Note: This article lists examples which take place within fandoms; not TV Tropes' opinion as to whether a change is for the worse. TV Tropes doesn't have opinions. The focus is on over-reaction about minor changes.
- LEGO keeps having this, also because it's a Long Runner that has been catering to several generations of fans meanwhile.
- Slopes. They came with the new brick design with tubes for more friction in 1958, but the early adopters agreed that slopes were completely unnecessary because LEGO had worked perfectly well without slopes before that, even if someone wanted to build something like a house roof. Having actual slopes would kill imagination and creativity.
- Wheels. No, really. LEGO introduced its first wheels in 1961, and there were people who were opposed to them for the same reason as in the case of slopes: It had worked perfectly until then with play-pretending and blue bricks (black was introduced the following year). Eventually, people came to terms with slopes and wheels and even accepted the introduction of rails in 1965.
- The introduction of themes (Legoland, LEGO Space, LEGO Castle) in The '70s. Until then, LEGO buyers were used to getting more or less big containers full of various LEGO parts that could be used to build just about everything. Never mind that rather specialized building kits had been around for longer than the simple brick boxes.
- Even minifigures in their final form with movable limbs and printed-on faces had their share of backlash because LEGO customers regarded them as LEGO becoming more (too much) like Playmobil.
- New colors weren't always universally welcomed. LEGO had started with only blue, yellow, red and white. The introduction of black in the late 60s and the introduction of grey bricks (there had been grey plates already) around 1980 were criticized for making LEGO less bright and colorful. Upon the limited introduction of the first green bricks in The '90s, LEGO was accused of going against their principles—they had refused to produce green bricks for decades to keep kids from building tanks. And, of course, every color that came afterwards was deemed totally unnecessary because "that could have been done with the six colors available for bricks in The '80s just as well".
- The increasing number of rather specialized parts in The '80s. This was around the first time that (former) LEGO users had kids themselves for whom they got LEGO sets, just to discover how much LEGO had changed since their own childhood and was still changing rapidly. In particular, the introduction of five-high castle walls in LEGO Castle and pre-shaped sailship hull parts for the new LEGO Pirates line felt to many like a shift towards Playmobil—again.
- This was also the main criticism for Fabuland: It came with too many large, "pre-made" parts like doors in frames, and an automobile could be pieced together from about half a dozen specialized parts, not to mention that the figures couldn't be modified unlike the regular minifigs. It was still LEGO, but felt like dumbed down to DUPLO levels.
- The 9V railroad from 1993 that replaced the Cult Classic "grey era" 12V system. Sure, the rails looked neater without the extra power rails in the middle, as did the wheels with their pseudo-bearings on the outside. But gone were spoked wheels and coupling rods that had made halfway believable steamers possible. Gone were remote-controlled switches. Gone were remote-controlled signals that could even cut the electricity in the rails, therefore one could no longer have more than one locomotive on the rails at the same time. Gone was the compatibility with model railroad mini banana plugs and the possibility to make your own cables. And gone were light bricks that could also be mounted under things and any easy form of interior lighting with them (building illumination had become next to impossible anyway since wiring up the town on your layout with the rather short standard 9V cables would have been way too tedious and expensive).
- Increasingly toyish trains that looked rather like futuristic monorails with not even the most remote resemblance to real trains. LEGO reacted upon the fan criticism for once—and gave their fans the "Super Chief", one of the first official LEGO sets that weren't intended for kids.
- The "Bley" scandal. When AFOLs ordered additional grey parts from LEGO in 2004 because they ran out of them while building e.g. spaceship models, they discovered that LEGO had completely discontinued the old grey and replaced it with a new, more bluish tone without any announcement. New grey parts weren't compatible with older ones anymore, so if these fans wanted to continue working on their models, they would have had to replace all grey parts with bley ones—and pretty much buy their entire stock of grey parts once more in bley.
