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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

You dare to ask, I dare to answer.

Robots are fun toys. Toy guns and cars are fun toys. A number of toy companies tried to combine the two. After enough transforming toys were made, Hasbro and Takara decided to team up, rebrand some of the toys they already made and buy up the rights to other transforming toys to make a new unified Transformer toyline. They also decided to take advantage of how in Ronald Reagan's recent series of deregulations, he legalized direct advertising in children's television (which had already been legal in Japan for a long while) and made the cartoon. Since it was the early days of toy advertisement cartoons, they made a lot of weird decisions that you don't see in modern cartoon toy tie-ins, most notably how they felt that they needed to graphically kill most of the regular cast onscreen in the movie to make way for new toys, because they couldn't just make a new toy of the same character.

After a while, the show dwindled for whatever reason, but the comicbook tie-in kept going strong along with japanese transformer animes that kept tying into the new toys coming out like transformers where their head or weapon or engine turns into a little person. At some point in the 90s, one of the new toylines decided to label itself "Generation 2" which retroactively made all the stuff that came before it "Generation 1". No later transformers series would ever be known as Generation 3.

The toylines eventually did a bunch of experimenting with robots turning into animals (more realistic-looking animals than before, with fancy new balljoints) and that turned into Beast Wars, which got a fancy early-CGI cartoon and 2 animes. Japan produced a lot of transformers animes, but they only started getting translated and shipped to the US in the 2000s, with Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Armada, Energon, and Cybertron. There were also transformers manga series, but I don't hear about them much aside from Kiss Players which is horrible trash and pretty rapey, because Japan has confusing standards for sexual content in media and target markets.

The Dreamwave Transformers comics came along around this time, and after the company collapsed in a horrifying mess, IDW picked up the license, although they only really hit their stride in the 2010s. They also labeled their stories as being part of Generation 1 to tie in with the new nostalgic for G1 toyline that ran concurrently with the cartoon-based toylines. That practice would continue to this day.

But then America started producing its own Transformers media in 2007 with the Michael Bay movie, which I didn't like, and then the entirely unrelated but pretty good cartoon Transformers: Animated, which was ended to make room for the next Michael Bay movie. Then there was Transformers Prime, which took a little of the Bay aesthetic and a little of Animated's aesthetic and blended them together in CGI, and eventually led into the sequel series of Transformers: Robots in Disguise. They also put out new stuff targeted at a much younger audience under the name of Rescuebots. The Bay movies kept on going, but the latest movie purports to be a reboot of movie continuity.

As things stand now, IDW rebooted its continuity because they wanted to make a new unified shared universe between Transformers and the other 1980s hasbro toylines they had comic licenses to (aside from My Little Pony). The current on-tv cartoon is Cyberverse, but there's also a Netflix webseries called the "War for Cybertron trilogy", unrelated to the War For Cybertron videogames which were actually prequels to the continuity of Transformers Prime somehow. There's concurrently a toyline for the current cartoon, a toyline nostalgic for G1, a toyline nostalgic for the Bay movies, and a toyline for younger audiences. That's not counting the weird territory of high-end unlicensed third-party transformers or Hasbro's own Masterpiece line of high-end obscenely expensive transformers.

Unicron is coming.

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

That reminds me of the episode where two scientists who really loving hated transformers put somebody in an ambulance only to find out that it's another transformer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rhkgPI1Mu4&t=278s

When I was a kid, I had a bunch of episodes from the very beginning of the show on VHS along with The Return of Optimus Prime, the two-parter that apparently ended the series, and I just didn't understand why Optimus was gone to need to return in the first place, why there was an entirely different cast of characters, the gently caress is a Quintesson, why there are TWO different two-headed dragons, why is humanity so much more advanced than the real world, what's the matrix, and why does Galvatron say that Autobots can't fly when they were all flying around like nobody's business in the first episode.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

The cartoon was also way ahead of the curve on post 9/11 racist muslim stereotypes, and one of the VAs quit over it.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

I liked Armada a whole lot at the time, and I never watched it again as an adult, which seems fine, seeing as how the show was targeted at kids, like I was at the time. I don't know how well it holds up, but it's not like most of the other Transformers cartoons hold up that well to an adult.

Minicons were perfect and amazing, and I don't think Hasbro has really matched the fun of small robots since, although I did enjoy titanmasters some. Sideways had the coolest minicon partner, although the head-mode-with-antlers was ridiculous.

The bigger Armada figures...well, they are a bit hit and miss. Beast Wars was really balljoint-crazy, which set a standard of articulation that RiD kinda fell away from with its few original toys, and then Armada stepped back a little further. Not just because of weird minicon gimmicks, but just a whole lot of weird, weird design choices. I think Armada invented the H-tank, and when you look at Demolisher, he has a bit of charm to him, but I'm not sure anything can explain why he is what he is. He has an interesting chair mode though. Scavenger is probably the worst offender, but there's still a little charm in how his minicon can sit in the driver's seat. You can even see a lot of the weird design decisions in the minicons, which is part of why they're so interesting. I don't think articulation is everything for a figure, because the engineering in the transformation and how aesthetically interesting the modes are also are important.

Then Energon rolled along and for various reasons I never really watched the show. I liked the robots though, and they increased the amount of articulation. The combination modes were kinda garbage though, but I still feel like the component limb robots from Energon are still my favorite component robots out of any combiner. But I guess "I don't like combiners but these robots are really good independently despite their gimmick" is pretty low praise.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Armada Cyclonus was perfect, even if he was basically a helicopter carrying a folded-up robot underneath.

Droyer posted:

they're literally just the same idea as Headmasters from the 80s.

That was the whole point, hence why they did it in the toyline all about retreading their old characters.

Not that I wouldn't love it if they did try getting more creative. There's still never been a bus transformer.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

What I like is that G1 often stays consistent with the toys in the relative size of the characters, so you get things like Huffer being the same vehicle as Optimus Prime but a little tiny version because he's a little tiny toy. You still get things like characters traveling inside of Astrotrain though.

Also the writers weren't really great at marketing the toys, so Bumblebee was a cheap little thing, but since they were drawing him the same size as the humans, he's the character they use constantly to interact with the humans, hence his popularity.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

The original "microchange" toyline that Megatron was part of had the gimmick of everyday items a kid had changing into robots. So there's a commercial where you see a watch, a camera, and then a Browning M1910. Kinda weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en3m-ggLrSc&t=56s

There was a whole conversation about them on the BSS thread a couple weeks ago.

Knormal posted:

There were also a handful of Microman figures who didn't make the cut for whatever reason. A binoculars guy who looks pretty lovely so I don't blame them for not including him.


But then there's Megatron's lost brothers. Frankly they look like better figures than Megatron and I'm surprised they never got used. I'd say they maybe didn't want to complete with Megatron being the only gun and thus kind of special from the other Decepticons, but then Shockwave ruins that.


Source, for anyone interested: https://micromanclub.tumblr.com/post/113055115824/micromansecretfilepart4

Realistic toy guns used to be real big before the proliferation of real guns prompted a crackdown on the fake guns. Or at least that's the story I've pieced together. I don't know if there are more realistic toy guns in Europe.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

To be fair, when Megatron was a hand-dragon, Optimus was a very different type of truck: A Fire Truck.

Ultra Magnus is a car carrier truck, which seems so goddamn perfect of an idea for a character to interact with all the other cars, he deserves to be more prominent in the franchise.

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Ghost Leviathan posted:

They should lean into the shared universe thing with the cartoons like the comics did, let them sell more tie ins and reuse old concepts. Have GI Joe be XCOM.

That's literally why they cancelled and rebooted the IDW comic.

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