humans NOT playing a more critical role. sure prime has mech and agent fowler and jack have proved themselves, but miko and raph. no. at least kicker had a purpose in macguffin hunting. but thats not much, hold on! he did attack megatron/galvatron.... the humans need to do more. lets see some human alliance masters!

also a fembot who isnt a motorcycle or spider.

and lastly a leader who isnt optimus prime OR rodimus prime.

 

Something that's not really a trend, but bugs me anyways:
Why doesn't Hasbro ever release anything with a color they've used before? Excepting Allspark Blue, I've never seen an exact color match in my life in the plastic or paint of two figures. I don't know why it bugs me that Prime's silver is just that little bit different from Megatron's, but it does.

 

I'm honestly tired of Starscream at this point; I'd love to see a series where Starscream is a posthumous character, a cautionary tale to future traitors: Someone like Thrust or whoever could say "You want to know why I won't take a shot at Megatron? I'll tell you. It's becuse I'll end up like that poor scrapheap Starscream. He died slow, and he died hard."

I've only seen the caste system for one show and a little in the comic series, and already I'm sick of it. The caste system should be something that Megatron is trying to impose on Cybertron. The very idea of Megatron, Mr. "Peace Through Tyranny" as a freedom fighter is a bigger violation of the character than anything the whining fans (distinct from decent, upstanding fans who have reasonable objections) say about the Bayverse Transformers.

Another thing I'm tired of is having Optimus be appointed leadership by divine right, via the Matrix. Whatever happened to him earning his rank? And no, I don't accept "Oh, TFP Orion Pax made a pretty speech, so he deserves to be appointed ruler of all Cybertron without any say by the people of Cybertron." I'd love to see Cybertron as a representative republic, but apparently, that's passe.

Speaking of TFPrime, I've gotten really tired of the relics; if they actually were WMDs, as Orion Pax feared, then things would be interesting, since the Autobots do not want Megatron and his band of happy psychos getting ahold of them. The Spark Extractor was a good one, but I also would have liked to see more Cybonic Plague samples (or a formula to make an advanced version of it), or perhaps Gideon's Glue under a different name, or perhaps the keys to a version of Scorponok who is like WFC Trypticon.

I've also gotten tired of the constant 86 movie references; seriously, that movie should be buried and forgotten.

Like Backpack said, Arcee as the only female Autobot has gotten annoying; I'd like to see more women on both sides., or heck, even genuine TF kids.

I've also gotten tired of kids being the ones to befriend the Autobots. As Backpack, once again, put it, why not adults? Fowler, Lennox, and Epps were great. Marissa Faireborn would be great again. About the only acceptable kids we've gotten over the years are Jack Darby and Sam Witwicky, and even Sam has his moments.

 

It took me a while to come up with some, but I've finally found some things I hate and don't want to continue. (Some of them are echoes of others)

Boring guns- theres more flavor to warfare than the pew-pew blaster. Remember when there were gatlings, rocket launchers, rust guns, and heat rays? This is one of my prime complaints. *not so subtle hint*

Smurfettes- have more than one female or don't have any at all. At this rate, we only ever have 'girl heroine' and 'femme fatale' as personalities. It's gotten bland.

Needlessly quoting G1- I actually don't mind a well placed vocal homage; but they are almost never well placed. Optimus needs to say a heroic oneliner, oh I know; "one shall stand, one shall fall" always works. Where's the originality?

Optimus or anyone for that matter being a 'chosen one'. Do you know whats better? a 'proven one'.

Dead cybertron- The concept could be cool when actually explored, but it isn't. It's just the backdrop and backstory. If that's the case, why not have a living Cybertron of which to pull new characters from?

Decepticons who never do anything- oh sure they do things. but they never succed at it. They can't even successfully shoot most of the time. Why are they feared again?

And I echo Honorbound about Megatron either needing a different backstory or a different personality because they don't match at all. Only problem is I've got nothing on what to actually do.

 

I pretty much agree with everything on this list.

The boring guns part is such a tragedy, especially since this is the franchise that spawned the Chainguns of Doom, Sentinel's rust gun, Megatron's deathlock pincer, or even Armada's Requiem Blaster.

Your idea of Optimus being a "proven one" as opposed to a chosen one can't be repeated often enough. The Matrix of Leadership has been poisoning the character and the franchise since 1986. Only three Optimuses have escaped it: Optimus Primal, Animated Optimus Prime, and Bayverse Optimus Prime.

What's funny about the dead Cybertron is that the movieverse explored it: each of its plots revolved around bringing back Cybertron and whether it was worth sacrificing an entire race of innocents. TFP could have had Optimus feel a crushing sense of guilt and failure about the loss of Cybertron, yet it does nothing. I remain firmly convinced that Cybertron's loss is partly the cause of Bayverse Optimus's fury.

You raise a good point about the Decepticons being utter failures, something that even Armada avoided; look at what happened to Hotshot and the Starsaber. One contributor to that problem is that no one can kill each other for plot reasons - there were several times that Autobot or Decepticon casualties should have occurred, yet nothing happened.