- The LEGO Trains situation worsened even more in 2006 when the 9V railroad was replaced with the even more toyish, battery-powered RC trains. They got so much of a backlash that LEGO repeated the "Super Chief" stunt in 2008 with the "Emerald Night", the first LEGO train based on Power Functions, the first LEGO steamer with an actually cylindrical boiler, and the first time LEGO officially made a Pacific locomotive (the instructions in the 7777 idea book don't count), and one year later, they changed their regular train line entirely from RC to Power Functions. This also allowed for a much better version of the "Hogwarts Express" than the 9V version.
- Happened in the BIONICLE fandom every time the characters received a redesign. Notable offenders are the Toa Inika and the Toa Nuva's "Mistika" forms. Perhaps the biggest "unacceptable" change of the franchise was when the tribal island setting of the '01-'03 lines got replaced with a futuristic mega-city, and the storyline drifted away from epic fantasy into light-science fiction territory. Unlike most other examples, almost all of these shifts were in fact planned ahead in the official Universe Bible, and hints were dropped all the way through — however the First Installment Wins, and any "change" is by default regarded as evil by casual fans who haven't been actively following the toys' and story's advancements. Some extremists even complained about changes that LEGO had no control over, such as all the characters that had to be renamed due to legal reasons.Greg Farshtey: This is BZPower, and all new sets are greeted with a barrage of criticism. It's tradition.
- Although the drastic toy design overhaul of Hero Factory was very welcomed, the BIONICLE reboot using the same construction style (which LEGO claims is here to stay) was met with a more mixed reaction. The aforementioned BZPower and other fansites were, however, this time more accepting of it.
- Technic going nearly completely studless. Now you cannot build anything without the pins. Metric trucktons of pins. The builds are also more rickety due to this.
- Older Technic offered a wider variety of machines and even universal sets. Now it's almost all cars. Licensed brand cars.
- Double-bewel gears taking over and nearly completely replacing the classic ones. While some of the bewel gears really are tougher, more fit for heavy duty and can be used in both planar and angular transmissions, the classic gears are all based around the number 8 which makes it easier to get the desired ratio, and often feature pinholes to attach different parts to them. Plus the classic ones look better.
- The price of small-scale LEGO sets have increased so dramatically, many consider it corporate suicide.
- Making licensed sets turned it up to eleven and now the corporate suicide may actually become a real thing.
- Every change that happens in the Fashionistas line is met with criticism and complaining.
- Quite a few people don't like how Polly Pockets don't exactly live up to their name anymore.They still fit in your pocket but now it is just the doll that fits inside your pocket instead of their whole world.
- Many fans of older Littlest Pet Shop toys, primarily the ones released from 2005 to mid-2012, tend to complain about drastic changes made with the designs of newer ones.
- Some fans have disliked various changes made to the toyline in the later years of the pre-Littlest Pet Shop (2012) era, such as introducing pets with less realistic color schemes, getting rid of the embedded magnets in favor of holes to fit pegs in playsets, using printed-on eyes instead of painted ones, incorporating the human character Blythe, and even motorized pets called Walkables.
- The pets released to tie in with Littlest Pet Shop (2012) were not very popular amongst fans and collectors due to lacking bobble heads and having more stylized proportions, which in some cases resulted in top-heavy pets that couldn't stand up on their own. The short-lived "Bobble in Style" line was released following several fan complaints to Hasbro, which reused older pet molds.
- While the excessive stylization that produced stability issues was toned back for generation 5, fans still dislike that the pets use a different kind of plastic than older toys, sport a wide variety of expressions that make it harder to imagine unique personalities for the pets, and have several tiny holes molded in to insert small pieces called Deco Bits. While the old molds weren't reused again, subsequent iterations of the toyline use designs that more closely resemble the toys from the peak of the brand's popularity and reduced the overall amount and prominent of Deco Bit holes before eventually dropping the concept.
