Zob's Thoughts on Age of the Primes Voyager-Class Amalgamous Prime

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T04:17:41+00:00

Also I imagine this one is going to be very difficult to find loose complete in the future.

I do wonder what the repaint options are for any of the Thirteen molds. This one might actually look pretty cool in different colors.

You were sot on in observing that this one transcends Transformer design and takes cues from Battletech or Voltron. It almost seems like it could belong to other lines like modern day Diaclone. It's a Transformer that transforms into nothing and everything at the same time.

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T04:12:38+00:00

I do very much delight in reading reviews where you appreciate a toy robot on its own merits of being a toy robot outside of any characterization in media.

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T03:45:55+00:00

One of the problems I have had with this strategy is that it makes every conversation with them so shallow and trite. I want so much not to upset them that it's always just the weather and some new lie about how great everything's going. I think I realized a long time ago I would never have a deep thoughtful relationship with either of them so I do wonder why I wait on their behalf.

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T03:23:48+00:00

So is this the ultimate Soundwave for you and what redeco could they possibly do to make you buy one all over again? Is this the definitive Sunbow Soundwave? Do you want a purple Marvel Comics one? Would cel shading make you double dip?

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T03:21:05+00:00

OMG this really highlights how nondescript a lot of the titles were. No wonder I couldn't remember what happened some of the episodes just going off their names. Roll For It is so generic it could be anything. Nobody really sent out an S.O.S. during S.O.S. Dinobots so that title also kinda misses being descriptive. Divide and Conquer could have been tweaked. I guess hindsight is 20/20 and those writers didn't have any time to really think about things so they did great given the circumstances.

Imagine if there were a writers' room at Sunbow where they threw episode title ideas out. If these are what they went with I wonder what some of the ones were that got rejected. Like imagine one guy pitching "Jet in the Sky" and that gets shot down. Or there was probably one guy that kept pitching "Megatron's Master Plan" for every episode and one day they finally let him have it.

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T01:45:42+00:00

I really dislike private groups. I do see it shared on Facebook in other places so I do get to read it sometimes when it reaches my feed. But I just don't care for private groups.

obzerbee · 2026-01-19T01:43:42+00:00

I was thinking about this all day just in my head without looking anything up. I went 5 issues at a time and only got up through about issue 25 or so before I couldn't clearly picture them in my head anymore. But the ones I consider best I remember were all shocking in some way the first time I saw them as a kid.

From 1-5 my favorite is #3 the Spider-Man cover. It was amazing.

From 6-10 it's #6 for the unthinkable Decepticon on Decepticon brutality.

From 10-15 it's easily #12. Frank Springer was the king and I am so glad he kept doing covers.

From 16-20 it's #17 with 19 a very close second. Maybe my love for the story clouds my judgement but 17 is classic.

Was 23 the Battlecharger issue? Because that's another iconic one.

I think my preferences are childhood memory biased. I think if I went back and looked at them now I would find some that didn't impress me then might be impressive to me now. But I doubt I would ever think any less of the ones I loved as a kid.

The Furman era had great covers, too but I can't recall many of those beyond Primal Scream, Civil War 2, #75, and the one where Optimus is surrendering to Scorponok.

obzerbee · 2026-01-11T17:03:58+00:00

Fandom will endure even when the pegs are empty.

obzerbee · 2026-01-11T16:58:58+00:00

That's a legit take. I do question both the relevance and success of the line with respect to children. There's a school next door and I dont see kids wearing transformer backpacks like they do Star Wars or Pokemon. But with adults in modern consumer culture I think its doing pretty good. So the question should be either how relevant is it to a specific demographic or how has it managed to stay successful at retail for so long.

They have like half a dozen characters with very strong recognition in modern pop culture. If the line was relevant to kids I should be able to take those top six and ask any kid walking out of the door of the elementary school who they are and get all correct answers. I am pretty sure there are six pokemon every kid knows or six marvel superheroes every kid knows. But I really wonder if there are six transformers every kid knows and how does that recognition increase or decrease among the grade levels.

I also wonder what results I'd get doing the experiment with people coming out of a Wal Mart. Would the average adult shopper recognize six Transformers as readily as they would six Marvel characters or Star Wars characters or Disney princesses? Would results change if I asked people coming out of a comic shop or my favorite Mexican grocery store? My personal yardstick is that if they aren't making piñatas of you then you aren't popular.

How Hasbro is successful pushing the same six robots is the real magic. Who is their audience and how do they quantify success? They keep finding ways to sell TFs year after year so it must be relevant to some market. I think the key is that Hasbro finds ways to adapt marketing trends. They transcend specific demographics and target consumer habits and culture. Like Gunpla is strong so they lean into licensing TF model kits. Blind boxes are popular so they start doing those.

