G1 Disenchantment!!!

[Devilbat]

Okay...I'll admit that I view G1 toys with rose-colored glasses, but I just experienced a very frustrating/slightly disappointing experience with a G1 Encore figure.

 

A brother of one of my students bought me an Encore Trailbreaker last year, and I was thrilled to get it, although I already had one in a mint box. But I opened it today just for the heck of it since the box wasn't mint and it was an extra figure. I already knew how to transform it since I had Hoist as a kid, but I was rather frustrated and disappointed with the end result. First of all, his head doesn't snap into place like I remember Hoist's doing. Maybe I just forgot, but I don't remember Hoist having an issue where his head didn't rest securely on his shoulders. I have to be wrong since they're made from the same mold. And the way his head flipped up left the camper on his back to just flop down without snapping into place on his back. I hate it when a given Transformer has some piece on its back that just hangs or flops without anything to secure it in place like that. I remember returning the smaller-scale ROTF Megatron to the store a couple of days after I bought it for that very reason. And I noticed the vac-metal coating on that do-hickey that snaps onto the back of his head was already coming off right out of the box, revealing the reddish plastic underneath! Bah! And then there were the labels. Oh my gosh...I wanted to cuss trying to put those blasted labels on. There are two little thin labels that frame in the screws on Trailbreaker's shoulders, and when I tried to remove the first one from the sheet, it broke, even though I was being very careful! And then others didn't completely fit in the locations they're made for, like the long ones on those panels on the backs of his arms; there's a tiny edge that overlaps the plastic because it doesn't fit properly, so naturally when I accidentally rubbed it, it peeled back and wrinkled on the edge a little, making it look like crap. And I discovered all of this while dropping the tiny labels in my carpet and having to get down on all-fours to find them and hoping they'd still stick. (lol)

 

Also, and I know I'm gonna sound hypocritical based on my comments in the "Devastator" thread, but...these things look cheesier, clunkier, and junkier than I remember. The spotty vac-metal combined with the out-of-the-box floppy parts and head and exposed screws on his arms just made this figure look ugly to me, especially when I posed it on my tv stand along with my NECA Terminator 2 and Predators figures; it looked blocky and way out of place alongside figures that I consider to be works of art.

 

Now I've had similar issues in the past, where I've opened up a modern Transformer or two, and I was just about always disappointed with the end result whenever I transformed them and had issues with either "kibble" or loose/aggravating parts, like with the ROTF Megatron. Maybe Transformers are not for me after all. I enjoy solid, sculpted action figures, like the aforementioned NECA figures, and/or statues and busts. I even liked the limited articulation on the NECA figures because I know they're more solid and (usually) don't have loose parts or labels that may or may not fit and/or peel off someday.

 

Maybe I'm just temporarily frustrated, but it makes me wonder how many more of my Transformers figures are as equally aggrevating/disappointing as Trailbreaker. I've already considered selling my Buster Optimus Prime and Premium movie Megatron, simply because I don't prefer my toys with cheesy/finicky electronics that may or may not quit working someday. But my negative experiences make me wonder if the bigger, more expensive figures like these and the Masterpice ones I own have similar issues to Trailbreaker's. What negative experiences, you may ask? Well, I remember I returned a ROTF Sideswipe summer-before-last because it didn't transform properly and broke in my hands, and I got rid of a movie Bumblebee because it simply looked goofy and didn't seem to stand very well. I also rememeber transforming my brother's Alternators Grimlock a few years back and noted how fragile and hollow it felt in my hands. The fact that it was very frustrating to transform didn't help my opinion of it either...

 

So do any of you guys ever get disillusioned with Transformers toys like I have? Is Trailbreaker just an exception and the rest are usually more solid and less glitchy? Or have I just unfairly put G1 toys and Transformers in general up on a pedestal thereby setting myself up for disappointment when in reality they're just cheesy, clunky toys that were meant to be played with and not displayed in a museum?

[Rollo Tomassi]

I went through my old Vintage TFs a couple years ago and had a lot of the same feeling you did. I guess Nostalgia had made them more awesome in my mind. But there were a lot ( and I mean A LOT) of them where I was like, "damn, I played with these?" Characters like Runabout and Runamuck. Or the Throttlebots.

