So, after Legacy Impactor was announced, and the discourse that followed, I found myself thinking about War for Cybertron: Siege again. It was something I've thought about writing on before, what that toy line was, and what it proved to be. So, today, I talk about Siege’s legacy. Which, of course, isn’t the same as Transformers: Legacy, but does include the new Legacy line. Don’t worry, it will make sense.
Context
Coming under the Generations banner, War for Cybertron: Siege was advertised at the time, as well, a War For Cybertron, the first of a 3 part franchise set on the home-world of the Transformers. This wasn’t the first time they did this, but you might ask why not? Its fun. This was coming after the disappointing and truncated Power of the Primes line, too, it looked promising. Seemingly hurried to the US market in late 2018, early 2019 elsewhere, there was barely a gap between the two. Siege got a lot of respect for its play features, but also criticism for its muddy battle-damage look, and also a bit of a heavy focus on G1 characters. There was a lot of that happening at the time, with the Bumblebee movie going quite G1, and Cyberverse using similar cast. This was then shortly followed by Earthrise, and Kingdom, whom did many of the same characters again, often with iterative retools, reused engineering, and old toys in new boxes. The specifically Siege toys became repaint fodder, which happened in bulk for the Netflix cartoon, as well as more recent examples like TakaraTomy’s Premium Finish line and the aforementioned Impactor. As a result: Siege is reasonably described as a stopgap and a repaint mine. How many repaints, you ask? Well, I went and ran the numbers. I got out a spreadsheet, and trawled the wiki. Here are my findings.
Distinct Siege moulds: 49
Uses so far/pending: 161
Not counting: blast effects, unchanged TakaraTomy releases.
Assuming: ER Prime is a retool, but ER Smokescreen is not.
The Generations Grab-bag
The thing about Generations and similar collector lines is that it can lack a strong theme. It's a melange of homage and updates, and the extent which there is a solid unified theme has varied over the years, even when going back further into the old C.H.U.G days. In the time of Combiner Wars and Titans Return it was notably strong, but more typically Generations operates as a grab-bag, usually a few big names, but with obscure stuff around the edges, and maybe some new stuff if we’re lucky. The thing about Siege is that it talks a big game about its theme, but when you actually look at, its all set dressing. Its actually a Generations Grab-Bag. We must ask ourselves the following: which toys in Siege explicitly and unambiguously have a Cybertronian vehicle form? And is this vehicle form distinct from their Earth form, or what might be considered their "iconic" appearance? I put it to you that only three-maybe-four moulds of the forty-nine actually started out as purpose built pre-earth designs. The rest were either late-G1 characters that were sci-fi vehicles in the first place, and/or characters fated to be released again in Earthrise 18 months later with a face-lift. The Starscream and Soundwave moulds are the only toys that actually tried to have new & alien vehicle modes, and not an especially good one in 'wave's case. You could argue Shockwave, but that gets a little muddy as shockers largely doesn't have an earth mode and isn't allowed to be a gun any more. The aforementioned Impactor is a similar case, he’s never had an Earth mode as a comic original, but then he does have that odd habit now of being repeatedly retooled into himself. Overall, Siege doesn't hit the same visual style as the conceptually identical War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron video game toys, which had gone hard on the alien-ness, so almost everything could fit unobtrusively into a "neo-G1" collection and truthfully many would not look that out of place as an Earth mode. And then Earthrise came along with functionally the same toys, but with a better defined cartoon look, and made a whole whack of stuff obsolete, often via exclusives which were hard to get. This understandably annoyed people. And then we got the Netflix branded Siege stuff, which cost a little bit more and tried to be more cartoon accurate…why? So, even if you liked the Siege moulds, they got obsoleted again, and if you missed them the first time, there’s now a confused market with a bunch of overlapping toys. Did the cartoon get delayed or something? Because this is an inelegant way to do things.
The 2019 Siege Sideswipe toy
The New Autobot Seeker
To illustrate my point of how generic a lot of Siege moulds are, I'm going to talk about possibly the most aggressively re-used toy of Siege, Sideswipe. It's a perfectly fine toy in most ways, and actually a favourite of mine. I am not especially a car fan, but that is not a Cybertronian altmode. That looks more like a legally distinct Lamborghini. Or any super car stand-in. Car modes such as these are the bread & butter of Transformers in general. The thing is, we already had a pre-earth Sideswipe, and that wasn't a great toy, but that a least that made an attempt to be alien. Siege Sideswipe fits in everywhere, because a specific style is harder to reuse. And then it got retooled into something more specifically G1 for an exclusive, as well as nine other things. The whole Cybertronian theme never was a serious effort. It was a stopgap. Siege exists mainly as a reset point for Generations, lessons learned from Combiner Wars etc, setting a new design standard and laying the groundwork for a repaint-based business model. Because if you didn't like the battle damage paintjobs in Siege, almost immediately you'd be able to get a cleaner version, and it would likely be a limited release too. And if you liked the dirt, well, there’s Netflix, innit? Why does Hasbro do this? Well, its basically a cost saving measure, and you can see similar things in their action figure lines. For example, with their Marvel stuff they get away with base moulds for the varying body types, call ‘em “Brawny”, “Skinny”, and so on. It makes a lot of sense, especially when certain characters recur. And since a lot of people like the G1 guys and try to have a complete seeker team, we were easy marks for it. Just look at Kingdom if you need more examples. The downside is that Transformers are inherently more involved as toys, so its more obvious, and you end up with a self-confirming loop. Only only certain characters sell, because that’s only what is sold most of the time.
