The Transformers thread (shows, comics, toys, all things TF)

[Guardian17]

On this day in Transformers history – September 17, 1984 was the date of the premiere of the very first Transformers cartoon. More than Meets the Eye part 1 brought to TV screens the saga of the Transformers – journeying from planet Cybertron to Earth in search of precious energy sources to rejuvenate their world.

In the 30 years that have passed in between, we’ve had over 720 episodes of Transformers. Those 720 episodes have spanned no less than 17 different cartoon shows, each with its own unique premise, but all tracing themselves back to the great pedigree set down by the first ever episode of Transformers, which aired this day in 1984.

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers...-of-the-premiere-of-the-first-episode-181156/

Click to read more...

 

[Supermassive]

I won't bore people by explaining why G1 is the only great iteration of the franchise, haha.

We didn't start getting the show on our Saturday morning cartoons until 1986, I believe. My father would rent us the VHS tapes once a week, and even if they were ones we'd seen several times, it was still a thrill to watch them.

My 6 y.o. son is really into the G1 cartoons now, and is frustrated that his favorite guys (Grimlock, Jetfire) aren't in every episode. I explained that new characters were brought in to sell more toys. Now he wants the toys, but I can't find the 30th anniversary figures anywhere.

 

[BonMorrison]

Man, I still have the first episode on VHS. So many animation errors.

 

[Lost Horizons]

I've got all the dvd's of the original run including the movie. Weird to think it's been 30 years.

 

[Lost Horizons]

I won't bore people by explaining why G1 is the only great iteration of the franchise, haha.

We didn't start getting the show on our Saturday morning cartoons until 1986, I believe. My father would rent us the VHS tapes once a week, and even if they were ones we'd seen several times, it was still a thrill to watch them.

My 6 y.o. son is really into the G1 cartoons now, and is frustrated that his favorite guys (Grimlock, Jetfire) aren't in every episode. I explained that new characters were brought in to sell more toys. Now he wants the toys, but I can't find the 30th anniversary figures anywhere.

Try a site like


http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/default.aspx

Transformers:
http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/brand.aspx?brand=2

they might have what you're looking for.

 

[BonMorrison]

I've been sitting here listening to the Animated Movie soundtrack now for the past hour thanks to this thread.

Greatest 80s soundtrack ever - even better than Top Gun.

 

[Lost Horizons]

I've been sitting here listening to the Animated Movie soundtrack now for the past hour thanks to this thread.

Greatest 80s soundtrack ever - even better than Top Gun.

Have you heard or seen Stan Bush's latest?

 

[Baby Punisher]

Transformers and Voltron were the stables of my childhood.

 

[The Nemesis]

Kind of funny to think that all the original characterization and plot outline and all that backstory stuff for the franchise was penned by guys from Marvel Comics.

G1 was great and it obviously is the standard that every iteration is held up to. Obviously when you look back at the G1 cartoon now there were problems. It got super hokey at times, the general attitude from the time that they were just selling toys and disregarding any semblance of continuity or consistency (not helped by guys like David Wise who clearly recycled the same scripts in pitches for like a half-dozen different series). And then there were some just plain awwwwwwfulllll episodes (Carnage in C Minor, B.O.T, I'm looking at you). Not enough Dinobots either. Especially Snarl. The Man's always trying to keep the stegosaurus down.

Never mind that there's the whole issue of how much people enjoy the post-movie season (I liked it. But I never hated Rodimus as much as most). And no matter how bad it got, at least it didn't go totally off the rails like the Japanese continuation did. Japan aired the same G1 series that we got here, but they tossed aside the final 3-parter about the Headmasters and made their own series. Which promptly killed off a bunch more characters (Optimus again, Ultra Magnus, Galvatron, Soundwave and Blaster both bite it and are rebuilt as new characters. Rodimus doesn't die, but after going from Rodimus back to Hot Rod and back to Rodimus again, he just sort of bails on his responsibilities and is never seen again), turned Daniel into a gibbering crybaby who acted like he was half his actual age, turned Arcee and Carly into shrieking, flighty, incompetents who would've been at home in a 60s sitcom, etc. So then by the end of the series when there were basically no characters from the G1 we knew left, everything was abandoned again so they could make a series where the heroes weren't Transformers, but kids who basically piloted lifeless Transformer bodies or turned into Transformers themselves (because apparently Japan views the idea of sentient robots as little kids' fantasies, where Gundam-like setups piloting robots is more "grown up"), and then... I don't even want to think about it.

