The Complexity of Modern Transformers Toys - THE TRANSFORMERS MULTIVERSE

29/03/2022, 13:11 The Complexity of Modern Transformers Toys | THE TRANSFORMERS MULTIVERSE
THE TRANSFORMERS MULTIVERSE

A Celebration of Transformers Source Material and Fan Culture
The Complexity of Modern

Transformers Toys
November 4, 2020 Uncategorized
When I was a kid my Grandfather showed me a small wooden box with ornate decorations on the out-
side of it. If you made two fists and put them together, it was about that size and dimension. The box
had no obvious openings but on one end – on the side was a small panel that if you pressed it *just*
so, it would slide sideways – but only half way. Only with the right amount of pressure.
Nothing would open at that point on the box. Sliding that first panel, allowed you to move another
section, which let you move another section. Eventually you got to open one part of the box, where
you could store a small keepsake. But if you kept going a couple more steps, there was yet another
hidden compartment. You would not know about the compartments if you just picked up this inno-
cent ordinary looking wooden box and tried to open it in any traditional method.
Japanese Yosegi Puzzle Box
My Grandfather picked up that box while in Asia during wartime as a male nurse. He traveled to Korea
and other places during the 1950’s and the Japanese puzzle box was one of the things he bought as a
souvenir/curio and brought back with him.
I remember as a kid him showing me that box and showing me the first step of that Transformation,
and then leaving me to figure out the rest. That box was beautiful and enjoyably complex. There were
no wrong ways to slide the parts, you could always slide back any piece that you moved easy enough.
It was strong and robust as well as ornate and being a hard wood, there was no chance of breaking it
unless you busted out a hammer and struck it with all your might. The box teased you, if you didn’t
solve it right away, your natural curiosity would inevitably bring you back to it. Those qualities are
what can also contribute to making a good Transforming robot toy. That sense of mystery, challenge,
fun and frustration.
https://transformersmultiverse.wordpress.com/2020/11/04/the-complexity-of-modern-transformers-toys/ 1/22
The mind that comes up with a box like that is not only clever, but creatively technical, artistic and re-
ally quite amazing. And that sort of mind, that creative and artistic genius mind goes into things like
designing Transforming toy robots, with all their complexity or simplicity be they 3-Steps or 36-Steps.
That Yosegi puzzle box in its traditional form is made of wood, and you would call it an artisan type of
product.
It’s not just a clever piece of puzzle boxery – but

