...would the animated show (G1) have gone on for much longer than it did and would it have a stronger legacy? Would Beat Wars even have existed? Would we still be watching the same continuity today through the eyes of different bots yet again? Your thoughts?

 

I think the show would have stagnated like Power Rnagers has. I remember when Power Rangers used to be awesome, but they went down hill after the movie.

We probably would have seen Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory in the US, but the series would have never been as cool as it is now.

You can almost consider it a blessing that the 86' movie almost killed TF's in the US.

 

Power rangers used to be sweet! Now I watch it and I'm like LOL WUT.

 

power rangers actually died down after in space.....but has one last hurrah with dino thunder and ninja storm

 

No way man, the PR Series went Downhill after the Space Arcs (In Space and Lost Galaxy) were over with. "Light Speed Rescue" and Beyond are just awful.

 

When it comes to PR I lost interest after In Space. The story arc was over so I was just no longer interested.

Throwbacks like crossover eps and Dino Thunder did perk my interest though.

 

Space was awesome and the only reason I watched Dino Thunder was because my childhood hero Tommy was back.

For some reason I was thinking space started after the ninja series. (Been a long day) The problem with PR was that the series remained successful to the point of stagnation. They also killed off Zordon which ruined my day when that happened.

As someone who grew up with the series, I only count everything up to the Space series because it just gets weird at that point.

When you look at Victory series TFs, they do have somewhat of a PR/Sentai quality to them so I can say it would be safe to assume that if TFs continued to be successful all through the 80's, the franchise wouldn't have as good of a following as it does now. I'm pretty sure the toys wouldn't be a cool either and we wouldn't have as many of the cool series that we have now.

 

Power Rangers is still goping strong over here, and its still diabolical!

If G1 had kept going strong, i think we would have a cheesey live action movie in the early 90`s, maybe a mix of primitive CG, men in suits and models. And about now we`d be getting a reboot/remake, that would be entirely different to Bays movies! (maybe)

 

Ya'll need to get to watching RPM. That is Power Rangers at some of its best.

 

Heh, it's now a Power Ranger thread  

If the cartoon movie did well at the box office, it may have encouraged future movies where a significant number of the cast get killed off to make room for new characters.

 

Power Rangers??? 

 

The 86 movie had a pretty limited release, to my knowledge, and was also put out at a time when even Disney wasn't making any big hits. Animation was in a bit of a black period there. Plus, there was the PG rating and the negative reviews - the movie had a lot against it.

That said, wasn't the post-movie cartoon still reasonably successful when it ended, or at least the brand overall? Just look at the toyline, it kicked for three more years in the US post-cartoon, and the comic lasted four more. That's always been my understanding anyway - that they nixed the show to rely on reruns and the comics to continue interest in the toys, and it all went downhill from there. I'm not sure the movie's failure in becoming hugest thing out there was the immediate cause of the later "end" of G1. Sure, if it was huge, it would've helped, but I think the bigger contributor overall (ignoring the increasingly gimmick-laden toys that mostly ignored established characters until the very end) was just the cartoon ending when it did. If it truly was a choice rather than a necessity due to failing ratings, maybe if they'd continued with another full season or so G1 would have kept it's legs a bit longer.

As is though, I think everything turned out ok in the end, all things considered.

I imagine I could be dead wrong about some of this, I'm basing it on generalized accounts I've read over the years.

 

^ Have to agree

 

The series had a complete season after the movie and then another 5 episode mini-series.

The movie didn't almost kill Transformers.

 

False.

The series had a complete season after the movie and then another 5 episode mini-series.

The movie didn't almost kill Transformers.

 

I think we've seen over the past 25 years that Transformers is cyclical in nature anyway and must continually reinvent itself. (That's pretty much true with all childrens' properties, by the way, including the aforementioned Power Rangers.)

The thing is, you've got a very limited window in which to keep and capture the attention of children, particularly with regard to boys' toys. If you capture the interest of a boy, say age 5, by the time three years are up, he's then 8, and he's likely moved on to other interests (like sports or bigger toys, etc.) And by the same token, you've got new five year old boys who were only 2 when the product first came out, so if you want to capture THEM you've got to make sure they're not totally lost in some convoluted backstory, thus requiring a re-invention, a re-telling of the origin, a re-casting of characters, and occasionally a complete from-the-ground-up restructuring of the entire universe.

Three is sort of Transformers' magic number, if you will. After that, it's usually time to reboot and hook the next wave of children.

Which is my roundabout way of answering the OP's question: No, the popularity of the TF86 movie wouldn't have changed things, no more so than the popularity of the cartoon series did. If there's anything robots that change will always be about is CHANGE.

 

Ktulu makes some good points. I think the OP has started from a slightly incorrect stance - that the success of the cartoon series/the movie was make-or-break for the franchise as a whole.

It wasn't. I know lots of fans came to TFs through the animation (and that it, for them, remains the main focus for TF), but the toys were released BEFORE the series/movie, and ran for a long time afterward. The comic did too, esp. in the UK where the comic was the primary media exposure for Transformers (we got very little of the TV series with any regularity).

In all honesty, I think if the movie HAD been a box office success, it still wouldn't have meant more TV series. It would have meant perhaps another movie. The series was expensive, and with 98 episodes to rely on for syndication, Hasbro just felt that - financially, at least - it didn't make sense to continue to pay for more episodes.

 

I'm pretty sure it did. I wasn't around in the 80's, but I've talked to enough people to know that Transformers lost a lot of their popularity shortly after Prime's death.

TRU used to have an entire toy aisle devoted to TFs, but the shelf space for TFs was reduced by almost 3/4 after the movie.

My mom used to work at a school and she remembered kids yelling out "I am Optimus Primer" and "Die Megatron" on the playground. After the movie, that became almost non-existent and He Man took their place.

The movie was the start of a slow and painful death for the 80's TF franchise and it never truly started to recover until Beast Wars.

 

It is interesting that He-man would take TFs place when it was She Ra that became prominent the year TFs took a nosedive. Then it was followed by the Ninja Turtles and Thundercats craze.

I remember being a kid and LOVING the post movie stuff. Perhaps it was because I saw the movie in the theaters that summer but I remember other kids saying that they didn't see the movie and were clueless about the new characters. Other kids watched TFs for the first time with Season 3 so they were clueless about the backstory but were able to enjoy it just the same.

I think if the movie was a success then the budget for the following seasons would have been raised but there was A LOT of stuff going against the cartoon that year. 1987 was a rough year economically and some animation studios went under which is why Sunbow and Filmation stopped producing new cartoons. All we got that year from them was leftover reruns and miniseries for seasons. That's why kids ate up Thundercats and TMNT as well since new animation studios took their place.

 

If the 1986 TF movie was a smash hit, I'm fairly certain we would have gotten to see all the rest of the G1 series that were made in Japan -- Headmasters, Masterforce, etc.

That would have been nice.