I ask this question as someone that recently got back into Transformers about a year ago when two of my friends got me to watch TFP(which I really enjoyed, but I know others aren't a fan of it). I also began getting into the comics a little bit but coincidentally they were doing their Unicron story to end the continuity as I began getting into them. What got me into the franchise in the first place was when I watched the TF1 movie when I was 7, but the Bumblebee movie being rumored as a reboot also got me excited to become a fan again.

It seems like they've decided to back to G1 for the most part with everything. You can see it with the toyline, the comics, the cyberverse show, and the Bumblebee movie being a reboot(according to the GameSpot interview which is the most recent one. The Japan interviews were apparently before that one.)

I'm not trying to be a Bayverse or aligned continuity hater so please don't think that, but it seems that after aligned failed, and then with TLK flopping badly that they decided to go back to their roots with G1.

I'm not expecting anyone on here to have an official answer, but why do you guys think they decided to almost "reboot" the franchise back to G1?

If I'm wrong with my thinking here, then please don't completely hate on this haha.

 

Marketability, lack of job security for creatives, budgets shrinking due to rising plastic costs, and John Warden are probably some of the more likely suspects for Transformers' current ... stability, shall we say.

 

I feel like there's been a gradual shift in that direction for a while.

RID resembled G1 more than the Beast Era.
The Unicron Trilogy resembled G1 more than RID.
The movieverse and Animated resembled G1 more than the Unicron Trilogy.
Prime resembled G1 more than Animated and the movieverse (Aligned was actually supposed to be a "modernized G1").
RID2015 resembled G1 more than Prime.
Cyberverse (their second attempt at a "modern G1") resembles G1 more than RID.

I don't fully agree with the common idea that Transformers media "used to be unique, but is now just rehashing G1". They experimented a bit in the '90s and early 2000s with some fairly out-there stuff like Beast Wars and Beast Machines. That was when the brand was still new and trying to find itself. Since then, we haven't really seen anything that out-there or experimental, most of it stems fairly strongly from G1, and we've been seeing a shift towards even stronger G1 influence for years.

I'm guessing the reason for G1's heavier-than-usual presence recently is because it's profitable. Every 30 years, there's a nostalgia cycle, and Transformers is currently in it's third decade. That's probably why we're seeing G1 influence a bit more heavily. I'd guess it will ease up at some point in the future, but not to the point where we get something as different as Beast Wars. I think the days of truly experimental and out-there TF media is done, at least in mainstream entertainment like movies and cartoons.

 

To me it looks like another attempt by Hasbro to unify the brand; the aligned continuity was intended to do just that but it completely fell on its face before it even began. Now they're attempting to do the same, but falling back on the G1 aesthetic because that is what the most recognizable iteration of the brand is. It definitely seems like they're putting in more of an effort this time (Evergreen designs in Cyberverse, and several characters in the new IDW comic being based on the the new Siege toys), but who knows how long it will last.

 

Its like asking why robbers go to banks. Its where the money is.

 

It's a case of trying to cash into 80's nostalgia,falling back to what people like best as well as unifying the brand so it's all of above in a way which truth be told I'm not liking how they're going about it. Mostly because they're both ignoring the other TF eras people grew up with and they're risking stagnation because of the constant push of G1 to the point of giving us too much of a good thing.

 

They toyed with it for a bit after (or during, depending on your interpretation) Beast Wars/Machines, and when that proved profitable and sustainable, they doubled down and now we're here.

Nostalgia, brand equity, and a concept that worked to begin with have been powerful motivators.

 

... Back to G1?

 

Of course with G1 being such a big part, to new fans, this is THEIR G1. So in the future, references will be both for OG-G1 and Neo G1 fans.

 

I'm happy they're at least trying. You look at other big name IP's and there is very little (I'm not gonna say none) of Hasbro's cavalier attitude toward it's cast. Imagine if Captain America and Iron Man were the only two stable Avengers. And every couple of years they just ditched a large chunk of the team and got whole new guys, while not even acknowledging that the old team existed. Or if Raphael was the only constant ninja turtle. It wouldn't stand.

When you create a single hero, such as Spider-man or the Doctor, you expect that he might go places and his supporting cast might shift. But to most of us, G1 was a story about a team. We didn't want the band to be broken up.

Hasbro has only truly realized this from Third Party TFs. They see hundreds of dollars flying into someone else's pocket because they made a proper G1 devastator and not some vague approximation. And it happens with guys HasTak decided weren't worth their time because they weren't the Main Hero. Imagine the shock the first time they saw folks buying guys like Jazz, or Trailbreaker, or Springer.... guys who hadn't had figures in over a decade... And the realization that that money could've been theirs.