Still, I own the series on DVD (twice over, because I made the mistake of buying the awful Rhino releases when there was no thought of anything better being made) and I usually watch it at least once a year. I will also say that though G1 is usually the first thing that comes to mind in terms of characterization and all that, Beast Wars and the latest series (Transformers: Prime) are both very good too.

 

[Roboturner913]

We didn't get the channel it came on Saturday mornings when I was a kid (this was before cable TV was really a widespread thing). But they re-ran it every Tuesday at 2:30. Of course, I didn't get off from school until 3, but I had my mom record it on our new VCR.

Every Monday night before I went to bed I would go out and make sure the big antenna outside was pointed toward the TV station. Well I guess one late night my dad was trying to watch something on another channel because he went out and pointed it the other way and didn't fix it back. My Transformers the next day was all staticky. Boy I was pissed. My dad made it up to me by taking me to Wal-Mart, where I got the Hound figure. (I think that's right, Hound was the Army Jeep, right?)

Memories.

I watch the occasional episode on Netflix now and again. I'm way too old for it, but I keep hoping my kid will get into it. I guess he's still a little young yet.

 

[Say Hey Kid]

On this day in Transformers history – September 17, 1984 was the date of the premiere of the very first Transformers cartoon. ...

and no one cool has been born since.

 

[Supermassive]

Try a site like


http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/default.aspx

Transformers:
http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/brand.aspx?brand=2

they might have what you're looking for.

Yes! Thanks for that, the kid is getting a sweet Jetfire for Christmas now.

I've been sitting here listening to the Animated Movie soundtrack now for the past hour thanks to this thread.

Greatest 80s soundtrack ever - even better than Top Gun.

I've gotten into glam metal in the past few years, and Lion's intro is still air guitar thrash worthy. I was always hoping that Rock Band would become an open source project so I could play that song on the 360. The whole soundtrack is great: The instrumentals, Stan Bush's songs, even Weird Al. So much win.

I watch the occasional episode on Netflix now and again. I'm way too old for it, but I keep hoping my kid will get into it. I guess he's still a little young yet.

The trick is to let him discover it for himself. Leave it on the Netflix queue. Kids are drawn to robots like flies to honey, haha.

 

[mmbt]

Yes! Thanks for that, the kid is getting a sweet Jetfire for Christmas now.

Lucky kid.

IIRC, Jetfire was identical to the armored version of the Veritech fighter in Macross/Robotech. Which to me was the ultimate in transforming robot toys, along with the Mospeada cyclone. Never had either one though.

 

[The Nemesis]

Lucky kid.

IIRC, Jetfire was identical to the armored version of the Veritech fighter in Macross/Robotech. Which to me was the ultimate in transforming robot toys, along with the Mospeada cyclone. Never had either one though.

It was.

The original batch of Transformers toys were actually cribbed from like 6-10 different lines and companies of transforming robot toys in Japan, which the Hasbro people and the writers from Marvel then cobbled together into the single line and story and whatnot. In fact, because the Jetfire toy was from the Macross line owned by a different company in Japan (Bandai instead of the Japanese side of the TF partnership, Takara) that's a big reason that:

a) Jetfire's character model in the cartoon was so heavily modified from the toy's design (bigger, bulkier body, face instead of a mouthplate and visor, no antennae, even a modified vehicle mode), to the point that the character was renamed "Skyfire" allegedly in part because it was so radically different from the toy character. The rename was also because:

b) Because of the legal ramifications of Bandai owning the toy and still potentially promoting the Macross line, the show writers were discouraged from using the character. From the show's production bible:

"JETFIRE has been "transformed" into SKYFIRE — with a different model — due to legal reasons. Do not use this character unless necessary"

and for season 2, it was noted in the bible that Jetfire would be redesigned and re-introduced into the series although those changes never happened and he was basically only used for transportation and rarely in robot mode. It also notes that similar legal reasons are why the Reflector bots stopped appearing.