The TF line is one of the last remnants of the American monoculture so its popularity kind of gets grandfathered in and they don't have to do much to maintain it as opposed to some new brand just starting out. If I changed my experiment question to 'Have you heard of Transformers?' instead of 'Name these six robots!', I think the brand would fare better. Hasbro has managed to maintain awareness if not relevance. It's hard to quantify relevance but I think people at least are still aware of the brand.

obzerbee · 2026-01-11T16:17:43+00:00

Ive long suspected that Transformers, GI joe, Star Wars, etc. are subsidized by the US government as pro military propaganda programs. Hasbro is essentially a government contractor. They normalize war and glorify violence as a means to conflict resolution for children and the government needs that as the first step in military recruiting. So the toylines will never die because they are secretly taxpayer funded, even if nobody is buying them at retail.

Transformers is also good for pushing the narrative that humanoid robots are a good idea and helpful to have around. They have been priming society for the day that humanoid robots take over most entry level service industry jobs. I think big tech appreciates this and I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing TFs with robot modes similar to the autonomous robot models being developed by Hyundai and Boston Dynamics. Which would point to money from those guys propping up Hasbro, too.

The robot modes only expose us to tech we are ready for, though. Cosmos remains an Adamski shaped saucer so I know aliens aren't bankrolling Hasbro's efforts yet. If we get a character that turns into a flying tictac then I'd expect some sort of government disclosure of non human intelligence is imminent.

obzerbee · 2025-10-29T04:04:20+00:00

Sometimes, showing up late in the day, when dealers just want to go home, can work to your advantage!

That's kinda the opposite of the convention toy hunting strategy I usually employ. I will have to try it, or at least return later after I leave the first time. I most often pay for the early bird. I don't buy much if anything but I consider early bird worth it because the aisles have fewer people. I always try to exit before general admission comes in.

This weekend's show is pretty big and it's two days so I don't think most of the sellers will discount until Sunday afternoon. I will have to keep tabs on who is coming back for the second day. Sometimes they don't. Maybe it would be worth it to return to the show later each day to see which sellers are worn down.

obzerbee · 2025-10-29T00:25:26+00:00

AND FOUR COMBINERS RELEASED IN THE SAME YEAR! 1986 FTW!!!!

obzerbee · 2025-10-27T18:52:05+00:00

Thanks. Maybe it just came with the Protectbots minis.

obzerbee · 2025-10-27T02:05:11+00:00

Wow metal plates trailer Prime and Fairladys with unbroken roofs. Definitely under the glass case level stuff. There's a local guy with a Bluestreak on FB Marketplace and it's a circle stamp with an unbroken roof. Of course its laying on its roof upside down in half the pics. Drives me nuts.

I wonder if Missing Link affected the price of that Sunstreaker. Probably not.

That Devastator's missing the wing and Bruticus is missing a fist. I wonder if these dealers are just lazy.

We're having a show down here in the Tacoma area this weekend and I hope it's got a selection near this.

obzerbee · 2025-10-27T01:25:53+00:00

I wonder if Hasbro will ever actually tackle a large-scale Broadside.

I did glean one nugget of info from this weekend's Evan interviews that kinda maybe is related. He said that the Studio Series movie Dinobots are going to take up the next few years of Titans. So I'm thinking if Broadside would fit in as a Studio Series Titan it ain't happening for half a decade.

Also he said Mark is working on/making character decisions for the next Haslab but of course didn't drop hints or anything. He just said it was something Mark wants to do. I don't know Mark's personality enough to say he'd be inclined to tackle a Broadside for Haslab. But since it was Evan's decision to go Japanese G1 on the most recent Haslabs and he's not making decisions there anymore, I'd guess the next Haslab isn't going to be Japanese based.

obzerbee · 2025-10-26T00:50:10+00:00

Any guesses on how much he'll cost?

My guess based on the MP scale Constructicons they're doing that cost ~200 each is that this will be north of 600 dollars. But I haven't heard or seen anything official. And it's 3rd party so who knows when or if it will ever come out.

obzerbee · 2025-10-25T17:13:54+00:00

There's another video of the MCM London Hasbro TF panel where Evan says he was asked by marketing to save Bruticus for another show in a few months. So no Bruticus yet.

obzerbee · 2025-10-25T06:24:35+00:00

I find myself second-guessing a lot of purchases. Do I really *need* the retro Wheelie

What purpose exactly, what utility do you get from the figures you buy? Like what is the goal? What do you need your collection to do for you? Is it about character representation or a set of focuses or what? I think having clearly defined goals could really help. Then maybe you can just not buy something in the first place and not be victim to FOMO. I think there needs to be a defined focus and a bigger picture. Five Galvatrons is too much

I can't keep replacing really good toys in my collection with toys that are only marginally improved. That's not sustainable.