Why do you think Masterpiece went whole hog into Toon Mode? They saw where the money was going. Fans will only buy what they're attached to. And by God, Transformers is more than Prime, Bee, Megs, and Starscream.

 

There was no "going back to G1". Everything Transformers has ever been, with the arguable exception of the Beast shows, is some variation on G1 already. RiD, Armada, Bayverse, Aligned, Animated, TFP, whatever... it's all an interpretation or reimagining of the original concept.

 

Even Beast Wars/Machines tied into G1.

 

G1 laid out the foundation. It is classic and iconic. You can give Super/Bat/SpiderMan some new radically different costumes or origin stories, but their early established versions will never go away.

 

Well...
I think this has to do with the nostalgia boom of the 2000's, fansites, comics, and conventions like BotCon.

• Also these characters are what most people are familiar with. People are more likely to know Bumblebee than Hotshot and Cheetor.
• The original series was also released on dvd, which probably sold well and introduced a younger generation to the Transformers.
• Classic characters were being remade into toys, such as Prowl, Shockwave, Starscream, and more.
• Another thing that helped was the multiple continuities, and thei reuse of character names. Which could show people there are multiple Optimus Primes.
• Some characters from the movies helped them grow more prominent. Brawl went from some extra component of a combiner, to being more popular and relevant than Onslaught himself.

Transformers always been interesting to me because instead of rebooting the franchise with the same characters and concepts, they build an a entire new continuity from the ground up. That's some extreme dedication. Take any Spider-Man adaptation, same concept, characters, and other stuff. But Transformers is one of the few series that can tell a story without the OG characters.

 

It's ostensibly a new continuity, but it's still just a variation on the same original thing. You're fooling yourself if you think it's ever become an entirely new thing. What version of Transformers have you read or watched that isn't the same concepts used over again?

 

Well Beast Wars, while taking place in the same continuity as G1 feels almost like a soft-reboot. Taking place in a different environment, new characters, and introducing completely new concepts that been well inked in the overall Transdormers mythos.
Some continuities may share some concepts, or flat out reject them. Take RiD 2001, the Unicron Trilogy, the movieverse, IDW, Aliged.
They may reuse the same basic concepts, but they build upon them or make their own rules.

I get what you mean by the same basic concepts, but I meant they introduce new concepts to the series. IDW introduced the idea of the Transformers methods of reproduction, BW and BM introduced the spark as being the crucial part of every Transformer, and many more to list throughout every continuity and universe.

 

All trivial. It's like one version of Peter Parker has organic web shooters. That's new. But who cares? It's still Peter Parker. He's still basically the same guy in basically the same kind of stories.

Beast Wars/Machines is a direct continuation of G1. Everything else, it's all the same thing. There is a planet called Cybertron, where living, transforming robots exist. There was a war between two factions. They change the minor details each time, but it's still the same kind of stories about the same kind of characters, and they ALL use G1 as the starting point they branch out from. I mean, it's hilarious you use Aligned as an example of how different the continuities can be, since that was, by Hasbro's own admission, a purposeful effort to bring things in line with what G1 was. Especially those lame novels and the good High Moon games.

 

It might be that Hasbro made some bad decisions, like releasing CW G2 boxsets at retail, turning the TLK toyline mostly into repaints of AOE figures, turning non Headmasters into headmasters in TR, James losing his touch writing LL in part because of their insistance that he use Megatron in it, keeping Bay on while the anti-Bay hate campaign became increasingly unhinged, etc and blamed the effects on the creativity of the fiction and toylines they were running at the time.
There are obviously a lot of people who want Transformers to be more than just the characters from the first two years of the franchise or the reinventing of those two years in Prime and Animated.
And children new to the franchise don't care either way.
So it's to be hoped that Hasbro sees the mistake of their current course and become more adventurous again.

 

It's because children of the 80s have money now.

Kids these days and thier parents are buying fewer toys, opting instead to derive their jollies from watching racist let's players on YouTube.

The superhero movie boom of the early aughts had normalised nerd culture to the point that my red state conservative country bumpkin parents know who Shazam and Ghost Rider are, so now it isn't as much of a social stigma for a 30-40 year old to buy an action figure based on something they loved as a child. This means more adults are buying toys. Either to indulge in their nostalgia otlr indoctrinate their kids.

Meanwhile, the jobs market hasn't been nearly as kind to the 90s kids. Poor bastards are getting absolutely shit on. I myself know about a dozen people with college educations in practical fields who can't find work in thier fields because nobody is fucking retiring right.now.
So yeah, the nostalgia needle is firmly buried in the 80s, because that's the Generation with disposable income.

 

Beast Wars also came from Kenner (a component of the Tonka buyout). Once it showed that the concept of convertible robots wasn't dead, Hasbro took over.