's just held back by seemingly Armada Megs-llike articulation, and a pretty cool looking new Megatron design.
Even the Alpha class Arcee wasn't bad lookswise, and actually balances the slender robot with the chunkier vehicle in ways its mainline counterparts struggled to (because the latter had to avoid giving her these cool but inaccurate Mega Man boots). But this Elita, while having a really neat vehicle mode, just rings of budget cutbacks when you look at all the cut corners for robot mode.
By and large, the smaller 4.5 “refresh” that occurred last year seemed to indicate a round of cost cutting DID occur. It would not surprise me if Authentics didn’t get overhauled in a few years with New sizes/concepts to fit increasingly tighter budgets.
I think it just comes down to media that happens to be current. Elita's always been tied to the War on Cybertron. Between the WfC Siege show, TFO focusing on the start of the War, and Skybound revisiting the Sunbow dynamics and highlighting Elita's resistance cell... Elita's had a lot of opportunities to shine. So if stuff concurrent with that stuff, like Authentics, or even EarthSpark, need another female character then Elita makes sense because she's "in the zytgiest" as it were.
It'll probably swing back around to Windblade, or even someone else, once something else becomes "current." Nothing's forever, and it's all cyclical.
I just think it's neat that we have choices. It's not just Arcee or nothing anymore. There are more female characters, more options to draw from, and that's better for the brand overall.
If they thought Authentics' budget was too high, that is dire.
when is minerva going to get her shot as 'the female character we are pushing this year' damb it
In year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred Eighty-Eight.
Minerva was great in IDW2, and I feel like that coulda been her moment to break out if anyone gave that continuity a chance
