This topic came up in another thread taking it off topic. I think this needs it's own thread.
The movie did not kill G1. The movie was one of the great moments in G1. Killing prime or the other characters did not kill G1. Here is what I think killed G1
1. Poor toys The movie toys were the start of the lower quality toys and it only got worse.
2. Gimmicks remember when the gimmick was the Toy Transformed?
We got everything masters and pretenders and so on
4. The end of the TV show. For me this was a big blow.
5. Nintendo. Only so much money to go around at Christmas and birthdays as kids we got older Nintendo got more important and Transformers became kids stuff.
6. We got older. For some it was Nintendo for others it was highschool and girls. Those who were kids in 84 were becoming teens in 87 and 88.

 

I agree with some of the points you make but you can't ignore the fact that the movie did some damage to the toy line. They killed off most of the characters everyone had come to love. I remember hearing from my friends (I never saw the movie at the theater) about them killing Starscream. At first I was like fuck yeah!! Awesome!! Then I began to think about what that actually meant. No more Starscream... He was one of the characters I loved to hate.

The movie brought too much change. Change is good. But too much of it can be lethal.

 

It's all contributing factors, no one of which could be blamed solely.

Two of the stronger factors in my opinion were the end of the cartoon (no TV advertising) and the gimmicks that took Transformers much further away from their roots than before, such as Pretenders and Action Masters.

Some of that's as much a symptom of the problem as the cause though - when sales decline, more divergent ideas and desperate measures are taken. Sometimes the gamble doesn't work so well, like Action Masters, and sometimes it does, like Beast Wars.

 

While the Movie itself didn't kill G1, I'm sure a lot of fans will remember it as the beginning of the end of G1. Killing off Optimus Prime wasn't the best idea Has/Tak ever had. They replaced a father figure with someone unsure of himself. Megatron, who was a serious threat, got replaced by his alter-ego Galvatron who was stronger and less stable mentally. Galvatron was almost clownish in some Season 3 episodes. Speaking of Season 3, it really didn't have most of the elements that made us fans in the first two seasons. Hasbro realized the mistake as sales began to take a nose dive. (It took Takara Longer) However, in either case, TROOP and later Star Convoy returned but it was really too late to do any good. Most of the fan base had already moved on.

It was kind of funny how the US & Japan split off in G1. Optimus Prime lead Cybertron into another Golden age, while Rodimus watched his Cybetron explode, and then took a powder with Kup and Blurr. (At least he took Blurr with him).

I'm still glad there was never a cartoon series about Action Masters.

 

While the later toys did lack the realistic alt modes of the 84-85 waves, they had more play value, IMO what killed G1 was that, without the toon to help boost their profile to the younger kids (as the origional kids drifted away) other, mostly newer, brands that did still have TV shows started to do better. That, and the general contraction of the Toy market, eventually killed G1

While "Gimmicks" are generally frowned uppon by collectors who remember the early days of G1, they didn't really hurt sales at all, as by the later years of g1 the target market had ceased to be the same kids who were G1 fans, and to whom Transformers had always been on the toy shelves, and hence needed a little something extra to make them seem more attractive, and to a kid the more a toy can do the better it is.

Indeed even as an adult, I still argue that many Cybertron toys are better than the Classics because the likes of Crosswise and the Cybertron Defence team can do everything that the Classics can do AND have cool extra "pop-out" weapons.

In a way its a shame, many of the Action Master only characters had great bio's Jackpot, Kick-Off, Treadshot, Skyfall and Rollout in particular had amoung the best and most interesting TF's character summaries ever

 

I realize I'm just one fan but I pretty much quit on the Transformers after the movie. I was pretty much ticked off that they killed off damn near the entire original cast. I remember being upset about it while leaving the theater and my 15 year old brother who went with me saying "boy they just killed the series with that" on the ride home. I did watch some of season 3 and I don't think I really planned on not watching anymore, I just found myself not interested in the new characters. A little of that may have been because of the fact that I was a growing out of TF at the time as well but I do remember finding the new characters extremely dull and lacking of any variety.

 

My best friend always said, he stopped liking TFs when they stopped having realistic alt modes.

