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2014 In Review: Best Toys (Generations)

In 2014, Generations didn't die to make way for the movies. In fact, if anything, it grew. The return of the Leader class and a robust, available, and relevant selection of Legends figures helped to expand the world of Generations beyond Deluxe and Voyager. Keep reading to see RAC and ExVee's picks for the best, worst, and weirdest of 2014!

While the new team showed their mark in Age of Extinction, it was perhaps more clear in Generations itself where their approach began to intermingle with an existing line's style. But their impact has been felt in other ways, significantly in delivering on the ages-old Hasbro promise of finding a way to get poorly distributed toys back out to retail. By convincing retailers still burdened with Fall of Cybertron Data Disks to continue ordering Generations Legends, they helped clear the way for a great range of figures in the US. This year we would also see an intent to connect with the fandom on a variety of levels, including peeks in to the design process of the toys via features on Youtube and Facebook. A few missteps may have happened along the way, and hopefully prevalent chrome is something to be left in 2014, but by and large this has been a good year for the Generations side of the brand.

For our picks of the best (and worst) of 2014, we've divided our lists to cover Age of Extinction and Generations separately, because it turned out that we had a great deal to say about both lines this year. Takara and Hasbro product have been considered where appropriate, but mostly we're leaning towards Hasbro product as its the more accessible and familiar for us and most of our readership. And at the time of this writing, there is a fair chunk of the 2014 Generations line still untouched by TakaraTomy between their own Generations branding or their Legends Series. Incidentally, 2014 also ended up being the year of confusing line names.


Best Figure - Leader: Legends LG07 Jetfire

In choosing a Generations Leader-class figure for Best of 2014, well it was going to be Jetfire, because that's what we got. Of the two possible Jetfires to choose from, we've selected Legends Jetfire for a reason we already discussed at length in our Age of Extinction rundown: chrome. While Leader Jetfires chrome is one of the better applications, it's neither true to the original Jetfires deco nor necessary. All that said, Jetfire is a great figure that manages to combine the robot mode animation model with a middle finger to Harmony Gold in the form of a very, very Veritech jet mode. On top of which, it has an implementation of the original toy's Super Valkyrie armor that is arguably more streamlined than the Classics version. You can read our review of Generations Leader Jetfire by clicking here.


Best Figure - Voyager: Roadbuster

In choosing Roadbuster for this, I feel there's a bit of a rerun from Hound on the Age of Extinction list. A portion of the choice is based on a good set of accessories that have a reasonably engaging design gimmick of different levels of combination, and the figure itself is a very solid design at its core. Roadbuster is particularly meaningful in completing a pair of generally under-represented toys from G1, following on from Whirl in properly updating the Deluxe Autobots. Roadbuster has seen update in the form of recolors previously, but this was the first time that any toy has been designed with the specific intent of portraying this character, and the first time since 1985 that a Roadbuster toy has not been another Transformer character first. Plus it has a great eye-catching deco, and I have a hard time saying no to orange. You can read our review of Generations Roadbuster here.


Best Figure - Deluxe: TG-33 Armada Starscream

Armada Starscream regardless of specific version was a solid figure, and a good updating on the original design. While the original will always be a particular favorite of mine, I was pretty happy with Hasbro's new take. But it was the TakaraTomy Generations (confusing line name crossover, I know) version that really caught my attention. Dropping one plastic color and easily doubling the number of paint operations, TG-33 Armada Starscream harks back to the old days of Takara giving premium looking decos on existing toys, and this more than lives up to that idea. While neither toy is entirely accurate to the deco of either Hasbro or Takara's original, TG-33 Starscream matches the closest to the animated appearance, and is the more attractive by far of the two choices. Click here to read our review of Hasbro's Generations Armada Starscream.


