2020 was quite the year, to put it mildly, and I will put it mildly, since, while it’s true, you’re probably tired of hearing it. I know I am. That being said, (and there was a LOT unsaid there), it was a very good year for Transformers, at least. These days especially, this whole hobby’s been a bright spot for me, and I feel privileged to be able to take part in it, and also write about it. And, speaking of writing about it, here’s my pics for my favorite Transformers releases of the year, in countdown form.
My criteria is limited to figures that became available to me, a Canadian, in 2020. This is also, of course, just stuff I personally purchased, and I’m sure there’s great figures out there that I didn’t get. Also, I rank everything included in a box as a single entry, so there’s a few multi-figure sets on here. Since I started working from home this year, an important criteria for me this time around became how much Desk Time a figure gets, i.e how long it stays on my work desk as something I can grab and mess around with during the day, before it moves to its proper place on one of my shelves. The other trend I’ve noticed about who wound up on this list is that, since I’m a fiction-first kind of fan, a surefire way to get on this list is just to be a new figure of a character I happen to like that’s been executed well. Anywho, let’s get into it. If you want to know more, I reviewed almost every entry on this list, and I’ll link them out. (2022 edit: The old website that hosted these went down, however, I re-posted them all here as Retro Bot Reviews, which means some of these links now take you to the future).
Honorable Mention: Earthrise Grapple
Speaking of “characters I like who got new, good figures,” there’s this guy, the sullen architect who changes into a bright yellow construction crane. In terms of his design and poseability, Grapple really feels like a scaled-down Masterpiece figure. I love how his design evokes the idea of a non-warrior, civilian robot just trying to make his way in the world. I also love how he’s ludicrously articulated, how he’s bright, cheddar-cheese orange, and how solid he feels in your hands. One involved-but-easy transformation later, and he changes into what looks like the kind of construction vehicle toy you’d roll around a sandbox, complete with an extending, rotating crane arm, with an optional grabby-claw.
So, why didn’t he actually make the list? Because, out of the box, you’ll break him eventually if you don’t sand down a pair of tabs on his legs, which is easy to do, but an unfortunate flaw if you don’t know about it. Maybe they’ll fix it when he’s retooled into Inferno in Kingdom.
Would be on the list if he got here earlier: Generations Selects Super Megatron
This highly-awaited adversary for my Star Convoy finally got to me right at the end of December, and while I’ve had a little bit of time to unbox and mess around with him, I haven’t managed to write him up, and it hasn’t been nearly long enough for me to form enough of an opinion to place him on this list somewhere, aside from the fact that he would be on here, and fairly high up. I’ll say this much, though: He’s a shockingly well-executed figure on multiple levels, especially considering he’s one of those Extreme Takara Retools, which are usually kind of messy and unstable. Not him, though. Expect to read more in the coming weeks, and look into getting one yourself.
#10: War for Cybertron Trilogy Quintesson Pit of Judgement
There’s a lot of stuff in this big box of figures, which helped land it here. Parts of it aren’t great, but the parts that are good are really good, and the whole set comes together into something exceptional.
The Judge himself looks great, even if he’s a bit under-designed. Wrong colors or not, the Bailiff has no reason to be as fun, expressive, and articulated as he is (in some ways, this set is “the Bailiff plus extras”). Meanwhile, another copy of the still-good-in-2020 Titans Return Sharkticon is always welcome, and the little PVC figure of the Prosecutor had way more work put into his design, paint and engineering than I was expecting. The tiny little Kranix PVC’s kind of undercooked, but plays well with the rest of the set, and the lovely papercraft backdrop is the perfect display piece to top it all off. If you’re a fan of Transformers: The Movie, you get a whole little world in this box.
#9 and #8: Earthrise Starscream, and the Earthrise Seeker Elites set
These three were like a double-hit of nostalgia for me. Not only were they a trio of characters I like, but the fact that they blew up the engineering for the old Classics Deluxes, and added a few quality-of-life fixes (ankle tilts, wings that aren’t in the way, a head that moves independently of the nosecone) was apparently enough to make me swoon. It was also enough to make me forget about how these immediately invalidated the Siege Seekers most of us had already bought.
Putting that aside, they’re just good figures. They really accurately captured their G1 cartoon designs, they’re fun to pose and handle, feel good to transform, and change into sleek fighter jet modes. This is another case of “I don’t need the Masterpieces of them, because these ones do everything I wanted from those.” If I had to rank the three of them, I’d say I like how Skywarp and Thundercracker came out a little bit better, mostly for that lush silver paint, but I like Starscream as a character better. Really, everyone should grab at least one of these Seekers, and their innumerable repaints and retoolings. I only tapped out at three due to space and money.
#7: Trumpeter Bumblebee Model Kit
He might not transform, but this Bumblebee model still did the leading man from the best live-action Transformers film right. The thing that still impresses me most about it, aside from the screen-accuracy, is how solid he feels once you snap him together. I’m used to model kits feeling a bit fragile, but they could have sold this guy fully-assembled as an action figure, and it would have felt complete.
Outside of that, he just emits personality and cuteness in a way no other Bumblebee figure I’ve handled does. He’s just adorable, poseable, expressive, and high-quality. He’s certainly got enough option parts, colors, and articulation to feel premium, and while the last entry invalidated the Masterpieces to me, this one invalidates those big, expensive 3A collectible figures of this guy. I’m looking forward to the rest of this little sub-line, and I wish it was more commonly available.
