The sweeps acted independently But, almost 99% seen weren’t Distinct individual characters, even some that were lucky enough to get names showed almost no individual personality At least those guys showed some personality
This. Seekers share a body type with Starscream and in some cases are literally clones of Starscream but they all have unique color schemes and their own identities. They aren't just generic robots who look exactly the same like the Sweeps are. What do you mean most of the time? They're never distinguishable from Scourge. Unless you're talking about how some times the Sweeps seem to voiced by different random actors but physically there's never anything that distinguishes a Sweep from Scourge. Like people actually buy up multiple copies of Scourge to act as Sweeps because they're identical. Though I think Hasbro did at one point release an official set of Scourge and Sweeps where the Sweeps in that set had a different head sculpt that lacked the facial hair. I think this look was based on an animation error seen in some episodes. I don't recall actually seeing such an error but it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. And otherwise it seems kinda random to have toys like that when the Sweeps were never anything more than identical copies.
I used "Most of the time" as a CYA statement so someone didn't @ me with, "in X episode they were different because of Y...".
I've always thought of it as Sweeps + Cyclonus' Armada. That wins for me. But if only Sweeps vs. Seekers, I guess I'll go Seekers. However, not Earth Seekers, the Cybertron 1st-episode (now Siege) seekers. Are the coneheads considered Seekers? I didn't think that was the case.
Most fans do consider the coneheads as seekers Even tfwiki has them listed along with Starscream and the others
The Coneheads are repaints of the G1 Seekers with different wings and guns. All six were called Strike Planes on the old catalogue and grouped together. It was the cartoon that differentiated them with the cone head design. Personally I prefer the non cone head depiction of the original toys. I really dislike seeing pics of the G1 toys with the cones up. The proportions look ridiculous. Of course the real crime with the G1 Seekers are the unpainted faces especially on the modern reissues. World's Smallest Starscream and Thrust had their optics painted along with Starscream's face and it really breathed life into them.
For a new movie I was re imagining the sweeps. Cyclonus and Scourge would be Unicron's minions. Unicron would resurrect several dead Transformers and Scourge would put an armor on them that was very similar to his appearance and would make them obey him. So it would be like the sweeps are an army of zombies controlled by Scourge.
How would you define the role of a seeker in the g1 cartoon anyway? Aside from Starscream they all acted like troops/fighters and not much else when it came to a “role” on s team
Not much of a competition. The seekers all look different (although sometimes only in shades of the same colour) and we get multiple different personalities. Most of this in bio's/techspec, but even in the media there was some slight differences. But at the very least they got names and different bio's. With the Sweeps you have little to no personalities and no way of identifying any of the members. They're all identicle clones. Plus the sweeps have a ridiculous altmode. Back in the 80's I eventually managed to get all the seekers (SW and TC thanks to cheap Mexican imports), and with later lines I've always been interested in getting more than just one (resulting in way too many MP Seekers). Outside of Scourge, I've never been interested in getting Sweeps. When The Rebirth aired and new Decepticon jets appeared (the Targetmasters), I thought that these were reformatted Sweeps, retro-actively making the Sweeps slightly more interesting.
I love the design of all the Movie bots. So I prefer Sweeps. I thought that was pretty ingenious. As you build your Sharkticon army you get a bunch of Sweep heads you can put on your Scourge Army. Just keep the Scourge head on one of them as the original and the rest are the canon fodder Sweeps.
This seems like an unfair comparison. This would be more fair, yeah? Starkticons vs Sweeps Junkions vs Seekers vs Datsuns
Basically, you’re asking “Do you like the Beatles or do you like the cover band?” Smh. I’m sure there’s an outtake with Bumblebee mumbling to himself: “Not these bland tools again! I miss being held hostage by real soldiers.”
Sweeps werent really honoring seekers though, theyre more like character fillers due to a reduced budget to the franchise? The Sweeps are more like vehicons...