G1, not for nostalgia, just because it's dumb fun.
Compared to most 80's cartoons, Transformers isn't constantly trying to shove the merchandising in your face. Everyone is likable (atleast in the first two seasons.) Which did a good job at encouraging viewers to buy these characters. Also it didn't talk down to it's audience with dumb characters or storylines (sometimes) so it's fun for a younger audience and a more mature mindset.

 

Prime because of the Predacons. They were the best part.

 

Tbh G1 is always going to be my fave but I acknowledge that it has its flaws. However, things were different back then. The story writing was simpler and the toons were basically ads.

But some episodes really were memorable:

1. Ultimate Doom

Optimus was willing to sacrifice earth for Cybertron...can’t blame him though.

2. Burden hardest to bear

Probably the best character development episode in G1. As much as Optimus is my fave TF (since the Diaclone days), I always felt a soft spot for Rodimus Prime. I just wished he had more bad ass moments in the original series.

3. War Dawn.

Simple moral lesson about blind idol worship someone for his/her abilities.

Following G1, it would definitely be Animated. Once one gets past the art style, the story writing is pretty good to me.

It has a balance of seriousness and humor and some of the concepts such as All Spark (how the writers used it) was really interesting and cool. Seeker clones?!

Oh yeah, did I mentioned Animated Megatron has to be one of the most intimidating cartoon villains in a long time. Even as a head, he did so much damage.

After Animated, it would be Beast Wars for me. Episodes such as “Code of Hero” were memorable. The End Times theme was also pretty riveting stuff too.

 

I like them all, but since your question didn't say that I could have more than one favourite, I'll cheat by using the transitive property to lump a bunch of shows together and consider them all G1. Please allow me to waste a portion of your time. Shia Labeouf may have seen Transformer heaven, but I'll be sent to Transformer hell for what I'm about to write.

So obviously the original show and The Movie are G1.

Japanese shows run "series" in a similar way to us running "seasons," so Scramble City, Headmasters, Masterforce, Victory, and Zone are all the same show.

The Beast Era shows BW, BWII, BWN, and BM are the distant future of G1. In Robot Masters, Optimus Primal, Star Saber, and Lio Convoy even travel back in time to help G1 Optimus fight G1 and BW Megatron around the time of Scramble City's construction.

The Autobots in Car Robots are future variants of Team Prime who travelled back to between G1 Season 2 and The Movie to fend off Predacons while the main cast was declared missing in the G1 manga. The English dub RID 2001 has characters even reference events from the G1 cartoon, so they clearly share the same backstory.

Unicron Trilogy is the English dub's way of connecting Armada and Energon to Cybertron, and Unicron's a universal singularity so it's the same Unicron in the 1986 film, but that's too easy, so I'll ignore that fact. Instead, I'll draw your attention to Energon Rodimus' backstory: he left his position in Autobot command for a colonization project and is finally returning to battle. In Headmasters, Rodimus leaves the battle to find a new colony, so this is Takara following up on that. Additionally, the Cybertron dub is filled with The Movie references.

Bumblebee, which originally took place between Bumblebee's WWII origin and the 2007 film, was reshot for him to come from a G1 version of Cybertron with everyone in their evergreen designs. It shares the same relationship to Bayverse as X-Men: First Class to the X-Men Trilogy. The 2007 film and its sequels are roughly the same continuity. That means that The Last Knight movie is actually 100% an episode of the original G1 cartoon. Cyber Missions too.

As for Animated, Optimus watches the G1 cartoon in the first episode as a historical documentary, so it's also G1.

The WFC and FOC games were made as G1 prequels with the Aligned continuity meant to reform all continuities into one canon. Aligned includes Prime, Go!, and RID 2015. Towards the end of Aligned, characters start getting upgrades to look like their G1 selves again.

Prime Wars takes place 40 years after the Great War. You might be wondering why I'm including mediocre shows and films too. I don't care. I love everything Transformers.

Cyberverse uses evergreen designs, so G1.

I can't just say that all the WFC Netflix bots are variants of the original G1 cast without connecting their events to the original cartoon. At the end of WFC, Unicron decides to start travelling back in time, indicating that this isn't a Unicron variant. This is the original Unicron before he became a multiversal singularity, and his appearance in The Movie is a direct consequence of WFC.

Oh, and G1 Transformers has crossed over with G.I. Joe, MLP, and Marvel. Marvel Cinematic Universe? G1. Avengers: Endgame? A Transformers movie.

Oh, and the original G1 toyline actually licensed Shockwave's toy from RadioShack, so RadioShack—the electronics store itself—is a 3D episode of G1. Every time someone talked to a store employee about appliances, they were actually interacting with a 3D Transformers character.

There you go. G1 is my favourite show. Anytime you guys are arguing over whether Geewans or Bayverse fanboys are "true fans," I honestly have no idea what you're talking about because they're one and the same.

"But John, after Hasbro acquired Tonka, GoBots are considered part of the same franchise." Fuck GoBots! G1 rulez!

 

Same here.