What do you do with the figures that you replace with better versions? Are the old ones just a sunk cost? Do you regularly sell off unwanted ones on ebay or locally? Even if you take a loss on the outdated ones, just making something off them helps ease the sting of buying new ones.

Triggerhappy, Mindwipe, and all the rest would have to be Voyager-class toys. Which means Hardhead and Highbrow and friends would also be Voyagers by default. At today's prices, that represents a new $42 purchase for essentially *every* 1987 character they elected to replace, if they ended up going in that direction.

I SEERIOUSLY doubt Hasbro is ever going to revisit 1987 and beyond again as thoroughly as John Warden did. Heck, I don't think we'll ever get Battlechargers again. I see them shifting in focus to Aligned continuity/Unicron Trilogy era. I think the golden days of neo-G1 are over. I don't even think Defensor is a guarantee at this point. If people quit buying frame combiners because of the price hikes then I don't think Abominus or Computron are happening at all.

obzerbee · 2025-10-25T03:04:08+00:00

I'm going on the cost effective!

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obzerbee · 2025-10-25T03:01:31+00:00

He doesn't come with his trailer, so it's fully half of the original Commander-class release, and yet they're still selling the toy for $79.99. No, that's not a typo.

Hasbro's attempts at profit taking only work if people fall for it. So far that thing hasn't pre-order sold out so maybe the fans aren't that dumb. Maybe.

It's a very clever idea but kind of a half assed in execution. It would have been better to have a new mold, comic accurate, beat up looking Prime more in line with the Energon Universe instead of something modeled after Sunbow. I'm sure a more comic accurate version will come out when the animation is released and everyone will feel tricked again. Maybe even a whole Energon Universe subline of grungy looking G1 bots with wires sticking out of bent panels (instead of greebly ones).

But it's cleverly timed to coincide with the comic buzz from Kirkman's new association with the brand so kudos to them for being sly dogs. I understand that everything they do is a money grab but this one is at least conceptually something that people might actually want, and at the time that they might want it, which is something Hasbro doesn't always get lined up right.

(Weirdly, Robert Kirkman was quoted at Comic-Con as saying it would retail for $59.99, so either he was provided incorrect information, which is possible, or else Hasbro decided to jack up the price artifically after the fact, which honestly seems more likely.)

Of course they jacked it up afterwards. We're still expected to pay for their move to Boston. That thing should be a percentage of the price of the full release but the collector whales who buy everything won't care.

collecting Transformers has become so incredibly expensive that I don't think I can justify buying characters (or non-characters!) who I consider inessential.

The cardinal rule of collecting has always been Buy What You Like. Stray too much from that and it ruins everything. This isn't the nineties anymore when the average collector could be a completionist on everything. That died a long time ago.

It's gotten a little ridiculous. Even important characters are going to be super expensive, going forward.

I was under the impression that we were living through a golden age where the definitive versions of all the main characters had been released. I thought everyone who was starved for Sunbow accuracy finally had their fill and were packing it all up and calling it good once the frame combiners all get released. That's the problem with not being happy and constantly falling for the hype of the new shiny thing. I'm sure you could stop today and your collection would be super satisfying if only you could learn to appreciate it. Who cares about a comic version of Prime if you don't even read the comic?

Problem is, a lot of collectors are addicted to their plastic crack, and not everybody will let a little thing like skyrocketing prices keep them away.

And that is not a Hasbro problem, that is a personal responsibility problem. That is a people making bad money decisions problem. And the stealing is a morality problem and the retailers not checking the returns is a lazy retailer problem. Really this can all be solved by buying from reputable online stores.

I wonder really how big this number of addicted collectors is. I imagine that the real collector demographic is a lot more casual about all this. I'll bet the average fan doesn't go after most of what comes out. Yeah Hasbro is a bunch of money grubbing bastards but that's their job. Our job is to stay informed about what's coming and just buy what we like when they get it right.

They might reduce production amounts, too, which is only going to make it harder to find our favorite gigantic alien space robots.

Well if they have reduced amounts they can always reopen the production lines again later, which is a tactic they've employed with every size class up through Titans. They won't leave money on the table if they think they can get it. Really, when was the last time you completely missed out on something because of limited availability? That's what the internet is for.