and...

c) There will likely never be a "proper" Jetfire classic toy remake/re-release like so many other prominent characters' toys. They can make their own homage redesign, but although you can buy near flawless replications of a lot of other G1 toys (I have a G1 Megatron and Soundwave on my shelf), Jetfire will never be among them (there are others that apparently won't be as well, though those are because they've lost/broken the original moulds)

 

[Acadmus]

On this day in Transformers history – September 17, 1984 was the date of the premiere of the very first Transformers cartoon. More than Meets the Eye part 1 brought to TV screens the saga of the Transformers – journeying from planet Cybertron to Earth in search of precious energy sources to rejuvenate their world.

In the 30 years that have passed in between, we’ve had over 720 episodes of Transformers. Those 720 episodes have spanned no less than 17 different cartoon shows, each with its own unique premise, but all tracing themselves back to the great pedigree set down by the first ever episode of Transformers, which aired this day in 1984.

http://www.tfw2005.com/transformers...-of-the-premiere-of-the-first-episode-181156/

I thought the Autobots were actually fleeing Cybertron, seeking a new planet to go to where they could escape the war with the Decepticons? Is my memory faulty here?

 

[Osprey]

Reading "G1" always confuses me a bit, since I know it simply as "The Transformers cartoon." Ah, so G2 was much later, in 1992-94. I was too old for toys and cartoons by then, so that explains why I have no familiarity with that (or anything since).

Not enough Dinobots either. Especially Snarl. The Man's always trying to keep the stegosaurus down.

This man speaks the truth. Snarl was the only full-size Transformers toy that I had (those things were insanely expensive for toys in the mid-80s) and it was disappointing to me that he factored so little in the cartoons. I still loved that toy, though, and it's been driving me crazy that I haven't seen it in over 20 years. Every few years, I go rooting through the childhood toy attic area at my parents' home, hoping to finally find it, but I never do. It's the house that I grew up in and I would've never thrown out or given Snarl away, so I can't imagine where else it could be, but it saddens me that I can't find it.

BTW, I was just looking up Snarl on Wikipedia (yeah, he has his own page) and, at the bottom, one of the versions was this "Snarl" from Transformers: Classics...

Never mind that it's not the Snarl that we know... what the heck kind of character design is that in the first place? That's messed up.

 

[Sharpshooter]

Greatest cartoon of my childhood!

Had so many of the action figures...the original metal ones(the best)

 

[The Nemesis]

Reading "G1" always confuses me a bit, since I know it simply as "The Transformers cartoon." Ah, so G2 was much later, in 1992-94. I was too old for toys and cartoons by then, so that explains why I have no familiarity with that (or anything since).



This man speaks the truth. Snarl was the only full-size Transformers toy that I had (those things were insanely expensive for toys in the mid-80s) and it was disappointing to me that he factored so little in the cartoons. I still loved that toy, though, and it's been driving me crazy that I haven't seen it in over 20 years. Every few years, I go rooting through the childhood toy attic area at my parents' home, hoping to finally find it, but I never do. It's the house that I grew up in and I would've never thrown out or given Snarl away, so I can't imagine where else it could be, but it saddens me that I can't find it.

BTW, I was just looking up Snarl on Wikipedia (yeah, he has his own page) and, at the bottom, one of the versions was this "Snarl" from Transformers: Classics...

Never mind that it's not the Snarl that we know... what the heck kind of character design is that in the first place? That's messed up.

The bottom one looks like a redeco/recast of a Beast Wars figure from the 90s. Yeah, they weren't exactly known for their creativity in terms of making worthwhile robot and alt modes by that point. A lot of G1 robots were kind of bonkers design-wise too, but they felt more like limitations of the toy-making technology of the time coupled with the fact that they were never meant to be fully humanoid, sentient robot characters in that mode (G1 Ironhide and Ratchet are among the worst offenders. They were clearly meant to turn from vans into rolling battle stations for human pilots, so their "robot" mode was a seat with a half-assed face decal sitting up behind the car windshield and looking nothing like the animation models that had the windshields as the chest), but by the 90s they were making damn fine regular transformers toys so there was no excuse for the laziness of the Beast Wars set in some cases.

