My take on IDW

While I want to harp on IDW for the complete absence of editors and proofreading, let's be honest and admit that quality control has been slipping all over for years. How many Universe 2 figures did Hasbro ruin with the sticky paint? The Animated toys in general were a nightmare, with cheap plastic and awful paint. Reading Shout Factory's forum made the G1 DVDs that I had preordered a serious disappointment thanks to all the obvious problems that they let slip though after all of the hype over how they were going to fix Rhino's screwups.

The fact is, a relative minority of fans genuinely care about any part of the franchise. Most of the people that think they do aren't even close. They might as well be the fair-weather fans that the movie's popularity sweeps in and then back out. I mean this in the most pointed way possible: if there were enough of them, at least one of these boards would gets its act together and finish a creative fan project instead of striving to be the ultimate social networking site, biggest compilation of lists, or most favored press release outlet.

IDW is doing a better job than DW. And thats saying alot!

No, not really.

Why? tell me how it isn't?

I saying no to the 'That's saying a lot!'.

well the artwork was the most detailed artwork I ever seen in comics also the story was good, dark and more mature like the one IDW is now.

FYI: It turns out Transformers toys are manufactured by factories handled by Takara, and obviously, problems weren't either company deliberately "being cheap" or anything. It's a factory problem, as we saw during the lead paint scare.

Oh, Henkei Prowls got sticky paint as well.

Hey, hey, plenty of fans care about the franchise. Look at the work being done on tfwiki.net, and I'm damn pretty sure TFW2005 doesn't BotCon win awards simply by being popular.

I want to second FFN's post, in a more pointed manner; this part of your post is drivel to the point of being genuinely rude. Even if it's not directed at any one site in particular, it's incredibly unfair. People do this stuff in their spare time, if it's not up to your unrealistically high standards, you should probably think about trying something of your own and see how well that fares.

To say those doing so "don't care" is horse poop of the highest order and basically condenses down in to "lol ur not the 1 tru fan".

And what have you done, other than complain that none of the fans on the boards have completed a fan project?

The AllSpark would like to talk to you about some of the work they did years ago. And I'm pretty sure the staff here, who has worked countless FREE VOLUNTEER hours to make this the #1 Resource Site (for 2 years running, so says BotCon) would like to have a word with you. And all the people that spend time going through the news (upwards of 50 submissions a day, having to realize what is news and what isn't, creating threads and finding threads, getting pictures, checking the information, etc.) would like to have a word with you.

For you to sit there and say that no "fan community" has accomlpished anything is pretty cheap. I do remember Hasbro having Transfandom, before the TFW2005/Transfandom split, host a poll about 20th Anniversary Prime and what the fans wanted to see included in it, which was then presented to Takara. I should know, I am the one who was the freakin' liason between Aaron Archer and Transfandom to set up that poll in the first place.

But thanks. Your kind words are most appreciated.

I'm at target and movie toys are lame

Nice try, but this wasn't a pro-Takara rant. It was about the lack of quality control everywhere. The "editors" at the plant who didn't catch the paint issue for months are as guilty of not doing their jobs as the editors that don't spellcheck or line up the dialog bubbles. I don't leap to the defense of IDW as fast as you do Hasbro, but singling them out is still ridiculous.

Again, you're really getting off track here. Everyone's screaming about the lack of creative talent at IDW. I happen to agree to some extent, but I don't see anybody doing any better. Unless Kris Carter has a new project? I'd love to extrapolate on what I think, good as much as bad, of the wiki and Botcon awards some other time.

Edit: I see while I was composing a response I've gotten some angry responses. The sad part is that I was actually going to commend 2005 specifically for putting together something other than another news aggregator with your various side projects. I still don't think you support your creative community, but I appreciate your use of a 6 year old Allspark project to put me in my place.

Regardless, none of this diminishes my point that the fans aren't putting their money where their mouthes are. Instead of complaining about AHM, they could be showing IDW how to do a comic. Instead of complaining about Animated, they could try to go through tedious process of making even a short cartoon. Having done both has tempered my criticism of the industry, but reduced my patience for everyone else who thinks they know better.