[trebleshot]

Primacron, for shame! You completely skipped over Transformers Animated, one of the best in terms of fiction and engineering. In fact, in my opinion it was just as good as Beast Wars.

It is a self-contained continuity, but there are so many G1 references sprinkled throughout that it became a big hit with fans. Unfortunately, its "US Anime" style (think Cartoon Network's "Teen Titans" or "Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated") was a very polarizing element with the fandom. Some loved it as a fresh take on the design, while others loathed it. Some even went so far as to say they were worse than "Bayformers".

The most impressive thing for me about Animated's toy line is how accurate the toys were to their show appearance, both in robot and alt modes, in spite of that odd aesthetic. Also, nearly every Animated toy had at least one appearance in the show.

The line and show ran from 2008-2009, though a few TRU exclusives were released this year. Aside from the exclusives, the toys are fairly easy to get still. Scale is not as much of an issue as most characters got multiple toys in different size classes so you can mix and match depending on your display needs.

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Originally Posted by Tarquinius

So for example...The Three Warriors Pack at TRU....are they mini bots orrrr are they like regular toons shrinked?

Those are Scout-class toys originally from the Cybertron line. On the show, they were smaller characters (though Scattorshot got a sizable upgrade and new toy half-way through the series). So they would be in the proper scale compared to most other characters from Cybertron.

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Originally Posted by Crazy Jetty

Outside of the main line, are the Legends, and the Power Core Combiners.
Legends are the smallest, they average $5 usd. Think of them as pocket transformers. They're really sort of a sidesomething that's entirely all to themselves. They're roughly to TFs, what DCIH is to DCUC.

Legends-class toys are considered part of a main line, and have been since their debut with Cybertron. They are just as much a part of a given mainline as the other size classes. However, their character selection generally leaves them out of scale with anything else in their line.

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Legends are generally not in scale with anything at all.

Some of them size well with other classes (like the Minibots and a few others), but larger characters like Prime and Megatron are definitely out-of-scale.

Basically, it's a mix-and-match process with Transformers since there is no single scale that everything adheres to, unlike other toy lines. Hasbro has been paying more attention to it in recent years, but some things just can't be done physically. Like making a Peterbilt long-nose truck and an F-22 Raptor that are in the same scale that aren't insanely huge and equally expensive.

It's practically a tradition now, given the genesis of the Transformers toy line itself.

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And so, if you're trying to keep things in scale, good luck. There pretty much is no scale in TF.

Agreed.