 

As I followed the Uk comics rather than the cartoon the movie didn't put me off, it gave a breath of fresh air to the line - it was the decreasing quality of the toys, the overreliance on gimmicks and finally the comic barely printing any new colour material than did it for me.

 

The toy market was still strong for several years after G1 started to go steadily downhill. Everyone I knew at school at the time played Nintendo games and collected toys. Competing brands like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Micro Machines did quite well, while Transformers was floundering. Trends change, old audiences grow up, fresh ideas capture more attention. Didn't help any that they canceled the show.

 

The big killer for me is when the cartoon stopped...I didn't get to see the movie as a kid so i was unaware of the TF annihilation...shortly after new character toys hit the stores that I didn't recognize then the whole Beast Wars thing...(which I still do not care for)...

So for that period i pretty much moved from TF to video games...now many years later it's back to Cybertron...

 

Same here. While the the movie/season 3 characters didn't make me love them like the original cast did, I still watched until the very end. After that, it was hard for me to believe it was over. Then Beast Wars toys came along....and I was totally not buying that. I never liked the idea of beast TFs. Still don't, to a point.

 

the movie didnt kill transformers.

the movie toys killed transformers.

 

IMO all the lameness after the movie killed TF's - the crappy toys ie. pretenders and other money-milking products like headmasters & targetmasters of toys that were already released (Rodimus, Blurr etc..)

Then came the super-lame Machine Wars and G2 toys - some toys were alright, but most sucked.

For me, it was the Beast Wars franchise that resurrected TFs. In the beginning I was apprehensive of TFs being animals - but in all honesty, the whole Beast Wars series blew away any generation of Transformers ever to air on TV. Classic & nostalgic factor aside, G1 was nothing but a long toy commercial - however Beast Wars actually had a deep & mature storyline which appealed to not only kids, but adults as well. I'll always be a "gee-whunner", but in all honesty, Beast Wars was and will always be the better series.

 

No, unless you lived in Europe or Japan, then came Action Masters and then a period of nothing. Transformers was already dead in the U.S. before G2 happened, hence the name "Generation 2". Generation 2 was the first attempt to resurrect TransFormers. Beast Wars was the next attempt, and the one that actually worked. Machine Wars came along as a Kay-Bee exclusive sub-line after Beast Wars started, though it reused a lot of European exclusive G1 molds and some unused G2 molds.

 

I guess it was so dead and crappy that it made me forget the timeline of events  

 

Wouldn't be too hard by that point, I guess. I sorta liked G2, but it was a pretty half-assed attempt at a comeback.

 

1. Poor toys The movie toys were the start of the lower quality toys and it only got worse. I for one liked the toys and thought that they were more durable than the original ones. Plus with the addition of the headmasters and target master there were a lot to choose from

2. Gimmicks remember when the gimmick was the Toy Transformed?
We got everything masters and pretenders and so on The gimmicks were likely needed to re-invent the line, there was a lot of competition and they had to do something.

4. The end of the TV show. For me this was a big blow. Yes. The Re-birth was (at the time) a pivotal point in my life. The last Gen1 figure I bought was a power master, but with nothing to support it I moved on

5. Nintendo. Only so much money to go around at Christmas and birthdays as kids we got older Nintendo got more important and Transformers became kids stuff. Very true

6. We got older. For some it was Nintendo for others it was highschool and girls. Those who were kids in 84 were becoming teens in 87 and 88. I think it is pretty typical of most things. You grow out of it until you realize that it is fine to collect toys and have a normal life.

 

I agree with most of your points, but I'm not so sure that the gimmiky stuff like Headmasters and Pretenders are a huge contributing factor...Armada is what got the Transformers franchise to really boom in the last five years or so and why? Kids (who are the target audience whether we like it or not) love the gimicky Minicons.

You could definitely argue by saying it's a different generation, brought up on Pokemon now, and that the gimmicks strayed too far from the norm from what was already established...I'm just saying kids are kids and they always want something new and different.

 

I agree with that. Even though the Re-birth series was weak I loved it for all the new stuff that came out.

 

That's a pretty good summary right there.