What was the real reason TF generation 1 ended with season 4 having only 3 episodes? Did the show/franchise loses interest from fans, ratings started to dive, No financial budget could be brought up or no interesting story ideas?

What do you think is the real reason that Generation 1 show lasted only 3 and a half seasons?

 

The biggest mistake ever, was killing everybody from season 1 in the movie...shattered every kids dream....then they went with G2 colors threw some people off....welk that what hapoen to me atleast...

 

Like any children's franchise, after a few years it lost it's steam and people moved onto other things, like Ninja Turtles and Batman.

 

Budget was severely cut, both on the TF and GI Joe cartoons, resulting in much poorer animation quality in seasons 3 & 4 of TF, and the DIC season of Joe. As they began looking worse, they started shedding viewers like dandruff. Hasbro couldn't afford to keep the shows running.

Add to that the fact that both toy lines were struggling under increasingly goofy and uncool gimmicks. Like Pretenders and ActionMasters, the Transformer toys that don't Transform. GI Joe got a bunch of ridiculous looking florescent Village People ninjas, Eco Warriors, Star Brigade, etc. It's no wonder kids lost interest.

 

Let's put it in a real simple light here, gross mismanagement of the properties. The same reason a lot of franchises that had promise and potential through the years have been destroyed, from the inside out.

I would say more, but since this thread is eventually just going to boil down to another storm of endless G1 hate as they all do, it would be a waste of time.

 

This is an exaggeration - "gross mismanagement"? Hardly.

The property wasn't mismanaged. The reality is, MOST such toy-related properties have a "shelf-life". Especially in the 1980s, the idea that such series could become "franchises" and even "evergreen" properties (e.g. toys will sell reasonably well even without a media push to support them) was not even considered. It had just never happened. Now it's pretty common (and one of the reasons we get so few new and interesting toy ideas, because the companies can just rely on the ol' favourites... but I digress).

As such, three years was seen as a pretty healthy toyline run.

To the original question, though, the series ended because Hasbro didn't NEED to fund any more episodes. I know the cartoon has its fans, but it was there to market the toys. With a total of 98 episodes (ripe for continued daily syndication), Hasbro simply didn't need to invest in more. They had that portfolio of episodes, and the chance to promote new toys (at a time when the toy sales were diving anyway) didn't really justify the additional finance.

It was a perfectly reasonable decision. Even by its most generous fans, the cartoon could hardly be described as an artistic or creative endeavour; there was no burning need to continue the story. So they didn't. It served its purpose.

 

Mismanagement, but a lof of people (myself included) outrew it, even though no one wants to admit it, and also yeah ,Ninja Turtles came along and that was what kids were into. It was a combination of several factors

 

I'd like to add that in the 80s' the comics also served as a big medium by which to showcase new characters/toys. It did seem clunky, given how in one issue you'd get introduced to a whole bunch of new characters in a roll call, but it worked. If you look around, Transformers even had commercials showing new toys and stating you could read about them in comics. So yeah, even with the TV show gone, they had their alternatives.
I imagined the comics worked better then because at least Hasbro kept the series as a single continuity, so you could go years with classic characters and new characters co-existing. It'd be very very difficult to do something like that now given series last 2-3 years meaning you could only put out 24-36 issues, which is a very short period to tell a story for a new continuity.

 

Optimus Died.

/thread

 

The audience grew up and moved on, with nothing 'fresh' to bring in new fans. This is why the Unicron trilogy effectively relaunched the line every 1-2 years. You see it elsewhere too - Power Rangers launching a new series nearly every year, Ben 10 going through regular revamps.

When you think about it, most toy/cartoon lines (even the crazily popular ones) enjoy a year or two at the top before something comes along to topple them.

 

I disagree on "no burning need". I still have a burning need inside me, that never vanished, that G1 cartoon continues. When season 3 started, it began to get really interesting.

 

I've always wondered about this. I wasn't born back when G1 came out, but I always thought it was weird that the DVD's only had three and a half seasons.

 

The demise of the G1 cartoon will always be lamented by quite a few people, but at least we didn't have to put up with the Headmasters cartoon. That would've killed my interest in Transformers quicker than any girl could have.

 

I put it down to Hasbro cost-savings turning into a massive false economy. With the diaclone / microman line used up,Hasbro had to make new molds and these molds were cheaper, basic and used more plastic, less metal to save money. This meant phasing out the old characters to better showcase the new molds which I imagine had a higher profit margin.
Problem is, things move on, and while I imagine a certain amount of the lack of interest was just part of the normal cycle,I don't think their cost-cutting helped. I remember as a 9 year old feeling the newer toys felt cheap.

 

I lost interest after the movie, killing off characters that you grew up with and the animation was not up to par like the toys. (no die-cast, simpler transformations)

 

Short answer? It ran its course. The franchise got to a point where it had simply become stagnant, and where attempts at reinvention were not as well received as in previous years. The post-86 movie stuff wasn't as popular as the stuff preceeding it, and the headmasters/targetmasters didn't breath the new life into things it was hoped they would.

So the show ended, and the brand continued on in other forms for a while, until it was reintroduced as G2 a few years later, and after that, Beast Wars.

 

like somebody said before killing off all the g1 characters didn't help.

 

Becasue the G1 characters were so badass, they did'nt f around so much like they do now, and killed each other off pretty quickly.

 

... was it really that short?

Season 2 was loooooooooooooooooooooooooooongggggggggggg.

The G1 cartoon was about a hundred episodes. By comparison, Thundercats and He-Man were both 130 episodes, neither of which had more than 4 seasons. Scooby Doo, Where are You? was two seasons and 25 episodes!

Seasons weren't cut-and-dry 26 episodes max like they are now. Other than its (very) abrupt ending, G1 didn't seem short to me. In fact, if anything it seemed stretched out, which pretty much caused The Rebirth.

 

So you're saying that the G2 colors of toys from 1993 put you off a cartoon that ended in 1987?

And not everybody died. Stop with the hyperbole. It was a toy franchise, it was a show dictated by toys on the shelves and new toys had to be advertised on the cartoon. If it was a TV show first and a toyline second, you can bet things would be a lot different.

The Marvel comic also killed off a lot of characters yet it lasted far longer than the cartoon. Would you care to explain to me why that was you think?

Generation One is the time period from 1984 - 1991.

Did they really kill off ALL the G1 characters?

They killed a small amount off in the movie for shock value and to make room for new characters.

You may have heard that he came back later on. Probably not though. You seem more like one of those fair weather fans.

The cartoon had already finished in the U.S. long before Pretenders and Action Masters were on the shelves. Try again kid.

And nobody should need reminding that Action Masters were the ones that don't transform.