Best for Last?

[Ground Zero]

Is it just me, or does it seem that the last figures in any given line are often some of the best -- and the early figures tend to be some of the worst?

G1 and Beast Wars seem to generally be the exception to the rule. Beast Machines and the original Transformers movie seem to be prime examples of "best for last" in action with some of the earlier figures being close to terrible, and some of the later figures being fantastic.

[Metrotitan]

Sure, it's just good marketing/planning!

When interest for a line is high (during the beginning) they roll out the lackluster figs, then when the interest wanes they have to give us the good stuff to keep us buying the line!

ROTF is an excellent example of this! All those awesome non-Movie characters at the end of the line!
Plus, look how great the scouts got by the end too!

[General Tekno]

It's not just you.

It's just the reality of designing anything - the earlier stuff is when they're learning the ropes, and by the time the tail end is designed the designers are comfortable with the aesthetic and start pushing the boundaries of what they can do.

[brr-icy]

except with things like hftd which seems to clog the shelves with needless repaints of dirge and ravage that don't look like they are ever going away here, making rts stay at the warehouses and/or never come to your local store, seems like a dumb idea, especially with the universe voyagers, 100s of repaints, one new mold at the tail end that hardly saw a release until clearance time

[Badgertron]

It is definately a Thing. Though, to be fair, all of the engineering on the early figures in G1 were taken from other lines, so they really can't take credit for that. Also, many of the Transmetal 2's were head and shoulder above most of whatever came out in BW leading up to Transmetals, so there's that.

[Protoman]

It's also a result of the designers getting a "feel" for the line and look and thus stuff ends up looking pretty...................... mostly. Tail-end RID was 99% repaints.

[Echotransformer]

Agreed...and the end of a given line is also typically the hardest to find at retail...that I find particularly frustrating!

[Ground Zero]

Originally Posted by Echotransformer

Agreed...and the end of a given line is also typically the hardest to find at retail...that I find particularly frustrating!

That's part of my big issue -- especially here in Canada. Seems we almost always miss out on the last wave of everything.

The odd thing is though, for some of these lines you'd think they would have carried over some of their lessons learned from previous lines -- especially the movie figures.

Forgot how nice some of the TM2s were from Beast Wars -- but I was always fond of the pure beast modes and Optimus Primal in particular (vs his TM and TM2 variants).

I also dismiss a lot of the repaints -- though I have to wonder what Hasbro has been smoking lately with the ROTF line. It seems they are determined to keep repainting the *shelf warmers* of all things -- and at this point, you'd think it would be pretty obvious that Ravage just isn't flying off of the shelves, no matter what color he is.

[justprime]

I also find the collecting of end of line paticularly hard here in Canada seems (with the exception of the G2 turbomasters etc)we are always chasing the last few pieces mostly they never make it here,..thank the matrix for the internet as a venue even if its expensive,... ( read Hasbro online store here to solve this) took me years to track down G1/G2 stuff before the net and I won't even comment on the chase for European/Japanese stuff but I do wonder after the almost 30 years why this hasn't changed ( Thaks Alex for the ROTF brawn haven't seen him in any store here yet) I do relise that a good portion is the retailers reluctance to carry the last few pieces but I do not understand why Hasbro doesn't push to sell the complete line (such as this one with all the interest in TF's ) or set up a venue to accomodate the people looking for these pieces I did like the old mail in's maybe it could be done this way if there are limited figures available or at least divide the numers equally (such as a toysRus limited ed) across the stores ( never did see an Arcee here bought her off the web) seems that there is room for improvment here.

[Badgertron]

You pretty much answered your own question, Justprime. Retailers don't really care which particular figure is on the shelf, as long as they have the stock to fill the pegs, which lends itself to stores lagging more and more after wave, oh, 2 or 3 of most lines, with us in BC generally missing out on the last (sometimes) 2 whole waves. The way I've figured it, BC misses out on quite a bit more than Ontario does, though to be fair, sometimes it works in our favour, when we get a sought-after figure months after the line has ended everywhere else.

As for Hasbro trying to ensure fans get more of the specific figures they want...well, gripes aside, that's what HTS is for, aye?

-BT