Dork Age/Toys

• LEGO, arguably.
  • According to AFOLS, LEGO had one from about 1997-2002 during the advent of "juniorizaton". Sets from that era were generally simpler and more crude than previously, using large, single-purpose parts as opposed to more complex subassemblies. Examples include Town Jr. and City Center (which replaced the regular Town line) — the cars were made of single-piece baseplates, and the headlights were usually just slopes with headlight texture printed on them (as opposed to using "washing machine" bricks with transparent plates on them). Castles were also simplified by using premade wall pieces. The era also had many poorly-received series, such as the Insectoids and the Time Twisters. However, starting in 2002 the situation started to become better - by 2005 the new City line was a complete antithesis to Town Jr.
  • LEGO's "Constraction" subline (Slizers, Bionicle, Ben 10, Hero Factory) arguably also went though such a period from '06-'10, beginning with the introduction of the "Inika" body-built, named after the Toa Inika sub-line of Bionicle, which basically consisted of an easily buildable torso with snap-on limbs, each made up of very few pieces. Due to this, functions were removed, with launchers and electronics taking the full focus. This type of construction hiked with the '08 Matoran, '09 Agori and '10 Ben10 sets, figures whose torsos, upper and lower arms and legs (or in the Matoran's and Agori's case, their entire limbs), hands and feet were made up of huge, single pieces and offered very little in the way of construction, focusing more on being "just" action figures.
    
    The Hero Factory 2.0 line in '11 thankfully ended this dork age with its radical design overhaul, that, although gave up on using the traditional LEGO Technic pin and rod connectors, made its figures pleasingly complex and incredibly well articulated again. Needless to say, though fans were generally happy, they were disappointed to find that this shift was so groundbreaking, it's bound to stay for a while, threatening with the notion of an "Inika 2.0". The reboot of BIONICLE mixed the CCBS system overhaul with the pin and rod connectors and even brought back functions, but wasn't marketed well enough to do much good, and it led to the end of Constraction for the foreseeable future.
• My Little Pony's toy line suffered this in the late '90s, when Generation 2 came along. They scraped their previous chubby designs in exchange for a design that resembled Horses instead of Ponies, and that generation was the only one not to get its own cartoon.
  • Another, short lived dork age occurred in 2009 with the G3.5 toy line, which limited the ponies to just seven characters alone (dubbed the "Core 7") and changed their designs to having large heads and hooves, but small bodies, this dork age ended in October 2011 when Hasbro switched to Lauren Faust's designs, although your mileage may vary with the Generation 4 toys...
• G.I. Joe arguably had its dork age in the early-mid '90s, when the line introduced more outlandish subsets like the Eco Warriors (basically, G.I. Joe meets Captain Planet), Ninja Force, and Street Fighter (no really!). Not helping was the decidedly bright and blatantly neon colouring for certain figures, as well as the overabundance of spring-loaded weaponry, among other gimmicks. Plus, there was the added competition from lines like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the coming of a certain morphenomenon, all of which spelled the end for the "Real American Hero" line by 1994. This was followed by a rather short dork age in the form the Sgt. Savage line, which introduced a Captain America-esque soldier helping the Joes against new enemies, but the line was short-lived.
  • And following on Sgt. Savage was G.I. Joe Extreme, where the toys had Liefeldian proportions and designs and articulation was reduced down to five points. While Sgt. Savage changed the scale somewhat it still kept most of the traditional Joe articulation and sculpting style intact, while Extreme was a blatant Follow the Leader to The Dark Age of Comic Books.
  • Sadly, the 2010s would be similarly unkind to G.I. Joe, as while Renegades and Resolute were well-liked, the toylines did not do well and were cut short by Hasbro, and the movies were considered to be poor-quality duds that may have even tarnished the brand. The anniversary year of 2014 saw more convention exclusives than retail releases, and the franchise lay mostly dormant afterwards until the launch of Classified.
• Transformers has had a few:
  • Generation 2 is considered one due to its very odd color schemes and mostly starting off as G1 redecoes. The lack of media support didn't help. On the other hand, a lot of the innovations were continued from the Beast Era onwards.
  • "Mainline" Transformers figures have more or less been in one starting in 2015; due to the old size-class system being regulated to Generations, replaced with a more gimmicky system of different gimmick-based assortments; the "Warrior" class figures were basically simplified versions of Deluxe figures, with reduced articulation and paint apps, and the plastic noticeably became more hollow. Other assortments were generally even more simplified, transforming in only a few steps, and unlike in the past, no alternatives were offered to create an accurately-scaled collection. Cyberverse continued this, but with even more gimmicks being added. While moderately sucessful with the target demographic, older fans rued the descision.
  • The Prime Wars Trilogy served as one for Generations, due to its use of G1 pandering as well as figures becoming infamously hollow compared to the past. The reduced number of paint applications didn't help. Though, we did finally get figures for a lot of the IDW characters, and updates to more obscure G1 alumni. War For Cybertron solved these errors by scaling down the figures to make them denser at the same price point, and an increased number of deep-cut characters, and an entire Beast Era line at the end.