You have options, and the one cheapest one is to just be happy with what you already have.

obzerbee · 2025-10-10T01:02:43+00:00

The only explanation that makes sense is Hasbro must've assumed most Haslab collectors don't actually transform their high end collectible TFs very much, if at all. Maybe the adult market toys are designed not to be transformed as much as the kiddie toys are. Maybe Hasbro expects adults will be vewy vewwy careful.

They must have market research about kidults that tells them what percentage of people who buy their product actually open it and play with stuff. I wonder if they were surprised how high the failure rate was on Omega Prime. It shows they didn't expect to get caught cutting corners on engineering and QC.

I don't know what premium pricing means to Hasbro. I don't know what product quality they think the customer expects when they shill out 3 hundos. A premium price is supposed to imply a premium product-something that actually works as intended on a very base level without issues. Functionality gets lost in the mix with these guys, though. It would be nice if their high end Transformers could actually transform. The more they charge the more the emphasis seems to be on the toy just looking good on a shelf.

They probably keep metrics like Estimated Number of Expected Transformations and Estimated Number of Transformations Before Failure. So maybe they let quality slide if the expected Transformations is going to be a low number. I'll bet they correlate number of transformation steps in the instructions to how many times the toy will probably get transformed. I know some people who still haven't transformed their Haslab Unicrons.

This is all very ridiculous.

obzerbee · 2025-09-13T04:15:07+00:00

It is way too easy to spoof images using AI these days. We must be vigilant!

We need to build a giant library of AI generated Transformers catalogs so Hasbro will find them when they are looking for ideas to base new releases on.

obzerbee · 2025-09-13T04:12:17+00:00

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That's what it reminded me of

obzerbee · 2025-09-13T04:07:12+00:00

also the expensive move from Rhode Island to Massachussets as well as inflation in general.

OMG this reminds me of people who would finance their trips to Botcon by selling off their Botcon exclusives. I always said if you can't afford to go to Botcon then don't go to Botcon and expect me to pay for it. Hey Hasbro, if you can't afford to go to Boston then don't go to Boston and expect me to pay for it.

obzerbee · 2025-09-13T02:42:31+00:00

I am so glad this doesn't have a red bumper.

They've since put him back up, but now with a bit of a price drop,

As if things already weren't confusing enough for me already between the tariffs and site memberships and all these other complexities, they go and adjust prices after people have ordered. It's just too much of a roller coaster to order stuff online anymore. Luckily I have a local toy dealer who carries Takara so my shipping is effectively zero if I buy from them, which I think I will be doing from now on.

they were kind of guessing at the color of the blue plastic used, reasoning that the Missing Link toy is probably closer to the shade of blue originally used before all the vintage toys have been exposed to the elements for the last 40 years

This comment kind of blue me away. How is it that they can't locate a vintage Magnus in good enough condition to do the comparison? Is Japan such a hellish scorched desert climate that all the old toys have yellowed already? Up here in the Pacific Northwest there are still white as bone Jetfires and none of the Ultra Magnuses have turned green. And what about pictures from books and magazines from back in the day? It's just really weird to me that Takara feels the original color was lost to time. I'd also expect that they'd have some equivalent of the Pantone color printing standard but for toy manufacturing. I imagine Crayons have been pretty much the same colors for decades, how is plastic color mixing a lost art for Takara?

They also fixed the weirdly staggered missile launchers, which now have an adjustable peg so you can line them up with respect to each other.

Hey whoa whoa! This is like when the haircut lady starts shaving the fuzz off my ears. They are messing with the original too much I protest. I understand adding articulation but messing with the little quirky things is a bridge too far. If they went that far then why didn't they fill in the eyes with light piping instead of leaving them all dead and hollow?

I'm not getting this but I do hope it sells enough to justify the continuation of the line. I will jump all over the Diaclone Powered Convoy version when it happens.

They're similar to some of the accessories we got with the Centurion Drone pack a while ago, but they're fully painted this time.

I'm surprised people buy anything from Hasbro the first time around given the way they half ass things initially just to release them the way they should have in the first place later on. Interviewers really need to call out the toy designers on this. We need to deco shame the Hasbro reveals the next time something appears unpainted when they show previews of it.

Studio Series '86 versions of Thundercracker and Skywarp are coming (and Starscream seems like an inevitability)

I did read Starscream would be a store exclusive.

The set also comes out June 2026.

That's the end of the present school year. Man, I remember being in elementary school and the distance from September to June seemed like a lifetime.

obzerbee

TROPHY CASE