I guess.

 

You guess?

 

From what I've heard? The toy sales disagree with the idea Prime was a 'success'.

 

I thought Prime was an excellent and well made series and one of my fave animated shows of the 2010s.

 

It sure didn’t save The Hub either, and it dealt a great blow to Takara Tomy. That “success” on a corporate side is also why we have Cyberverse - because Prime cost Hasbro so much pain that they decided to just acquire an animation studio and try to create a new, in-house, child friendly, neo-Aligned continuity. The gritty edgelord tone sure did wonders in hindsight with that knowledge.

 

I wouldn't pin the failure of the HUB entirely on Prime, though given it single handedly torpedoed Hasbro's purpose-created animation studio because it ran over budget and overall was not that successful, it played a part. The HUB was simply poorly run, not a free channel to most people (it was only available for many people in a multi-channel package that involved a lot of those movie dedicated channels, not something you're going to buy if you want to park your kid in front of the TV for cartoons), seemingly lost sight of its purpose of a Hasbro controled cartoon marketing vehicle almost immediately (GI Joe Renegades getting canned after one season was a true tragedy), and on top of THAT simply didn't have enough original content - Dan vs. is not original to the HUB and yet is probably one of its most well known shows because it was brought onto the channel.

It says a LOT when the only thing that survived the HUB and technically stayed in the same place was My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Discovery wanted nothing to do with Transformers.

Plus, if you ask me? The people who wrote the commercials for Prime were better than the show's actual writers. Those between-show segments were absolute gold - Megatron's 24 hour channel takeover was amazing purely because those hijinks were legitimately the best character pieces he ever got (him turning into a Care Bear as a new alt. mode and WHO NEEDS SLEEP?! to name a few). And then the Christmas one where the Vehicons redcordated the exterior of the Nemesis with Christmas lights...fantastic.

 

No joke, I remember Prime's Megatron best from the top promo because it was so darn charming and funny.

 

That's a pretty extreme use of the term edgelord.

 

Don't put me in a box.

 

Oh, one other thing that I neglected to mention, the toy line was a failure as well for Hasbro too.

You know why we got the rebranded Beast Hunters? Because none of the vendors were willing to buy any more Prime toys any more because they weren't selling. So Hasbro had to redesign and relabel the entire product line in an attempt to convince them that it wasn't "New packaging, same product. Loser". Even that wasn't enough, as the lines (Plural at this point) still sank, to the point where at the end, the last figures were Target Exclusives, who had been sweet talked to take a package deal to distribute the final toys and movie. Because no one else wanted to take the loss on buying any more Prime product.

Given that the entire reason the franchise media exists is to sell the damn toys, the show didn't do the one job it was designed to do either.

As to the HUB, between interviews and some reading between the lines, I think Hasbro didn't pull the yoke like they should've on the Prime people was because they were worried that as a fledgling network, they'd earn a bad rap of being hard/impossible to work for and wouldn't be able to attract future talent. Then, by the time that they realized just how out of control the Prime employees were, it was too late and had to take drastic actions to balance the books, which ended most of their plans that they were hoping to use as tools to offset their budget issues in the long run.

 

Just curious.

 

Yikes. Behind the scenes, it came apart on every level. It's a damned shame, since it looks to me like Hasbro isn't willing to take risks or invest heavily in their IP after this one blew up in their faces.

 

Yes, that is exactly what happened. That's why all we've really gotten since, beyond TLK (which was an even bigger disaster because it proved the movie franchise could not only fail, but fail spectacuarly), is G1 rehash over G1 rehash.

Hasbro is scared of trying to branch out again and ultimately lose control the same way as what happened with Prime, which is why it annoys me when people say the show was better than it ever was. If it was so good, then why is it the main reason the franchise has been stuck in a G1 rut ever since because G1 is the only thing Hasbro knows for sure will sell?

 

Well, there's those BotBots things.

 

@Wheeljack84 You completely dismissed Animated for it's art style, yet don't do the same for Prime despite, by your own admission, them having the same basic character design philosophy.

I'm sensing some hypocrisy. Unless there's another reason you want to elaborate as to why Prime is somehow better.

 

Given the money that they lost, I don't blame them, but it's going to bite them in the long run as people get tired of G1.

 

Ehh, I like Prime, I like it a lot less than I was a kid. I watched animated when it first came out (I was like 4 and it ended when I was 7) and after revisiting both, I found animated held up better, My biggest things are the Animation, voice acting, and story.

Animation:
There is a difference between Artstyle and animation. Artstyle is how it's drawn and Animation is how it moves. Artstyle wise, Animated kicks ass, being designed by the endlessly talented Derrick J. Wyatt but has some janky animation which is only really good for the multi parters and late season 3 when they clearly had a bigger budget. Prime Still has a GOOD art style, just not a unique to animated but that is subjective, LIKE THE REST OF THIS. Animation wise, Prime is a killer and flows very smoothly.

Voice Acting:
Opinions are subjective to everyone, but the animated voice cast kills the Prime cast. For me, the Prime cast really just has the infinitely great tag team of Frank Welker and Peter Cullen. But Prime is taken down a peg with the rest of the cast just being average and Cullen forgetting how to do the Optimus voice casually like the g1 days and just sound like he is always giving a speech.

Animated on the other hand has a multitude of returning cast members and personally, my Optimus and Megatron will ALWAYS be David Kaye and Corry Burton. All the cast members just bringing life to characters that prime just lacks.

Story: I think both stories are really good, they both have some execution problems. Animated, takes almost a season to start its story while Prime screeches to a crawl in the middle. Personally, I like animated's more but that's my opinion.

Bulkhead:
He is Ok in Prime, but they clearly didn't understand the character. (Energon one doesn't exist in this conversation, that's springer) Bulkhead was just a Big bot who was a loveable teddy bear on the inside, not a wrecker, that's just how I feel.

 

Those don't really count since they're not a mainline series. I also can't find the damn things at retail - I have Series 1 Fun Gus and goddamnit I want MORE of these glorious little bastards if I could only find them!

 

Cullen was boring. The characters were boring (bar one or three). The plots were (mostly) boring. Especially at the end when the Autobots had to go after the 'relics', though some were actually interesting scifi ideas.

I guess Cullen just forgot how to sound like the 'Heroic everybot'. I blame Bay. He turned Prime into a monster.

The best thing about the show was Jeffery Combs. I believe that the take off on Re-Animator was the best episode...

He can make any P.O.S. watchable, if not entertaining...see The Phantom Empire (1985, google says 88, but I think it's wrong).

Prime continued the lazy Orci & Kurtzman (I think that's their names, I tried to forget they exist...) style of writing, and ripping off better works.

I.E. The whole 'lost' Cybertron. Aliens without a home to return to, stuck on Earth... I wonder where they got that idea?...Probably saw Doctor Who in 2005...
AND (If my memory serves me)...THEY (the same hacks) DID SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THE PLANET VULCAN IN STAR TREK (2007) And they've fucked up Star Trek ever since...

'Bumblebee' was R2D2, though that's the movies fault for infecting the character for how long,10, 15 years?

It was such SERIOUS BUSINESS...they tried making it darker than BEAST MACHINES,but failed to have many real consequences throughout the series.


Now I'll say something nice about this mostly uninspired show...


I did like...no, I loved the part where Prime Megatron gave up fighting and his quest for power, forever...after...Something about the show's Unicron...Dark Energon...Something...Can't remember what it was though. It was years ago...

 

Does it have its issues behind the scenes? Oh absolutely. But I wouldn't go far to call it the worst thing ever.