ornate, well decorated and constructed. Equal
parts art and functional wooden box.
The craft and care that goes into that traditional puzzle box is a value you don’t see in most modern
“products” be they furniture, toys or whatever.
For a toyline, characters and media I love so much – I really don’t enjoy transforming most modern
Transformers toys. They are often too complex for my liking. They may look great, but I find them
more painful than pleasurable to transform.
They lack the simplicity of the Yosegi puzzle box that draws you in,
and is just complicated enough to intrigue and challenge,
but not so complex as to frustrate and annoy.
THE WILL OF A WARRIOR
Modern Transformers often lack the Artisanry of the original Diaclone and Micro Change lines from
which they grew. They were simple, they were ornate and beautiful, robust and of course they were
functional. The toys could take a beating and still transform just fine.
Ocassionally a modern transforming toy will surprise me with it’s level of ingenuity, its just right in the
middle complexity or it gets close to actual artistry. More often it’s not so, I just want to acknowlege
that there are exceptional Transforming toys that are made even in the modern era. But complexity
for the sake of it does not equal good design or good art.
Take a look at the history of any art or craft and you will see that it is simplicity and beauty that makes
for great art and not complexity for the sake of it. Even great complexity is not of value to the everyday
person until it is refined for use and non-technical function. I am not a computer programmer, nor
hardware expert, yet I can “use” a computer for basic functions. I am not an electrician yet I can flip on
and off a light switch. The more complex something becomes, the less it is understood by the general
layman and more it only understood by specialists such as technicians.
I don’t want to get too in depth into the the theory of complexity of Transformers, so I will use some
actual toys rather than charts to show a range of simple to increasing levels of complexity with the
most simple on the left and the most complex on the right.
Above (left to right) is a flip changer Rescue Bot Heatwave, G1 Sideswipe, G1 Doublecross.
Below is Combiner Wars Megatron, Studio Series Optimus Prime (a KO redeco, but same transforma-
tion) and Studio Series Sentinel Prime.
From left to right then we have from simple to complex. The Rescue Bot requires exactly ZERO steps to
transform. It literally transforms itself simply by tilting. G1 Sideswipe requires between 5-10 steps to
change into car mode (depending on how dexterous you are, I tend to cheat some steps by squishing
the toy together in my hand). Combiner Wars Megatron is more complex still, requiring around 15
steps, but most of the movements are quite natural and not much guess work is needed.
Once we get to Studio Series Nemesis Prime and Sentinel Prime, now we are dealing with 20, 30 or
more steps. Parts are not as obvious where they can move, or not move. Parts require more flexion
(bending of soft plastic) and it can be hard to know what *should* bend a little, and what will break if
forced. While I can easily transform any of the first four toys in under a minute, the Studio Series toys
will take me easily 10+ mins each to transform – if I can even remember how to do it – which I often
can not.
These are just broad generalizations for the sake of making an example. By no means do all toys in
each line subscribe to this standard. EG some G1 toys are complex, some Bayformers are simple, but
by and large the reverse is true, with the Generations ongoing line of of toys usually in the middle level
of complexity. The image above shows the current ongoing toyline in 2020. From simple to most com-
plex we have Rescue Bots, Cyberverse, Generations, Studio Series and Masterpiece which range in
price, complexity and target demographics.
For fans who enjoy the complexity of modern Transforming toys, this increasing complexity can be a
good thing. Some people who buy Transformers toys at a high price that are overly simple may feel
like they are not getting the value in the toy and the design, which is a valid point for an adult collector
who has transformed perhaps hundreds of toys, and enjoys the evolving complexity of the toylines.
But it leaves any new fans in a harsh reality of perhaps not being able to enjoy the toys at all. They ei-
ther adapt and learn fast or just don’t buy the toys again if the complexity level is too
overwhelming.
For me I get the most enjoyment and value out of simple transformations that don’t take all day. I
grew up with the G1 toys, and never had trouble with any of those. If it takes more than 1-5 minutes to
transform that to me is not enjoyable, it’s just wasting time. So I end up transforming anything compli-
cated today while doing other things like watching a movie. I used to not ever transform most modern
Transformers at all as I just didn’t have time to do it, or I’d be too tired.
Now when I get a new one I’ll put it somewhere like on my nightstand and I pick it up and mess
around with it while watching TV in bed or listening to Podcasts. Using that method over the last year I
have transformed pretty much every new toy at least once or twice, and even dug out some of my
older ones to mess around with, in contrast to almost never transforming most of my newer toys in
the previous year but just plonking them on the shelf and forgetting about them.
If I was a kid of say age 8-10 today, (in this distant present future year of 2020) and you handed me a
Transformers Masterpiece toy, a Studio Series or any of the overly-complex Bayformer Movie inspired
toys I doubt I would be able to transform it at all, with or without instructions. That to me is a failure
to connect with your supposed “core” audience – being children for Transformers toys.
It makes me wonder if today’s complexity in

