Reveal the Shield's Gimmick is Utterly Pointless

[Scrapper6]

Please don't let the thread title fool you, I am not badmouthing or bashing anything, however I am scratching my head at Hasbro's ultimate goals for Reveal the Shield and more specifically their gimmick.

Excluding the Legends figures, let us take a hard logical filled look at the current roster of Reveal the Shield Transformers Characters.

Scout Class:

Windcharger (Autobot)
Bodyblock (Possibly Autobot)
Downshift (Autobot?)
Chopsaw (Decepticon)
Demolition Rumble (Decepticon)

Deluxe Class:

Optimus Prime (D'uh, Autobot)
Bumblebee (Ditto)
Special Ops Jazz (Autobot)
Turbo Tracks (Autobot)
Fallback (Autobot)
Mindset (Autobot)
Wreck-Gar (Illegitimate Offspring of Wierd-Al Yankovic... I mean Autobot.)
Perceptor (Autobot)

Voyager Class:

Strafe (Autobot)
Solar Storm Grapple (Autobot)
Lugnut (Decepticon)
Deep Dive (Decepticon?)

So, to re-cap, we have a Scout Class dominated by Autobots and Possible Autobots (since they haven't gotten past the warehouses yet we don't know their factions, though speculations are rampant.) There's a Deluxe Class that is Entirely Made Up of Autobots and a Voyager class that, if my guess on Deep Dive is correct, at least 1-1 Ratio Autobot vs. Decepticon.

Would someone care to explain to me why Hasbro even bothered re-branding the Hunt for the Decepticons and Generations figures into this Reveal the Shield malarky when ultimately roughly 90% of the figures released under that banner are simply Autobots?

It is entirely pointless and useless, they would have been better off calling it Reveal the Autobot or Really Only Autobots Here, or possibly, the No Decepticons Allowed Club.

It is ridiculous, the gimmick serves nothing more than offering up fanwanky goodness in bringing back the rub-signs. (But Perceptor's is stuck inside is chest and permanently active, how does that even work?? Great placement job Hasbro.) And it seems to have successfully confused/turned off Retailers due to the fact that Hunt for the Decepticons and Generations were the only lines they seem to have been ordering since well before Christmas of last year.

Hence why saturation of Jazz and Tracks is so damn annoying. (I want a Jazz and Tracks darn it.) But I'm getting beyond what this discussion was meant for.

Do you think perhaps that if Hasbro's Marketing department had planned out RtS better that we might have seen more Decepticon only waves, perhaps with a Reveal the Shield Double-Agent type character with two different rubsigns on him?

Perhaps the Tomahawk and Terradive repaints with remolded heads were meant to be a part of Reveal the Shield as Decepticons, Tomahawk could have been a Spinister repaint/remold. Of course with DotM right around the corner those alternate heads and repainted figures won't be out for the better part of a year, unless they are packaged in Generations packaging and Hasbro continues to market Generations alongside DotM.

Thoughts, disagreements, agreements, rapid monkies spewing garbage, Anti-Autobot Campaign sentiments? What happened to all the Decepticons?

[RNSrobot]

Mindset is a Decepticon.

And, uh, okay?

[Scrapper6]

Originally Posted by Ryan Ro

Mindset is a Decepticon.

And, uh, okay?

I thought so too, but apparently he is in fact an Autobot, unless TFWiki and TFU are both wrong on this fact. *Goes to check TFU before posting to make certain of his facts*

Yep, even his bio specifies him indirectly to being an Autobot. The character in the comics was a Decepticon, at least during G2, but apparently the toy is using the IDW version to represent the faction and he was an Autobot or at least under Nova Prime's leadership, thus Autobot Ancestor.

[jourdo]

Do you know for sure that Jazz is an Autobot? Sure he looks like the original Jazz... but until you activate that rubsign he could be a dirty Decepticon spy! I trust noone in that line.

[Dragon Knight]

Jazz is SO a Decpticon!

Jazz is the most hilarious. They go through the trouble of hiding what faction he is, only to have the first word of his bio be AUTOBOT JAZZ.

[Hellboy]

It's quite possible Hasbro has determined the Heroic Autobots are the prime (ha!) sellers in the Transformer line and are thusly ensuring better sales.
Reveal the Shield is simply a marketing tool. "Hey Dad, remember when you had transformers with the rub signs? Well look at these! Your kids can have the same memories as you! Buy one! Buy two! Heck, buy them all!"
"The Hunt for the Decepticons" probably wasn't working well enough for them. That's usually the reason for any change in marketing strategy. Perhaps the title itself was confusing to non-savvy parents. "My kid wants something called an Addobutt... or Auto-something... this says Decepticon."

