Revenge of the F-ed-up Transformations

[dyrl]

Hasbro Marketing genius... Or bad magazine Editor? Tonight on Unsolved Mysteries. Also - how Johny Grew up to be the laughing stock in school who got a picture with his Optimus Prime toy that showed how totally incapable he was of actually playing with it...


Pete

[blueshift]

Oh Jesus Christ, there's absolutely no excuse for that. It is a toy meant for children, and it comes with instructions.

[Shockprowl]

*adopts best Mr. T voice*

I'm gunna make 'em pay!

[Deleted]

What's he tried to transform it onto? A pile of scrapmetal? A Poundland TF? Or something else less obvious?

[The Doctor]

To be fair, most reviews have mentioned it's a bloody hard toy to transform.

-Ralph

[blueshift]

Yes, but it isn't 'I wonder if his chest is supposed to look exploded and he has no arms and feet and his head hovers' hard

[Nigel]

I have to come to the defence of the boy here. I transformed Optimus for the first time last night and it took me a b****y age because the instructions seem to tell you to do something the toy isn't capable of. The pegs that hold the chest pieces in place don't look like they're supposed to come out and there's no obvious way to pull them out without thinking they're going to break. This is compounded by the next few steps being an overly-complicated series to put the arms in the right position. Add to this, the toy saying "Optimus Prime" every few seconds and I was getting frustrated almost to Ralph-with-Ultra-Magnus proportions. (Ironically, once you realise what you're supposed to do with the chest - which is the "exploded" look as pictured - and ignore the several arm steps, looking instead at the last picture in the sequence to see the correct position, it's actually fairly straightforward.)

Besides, the poor boy probably had nothing to do with transforming that toy, rather some befuddled, deadline-constrained adult who maybe hadn't had any prior transforming experience.

[grahamthomson]

The instructions for ROTF Optimus are poor. And there's no mention of the button on his truck mode that activates his vehicle noises.

[Bogatan]

It does come in robot mode though. There was no need for anyone to play with it.

If they did feel the need, difficult as it is if they got that close it shouldn't have been hard to see that lowering the chest pieces down would have made it look a whole lot better.

Andy

[Nigel]

Hmm, good point. Perhaps they were trying to demonstrate the transformation concept and intentionally showed it mid-transformation? (Sort of, because there is something really weird going on with the feet.) Or perhaps they were going to show it as a truck and the idea fell apart when they actually tried to transform him?

[dyrl]

Maybe they gave the robot mod out of box version to that kid and five minutes later the little rascal had it all mangled up after play time?

Pete

[Nigel]

Actually, I see the smoke stacks are all to pot, too.