Transformation existed when I was a kid, would I
have lost interest in the toys altogether, would the
complexity and frustration have over ridden any
play value or fun factor? For me… that answer is
Yes.
Especially if those toys had fallen apart while trying to transform them I would not have bothered with
them. They would have gone to the same forbidden realm of “too hard” like airplane model kits or
miniature model trains. Those things to me are not fun, not toys and involve large amounts of hours
invested to get any value out of them. And once complete they are hands off. Anti-fun in my book.
If you happen to love a Rubiks Cube, or can solve it – or know anyone who can – I am the *opposite* of
that person. I like the look of the Rubiks Cube in an aesthetic sense, I admire its robust build quality
and design and I could happily put one on my shelf as a bit of nostalgia. But when it comes to solving
it Furgettaboutit! I want to fucking *smash* the Rubiks Cube, it makes no sense to my brain at all and I
literally can not solve it.
Most modern Transformers toys both official and unofficial I do not enjoy transforming at all. Some
are downright painful, and can’t even be done without fear of breakage. They have become for me
pretty looking action figures rather than play worthy toys. That’s a damn shame – they ought to be
both. Pretty and functional, without breaking too easily.
If you’ve ever folded or seen some origami, that same genius mind is at work here again, but once
completed it is a pretty delicate thing to be looked at, not played with, as are many modern trans-
forming toys. They have become delicate swan like twig ballerinas where once they had unbreakable
unbeatable chogokin sumo strength. The transformers were once made of sterner stuff.
(*Please note that real life Sumo and Ballerina’s are highly skilled athletes and are proptionally VERY
strong according to their specific performance requirements, I use the archetypes only for a contrast-
ing example. Please don’t mess with Chun-Li who would break you with her literal thighs of steel).
TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY
Compare the “enjoyment” this week of transforming a great looking Studio Series toy, that took me
well over twenty minutes to transform and multiple parts popped off again and again, with the sim-
plicity of say transforming my G1 Doublecross, that I can change from one mode to another even with
my eyes closed, and totally without swearing like a filthy sailor.
One toy I can change over and over again loving the intuitive transformation each time. The other I
have to put down either out of frustration or boredom at the parts popping off, lack of clearance and
parts of the toy seem to be at war with itself. I get so annoyed I want to **SMASH** it but the toy
does half the job for you by falling apart in your hands.
Toys should always be more fun than frustration in my opinion. Otherwise they cease to be toys, and
become adult collectibles or interactive puzzles. Which is fine, but don’t make a 40 step fidgetformer
and market it to seven-ten year olds. That’s just dumb and borderline unethical in my opinion. Fuck
the people who do that, you have robbed that child of a good experience. Fortunately we have the
Rescue Bots toyline for the younger ones which are thankfully simplified and more robust so can actu-
ally be played with without instant breakage nor being too complex for kids to enjoy.
There is however a middle ground between the very simple G1 transformations at one end of the
complexity scale, and Bayformers and Masterpiece (MP) at the other end of the scale. For me that mid-
dle ground is a good looking, posable, fun to transform CHUG figure – CHUG being an acronym for
Classics Henkei Universe and Galaxy lines, or more commonly referred to by the ongoing Generations
line that carries over from year to year in multiple toy lines. Generations is a “best of” or classic hits
transformers line featuring new toys based on old characters, not attached to any current tv show or
film as those always get their own dedicated full lines.
For the simplest of toys for young kids we have the Rescue Bots line, which is a great toy line full of
sturdy drop tested toys that can be transformed without fear of breakage. The trouble is the branding
and look of Rescue Bots implies they are for pre-schoolers. And a lot of kids (and parents) buy their
kids toys for seven year olds, that are too damn complex for them, and really intended for kids say age
8-10 and up, or for teenagers/adults as they are just too complex for younger children.
Another issue is that Transformers as a brand, has far too many lines and sub-lines of toys, that it’s
