The best parts about reading old 'initial reaction' threads like that is to see how many of the key forum personalities who absolutely loathed the design direction ended up becoming the most l33t cheerleaders for it once the movie came out, and more than anything, provides more concrete proof that everyone with self professed engineering & back-end Hasbro marketing knowledge are no more aware of
anything than Joe Nobody down the street. The same thing happened when the Animated designs showed up, with all the "that could NEVER work as a toy" strings of assertions.
Still, it's funny how everyone who said "that could never work!" in reference to almost each & every leaked Movie design changed their tune once the first trailer showed up and then started saying the exact same thing about why updated G1 design styles couldn't have been used instead... coincidentially, only after Michael Bay said so and essentially told them what to think. But as CGI has proven time & time again, *anything* can work and look believable if you do it right. Starscream's movie design in particular is proof of this since the whole thing on screen is one giant cheat compared to the three dimensional figure we were given, which was essentially nothing more than a jet backpak on top of a folded up robot with excessive arm/wing kibble that has nowhere to hide.
But, in some cases, I'm as guilty as everybody else when it comes to eventually warming up to something once it becomes clear it won't be changing, so I'm not taking any holier than thou stand here, haha. It never really happened with the Movie stuff since I still think the designs are horrid and don't look like much of anything in bot modes, but it definitely
did happen with Animated. And that's the one paramount thing Hasbro can always rely on when it comes to fandoms of any kind - they might bitch & whine at first, but most of them will eventually do an aboutface and embrace it, become cynical to what they were given in the past, and then proceed to repeat ad nauseum with each new series as they're unveiled. It's a pretty fascinating process to observe, actually. From a collective psychological vs. consumer standpoint that is.