You're also lucky you had a Snarl. Only Dinobot I had was the purple G2 release of Grimlock. I wanted Snarl so badly that one day I saw on in a clearance pile of G2 transformers at a K-Mart when I was shopping with my mom, but when I opened the package in the car, the spring to pop one of the robot mode hands out of the dinosaur leg was broken and we had to take it back. I never did find another one.

and if you want the best example of Snarl getting the shaft:

He's in the Transformers Movie for all of about 5 seconds.

Behold, the only times you see him in the movie:

That's it. he doesn't do anything, he doesn't say anything, and any other time you see the rest of the Dinobots, it's everyone but him.

The script apparently even repeatedly refers to "the 4 Dinobots" and Snarl usually gets left out presumably because he wasn't one of the original 3, and Swoop was considered more interesting because he was a Pteranadon.

He might even get the shaft now because they've re-shuffled the Dinobot names in newer toys/fiction because "Slag" (the triceratops) is a vulgar word in the UK. So sometimes the triceratops is now called Snarl, and they just ignore having a Stegosaurus.

and in a fun bit of trivia, apparently a bunch of original Snarl toys had to be recalled because they were painted using lead-based paint. Fun times

as an aside, there's a collector series of "Masterpiece" toys out now that are super-detailed.

want.


EDIT: I know how incredibly nerdy all that talk is, but even just outside of my Transformers fanboyism, the history of the brand, its creation, and the various parties involved fascinates me.

 

[RobBrown4PM]

I was more of a beast wars fan my self. Good animation for the time, absurdly complex characters, stupidly dark tone for a kids show after season 1,and it aired at the time Reboot, and AYAoTD did and all on the same channel and around the same air time

 

[Guardian17]

Never mind that there's the whole issue of how much people enjoy the post-movie season (I liked it. But I never hated Rodimus as much as most). And no matter how bad it got, at least it didn't go totally off the rails like the Japanese continuation did. Japan aired the same G1 series that we got here, but they tossed aside the final 3-parter about the Headmasters and made their own series. Which promptly killed off a bunch more characters (Optimus again, Ultra Magnus, Galvatron, Soundwave and Blaster both bite it and are rebuilt as new characters. Rodimus doesn't die, but after going from Rodimus back to Hot Rod and back to Rodimus again, he just sort of bails on his responsibilities and is never seen again), turned Daniel into a gibbering crybaby who acted like he was half his actual age, turned Arcee and Carly into shrieking, flighty, incompetents who would've been at home in a 60s sitcom, etc. So then by the end of the series when there were basically no characters from the G1 we knew left, everything was abandoned again so they could make a series where the heroes weren't Transformers, but kids who basically piloted lifeless Transformer bodies or turned into Transformers themselves (because apparently Japan views the idea of sentient robots as little kids' fantasies, where Gundam-like setups piloting robots is more "grown up"), and then... I don't even want to think about it.

I was a big fan of Snarl as well.

To this day I wish they had continued the story from Rebirth if not in a cartoon then in comic form.

The Japanese Headmasters was disappointing for the reason you described.

I did enjoy the episodes with the combiners.

 

[Power Man]

Good times


it was 10000000000000 better than Bay's ****



I had the Optimus Prime toy; unfortunately the trailer wouldnt pop out of nowhere like it did in the cartoon :-(

 

[The Nemesis]

I was a big fan of Snarl as well.

To this day I wish they had continued the story from Rebirth if not in a cartoon then in comic form.

The Japanese Headmasters was disappointing for the reason you described.

I did enjoy the episodes with the combiners.

There was some info out there on what was planned for "season 4" had it gotten a proper order. The Rebirth was originally supposed to be a 5-parter like Five Faces Of Darkness to start season 3. Also Starscream would've returned eventually having survived Unicron blasting him after getting his body back and would've maybe had some of the new Decepticons in tow as his own force. It would've been cool to see.

