For the most part a lot of Transformers looks pretty great, and generally speaking most series have pretty cool looking bots for the most part.
That being said, sometimes bots look as appealing feces, so which one do you consider the worst looking ones?

My vote would be this disgusting, weirdly proportion, creepy fucking head, barely even looking like a Transformers pile of shit: Beast Machines Cheetor.

I mean all the Beast Machines designs are awful, but since Cheetor is my favourite guy this one is the worst to me.

Also I just saw I made a typo in the title and I'm not sure if I can change it and if I can't that'll bother me for the rest of time.

 

Megs is the poster child for all the complaints against the designs in the Bay movies, in particular DOTM.

 

I cannot stand this toy. The car mode is a boring sedan and the robot mode....ugh. What's worse? His name being Sideswipe of all characters...

 

So many to choose:

Kup
Orion Pax
Alpha Trion
A3
Beast Wars Rattrap
Brains
ROTF Wheelie
Waspinator. I don't like animal heads on humanoid robots.
Bulkhead
Animated Soundwave
Animated Lockdown
Movie Ironhide
Scalpel
Movie Frenzy
Armada Scavenger
Transmetal Optimus Primal
Prime Starscream
Prime Megatron
RID Sideswipe. I like the character but the hair is just wrong.
RID Overbite
Bisk
Movie Starscream
Wreck-Gar
Movie and RID Drift
Animated Highbrow
Animated Huffer
Animated Pipes
Rung
Emirate Xaaron
Wildwheel
Windblade
Movie Hound
The Dreads
Most Mini-cons
CHUG Skullgrin
ROTF Bludgeon
IDW Tailgate
Chromedome
G2 Rapido
Pretender Jazz
Pretender Grimlock
Animated Prowl. I love the character but I hate the exaggerated shades.
Cybertron Optimus Prime
Cybertron Repugnus
G1 Optimus Prime's head
Powermaster Optimus Prime
Froid
Most of the Star Wars crossover robot heads.
The Avengers crossover toys.
Energon Signal Flare
Mainframe
Slingshot
The Transtech aesthetic.
G1 Bumblebee
Goldbug
G1 Swindle
ROTF Skids and Mudflap
Armada Sideswipe
G1 Groove
G1 Blurr's toy
IDW Swoop
G2 Liege Maximo
Regeneration G2 Cybertronians
Botanica
Nightscream
Beast Wars Black Arachnia
Titans Return Sentinel Prime.
CHUG Blitzwing
Megadeath

 

Prime Megatron? Prime Soundwave? Cybertron Optimus? G1's Optimus head?
Mind elaborating a bit one some of these?

 

^^^^^might be easier to just say who you DO like

 

I hated the skull face on Prime Megatron.
I didn't like the stylised design of Animated Soundwave or his voice and back story. Mind you, Bumblebee Soundwave is the only official Soundwave to properly emulate his iconic G1 voice.

Cybertron and G1 Optimus Prime both have those creepy yellow optics. With the face plates, I just thought they looked unheroic. I'm not a fan of Optimus Prime anyway.

I'm not a fan of the stylised aesthetics on a lot of modern Transformers. One I forgot to mention was ROTF Nightbeat. The head was too alien which is unfortunate because his car mode is one of the greatest repaints ever.

There are some great Transformers characters with excellently designed toys but an ugly head can ruin it all. Whether it's Rattrap's robot face having no nose and buck teeth, Alpha Trion's facial hair, Chromedome's lack of expressiveness or the Dreads alien looking faces, an ugly head just undoes any of the character's merits to me.

Mind you, Rattrap and Slingshot are just a##holes anyway, the ugliness of their characters just enhancing their ugly aesthetics.

If all of this sounds superficial, Transformers is a very visual franchise between the toys and the various media.

I'm not attacking anyone's preferences, just expressing my own opinion. If other fans like the characters or toys I listed, good for them. We dont have to agree on everything but we can be civil.