creates confusion for parents looking to buy their kid a toy. Brand Awareness? How about “Brand
Confusion”.
Ideally Rescue Bots is for the youngest kids, Cyberverse for those a little older, and Generations and
Studio Series and MP for even older folks. But parents by and large don’t know that, unless they hap-
pen to be fans themselves.
Hasbro loves to show off that same giant slide every year internally for their market demographics toy
show presentation of boredom yadda yadda yaddas. But god forbid they put that same simple func-
tional graphic reworked on the back of a package that any parent could understand. Other companies
like Bandai, TOMY and Playmates are much smarted and clearer with their packaging and use the rear
of the package to actually tell you useful information, something Hasbro has not done for decades.
For the kids of adult Transformers fans, they are spoilt and get to indulge somewhat in their parents
hobby, having access to simple or complex Transformations and their parents will know what suits
their kids choices as they grow.
Complexity is not a bad thing, and we should all be challenged in life with incresasingly complex tasks
and skills in our jobs and everday life. But simple/complex is also a choice or preference. Not everyone
is cut out to play basketball or go rock climbing, that kind of physical dexterity and complexity I enjoy.
But mechanical or mathematical complexity forget it, I’m a moron in those areas.
If you handed me the choice of say an electric power tool, or non electric tool such as an axe or ham-
mer – I like the simplicity of the axe or hammer. It’s also a lot more useful exercise to me than an elec-
tric tool as it requires muscular force, but it’s relatively simple to use. I say that, but then there are
highly skilled people who can carve giant blocks of wood into artistic and functional objects with sim-
ple axes and whittling tools.
I’m not one of them, my talents lie in destruction or taking things apart efficiently and ruthlessly. Or
analyzing whats exists, seeing the common themes, ideas, archetypes etc and sharing a different per-
spective on familiar territory- a builder of things, I am not.
GOLD BARS AND GOLD BUGS
There are many types of plastics, rubbers and hybrids made from petroleum products and byprod-
ucts. Plastic really has no end of uses. How long it lasts, what its used for, it can be soft and flexible,
hard and rigid. Like metal plastic can snap at cold temperatures and at extremely high temperatures
can be made into a semi-solid or semi-liquid and poured into a mold. The same basic theory and
ideas apply to making your Gold bar or making a Goldbug in a mold.
Metals last a long time, but can be destroyed with rust, very naughty weather and salt water. Plastic
can last a long long time but can easily become brittle when left in the sun due to the ultra violet radi-
ation. Under stress plastic can bend and warp. Most modern Transformers are made of a softer plastic,
that allows for some friction in transformation, some bending and minor warping before anything
breaks. Your old G1 Transformers were mostly made of a harder plastic that tended not to break even
with a lot of play, but when it did it would be a clean snap rather than a soft bend.
Those telltale white stress marks are the horror of any modern Transformers fan when you are trying
to change a toy from one mode to the other or just posing a toy.
The softer flexible plastics when done right make for a very pliable modern toy that is also super pos-
able. The harder plastics can also be used and sometimes we even get diecast on the more upper end
of Transformers toy complexity scale.
Some modern plastics are hybrids and while appearing thin, can actually be very strong, causing con-
fusion in the modern collector who assumes that all thin/soft plastics are cheap and break easily. And
the reverse is true, some thick robust looking plastics can also be cheap garbage that breaks easily
with no give to them at all.
A good modern transformer then is like the proverbial reed that bends and flows with the wind… and
springs back to shape once the wind has ceased to be. It bends rather than snaps. It flows with life.
SWEEP THE DOUBLE LEG JOINT
The modern Transformers I enjoy the most are the Generations line. Their complexity is usually right
in the middle. Not too simple, not too complex. Some of them still stump me and may break without
some help.
I have collected a good number of nice bots from the Studio Series line despite NOT liking the live ac-
tion movies, their stupid ugly movie faces or their overly complex transformations. The SS line are
