2012 Year in Review (Part 2)

Here's part 2 of my 2012 year in review. While I did

Here are my top 5 Stinkers for 2012:

#5 Transformers Kre-O Collection - Yeah the entire collection sucks. From the confusing ill conceived premise to poor design, this entire initiative by Hasbro has been a huge debacle. I can see why someone in marketing would think that combing Lego type sets with their out performing Transformers line would be peanut butter and jelly time but it is not. It takes hours to build, deconstruct, and rebuild these sets to transform them from vehicle mode to robot and back. Do you think kids have the attention span to do this? Do you think adults do? No one does. The sets try to recreate the characters from the classic Transformers series (be it G1 cartoon, Movie-verse, whatever) but with the absence of abundance of specialized block pieces the Kre-O design sets fail. It was no wonder when these sets started going on clearance halfway through the year. It's baffling to me that they have considered continuing to produce a wave 3 of this toy line, albeit with an emphasis on the Kreon mini figures as opposed to full on deluxe building sets.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#4 Transformers Prime RID Airachnia - By far the worse Transformer to come out of the deluxe line in a while is Airachnia. I admit the original Transformers Prime character design is really complex since she is technically a triple changer and super slim but what we got was a rigid brick with the same articulation as a 70's Kenner Star Wars figure. While her helicopter mode looks well and her robot mode kind of represents the character, they failed to give her any articulation of playability. There is absolutely no way she can assume her spider mode transformation without buying 2 or 3 of the same toy and augmenting the chopper blades for extra elongated spider legs. Her gun accessories are also horrific in design. Absolutely the worse toy I've seen in the deluxe scale figures in a long time (not counting the horror of the Bayverse deluxe toys).

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#3 Transformers Arms Micron Autobot Swerve - This toy is not that bad but the fact that his head broke off seconds after I untied this figure from his plastic tray gives him a place on the 2012 fail list. Quality control has been horrible lately with Takara Tomy / Hasbro figures and Swerve is on this list to represent this fact. I paid $50 for this import figure and his head snapped off out of the box with no pressure applied at all. I expect this will happen more and more and we are all f*cked for collecting Transformers.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#2 Transformers Arms Micron Unicon - While the figure looks TV show accurate, his transformation into a rock ship with his face on it and the really lame battle suit mode for RID Optimus Prime and Megatron was really poorly designed and executed. Surprise to me, the figure I got has a small tear in the rubber horns on his head. It looks like his horn was assembled wrong and when the rubber was glued to the PVC plastic base someone tried to adjust the horn to point in the right direction which tore the rubber horn. The horn is pretty secure in its glue and the tear is not loose at all. However whomever tried to adjust the position failed and promptly tied the figure down into it's packaging and moved on with their lowly life, thanks for the defective figure mysteriously incompetent factory worker.

*Image Courtesy of Seibertron.com

#1 Transformers Generations SDCC Bruticus - The worse disappointment in 2012 is SDCC exclusive Fall of Cybertron Bruticus. There was so much anticipation for this set. The first combiner Transformers set in years and we got a very poorly engineered misformed hodgepodge of deluxe figures that mangle themselves together into a Frankenstein monstrosity. The set contains 5 combaticons representing a updated version of the classic G1 progenitor combaticon team. While each figure range from average to above average in vehicle mode, robot mode, and transformation, every single figures combining transformation is a compromise which leads to a misformed mess. With uneven limbs, awkward articulation, and a hollow center mass, Bruticus is a unanimous mess. This toy is my #1 failure of 2012 because it has the most promise to be a centerpiece must have toy of the year but sadly a series of design failures and compromise  hampered it's true potential.