Personally, I'm a Decepticon fan but most kids still like to be the good-guy. Remember, Transformers are marketed to kids. How often do we get a Masterpiece item for the collector market? Once in a blue-moon to shut us up is about it.

[gagagalvatron]

Originally Posted by Scrapper6

the gimmick serves nothing more than offering up fanwanky goodness in bringing back the rub-signs.

But I like fanwanky goodness in my rub-signs!

Er, that came out wrong.

[Vain]

There's always been less bad guys then good guys. Even in Beast Wars when they got into season 2 and everyone had brand spanking new Transmetal forms and fuzors joined the fight. They decided to kill off Terrasaur and Scorponok right off the bat putting the Predacons back to a smaller number.

In fiction ( not in the show anyways) the decepticons seem to just be more skillful then the autobots and usually need a couple of them to take down one single decepticon. So I guess they're forgiven for that but eh. My only problem with the rub signs is that they replaced the normal logo which is infinitly better. If you had a rubsign on the alt mode somewhere and had the normal logo on the bot mode I'd be cool with that but alas, we don't get everything we want.

Although there's clearly a lack of decepticons, the small numbers of them mean that more of them are iconic, meaning more of them will sell well. They clearly need to drag out the release of iconic badguys to make sure that the specific wave will sell. They can't release all the iconic characters at once or else future waves will suffer. Considering we got Scourge,Thundercracker,Thunderwing,Straxus,Skullgr in,Thrust,Dirge in the generations line, they probably couldn't afford to put in more decepticons a la g1. Admit it, the generations line up decepticons were great and I'm happy we got em. Anywho, that's how I think it works. Did they really need to make a RTS line rather then just have both lines merge together, not sure but it's there and it's giving us g1 autobots so yeh.

P.S You forgot Cyclonus and Hot rod in RTs

p.s.s Perceptors Chest opens,so not sure what you were saying about his rubsign.

phew, that dragged on a bit!

[Scrapper6]

Originally Posted by Vain

There's always been less bad guys then good guys. Even in Beast Wars when they got into season 2 and everyone had brand spanking new Transmetal forms and fuzors joined the fight. They decided to kill off Terrasaur and Scorponok right off the bat putting the Predacons back to a smaller number.

In fiction ( not in the show anyways) the decepticons seem to just be more skillful then the autobots and usually need a couple of them to take down one single decepticon. So I guess they're forgiven for that but eh. My only problem with the rub signs is that they replaced the normal logo which is infinitly better. If you had a rubsign on the alt mode somewhere and had the normal logo on the bot mode I'd be cool with that but alas, we don't get everything we want.

Although there's clearly a lack of decepticons, the small numbers of them mean that more of them are iconic, meaning more of them will sell well. They clearly need to drag out the release of iconic badguys to make sure that the specific wave will sell. They can't release all the iconic characters at once or else future waves will suffer. Considering we got Scourge,Thundercracker,Thunderwing,Straxus,Skullgr in,Thrust,Dirge in the generations line, they probably couldn't afford to put in more decepticons a la g1. Admit it, the generations line up decepticons were great and I'm happy we got em. Anywho, that's how I think it works. Did they really need to make a RTS line rather then just have both lines merge together, not sure but it's there and it's giving us g1 autobots so yeh.

P.S You forgot Cyclonus and Hot rod in RTs

p.s.s Perceptors Chest opens,so not sure what you were saying about his rubsign.

phew, that dragged on a bit!

An interesting bit of commenting there, perhaps, but still, I can't help myself, I have always been an obsessive individual when it comes to my 1-1 Autobot vs. Decepticon thing, it's nice to give them rivalries, and the more even numbers of both factions you get the better.

The less said about RtS Battle in Space the better, I hear it has really poor QC and plastic choices, which tends to put me off picking it up even though I really want to get that Matrix accessory and the G1 colored versions of the toys.

Undocumented toy features for the win, I had no idea Perceptor's chest compartment could open up, thank you for pointing that out to me. Just another cool bit of fanwank about that figure.

I don't think it dragged on, it was very insightful and discussion worthy. I applaud your use of large wordology... Heh, heh, heh. Anyway, glad to hear your opinions on the matter, that's why I started up this thread.

[Janitor]

Don't forget the mysterious G1 legends Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Trailcutter, Gold Bumblebee...