Best Figure - Legends: Skrapnel With Reflector

Pretty much everything about the figure is excellent, up to and including the establishment of a really engaging replacement name for G1 Insecticon Shrapnel. The figure itself is similarly close to the original, improving on articulation and transformation significantly. Topping off all that is the inclusion of a Mini-Con Reflector, who not only becomes an (upside-down) camera but also unfolds into a decent approximation of G1 Shrapnel's gun. There were quite a few good Legends this year (and Tailgate), but that extra touch puts Skrapnel at the top of the list. You can find our video review of Skrapnel and Reflector here.


Best Articulation: Windblade

2014's Generations figures were a surprisingly consistent batch. With exception of molds brought back from previous years as recolors or retools, most everything we saw this year followed a general model of articulation. That made this category hard to pick for, but finally we decided Windblade would take this for but a simple addition: wrists. While otherwise Windblade follows the same general layout as the majority of other figures before it this year, it adds swivel wrists which are a great benefit to posing with a sword. In addition, the thin build leaves the other joints with more room to move and so a greater degree of poseability within its jointing structure. It was a close field, but Windblade just manages to stand out on top.

We would've picked Fall of Cybertron Skywarp, but that would be cheating.

You can read our review of Windblade by clicking here.


Best Paint and Deco: TFC-A03 Hot Rodimus

(That's Cloud Rodimus, if you dont recognize the serial number)
I'll admit I may have a degree of bias towards this figure, but I think even without that playing a role I would have reached the same conclusion. The Japanese exclusive Cloud series has a really spotty record with its toys, either being very boring, unappealing, or unexpectedly brilliant. Rodimus is one of two figures that falls in that last category. The Generations Springer mold has an amazing versatility to be able to represent other characters if given an appropriate deco, and making a Rodimus from it was probably one of the last things anyone would have considered, but it just works so well when put to practice. This is helped in no small part by evoking IDW's Rodimus design in the current comics a bit, but moreover I think this is just proof that the only thing standing between a given mold and a good representation of another character is creative deco work.


Best Recolor: Crosscut

There's a very short list of things to recolor Skids as. Crosscut is there, but nobody really expected to get what was a Japanese mail order exclusive character as a general release Generations toy. True to the category, the silvery-grey plastic of the body with a really pretty highlighting of red paint and black accents makes a very attractive figure, and the Diaclone-based head sculpt came out well. The unexpected bonus was in Crosscut feeling much, much better as a toy than Skids did. The general parts fit was more comfortable, and the toy has never felt like it was fighting against you the same way I experienced with Skids. There's a rare occasion when a recolor comes off as superior in every way to the mold's original use, and Crosscut is one of those instances. You can read our review here.


Best New Use Of An Old Toy: Chromia

Chromia used to be Prime Robots In Disguise Arcee, and you can see that relatively clearly in the torso. But only the torso. The head, lower arms and legs, and entire back half of the toy are completely new. Even the other parts from Arcee that remain have been enhanced with parts to make Chromia look more heavily armored. This level of remolding is practically unheard-of if not planned carefully in advance as was the case with Springer and Sandstorm, just to give one of the best examples. It's extremely unlikely thats the case with Arcee and Chromia, and an extensive number of paint operations for a US Deluxe figure complement the remold effort nicely. You can read our review of Chromia by clicking here.


Best New Trend: More Female Character Toys

It has been a long-held belief in the toy industry that female characters won't sell in a boys' toy line. Women have historically been shortpacked or worse yet left as media-only characters. This year, Hasbro took aim at changing that perception by shipping not just three female characters, but one that was created by fans - and two in the same wave. This is a welcome change to a toyline that previously was lucky to ship two female characters in a given toyline within the same year. If you factor in the characters included in this year's BotCon exclusives, this is by far the most women we've ever seen in the Transformers toyline at once.


