Not strange at all. JimS has said in some podcast interviews that they couldn't do Jetfire for legal reasons.

Not sure why Jetfire's box art should be an issue after the Harmony Gold lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice (the only real violation would have been that exact image, if that), but since we never really found out what that legal action really meant, I can only assume that it doesn't mean what some of us thought it did.

 

I figured it had to do with the Lawsuit that HG had with Hasbro. I remember last year HG had a suit against Hasbro regarding the Jetfire/Hound Transformers/GI Joe set. Funny the authors of the Legacy book caved it that was the case.

 

Pretty sure the authors of this book don't decide on legal actions on their own, there are people up in the chain, at IDW, but probably mainly at Hasbro, who decide when some things can't fly.

There's no caving in or any of that sorts. Know your post wasn't judgmental or anything, but just pointing that out...  

(Plus we don't even know if Hasbro and HG struck some sort of deal about the whole Jetfire issue)

 

Was Rotorstorm and Thunderclash in it? I flipped through my copy and didn't find them.

 

I'm hoping to get mine soon off amazon or at my LCS

 

Received mine yesterday. Beautiful book and very happy with my purchase.

I'm of course mostly interested in the nostalgia part of the book, so the Japanese series were literally glossed through; even the diaclone part interested me more.

But still a shame that Jetfire's missing and of course most of the European 1991/1992 figures. Those were also a big part of me remembering G1 toys, even though I never bought one at the time.

 

Yep just got this book in the mail today & it's totally worth the hype!

I'm so glad the book managed to be released before end of the year 2014, a fitting close for the TF franchise celebrating it's 30th anniversary.

 

Anyone else order this from Barnes & Noble and still waiting on it?

 

This book is great! Had mine on order since Xmas '13 and it has sooooo been worth the wait! My only gripe would be the omission of jetfire (just read something about this being down to legals?) and the omitted euro back of box featuring overlord and motorvators and back of box featuring the turbo masters & predators. No doubt covered already in the thread so apologies if that is the case but was this down to a lack of quality decent sized images?

 

Yep. Jim has said that it was either originals or nothing. Scans of the packaging wouldn't have been up to the standard of quality that he was going for.

 

My copy finally arrived today; it's beautiful. Such a shame about the lack of Euro G1 items, but whatchagonnado?

 

Such an awesome book,most of these character art and characters Ive never seen before so this has been quite the surprise. Suddenly Im getting the itch to buy some more G1 figures . Has there been a book released that has all the pics of the actual G1 toys??

 

Yep:

Transformers Generations
Cybertronian Recognition guides
Rik Alavares books, while not complete, can probably be picked up cheap.

 

Still enjoying dipping into this tome  

So much quality artwork, I wonder how long the artists took over each piece of work? Must be thousands of man-hours in there.

Things I noticed for the first time in this book:

Diaclone red Hoist has a human riding in his chest
There's a Japanese Micromaster called Gingham  
Who the heck is the guy sitting in the rear right seat of Actionmaster Optimus Prime's Armored Convoy vehicle?! He's there again in the same seat on the 1990 box art.

And one final observation; I noticed a few characters have had their artwork flipped over (such as Nightbeat, Windsweeper, Sureshot, Chase). It's a silly thing but somehow it makes their art look 'not right' in my brain, it doesn't jog the memory the way the other stuff does. Was this done to balance certain page layouts/fit available space? Or maybe that's how the original art was drawn and it was mirrored for the G1 box? Or is it just accidental error that went unnoticed during production of the book?

 

If you haven't picked this up yet, amazon has 30% off any one book. Use code HOLIDAY30. That should make it right under $23, free shipping with Prime.

 

I'm late to the party, but... I got the book last week at my local comic book store, and it is incredible! I paid cover price for it because I like to support my local store, so I was a little scared of how much I would like it once I got home and opened it. It is superb! On my first pass, I looked at every single page and probably spent about an hour with the book. Numerous times since then I have dipped in and out of the book and am blown away each time. As a graphic designer and illustrator, the Transformers packaging art has always been a source of inspiration for me, so having much of it in one place is a tremendous resource.

Add me to the list of people who would be interested in a Beast Wars book. In fact, after looking through the book I became quite curious as to whether there is a "Botch"-like resource out there that collects the Beast Wars package art..? I know TFWiki has it for most characters, but the images are small. Does anyone know if there is anything better?

 

Finally got my copy and there's not much I can add that other people haven't already said...BUY THIS BOOK.

It's just lovely. So many details in the drawings I never noticed before.

My one complaint is that my favorite piece, the 1988 packaging back collage, (with Powermaster Prime and the Pretenders,) looks quite blurry and washed out. Obviously this was a case where they did the best they could do, but it was just bad luck that my FAVORITE piece was the only one not presented "perfectly."

But that's a minor quibble...the rest of the book is just amazing. Bravo to everyone involved with its production!

 

My wife gave me this for Christmas - FINALLY! I'd been waiting for what feels like years for this thing! Could not be happier. Dream come true.

Btw, which pieces were omitted from '84-88 besides Jetfire?

 

Was also a (late) Christmas-gift for me, love this book. I was positively surprised that even the Japanese stuff is in there. Soon Star Saber, soon.

They obviously had to draw the line somewhere, but man I would like to see some BW packaging art in book-form. They had some wicked looking artwork on these boxes as well.

 

I'm thrilled with what we got, that this book actually exists, but I would've killed for each piece of art credited to its respective artist.