![]() ![]() ![]() Unfortunately, the series debuted to lackluster sales, despite featuring many fan-favorite toys that hadn't been available for years. It put a much larger focus on keeping "main" characters (particularly Optimus Prime and Megatron) readily available on shelves with a variety of toys at different price points, as most of the successful competing toy lines of the '90s were focused on a core cast of characters, rather than the massive ever-changing casts of the '80s. Generation 2 also sought to follow changing trends in the toy market in a broader sense. But after that initial year, all-new product quickly outnumbered reworked old product, and the line pushed its design and engineering to levels far beyond the original series most notably, it was during the latter half of Generation 2 that the toys began to feature the kind of advanced articulation in robot mode that made the toys much more "action figures" than ever before (and far more posable than many "regular" action figure lines!), which has been a staple of the brand ever since. Initially, the line heavily featured re-releases of several "Generation 1" toys (as the pre- Generation 2 series quickly became known to the fandom), with tweaked decos and new accessories, alongside several molds that had been recently released as part of the European-market line. ![]() Optimus Prime's first G2 toy, essentially a re-release of the original toy but with a new soundbox and weapons. In a desperate bid to save Transformers from ending for good, Hasbro chose to end the line in its third year, and go in a completely new direction. Unfortunately, the revamping failed to give the franchise the jumpstart it needed, despite having created several benchmarks that Transformers lines still follow to this day. Generation 2 saw more-or-less simultaneous release in the US and European markets, but Japan would not start the line (or even have any Transformers product at all on shelves, for that matter) until 1995. With a mix of classic popular characters, vintage toys, all-new gimmick-laden molds, and bodacious 90s color schemes, Hasbro hoped to recapture some of the financial success that had been lost with age and competition. Two years after the original Transformers toy line petered out in the US, Hasbro revamped the series with late-1992's Transformers: Generation 2, the first "reboot" of the franchise. ![]()
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