Ok, this is a bit different from my average project but I need to get my feelings about the current state of this franchise that means so much to me. Remember these are my opinions and I do not encourage hate towards anyone if they disagree with my opinion. Transformers is basically dead right now. Let's take a look at the films, look at how badly Transformers One did despite it being amazing. You can tell that the average person doesn't care about this franchise anymore. While yes, it may be partly the marketing team's fault, there's no way I believe that it is the sole reason the movie underperformed. I believe that it's more on how bad the previous movies were with public perception. Let's take a look at TLK, that movie was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Its plot was so bad that somehow broke the entire lore of the Bayverse in just ONE movie. Also the action was nowhere near as good as the previous films, which was what drew general audiences in. Then after that came Bumblebee and the reboot, which was decent, although a lot of people found it boring due to it being more story-driven. However it at least gave us a clean slate to start over after the abomination of TLK. Now after this, I have no idea why, Paramount decided to wait 5 WHOLE YEARS to release anything related to the new universe in the form of ROTB. Ima be quite frank with yall, I DO NOT LIKE ROTB. While yes, it has good qualities like Noah and Mirage, the movie as a whole does not fit being a sequel to Bumblebee due to them portraying Optimus as an idiot who somehow didn't think he would get stuck on Earth after sending one-way escape pods there, Unicron being brought in before Megatron, and trying to introduce two new factions already. On top of this the action was pretty boring and the CGI was mid, so it makes sense, especially after word of mouth got around saying it was mid, for the movie to not make as much as Bumblebee or TLK. So if we're counting, we've had 3 movies in a row that have either been seen as horrible or have had mixed perception. It makes sense why general audiences wouldn't have faith that TF One would be good either especially after it marketed itself as an average kids movie. Now we don't even have any info about when the next Transformers movie will come out. or its progress. Now let's take a look at TV shows, maybe that could be better, right? Well, in my opinion, after Prime, there hasn't been a Transformers TV show that has been as memorable as it. Now, I do think Prime is heavily overrated, but at least it was enjoyable to watch mostly throughout the whole thing. This cannot be said for its sequel RID. That show barely felt like a sequel to Prime and basically ruined all of the characters that returned. So not a great start to say the least... Oh yeah, there's also Rescue Bots and Rescue Bots academy but those are like for preschoolers and won't really attract those outside of that age demographic, and I can't really comment on those since I don't know much about them. After RID came the Prime Wars Trilogy, at least I think. The less said about those "shows" the better. When that dumpster fire of a trilogy ended, I'm pretty sure Cyberverse was up next, and boy was that first season rough. Though I can say that the later seasons and specials did get better to the point that I would recommend giving it a watch if you can sit through the first season (Season 3 was lowkey peak not gonna lie). Then after that it was the WFC Trilogy, which sucked. But it did go uphill for at least a bit with Earthspark season 1, then it crashed and burned by destroying all of the messages and themes it had in season 1 with the later seasons. Welp, after that came Cyberworld, which basically no one knows about after half of the previous shows being bad. Through all the slop that was present in the movies and TV shows, at least the comics remained pretty good with IDW and later Skybound, although after DWJ's run ended, it felt like the story's been on a decline. These comic were aimed at more mature audiences and I feel that they benefited from it. While I don't think Hasbro needs to take it as extreme with their TV shows, they shouldn't be afraid of showing more mature topics like the propaganda, loss, and general brutality of war that was present in stuff like Animated and Prime. Those shows are way more memorable than any newer Transformers shows for that reason. Finally, we have to mention the figures. While yes, they have been getting better over the last few years, they continue to get more expensive. Like there is no way that deluxes are now almost 40 dollars. I understand that Hasbro kind of had to do this due to certain things going on in America and the world right now, but could they not at least try to give us better paint for the price? (I don't know how much paint costs but is it really that much?) Also, how are we supposed to be fine with paying VOYAGER PRICES FOR DELUXES. (CONTINUE)
[SUMMARY IS AT THE BOTTOM] (CONTINUATION) I DO NOT CARE THAT 86 SCRAPPER HAS A RATCHET FOR AN ANKLE PIVOT, THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR A 40 DOLLAR FIGURE TO BE A MID, HOLLOW DELUXE WITH BARELY ANY ACCESSORIES. There's also Brawl and Swindle who, while they look really good, are voyagers as well even though they are literally deluxes. All they do is make Bruticus even more expensive to complete. This is literally Hasbro testing the waters to see how much they can scam us. Though, again I will give props to the designers for generally making pretty good figures. Just sad to see Hasbro locking them behind insanely expensive prices. Also there's no new games either with Reactivate being cancelled. So in conclusion, this is why I think Transformers is practically a dead brand. Public interest is at an all-time low, Paramount doesn't seem to know what to do with future movies, the shows are now kinda abysmal half of the time, the comics are starting to have a decline in writing, no games are coming out, and the figures keep on getting more and more expensive. All we have now is the fandom to keep the brand alive.
