Hasbro Comic Universe/YMMV

• Broken Base: Oh it's quite a big one.
  • To its supporters, the HCU is Crazy Awesome, being a fun modernized telling of grand old ideas but to its critics, the lack of media awareness regarding the non-Transformers brands made it a doomed idea from the start.
  • The over-reliance on the Transformers comics (Visionaries invading Cybertron, Dire Wraiths hunting for Ore-13, Skywarp as a G.I. Joe). Logically it makes sense, they'd been ongoing for a successful eleven years by that point, but there are readers (both fans and detractors) who don't think that the other franchises should be relying on Transformers to reboot themselves.
• Common Knowledge:
  • ROM is not a Marvel character. He's a Hasbro character. The Hasbroverse has been, so far, the truest adaptation of the toyline to date, by virtue of treating him like a Hasbro character and having him interact with other Hasbro characters. Marvel, when they had the license, made the mistake of acting like ROM was a Marvel character and Canon Welded him and the Dire Wraiths in the backstories of ACTUAL Marvel characters, leading to the false assumption that ROM is a Marvel character, and thus a They Changed It, Now It Sucks reaction to him ensued once he appeared outside of Marvel.
  • IDW was not forced to write the Hasbro Comic Universe. They had the ideas and the licenses, so they simply thought it would be a fun thing to do.
  • Despite what some diehard Transformers fans will tell you, this 'verse did not kill IDW's original Transformers continuity, which came to a close less than two years after the HCU debuted. Not only were the stories were already wrapping up, the sales throughout Phase 2 were on an unsustainable downwards spiral; and, other than a brief sales spike for the first issues of the relaunched series, the relaunch did pretty much nothing to the sales trends, which continued to decrease at the same level as they had from around the 51st issues to the relaunch. While the Hasbro Universe titles generally didn't sell great, they didn't affect the sales of the ongoing Transformers series at all. If anything, the opposite happened as many only bought other HCU titles for the Transformers cameos.
• Cult Classic: Didn't pull the same figures as the Transformers books, and never had the same sprawling online community, but the hardcore fans signed on for life.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • He may have only had four issues to his name, but Action Man is quite popular among the fanbase.
  • Rom and his gloriously hammy dialogue. The fact that his Marvel comic was quite popular helped. He's even the IDW Hasbro Wiki's mascot.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A quick stroll on Fanfiction.net and AO3 will reveal that the overwhelming majority of Transformers fans who write about the later days of the 2005 IDW Continuity refuse to acknowledge the HCU and keep the action solely on the Cybertronians. The only thing that most of the Transformers fandom seems to have embraced is Stardrive, the orphaned Camien that Rom adopted, but don't expect the fan writers to ever mention her backstory or her Dire Wraith mutations. Even fanart of her has a 50/50 chance of having her in her natural blue paint rather than Space Knight armor.
  • Even those who like the verse aren't huge fans of Transformers vs. Visionaries. Word of advice, when you're trying to get people interested in a thirty year old franchise, don't open the book by killing off Kup, one of the most beloved Transformers of all time, and then making his murderer, along with her ready to enact Hostile Terraforming species, a Karma Houdini.
• Hard to Weld Work: Several, which is why they never showed up in the universe's short life:
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: First of all, the rules of MLP pretty much ensure that only the Equestria Girls characters can interact with the Hasbroverse characters. Second, its lightearted Slice of Life tone would clash with the action-packed Darker and Edgier tone of the Hasbroverse.
  • Jem: Also lighthearted, but aiming for Like Reality Unless Noted, unlike the Fantasy Kitchen Sink that is the Hasbroverse. Notably, IDW flip-flopped on wether it was part of the Hasbroverse or not, before Jem 20/20 settled in stone that it's not (by virtue of being published and taking place AFTER the Hasbroverse ended).
  • Dungeons and Dragons: The game doesn't have an in-built narrative, and most spinoff media give the creators a huge deal of creative control.
  • Littlest Pet Shop: Also lighthearted, plus Blythe's Speaks Fluent Animal power is supposed to be Magical Realism, so being integrated into the Hasbroverse means the power would have to be explained.
  • Pound Puppies: Also lighthearted, not to mention the intelligence of the Pound Puppies would also have to be explained if they were integrated into the Hasbroverse.
  • Zoids: The shows take place in a future that can't be reconciled with the established future of the Hasbroverse.
  • Trolls: Again, way too lighthearted.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Despite the fact that MLP sat out this verse, they would get their own comic crossover with the Transformers a year and a half after the HCU ended.  
• Just Here for Godzilla: An odd case of Godzilla having been here first. Many of IDW's Transformers readers still only read Transformers books and kept doing that even after the HCU launched. And their only major reason for even checking out any other title was the occasional Transformers reference. A good example is G.I. Joe Vol. 5. While the Denser and Wackier tone proved off-putting to many Joe fans, some Transformers fans were very eager to see Skywarp finally receive A Day in the Limelight. In fact, a large complaint from the online community about ROM: Dire Wraiths is that it has no Transformers references.
  • Many other were checking the universe for Ensemble Darkhorse ROM, a character that went largely unused after Hasbro fully got the rights back from Marvel.
• Snark Bait: Barring My Little Pony, and that's relatively recent, Transformers fans have never generally held Hasbro's other franchises in high regard. This universe's short run only threw more fuel on the fire, and the above-mentioned issue of having ROM outside of Marvel made things even worse.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The Transformers books. While it makes sense to centre the universe around the Transformers franchise considering they have strong sales and eleven years worth of books and mythology, the lore of all the other franchises has to be twisted around and bent to suit the Transformers. Transformers: Unicron is without a doubt the biggest example of this. Though it's ostensibly the Grand Finale of the HCU, it's clearly, and shamelessly, a Transformers comic.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Oh so common.
  • MASK fans weren't too thrilled on Matt Trakker's Race Lift which has so many Unfortunate Implications. The redesign was probably the result of the original Matt Trakker looking very similar to Duke and the artists wanting to avoid any confusion.
  • Many ROM and Micronauts fans would have preferred a continuation of the old comics set in the Marvel Universe rather than a full reboot.
  • While the Visionaries reimagining had its supporters, the more notable changes, particularly Darkstorm's demise, were not met with great cheers. Not helped by the fact that Unicron showed up before the Visionaries could accomplish much of anything, and then the entire Hasbroverse ended after Unicron was defeated.
  • And a lot of readers of IDW's Transformers book just don't care about the Hasbro Comic Universe either way and were perfectly happy just reading Transformers comics.
• Too Good to Last: A Shared Universe between, nearly, all of Hasbro's properties. There's no way this was gonna be around for long.