Preface:
So how good do we have it? Really damn good. You’ll not find negativity in this series of articles. I’m going to only cover the positives.
Refer here for Armada:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=36656Good news everyone!
I’m an idiot.
Wait,..that’s not good news at all. Let me take you back to 2004 briefly to the day I saw the first pictures of Transformers Energon Toys. “Those look terrible. I’m not buying that crap with its stupid clear weapons.”
Then I went to Wal-Mart and saw them putting out the display pallet for Energon. Ten minutes later I had picked out all the best paint app figures and was on my way into nearly two years of bitter frustration. I loved every minute of it.
Before talking about the toys, I want everyone to understand something about the Energon line, especially you new ‘movie’ people…This was, by far, the most difficult, evil set of TF toys to find in retail, ever. Concept Bumblebee you say? F’ your Bumblebee. Find me an Energon Grimlock and Swoop. Seriously, here was the situation, any one of these things would be problematic, combine them all for the Gestalt of collector annoyance:
-Wal-Mart makes a policy change to reduce its boy action toys aisles. TF shelf space becomes a max of 2 feet and 6 pegs.
-TRU is nearly dead as for as toys go (within the next year they pull out, but this was the dark time as far as in store merchandise)
-Distribution is plagued by shipping delays, especially bad for the east coast
-Energon Ironhide (biggest shelf warmer…ever…)
-Information on toys was leaked really, really early. This lead to numerous, fruitless hunts for toys that were not going to be at retail for weeks. The reactionary collectors turned to eBay, drove up prices, which called forth scalpers…etc, etc….
-Then, to top it all off. Hasbro filled all those waiting orders…So when you finally found wave 2 of Energon and rejoiced, little did you know that you might never see wave 3 because there was more of the previous 2 waves than any store could sell. We had drought, we had flooding.
It was a very odd time to collect Transformers. The chase aspect of it was not properly fixed until Cybertron the following year. All of this begs the question “Was it worth all that effort?”
You’re GD right it was.
I won’t lie. If someone doesn’t like ‘the Energon Line’, you should question their judgment about a lot of things. Energon fixed Armada’s issue with articulation, brought back accessories and weapons, gave the opportunity to combine weapons or bots as you saw fit, and may just be the uncontested King of the Homage. You may not like the combination gimmick that a lot of figures had going on, but the big secret about that gimmick…you don’t have to use it.
Now, about those homages…Shockwave, Omega Supreme, Springer, Arcee, Wheeljack, Galvatron, Inferno, Barrage, Scorponok, Grapple…etc…etc. So many of these molds could be used as potential ‘Classics’ that it is silly. I am to this day, surprised they haven’t been conscripted towards this purpose in some way. Long before Classics came around, I had it in my head to build my own ‘Neo G1’ from these toys. It was such a throwback to all the G1 stuff and characters I loved from back in the day that I pretty much ignored any and all official Energon story for a long time.
This was a particularly innovative line. Where Armada replicated the playability of G1 with character specific gimmicks, Energon had more universal gimmicks. Now, I accept that not all combinations or weapons were good, but they were all fun and truth be told, many of them are good. See, any of the deluxe Autobots could be combined with any other deluxe Autobot to form a mini-combiner. Likewise, Voyager sized Autobots were to combine with other Voyager Autobots (in truth, you could mix a deluxe and voyager, though it tended to look stupid).
First off, those combinations hold together really well! Small complement for sure, but an important one. Now not all configurations were particularly appealing, but take a combination like HotShot for the upper half and Inferno for the lower half.
http://www.seibertron.com/toys/fullsize ... 1&image=69That’s pretty solid for a small scale combiner. You were actually able to do numerous variations on the actual combination as there were few set-points for locking in the combined modes:
(HotShot behind the protective shielding Inferno provides:
http://www.seibertron.com/images/toys/f ... hot059.jpgWith 20+ something Deluxe figures and about 10 voyager figures, there were a lot of potentially cool and fun combinations to try out.
Energon brought back Scramble City style combiners. These little guys were a feat in of themselves just to find them. The actual gestalts went from great to crummy with Bruticus being top of the chain, followed by Devastator, and lastly the unfortunate Superior (who suffers a design flaw making the combined form very unstable). So, opinions range on the worthiness of these toys, but one thing no one really complains about is the sheer awesomeness of the individual team members.
Combinable figures aside, the other gimmick of Energon related to its weaponry. Most figures came with some kind of clear plastic weapon. This was to represent one of two things, either energon powered weapons or energon based weapons (like Prime’s axe from G1). I was originally luke warm to the idea because the idea of energon guns was kind of lame (it still is…), but damn, when I realized how many awesome variations there were to the melee weapon aspect of these weapons, I was in trouble. See, I was either going to have to buy numerous Omnicons/Terrorcons to collect multiples, or hunt down expensive Japanese variations for the sweet oddly colored weapons they offered. (I have since bought several repeat Japanese toys to get orange energon weapons )
Energon also gave collectors some of the best toys we’ve seen in many years. There is of course, the big daddy of the line: Galvatron. Hard to find on release, short shelf time, highly sought after…these are the reasons he fetches $100 on eBay with ease. Galvatron was everything collectors were asking for at the time. He was actually, a little more. The detailing and overall color scheme was superb. Personally, this figure is so nice, that the upcoming Classics Galvatron looks wretched by comparison.
Omega Supreme/Sentinel was a mold that garnered a lot of both positive and negative attention. Lots of people hated it because of its split color scheme and differences from G1. Many others loved it because of the size, detailing, and similarities to G1. (See how things work in F’ed up TF land?) Well, several years have passed and the jury has come back with a resounding love for this toy. He’s big, bad, posable, and expensive. A perfect recipe for desirability; I think this is the toy that I get the most questions about from other collectors. Somewhere along the line, Omega Supreme went from the $25 clearance shelf to the shelf of honor in many collections.
Divebomb is proof that toys don’t have to be large to rock. This small little ninja-type bird pokemon Transformer is one of the coolest toys in the line. Sharply angled, full of points and lacking in a “simple” transformation, Divebomb deserves a second and third look for any collection. He’s no homage, he’s his own man, er, bird. From his boomerang (or awesome arm gauntlets) weapon, spiky boots, or cleverly revealed energon-feathers, this is one of those toys that sparks imagination in good ways. He had a superior repaint in the Superlink line that is stupidly expensive now. Bonus!
Speaking of repaints…how about Quickstrike. See, Energon did something I think it cool. The repaints it offered, were fantastically superior to the original release. Quickstrike is full of detail, has a cohesive paint scheme, and just makes more sense in regards to his alt mode than does his predecessor Bulkhead. Other notable improvements on the second go around include: Landquake, Beachcomber, Starscream, and Roadblock. This line was the first time I was out and actively hunting repaints.
It’s hard to say too much good about the line. There were individual stinkers and plenty of figures who could have stood a bit more time in the editorial phase, but overall we got a plethora of fantastic toys. Energon was the line were I realized that I was hooked. No longer was it ok to wait until things were just available. I had to have them sooner rather than later for fear that I might not fight them at retail otherwise. Perhaps it was due to this line specifically catering to TF fans via homages, superior sculpting, and/or paint aps, I don’t know…Whatever it was, modern Transformers shed the baby fat with this line and prepared itself for what would be the true heavyweight of modern toy lines: Cybertron.