- A frequent source of contention about the first wave of G7 pets is that despite pre-launch promotional material hyping up a return to the second generation's aesthetics, there's a distinct lack of G2's signature eye symbol-based personality marks, the symbols instead being present in the form of body markings. While this would be understandable if G7 fully committed to having body personality marks to establish its own identity, a handful of pets have eye symbols in addition to the body symbols. Since one of said pets is also the generation's mascot and the first pet in the relaunch to have been seen by the public, this created an expectation for more pets to have eye symbols. A further topic of debate is a lack of consistency with the symbols' presentation; some blend in with the pet's other markings, while others have been unfavorably compared to cutie marks due to standing out too much, such as this Pomeranian
with a single cream-colored lightning bolt next to its eye that sticks out against its dark brown body.
- The Shopkins fandom seems to have a strong hatred towards modern toy franchises like Real Littles, Mini Brands and Miniverse.
- Sometime fans of earlier generations of My Little Pony will complain about the new generations.
- The G2's (a set created in the late 90's into early 00's) are sometimes accused of being too petite and skinny - this complaint was particularly common during their heyday, and is sometimes levied against the G4 (Friendship is Magic) toys as well. Apparently, women are concerned that their girls are developing an unrealistic body image for horses.
- The first three generations had a bit of a 'collect them all' mentality, in which each season saw a release of four to six (or more) brand new ponies with different appearances and poses. Original fans have collections that easily number into the hundreds, with each toy having a unique name and appearance. With the G4 toys, once you've collected the main characters from the TV show, you're pretty much finished - other ponies are few and far between, and some of them, such as Holly Dash, were oddly hard to find even at their time of release, which annoys fans who want more variety.
- Fans have also complained that they toys have gotten smaller over time, became so stylized that they barely resemble ponies, and have declined in quality (with the hair in particular becoming harder to tame).
- Beyblades, specifically the Engine Gear system. But not looking into its parts separately.
- Many toys that were handmade or assembled with manual labor. Management may change to automation, cut corners, change suppliers or subcontractors. Cue the fan reaction.
- Transformers is no stranger to this trope:
- The Action Master line is often derided because the Transformers... don't transform. While it produced some original characters who've gone on to have their own fan bases, many still look down on the line for going against the very idea of the Transformers franchise. It's telling that when the original characters get toy updates via retools, all of these new figures can transform.
- Transformers action figures, post-2005 and beyond, were lambasted for what are minor imperfections and frailties. After the ultra-complicated and realistic robot designs of the live-action films resulted in some huge advancements in the way the toys are constructed and how their transformations work, there have been numerous complaints that they are simply too tough to transform now (with the complainers seemingly being oblivious to all the sub-lines whose figures still offer the same level of complexity as pre-Movie Era toys). A bunch of superficial design details, like the broken-up panels, insect-like faces and "chicken legs" also make many fans angry. Though in all fairness, in the case of a handful of figures, it is difficult to decipher whether the designers intended them to fit in with the Classics-line or Movie-line toys.
- Inverted. The exact opposite happened with the Transformers: Prime line. After the initial, poorly-distributed "First Edition" assortment showed off what seemed like highly complex, innovative, and accurate transformation, it was abruptly canceled in favour of the mainstream "Robots in Disguise" line, which were slightly simplified, had "kiddier" gimmicks and weapons, and relied a bit more on "fake" kibble. Many fans of the earlier figures were outraged, believing that the new figures suffered from "forced simplicity" being thrust upon them for the sake of younger kids (which, as one would do well to remember, are still the true intended audience for the figures, adult collectors being merely a Periphery Demographic). Never mind the fact that quite a few of them are actually not really worse than their predecessors in terms of quality and functionality; rather, they simply attempted things differently. It hasn't stopped fans from declaring the whole line ruined as a result.
- Due to the loss of Trademark, certain names had to be changed: Bombshell became Hardshell, Octane became Tankor, Shrapnel became Sharpshot/Skrapnel, etc. At best the fans just accept it as something that cannot be avoided, but few people actually like the new names. It's telling that even most fiction tends to stick with the original names.
- This sort of thing is so commonplace that the Transformers wiki has a page titled "Ruined FOREVER" which catalogues all of the changes to the franchise which were met by overblown outrage. There's one from pretty much every major toyline, going all the way back to the original "Generation 1" era toys.