Eh, that’s capitalism for you. However...
The 2012 FOC Sideswipe toy
The Legacy of Siege is not Just Repaints
So, if Siege failed to deliver on its theme, what did it deliver on? Play value, posability, and general quality. Siege toys were legitimate fun to play with, and added entirely news concepts to the brand. It popularised the use of 5mm ports for accessories, and while the basic idea wasn't new, the execution and standardisation was praiseworthy. Factoring into that was a revolutionary new style of Transformers, the Weaponizer, who made full use of those ports, and the toys were robust enough to take the added weight. These embraced partsforming to provide a toy whose job it was to be made of guns, and if you don't think that's fun, I can't help you. Finally, there the Battlemasters whom brought their beloved blast effects to the table. So, while the words Cybertron & Siege in the title were questionable, at least the word War made sense. And because I don’t want this article to be just about repaints, I’m going to talk about each price-point a bit.
BattleMasters
Famous for the blast effects mentioned above, these were inexpensive little dudes that turned into weapons, and came with little translucent explosions. They were a joy. While this price-point would see a lot of variety with new characters, melee weapons and Rung getting his first toy, it was front-loaded with orphaned targetmasters to go with toys from Titans Return, in another example of the Generations Grab-Bag. Its a tragedy that Earthrise replaced them with ramps, and Kingdom dumped the idea entirely.
Micromasters
There's no delicate way to put this, but these failed. The teams were cut down from four members to two, and given a largely unconvincing combined weapon mode. The individual toys meanwhile offered little posability or visual improvement over the late-G1 originals, and largely didn’t commit to the theme. Soundwave's menagerie also ended up here, and I don't know hard I should be on those as they just had to turn into a slab, but I'd say Laserbeak did alright, while Ravage was overfed. If you’re into Micromasters, they aren’t bad, but if you aren’t? Stick to Storm Cloud & Visper.
Deluxes
All killer, no filler. The toys featured here are notably consistent performers across the board, with the possible exception of Chromia, only marked by distribution woes and the occasional QC fault. Pick your fave, then pick a weaponizer, and you’ll have a good time. Add a Battlemaster for a fantastic time. Its mostly Autobots, but the Deceptions are a good bunch of chaps too.
Voyagers
This price-point is probably the one going the hardest on the whole “Cybertron is supposed to be a messy warzone” thing, featuring some big names, and most of them looking pretty sci-fi. Unfortunately, as characters like Optimus Prime and Starscream live here, successive re-releases and over-exposure makes the toys of this slot less appealing. They aren’t bad, but don’t pay too much. Notable exceptions include Apeface, whom has not be re-released, and the Megatron which I feel came out better than the Earthrise version. There’s also a Springer with the misfortune of following arguably the best voyager of all time. He’s OK though.
Leaders
At the time, many people felt that these were merely voyagers with more accessories, something typified by the Shockwave and later Astrotrain releases. Its not an unreasonable view, given overall design, and the general vibe of “biggish dude armouring up into bigger dude”. That overshadows the actual merits of the price-point though. The Ultra Magnus brought back the long-absent inner robot gimmick, and paid tribute to the 2001 RID version at the same time. Its nicer than all the subsequent versions, TBH. Galaxy Upgrade Optimus Prime brought a welcome bit of Unicron Trilogy to events, and you’d have to very grumpy not to appreciate the four-arms-but-only-one-hand super mode of Shockwave. And to bring up the matter of theme again, Astrotrain is a steam engine with a coal tender. On Cybertron. Just saying.
Big Boys: Commander & Titan
This is a slot that I regret my own inexperience with. Jetfire and Omega Supreme where however well-received, so I assume they’re good if you can find them. Omega is currently unique, too.
Concurrent Exclusives
Sorry, gotta talk about repaints again. There were 12 concurrent exclusive releases, of which 7 were multipacks, usually if 3 or 4 toys of the straight repaint variety. Generations Select had a further 9 solo releases, and TakaraTomy did a Nemesis Prime. As Starscream was present, this group included the seekers, and similar common repaint candidates and army builders. This trend would continue into Earthrise, and would generate much of the general annoyance discussed earlier. There was also more oddball stuff though, like the Powerdashers, a well-regarded toy-style Refraktor set. The Hot Shot repaint/retool is another personal fave here, but maybe don’t get Slamdance. He breaks.
Conclusion
Transformers in the modern sense largely starts with Siege, and its legacy is that of a bunch of good toys, basically ran into the ground. There’s not much actually bad in the line, as everything is fun to play with and holds up well. The problem is that it was immediately followed by Earthrise. Earthrise was certainly more pleasing to certain sets of the fanbase, and a worthy sequel, but it made people regret buying into Siege like an early adopter. More so after the Netflix business. The extensive use and reuse of Siege moulds, either as repaints or retools or suspiciously similar engineering, has devalued them. This is a real shame, as Siege is generally excellent outside of the Micromasters, and even they have an appeal. I actually kinda miss it, and hope Legacy can live up to it in every sense of the word.
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