 

I just can't watch Beast Wars or Beast Machines. The character designs, toys and animation looked ugly as hell to me when the shows were new, and they've aged horrifically. Every time I see someone rave about the character arcs and plotlines I think I should give it another go, but just watching clips turns my stomach.

 

Animated with Prime as a close second.

 

Animated, hands down, no contest. In my opinion, it was the last truly great Transformers show, and really was the end of an era before we hit our current dark age.

Animated easily had some of the best incarnations of its respective characters, with unique and fully explored backstories and character arcs (for the heroic characters, at least). Some of whom are break-out stars who have gone on to feature very prominently in succeeding TF media, alongside the more traditional legacy characters. It had some of the most-loved human "sidekick" characters, and while the human villains aren't too popular the Decepticons more than make up for it. And despite being prematurely cancelled, it still managed to tell a rich story with a satisfying conclusion, whereupon a team of misfits and flunkies is recognized as true heroes on two worlds.

There's so much to talk about and others have put it much more elegantly and concisely than I can (I'd need to write a full essay to properly organize and convey my thoughts). The bottom line is Animated is much more than the sum of its parts, building on foundations established by the likes of Beast Wars and incorporating a little something from every other generation that had come before to create something new; something that Transformers seems to have forgotten how to do in recent years. Some of my personal favorite characters in the whole franchise come from Animated, and I sincerely hope we're able to revisit the Animated universe the same way we've revisited G1 (and hopefully soon Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy).

 

Awe man, .......Just gotta go with my G1 show since that is what i know and grew up watching. I mean sure there's been other parts of animation toons i liked. So a good example of those toons was combiner wars cartoon to the power of the primes cartoon show that was on the net to watch.

 

G1 is my favorite, all seasons especially S3, movie included. Nostalgia factor is strong, of course. Beast Wars was nice to see. Honestly after that never really saw an entire show, only fractions. I'm currently interested in the new WFC series (I'm waiting for the DVD release, well.. since it's from Netflix, I don't expect precisely excellence, but we'll see), mainly for the "pre-G1" thing, and because since I was a kid the Cybertronian "true self" of the bots was always the most impressive and interesting factor for me, rather than earthly stuff.

 

Mine is:

G1
Prime
Beast Wars

 

this is tough i enjoyed a lot of the shows for different reasons throughout the years even the japanese beast wars series and continuation of G1 granted i didnt see the later til much later in my life

 

Beast Era... it's the only series I've seen where the writing and characters have been the most consistently good. I find I like it more every time I've rewatched it rather than less. I consider it the gold stand and have been waiting YEARS for another series to even coming close to being as good.

There are a few minor things that could have been better, it's by no means perfect. But nothing else has even been able to match what the Beast Era did let alone set the bar higher. A few have come close to being really good. Only thing that really prevents that is either having characters who add nothing to the story or having too many plot threads that don't go anywhere.

 

In no order my top four would be G1, Beast Wars, Armada, and Prime.

 

1- G1
Apart from nostalgia, there were chapters with a very good story,I mean the second season is the holy grail of all transformers series.Also the animation at times was incredible.

2-War For Cybertron Siege
The new Netlfix series, everything I saw from G1, this series takes it one pitch higher.There are still things to improve, but I liked many things that I saw.

3-Beast Wars
Although at that moment I didn't get much caught, I think that later I started to have more affection for it, to the point that it became one of my favorites,having a new concept of animal robots with novel animation, and also having the connection with G1, are all the things (that added) to accept it as a great series.

4-Victory
I have seen the Japanese series, and I think that Victory is the one that stands out the most among them, its animation is the highest point,and they also showed a new facet of Optimus (including its design) that we had not seen so far.

5-The Machinima Series
I know, I'll be the only user to put this series on a list of good series.But I'm a colossal G1 fan,and I had to wait 28 years to see a series with the designs which I met the transformers,it is a merit that I will always thank.The series has a regular and slow animation, but to see Trypticon fight to Metroplex again or to see the ghost of Starscream, are things that a fan wanted to see again, right?

To finish...
I tried to see Armada, when I was a teenager and I never liked it, the characters were too square,also never liked that when transforming they say transform(japonese stuff)
And regarding Prime, Animated, Robots in Disgues, Rescue Bots, GO, Cyberverse? etc...It never caught my attention, I think that seeing his designs was the first reason, and maybe the other reason because I was already an adult and it seemed very childish to me.

 

I haven't seen everything, but I'm going to have to say Animated. I give it an edge over Beast Wars because its art style and animation have aged better, and Animated was really designed from the ground up to utilize previously-established continuity, while Beast Wars only started doing that in the later seasons.

 

1- Transformers Prime - It made me a Transformers fan. Seasons 1 and 2 were great, Season 3 wasn't so good, but wasn't so bad.
2- Transformers Galaxy Force - It was loosely connected to Micron Legend and Superlink, but it was great.
3- Transformers Micron Legend - First episodes were fine, but then it got better.
4- Car Robots - Although there were no known characters, it was good. I sometimes thought Fire Convoy was Optimus Prime, but of course he isn't.

 

What the... So, you mean all Transformers series are in the same universe??

 

In Japanese continuity, they are. Don't look up the graph. It'll make your head hurt.