 

And many of them were more broken than I had remembered, so that kinda sucked. I played rough with my toys as a kid, but remembered them as they were when they came out of the box, not after I was done crashing them into each other. SkyLynx was missing a couple feet. Jetfire's arm was broken off. Smokescreen's windows and windshield were completely broken off. Thundercracker was missing a wing. Ironhide was missing a leg. The list goes on. And all of them had super loose joints.

 

So, yeah, Vintage Gen1. Doesn't hold up well.

[Wheeljack35]

I think we are more used to the modern figures with the ball joints then the origionals that's why

[Nguyen_Dragon]

The bigger G1 figures are still pretty awesome... I dont bother with the stickers... I hated them even when I was a kid...

 

I also hate electronics... Remove it and make better use of their resources...

[JeffreyA]

Well with me and the stickers I started doing my own ways like how they look on the cartoon send the 86 movie came out or in my case after I got Metorplex. So from Metorplex and on I try and copy where the autobot/Decepticon icons would go on them and if they had different things on them. Also I fine it alot easyer to transform the G1 figures then the ones they have today.

[Devilbat]

Well, I remember several years ago, back when the TRU Commemorative stuff came out, I would buy them for my brother for birthdays and Christmases, and that's what got me hooked on collecting Transformers as an adult. He'd open them, but then he'd have me put the stickers on for him since I was always so very meticulous when I put mine on as a kid. And as an adult, I was even more precise; I'd use models knives to place labels in hard to reach places, and I'd use Q-tips to rub labels down in place so they'd stick good and even. And I remember when I put the stickers on his Prowl and Smokescreen respectively, I didn't like how some labels were meant to go over moving parts, and I had forgotten about that concerning the original toys. Like for example, on Smokescreen, you're supposed to put those tiny stickers in those tiny tiny holes for headlights, and I remember it was durn-near impossible to get them in there and make them look right. So I made a mental note right there that if it were my figure, I would just leave them off since the headlight holes looked fine without the labels, or at least I thought they did, especially since the white pegs for the arm joint looked like headlights to begin with. And I hated how Prowl had those rank stripes on his shoulders, and they were meant to cover up the swiveling joint, and it just didn't look right when you pressed the label down in place and it didn't lay evenly over the joint. But at the same time, I remember transforming Smokescreen and putting on all the labels, and just thinking how great the figure looked decked out with his labels (the ones that fit right that is) and weapons in place. It looked so cool and surreal, to hold that brand-spankin' new Transformer in my hands, one that my brother had when he was a kid and had played rather roughly with, and it was new and complete once again, like I had traveled back in time and had bought a new one again. I was hooked. Right then and there, I had to seek out the Commemorative collection for myself, and I did. Oh man...I had an absolutely mint, C-10, cherry-picked MIMSB Commemorative collection that I was quite proud of...and I sold every one of them on eBay a few years later for a quick buck. *sigh* And I had every single one of them too, as far as I know, in perfect boxes. Oh well. What can I say? There's nothing I can do about it now, right?

 

But anyway, getting back to the sticker issue...I love the "Seeker" figures, for example. My first Transformer ever as a kid was Starscream. My uncle took me to a local shopping mall for my first-ever trip to KB Toys, and that's what I bought. But even back then, I hated how you had to put stickers on his face for his eyes. That always bugged me, and the stickers didn't even fit right to begin with! They're just there on his face like paper goggles! (lol) And I own the cool Encore Thundercracker/Skywarp set, but I know down inside that box somewhere are those flippin' labels for eyes that I just hate. And the OCD in me won't allow me to paint the eyes on. Then my toys wouldn't be in original, out-of-the-box condition if I did that, and that would drive me crazy. (lol)

 

Maybe I just need to keep all of my G1 Encore figures in their mint boxes for display, and just open the other miscellaneous figures someday to pose around them.

[Superpowers1980]

The original models for TF were good, but man those stickers. As a kid I mostly avoided putting stickers on anything, every once in a while but never the entire sheet. I was a sloppy kid and no matter how hard I tried the application of the sticker to the toy never worked.....HAHAHA.