One idea I had for Megatron's backstory was that instead of being the freedom fighter against the oligarchy's caste system, he was instead the director of their secret police, and that after the Great War overthrew the oligarchy, he and some of his Decepticon followers fled to Earth to rebuild, with Optimus and a team of Autobots hunting them down.

 

We have a winner.

And I'd add Unicron in general. I'm tired of him. Really tired.


And I agree a billion percent with Rewind Eject about Smurfettes and Proven Ones over "chosen ones". Those were great points.

 

Peter Cullen-a-mis-prime.

The driest Autobot in all the land...

 

I'm sure these have all been mentioned (some probably more than once)....

-Optimus being the leader
-Megatron being the leader
-"One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall" is a line that needs to die a horrible, agonizing death and never resurrect, as far as I'm concerned. UGH.
-Bumblebee being unable to speak
-The dynasty of Primes/Matrix birthright leadership thing

This. So. Very. Much.

 

Oo, good one!

 

Oh man, Agreed! As much of a G1 fan as I am, if they're going to create a new TF fiction, I think it's time to dispense with the excessive fanwanks. One or two a season, ala beast Wars, works just fine. Unless the fiction is meant as a cannonical bridge to G1.

 

Unless you've just moved to NYC, like me. Then it just seems like the prices keep going up for tinier and tinier toys. $16 for the teeny Prime RID deluxes?! Even at a Target deep in the bowels of Brooklyn? Gah!!

 

I, for one, would LOVE to see a "Shattered Glass" animated series that doesn't turn out to be a dream sequence. Just think about how much attention Hasbro would get with an "Evil Autobots" and "Heroic Decepticons" gig. One episode during a series in which they go to a parellel universe isn't what I want to see. I want an entire dedicated series.

 

Overtly worded Optimus and Megatron bantor.

"IT STANDS TO REASON THAT THE BLAH Is BLAH BLAH BLAH..."

It's the new pain count.

 

I like Skywarp.


Does the paintjob make him look fat?

 

This isn't really me complaining, but I would like to follow Hot Rod/Rodimus. I'm a fan of rookies and following their growth. When a character begins with tons and tons of experience, it's just not as interesting past their introduction. Great Leader Optimus, Former Wrecker Bulkhead, Seasoned Veteran Ratchet, Long Time Warrior Arcee, meh. Its a big reason why I liked Animated.
(And I know no one will agree, but hey, I like what I like  )

 

Big guys who are gentle and dumb.

Megatron as a Cybertronian jet (aka a blob of plastic with wings!)

Generic Decepticon redshirts who die when some Autobot punches them.

Starscream as a coward.

Blue bike Arcee.

 

A few more:

Transformers: Transformersreference: Transformers: Robots In Disguise. Transformers: Energon. Transformers: Cybertron. Transformers: Prime. Transformers: Transformations. Transformers: One Shall Stand One Shall Fall.

Optimus Prime as Space Jesus or RoboSuperman: The moment Prime stopped being a compelling character for me was when it was revealed in the '86 movie that he was specially designed to house the Arc of the Covenant for Robots in his chest. Then later fictions would retconn this to mean that Prime could also never stay dead. They've done to Prime what DC has done to Superman: made him boring as indestructible foreverdirt.

"He Just Likes being Evil" as a note in a character's bio: Hasbro, kids can handle a little moral ambiguity. Bad people generally think that they're the heroes of their own story.

"He always does what's right and pure" as a note in a character's bio: Seriously. Children aren't stupid Hasbro. They read Maurice Sendak and root for Snape.

Stickers: This one's preemptive. We're seeing it with Legos. We're seeing it with Takara. We're seeing it with Kre-o. Hasbro: DON'T.

Mary-Sues: This is a corollary to the no more bad-asses one. I don't mind a brawler, but I DO mind a retconned perfect awesome Poochy. Like Drift. And Sunstorm.

Essential white boy. Flawed minorities/girls. At the risk of flame-bating, I'm tired of the generic white male kid being the clear audience surrogate, and the "other" kids being along for the ride; tasked with providing friction and flaws. Either they ALL get to be flawed, multidimensional people, or they ALL get to be perfect little surrogates. Animated is the only fiction to really get this right (though I don't really watch Prime, and am basing this entirely on what the folks on WTF FTW have criticized Prime for).

Seriously, I'm not trying to pick a fight with that last one. Please don't hate me for it. Hate me for the other things I listed. And for my new hat, which I bought from Princess Beatrice.

 

I don't think the last one counts because the Blue bike Arcee's only in Prime right now and not in the other TF brands at least not yet.

Now if she appeared in the 2007 film with that color scheme and used it since then that counts.

 

Hear that hasbro, it's time to put that garbage to bed.

 

Anyway I guess I now want to see a Armada esuqe Starscream right now because Prime Starscream pretty much nailed the Backstabbing character down to a tea.

Generations should really make an effort to bring in TF characters that aren't from G1 and from other shows because some of them deserve updated toys in their own right.

Give Ratchet and Bumblebee a break and put in Red Alert and Hot Shot for a while.

Hasbro should stop going overboard with the G1 quotes and maybe start putting in new quotes from other shows or at least lesser known G1 quotes.