Hoist’s another one of my obscure favorite characters, whether he’s the jovial british doctor in the cartoon, or the one normal person on the Lost Light’s crew. Either way, in Earthrise, they did him near-perfectly, in all his dumpy, non-warrior glory. Despite his proportions, he’s ridiculously bendable, and still manages to emit a sort of jovial, working-man, friendly, non-fighting personality.
This is definitely a case where there isn’t one thing I can point to about him, he’s just very well-executed. The sculpting and paint are on point, he’s fun to transform, and he changes into a good-looking realistic truck mode, in a color scheme I’ve actually seen on working trucks on the streets of Toronto. He’s not perfect by any means (his arms pose weird, and just hang out in his truck mode), but overall, they did this favorite character of mine right.
#5: Generations Selects Exhaust
Whereas the previous entry was a well-established character I liked, this guy’s a complete nobody, albeit one with tons of memetic fun built around him in the fandom, which is admittedly what drew me to this release.
Memes aside, though, Exhaust is just a fun, well-engineered deluxe carformer. He looks great, poses well, transforms in a fun way, and becomes a sleek car mode. On top of that, he’s an obscure pre-Transformers design given form, and a much more affordable alternative to the old Masterpiece. But putting that all aside, sometimes, all you need is a well-done Deluxe to be a highlight of a year. He’s certainly shown up as a model in a lot of my photo shoots as a result of how good he looks, and how fun he is to just pick up and fiddle with.
#4 Generations Selects G2 Megatron
It’s not just the colors, I swear. Okay, the colors are a big part of it. You know I’m a sucker for gaudy 90’s G2 schemes. But for what it’s worth, this is also a really good Voyager that happens to wear these lush colors extremely well. This second pass at the Siege Megatron mold fixed a lot of things, but made a few things worse, though it did them all in fulfilling the important role of being an absolute slab of a bad guy, who changes into a big, angry tank.
But those colors, though. It’s a chef’s kiss if the chef was a kid decorating cupcakes. They just make the few criticisms I have about him (what the heck even is his other weapon? And why can’t it shoulder-mount?) melt away.
This is the only entry on this list where I can unconditionally say everyone should get one, because he’s cheap, small, really good, and, thanks to HasTak having the foresight to re-release this tail-ender Siege figure in Earthrise, readily available. Even if you don’t know or care who he is, he’s easily the strongest Battlemaster figure I’ve handled. Great things really do come in small packages.
Not only is Rung a character from a series I love who’s getting his first figure ever, but they made him into a really fun little Battlemaster. Between his hyper-accurate sculpting, his extra poseability, and his great paintwork, it really feels like extra work went into this release, probably because they didn’t know when they’d get another crack at this character, with his weird alternate mode that happened to fit in with this little side line.
#2 Ocular Max Azalea Protoform
It was a sad day when we all realized TFCon would be skipping 2020, but at least we still got a crack at the exclusives they always put out, like this one.
Masterpiece Arcee who? Ocular Max’s take on a Masterpiece Arcee runs circles around anything official, even the upcoming actual MP, by presenting us with a normal, non-weird, animation-accurate sculpt, a backpack-free transformation, great articulation, and a lot of fun option parts. And this Protoform version, released online after the convention was cancelled, takes the colors of her G1 toy prototype, and uses them to create a figure with an incredibly lush, sunset-y, vaporwave-y color scheme that makes that sculpt sing.
I’m usually not a big supporter of unofficial third-party figures, they’re extremely hit and miss, but I’ll outright say that anyone that collects Masterpieces and wants an Arcee ought to invest in some version of this over the official Takara one. And if you can get your hands on this unique version, even better. Heck, I don’t even collect Masterpieces, and I love this release, both in concept and in execution.
Okay, given the significance of the character to me, he was always going to be on the list, but I honestly wasn’t expecting him to top this year’s list, until I had him in hand.
Since this tooling came out as Cliffjumper, I’ve noticed it’s kind of a “love it or hate it” deal, which is fair. Me, I personally love it. It’s not just that they finally made a new Hubcap, or that they did him right. This figure packs a ton of fun into a small size, with poseability that actually outdoes the old Masterpiece Bumblebee he’s inspired by, an involved-but-fun transformation and alternate mode, and a big pile of bazooka-forming accessories, which just beg to be assembled into a bunch of crazy combinations. His only issue, in my eyes, is that he’s slathered in chippable, scratchable paint (especially on his shoulders), instead of sturdier bare plastic, but that’s barely a complaint.
I talked about Desk Time as a factor at the start of this, and Hubcap’s legitimately never left my desk since I bought him, unlike everyone else on this list. He’s fun to mess with and transform, and my favorite Transformer product to come out in 2020.
And that’s in for the year! Tons of great stuff came out, and, as someone that’s been a fan since the early 90’s, I can legitimately say that between the quality and variety of what came out this year, it continues to be a great time to get into the hobby. And here’s to 2021, which is only going to bring greater things that are even more laser-guided to my interests, like Studio Series ‘86, and Kingdom’s remakes of the Beast Wars cast. I’m looking forward to owning them, and I’m looking forward to writing about them on here. I’m also interested in anyone else’s top ten of the year, if you want to sound off in the comments, or on socials. There’s no wrong answers!
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