Worst Figure Overall: Rattrap

This came down to a tossup between Rattrap and Sky-Byte. Neither seemed to be entirely as good as the original toys they were based on, even if there was some degree of design or functional superiority to be found. It fell to Rattrap though because for whatever other faults it might have, Sky-Byte both can be successfully transformed, and can do so without a very real risk of parts snapping off through no fault of the consumer. Rattrap is notorious at this point for shin pieces that will crack off their hinges by moving them in the way the toy was designed for. And while it has an excellent beast mode, the transformation is overly complex, and the resulting mass of beast parts on the robot impede the movement of the toy in a way that was never so acutely felt on the original Basic figure from nearly two decades ago. While visually this may be the best representation of the character, it is a travesty of design and material problems. You can read our review of Rattrap by clicking here.


Worst New Trend: Remaking Vs. Reimagining

One of the most appealing aspects of the Classics line, all the way back to 2006, is that the designers have largely not been content to simply remake old toys with modern articulation. In making their mark on the Transformers brand, the new design team has seemingly made a conscious effort to work differently. Many of this year's figures have been fairly straight reworkings of G1 figure designs whether it's entirely appropriate to the goal of a given figure or not. One of the best examples of this is Voyager Brainstorm, who combines the IDW visual style with the original figure's basic transformation scheme and Headmaster gimmick with decidedly mixed results. In many cases the "G1 with ball joints" approach has been successful, as in the case of Skrapnel, or neutral, such as Roadbuster.

As appealing as the Combiner Wars figures have been so far, a majority of returning characters are extremely close to their G1 appearances, suggesting a continuing preference for remakes going forward. Thats not inherently bad, so long as the toy is designed well and remains fun to play with. But it would be unfortunate to see reinterpretation be lost entirely, and in the long run it's not what we want to see out of the Generations line.


Most Amazed It Really Happened: Arcee

"Until Im holding it in my hands, its some kind of mass hallucination." -'Headmaster' Don Ferguson, 2014

In October or so of 2013, a large list of products was leaked from a Hasbro database, and contained in this document was Generations Arcee. This was something that had burned the fandom once before, as Prime First Edition Arcee was originally solicited in the same way. Skepticism was high, but lo and behold months later we saw it, and months after that we were actually able to buy a very Classics Arcee. That this toy exists is by itself very amazing. Nearly as amazing is the backstory of its design, which reaches back to 1998, and the short-lived Botcon Japan. You can read more about that here. For various reasons it may not be precisely your ideal Arcee - the Hasbro color scheme is a little off, the body design itself skews a bit towards pinup proportions, and given Don's nickname, perfection is still out of his grasp. But it's more important to note that this is a toy that, for three decades, we were all absolutely certain would never happen at all. Read the review of Arcee.


Thrillingest Thirty: #30, Windblade

Windblade is, at once, the sum of both Hasbro's celebration of Transformers milestone anniversary, and their acknowledgement of the fandom's dedication and role in its growth. Shaped by a series of polls conducted by Hasbro, many aspects of the character's design were left to fan choices, save one: gender. Responding to requests from the fandom, Hasbro demonstrated its dedication to the Fan-Built Bot concept by correcting this initial oversight and allowing the fans to determine whether the character would be male or female. The fans spoke, and Windblade - sword-wielding female Autobot seeker - was born. The result of an accelerated development cycle, Windblade is a solid toy, with only minor issues arising out of a complex design. But more importantly, she represents the first opportunity the fans as a whole have had to shape the development of a mass-market toy. While created as a celebration of the history of Transformers, Windblade reflects where Transformers and its audience are now.


Most What!? of 2014: SDCC Knights of Unicron Set

What?

Seriously. What?

By far the most bizarre of the exclusives offered at SDCC 2014, this was one of two possible packages pitched for this third Transformers exclusive slot. It's said that this was designed - and subsequently chosen - because the head of the Transformers team at the time was himself a great fan of this music genre. But this makes the set itself no less baffling. Featuring the extremely rare inclusion of soft goods like ribbons and wigs for the Transformers figures and a great deal of insert paperwork and even an imitation vinyl record album, the Knights of Unicron is easily the most niche of the already niche market that is a convention exclusive. And this was the most expensive - and most heavily promoted - Transformers exclusive of the year, if not the most expensive Transformers SDCC exclusive ever.

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