- The 2002 revival of G.I. Joe action figures got considerable backlash for removing the "O-ring"note and replacing it with a "T-bar", limiting the figures' familiar articulation. The figures from 2007 onward feature new engineering that still replaces the O-ring but retains the articulation of the original line, though there are still complaints with this linenote .
- Most people who liked K'nex for being a clever offshoot of Tinker Toys were less than thrilled to see them beginning to use pieces that bear a blatant resemblance to LEGO bricks. Most of this came from those who thought they were being original in the wake of a building toy market filled with knockoff versions of LEGO.
- When Mr. Potato Head went from being metallic pieces you pierced into actual potatoes to an all-plastic head. Sure, it was safer (and didn't waste food), but purists argued that you couldn't use things other than potatoes, and the places you could stick the pieces into were pre-determined, thus stunting a child's creativity.
- Similarly in 2021 when Mr. Potato head was re-branded as "Potato Head" many people argued that the name change was unnecessary since the parts for Mr. and Mrs. Potato head are already interchangeable and attach to plastic potatoes with no defined gender charctersistics.
- Adult Thomas Wooden Railway fans and collectors had not taken kindly to the "Thomas Wood" range that replaced the former range in from late 2017 to mid-2021, namely the compacted models of bigger engines, how certain parts of engines remained unpainted, and a track system that was incompatible with track from Thomas Wooden Railway and other third-party brands (though adapters were included for a short time). If the reviews on the Toys R Us website were anything to go by, parents who purchased them for their children have not taken kindly to them, either. Despite Mattel's attempts to improve the line, such as having the engines be fully painted again and bringing back long-time favorite characters such as Edward, Henry, and Toby, these changes weren't enough to save it and the line was discontinued on June 2021. Thomas Wooden Railway was re-introduced in 2022 in a redesigned form to much more positive feedback from fans.
- Marvel Legends:
- Under ToyBiz, the Marvel Legends line generally eschewed movie figures, with the sole exceptions being Daredevil, Blade II and The Punisher, which each received a single figure. This immediately changed when Hasbro took over the line, with their first three waves including figures from X-Men: The Last Stand, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy being the subject of its own wave, and Target stores getting an exclusive The Incredible Hulk figure. Following the line's return from hiatus, Hasbro began doing movie-themed Marvel Legends waves, beginning with Iron Man 3 in 2013 and continuing to this very day. While this move proved to be a highly successful one (since the popularity of the MCU helped renew interest in the line), a number of longtime collectors disliked it, as they preferred ToyBiz's strategy of keeping the comic and movie figures separate.
- Another major complaint was the perceived downturn in quality once the line transferred to Hasbro, with most of the early Hasbro figures having less articulation and paint application than their ToyBiz predecessors. While Hasbro thankfully increased the articulation and quality when the line returned from hiatus in 2012, there are still many fans who feel things were better under ToyBiz. This is exasperated by Hasbro's habit of reusing parts (and in some cases, entire bodies), which some critics have compared to kitbashing.
- The decrease in the size of the Build-A-Figures is another frequent criticism. ToyBiz instituted the Build-A-Figure concept with the idea that fans would be willing to buy an entire wave of toys so they could complete a larger figure that would normally be too expensive to release on its own. These included massive characters like the Sentinel and Giant-Man. Under Hasbro, the size of the Build-A-Figures gradually began to decrease, hitting a breaking point in 2013 when minuscule characters like Puck, Rocket Racoon and Hit-Monkey were featured. While Hasbro has since returned to doing larger Build-A-Figures (like the Hulkbuster from Avengers: Age of Ultron, Giant-Man from Captain America: Civil War,the Molten Man elemental from Spider-Man: Far From Home and Totally Awesome Hulk), they'll still occasionally release one that is essentially the same size as one of their single releases, like Mantis from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 wave, Okoye from the Black Panther wave, or sometimes an even smaller figure, like Cosmo the Space Dog from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 wave.