At least they did continue the very awesome Marvel comics series with Transformers: Regeneration 1. Reunited the whole writing/art team including Simon Furman, picked right up where they left off with Issue 80, and basically got 20 more issues out of the story before wrapping it up for good around Issue 100. I need to get the last TPB still to see how it ends. Probably with Optimus dying again

The only fun thing about Headmasters series was the horrible Singaporean dub into English that seems to have been made with the most amateurish voice cast possible and no real writers. They didn't know any names or terminology beyond the most basic stuff, so everything got messed around. Sixshot was changed from something like "Combat specialist" to "Ninja consultant" and when Soundwave was killed and rebuilt into his new form, Soundblaster, the show redubbed him as "New Soundwave" Literally everyone called him that whole thing, like it was one word "newsoundwave" It's so awful that it's hilarious.

I actually own all 3 Japanese shows on DVD as they were released here, but I only made it through Headmasters and about 5 episodes into Masterforce before I just couldn't stomach it anymore. I haven't touched Victory yet.

Good times


it was 10000000000000 better than Bay's ****



I had the Optimus Prime toy; unfortunately the trailer wouldnt pop out of nowhere like it did in the cartoon :-(

Fun fact: Optimus toys from the west had shorter smokestacks on the truck than ones from Japan. Toy laws here demanded it so that kids would be less likely to gouge their own eyes out while playing with it.

 

[Tek_Jansen]

Reading "G1" always confuses me a bit, since I know it simply as "The Transformers cartoon." Ah, so G2 was much later, in 1992-94. I was too old for toys and cartoons by then, so that explains why I have no familiarity with that (or anything since).



This man speaks the truth. Snarl was the only full-size Transformers toy that I had (those things were insanely expensive for toys in the mid-80s) and it was disappointing to me that he factored so little in the cartoons. I still loved that toy, though, and it's been driving me crazy that I haven't seen it in over 20 years. Every few years, I go rooting through the childhood toy attic area at my parents' home, hoping to finally find it, but I never do. It's the house that I grew up in and I would've never thrown out or given Snarl away, so I can't imagine where else it could be, but it saddens me that I can't find it.

My dad let me play with his Snarl that he must have picked up when it was new. I distinctly remember having the diplodocus (his name escapes me) and Slag as well. Like you I have no idea where Snarl ended up but my 4 year old has recently come across the Slag figure. I don't recall ever having the Grimlock or Swoop from the same set but the Grimlock posted in this thread is amazing! I think I'm going to have to track down all the dinobots for my boy.

I'm not familiar with any of the generations after g1 (vaguely beast wars but I never had much interest in it with my dad's VHS recordings of G1 always being at hand), is there anything worth watching?

 

[Tek_Jansen]

Oh man I just remembered the probably original Devestator release too. My sister had it but by the time it got passed to me a lot of the members were missing. I still get a glimpse of the occasional green construction vehicle when looking through my old toys

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Man, I still have the first episode on VHS. So many animation errors.

Let's see...what was it...grade 4 I think. 3pm to 5pm: M.A.S.K, Transformers, then I think GoBots and something else. Recorded them forever ago, only didn't keep the tapes. I think my favourite was the Stunticons/Aerobots (?? is that it? The autobot planes that combined to form the one big guy? I think Skyfire/Jetfire was the torso piece and the "edgy", rebellious one was called Slingshot) two-parter when they went to Cybertron to use the phlebotonium thingie to make sentient bad-guy car robots.

The toys, I had: Megatron, Optimus Prime (who I took apart in an early engineering exercise to learn it's easier to take things apart than put them back together), Starscream, Skywarp (didn't have Thundercracker but always meant to get it), Soundwave and a bunch of his cassettes, ...uh...something that transformed into a Porsche 911 that might have been a GoBot...I had a bunch of Japanese ones that my dad got me from something that didn't get Americanized, had the Japanese version of Inferno, a bunch of either Constructicons or the Armyvehicle-icons (don't remember the name)...

Oh, and I had the GI Joe base and the Cobra tank. Also the F-14 with the lever that made the swing wings move, which lived on top of my tv long after I stopped collecting toys.

*edit* I had Prowl too. The little kid in me was disappointed with how he was done in the first movie, and the adult in me can't believe I'm not too embarrassed to post that on the internet.

*editedit* I had the Japanese version of Snarl, too. The head was different. After a while, the little bolt that held the left swinging part of the tail came out, so I used to pretend he had suffered a grievous war wound that caused half his tail to fall off.