good toys. But they are toys for adults or the more mechanically minded. Without videos to assist me I
could not change at least 70% of them without breaking them and would not even be buying them at
all.
The pack in instruction manuals for lines such as Generations and Studio Series are univerally SHIT.
That’s more fact than opinion. It’s an area that tends to be agreed upon by fans old and new and the
obvious byproduct of cust cotting in paper/materials (responsibly so…) and the cost cutting of any ac-
tual DESIGN work or effort in the instructions themselves (irresponsible…)
And for anyone who has seen the beginnings of the Transformers in the 1980s all the way up until the
modern era – the instruction manuals have gone from being simple to follow and clear to read and
understand, to just terrible incomprehensible wastes of time and materials. They should just scrap the
manuals all together given how low the quality has devolved, how riddled with errors they are can
and do lead to actually breaking rather than transforming the toy.
A smarter move would be to support more of the Youtube instructional videos for How To Tranform
Transformers .
Rather than continue down the path of useless indecipherable badly rendered and shaded pieces of
toilet paper that are the current level of instructionally devolved mis-informationals.
A company such as Hasbro would never officially endorse any of the various independant
Transformers reviewers on Youtube for a multitude of sensible reasons, but there is NOTHING stop-
ping them from having videos on their OWN well known Hasbro Youtube channel for how to transform
every product they make, it boggles my mind why they don’t do this.
It’s so simple, it makes so much sense, it’s been suggested by just about every long running TF
Youtuber and TF Podcast on the planet – so you know, naturally Hasbro will never actually do it. It
makes TOO much god damn sense.
It’s like when Nintendo does some inexplicably stupid ass backwards thing. Sure 90% of what
Nintendo does is smart for them as a business and good / enjoyable for the consumer, but that other
10% of old world stick in the mud ass backwards decisions that they make, that literally nobody out-
side their closeted doors understands, that Mind Boggler pops up with big corporate companies like
Hasbro too, it’s just inevitable when you have committees and investors and stock holders and suits
and blah blah blah…. zzzzzz.
Even ex-exmployees have openly talked about how backwards and downright out of the touch the
once personable Brothers De La Hassenfeld Company can be. To be fair that describes not just Hasbro
but is somewhat the nature of any corporate mega-giant that has so many moving parts that it’s be-
comes unfathomable to have any individual voice or personality in such a large behemoth.
With my core collection of Transformers I’m after a select few more hopefully not too god damn com-
plex characters and then I’m done actively collecting them. But I have plenty more articles to write for
this blog and some Collection Showcase posts to photograph and write in the coming months so
don’t make like a tree and leave, be a kick ass Commando and stick around!
IMAGE CREDITS
*Perceptor comic art by Casey Coller
https://www.deviantart.com/idwlimited/gallery/41905036/casey-coller-transformers-black-label
https://www.comicartfans.com/searchresult.asp?txtSearch=Casey%20Coller&PM=1
*Goldbug image TFW2005 toy Gallery
https://news.tfw2005.com/2013/11/24/tfws-generations-goldfire-goldbug-gallery-now-online-178821
Chun-Li fan art by Willemijn1991 https://www.deviantart.com/willemijn1991
Hasbro brand demographics slide from TFW2005
https://news.tfw2005.com/2016/02/12/tfw2005-coverage-hasbro-toy-fair-2016-investor-press-event-
309206
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29/03/2022, 13:11 The Complexity of Modern Transformers Toys | THE TRANSFORMERS MULTIVERSE

THE TRANSFORMERS MULTIVERSE

The Complexity of Modern

Japanese Yosegi Puzzle Box

It’s not just a clever piece of puzzle boxery – but

and is just complicated enough to intrigue and challenge,

but not so complex as to frustrate and annoy.

THE WILL OF A WARRIOR

It makes me wonder if today’s complexity in

TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY

GOLD BARS AND GOLD BUGS

SWEEP THE DOUBLE LEG JOINT

*Perceptor comic art by Casey Coller

*Goldbug image TFW2005 toy Gallery

Chun-Li fan art by Willemijn1991 https://www.deviantart.com/willemijn1991

Hasbro brand demographics slide from TFW2005

Occasionally, some of your visitors may see an advertisement here,

UPGRADE NOW DISMISS MESSAGE

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