2018 has dawned, and brought with it new beginnings as well
as more of the same. My wife and I spent almost two weeks in Munich, Germany on
vacation, and during that time away from home and the general goings-on of the
world, I got some time to do some thinking about the direction of things. Important
things that often get drown out by the demands of work and all the hustle and
bustle: the direction of the Coffin, and general matters about my collection.
My primary goal for today is to find a place to display TFC
Toys Hades, so that I can finally assemble it. I also need to begin what feels
like a massive undertaking of photographing the TFC Seacons that I got for
Christmas, and getting some pictures of various third party combiners in their
combined form, as my write ups on their component parts are reaching
completion. That brings me to my first vacation thought: I want to get better
with my photography. Not only in terms of quality of images, as I know that
some of my pictures are a little blurry at times, but also in terms of taking
good pictures of figures. Most of my pictures are just toys standing there, and
that is something that I’d like to change.
But the big thing that I’d thought about while on vacation
was about the future direction of my collection, and I’d reached a preliminary
decision before coming home, only to arrive home to a some waiting packages
that confirmed my decision was correct. My wife maintains that she knew this decision
was coming, and I suppose that she is correct: after all, who really knows us
if not that one incredibly significant other, and mine knows me far, far better
than I seem to give her credit for. But the conclusion I reached feels titanic,
a massive statement that I don’t honestly believe I would have ever seen
coming, despite telling myself I have stood on this precipice before, even announcing
it to my wife a few times over the last couple of years, but only now really
feeling like it is the correct decision to make, the best road to take into the
future, regardless of how long the road may last.
I think that I am going to limit my Transformers collecting
to third party and Masterpiece figures.
Now, I have been well known to indulge in Hasbro products
for entire lines, most recently Combiner
Wars, but also lines past like Energon
and Cybertron. Who owned two Energon Hot Shots, the regular and the “Powerlinx”
repaint? This guy! I bought so many Minicons during Armada, and then a few years later rebought them when the Cybertron line repainted and repackaged
them as those versus packs. But shortly before we left for Germany, just a day
or two before Christmas, I got Power of
the Primes Dreadwind in the mail, and I just was not impressed. It’s a fine
figure, as hopefully will be made known on this blog in the next couple of
days, but I just was not at all excited about it. Later that evening, while
watching hockey, I was fiddling with TFC Toys Cyberjaw, a version of a figure
and character I have never in my life liked for any reason (I think I tweeted
about this at the time. . . ) and was totally smitten. I know it’s not fair to
compare a $15 Deluxe and a $99 essentially-Voyager of collector grade to each
other, but they are both still toys, and one of them elicited the proper
reaction from me, while the other just made me glad I could check it off my
shopping list.
In January of 2018, I am well on the path of third party
collecting, and I don’t think of this decision as anything that is reactionary
or rash. I have reached the point in my collector’s experience where I find the
unofficial products better and more satisfying than the official ones. I will
certainly buy some Hasbro figures from time to time, but I think that the main
focus of my buying and collecting is moving on to a different place. And it’s
not really a “me” thing: it’s a Hasbro thing.
I have not had a single third party figure experience where I
felt disappointed or anything negative. None of them have even approached a meh
or flat reaction. Sure, some figures have not been the most exhilarating, like
Nemean and Dinosan, but when the response to a Legends scale figure like Iron
Factory’s Clone elicits more joy than something like Titans Return Overlord does, I think that says something.
Distribution has been so, so poor in my area for the last
few years now, and it is past the point of being frustrating that every time I’ve
been to local stores, I see the same three or (maybe) four Transformers on the
pegs. Literally the same. One Target in my area had a Titans Return Hot Rod on the peg for almost a year; I know it was
the same one because the top right corner of the card had been cut off,
probably when the case was slit open, so this is not some hyperbole that so many Hot Rods had been shipped to
this store that I simply am overreacting. Going to the store for months and
always seeing the same couple toys really kills the enthusiasm, and there is
something that feels wrong about ordering toys that should be available at
retail online. The kicker is that, when they arrive at my apartment, my
response to them is always something that I’d call quaint: “oh, that’s nice.”
This brings me to my next point. Power of the Primes contains a Starscream. A combining Starscream,
at that. And I have no interest at all. I’ve bought a few Starscreams out of a
sense of obligation to the character. Over the summer, I sold off my live
action movie Seeker set, which does mean that I bought those live action movie
Seeker figures several times, and have trouble even remembering that I owned
them. But I bought them all. Hell, I just bought Transformers Legends, the Japanese version of Titans Return, Octane because he came with a second Headmaster
figure that is a Ghost Starscream head. I am a man who will buy Starscream. But
I do not want the Power of the Primes Starscream.
On vacation I saw a picture on Twitter where someone had attached Combiner Wars Combaticons to Power of the Primes Starscream and the
reference was so powerful that I thought, “Well, now I have to buy it!” And
seconds later, that thought had passed, never to return. Maybe the issue is the
rehashing of the last two lines’ gimmicks into a new, unified third line,
causing enthusiasm to become a casualty of the corporate need to rebrand as
fast and often as possible before the consumer gets comfortable. But I think it’s
really more because of Hasbro’s products versus the things that third parties
are doing, which I find infinitely more interesting and satisfying. An etailer
sends out an email notifying me that some new 3P product is up for preorder. I
look at pictures, and decide if it is worth a fairly predictable and stable
$100 of my money. Hasbro puts out official images of some new official product,
and I’m not entirely sure how much it’s going to cost at retail, as the prices
have been going up for years now. $13? $15? The current almost-$17? The returns
are diminishing though, as the $17 Power
of the Primes Dreadwind is a retooling of a $15 Combiner Wars Arielbot. $100 for MakeToys Galaxy Meteor, and it is
a brand new figure. There was a time where I, too bought in to the idea that I could
get five $17 figures for the price of one $100 figure, but it’s not about how
many toys you get, but rather how good the toys you get are.
When we arrived home, a package was waiting for me, containing
Masterpiece Sunstreaker, a figure I have
been excitedly waiting for since I preordered it. It is a pretty excellent
figure, and one I found myself impressed with a number of times during the
exploratory phase. I’m good with Masterpiece
figures, as they don’t fall into the lethargic space that Hasbro Transformers
have become mired in. and I have missed out on quite a few at this point, so
maybe I should look into shoring up those deficiencies. So it’s not like
everything official is bad, or that everything unofficial is marvelous.
But I think my focus and enjoyments as a collector are
changing, have been changing, and for the time being at least, where I see my
converting robot collecting going is not where Hasbro wants to take us. So, I’ve
decided that we need a little time apart, you know, to work on ourselves a bit.
It’s not a forever goodbye, as there are two Power of the Primes figures that are on my future shopping list;
but it is a goodbye for now. And maybe in the future, if things are meant to
be, we’ll get back together and give it another try, Hasbro and I. But for now,
I don’t really see us moving in the same directions, or being together.
Don’t feel bad, Hasbro, but it is not me. It’s definitely you.
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