 

Μake that two heresies while you are at it

 

I seem to be among a few minorities in this fandom for different opinions I have:

I don't like Optimus Prime, Rattrap, Dinobot, Alpha Trion or G1 Bumblebee.
I base my entire collection on vehicle scale.
I like the Prime Wars cartoon.
I don't get the appeal of Animated or G1 Season 2.
Rodimus Prime and Prowl are my two favourite Autobots.

 

Are you the Armond White of Transformers?

 

Cybertron Megatron comes to mind as probably one of my least favorite forms of Megatron, although that may be due to the color scheme, since I like his Galvatron form better.

I always thought Prime with yellow eyes worked depending on the head sculpt. As MP-44's head I don't think looks good with yellow eyes while siege's I think does

 

Well, not really. I'm not an Optimus fan either. Personally, I always found him meh. I kinda have the same problem with almost every non-Beast era Megatron.

Anyway, returning to the topic, I personally liked the Beast Machines designs (and I like the show a lot more than a lot of people do), but there is one rather horrid design in that (which is unfortunate, because I really liked how this guy was handled in BM, which is surprising, because I hated him in BW).

Behold... TURKEYBOLT!!!



I liked BM Silverbolt's robot mode, but what in the Sam Hill hell is this?

 

BM Rattrap ( I already hated the character from before and this design made me hate him even more)

Rid 15 sideswipe ( his hair is one of the worst design choices ever)

BM Blackarachnia ( do I really need to explain?)

animated Optimus ( the rest of his body is fine but his face annoys me)

transmetal Optimus primal ( I hate the face and the color scheme

Beast wars megatron’s first design ( I really hate how his head is part of the arm and I hate where his tail is too)

 

I don't think anyone can beat these three in the "bad design" competition. They are the definition of "junk scrambled together to make a robot". I know that's the usual complaint with Bayformers but there's at least a shred of coordinated chaos that somehow ties the designs together. There's none of that here with the Arcee triplets. It's just pure chaos.

 

I never liked X-Brawn from RiD2001. The ridiculously lopsided look just doesn't gel with me, especially when Side Burn and Prowl have pretty standard proportions.

It's never used anywhere anymore, but I really dislike the original G1 version of Huffer. It's not that he doesn't look like Huffer so much that he doesn't really mesh with the other styles. With the recent revelations about them potentially being original, non-Microchange designs, I can forgive it somewhat.

It's not a defining depiction of the character, but CW Optimus Prime is one of, if not the worst design for Prime we've gotten. It looks like he tried to compromise between trukk and munky by being both at the same time.

 

Movie Bumblebee and Prime Bumblebee.

 

Most of the G1 Pretender inner robots. Hard to top some of them.

 

I don't know if I would call them bad, just forgettable, which is arguably even worse. When a design is really bad, they get remembered. When they're as generic and boring as most of the inner robots for the Pretenders are, you just forget about them. There's a reason why Bludgeon has only gotten one toy based on his inner robot form in the past 30 years (which was a con exclusive).

 

I've always found the design of the protoforms from the 2007 movie terribly ugly. I just don't like that super lanky and generic look. Like, they almost look like knockoffs that would be in a "Transmorphers" mockbuster or something. I actually do like the idea of the Transformers having stripped down comet modes for space travel...that's a really cool concept. I just wish the designs were better, and each character looked more distinct...they should still have individual identities before coming to Earth. I actually think the tie-in comics handled the protoform concept much better, visually. And even the protoforms in the sequels looked much better.

I might take some flak for this one...I really don't like Windblade's design. I think I said it in another thread recently, but she somehow manages to feel super overdone and super generic at the same time. On one hand, I don't like the makeup and the helmet design. I get that the look is based on real Japanese styles...it's just not my aesthetic. And on the other hand, I feel like there are way too many red jet Transformers with wings that stick up at an angle. That part of the design is basically "Jet Transformers 101", it feels terribly unoriginal. I do like the turbines on the wings though.

I'm honestly not a fan of any of the Bay bots that are lanky, have lots of random spikes, and have lots of gaps in their armor...the ones that sort of look like Bionicles. Which isn't all of them, despite what some people claim. I think there are a lot of good ones. But I'm not too fond of designs like Movie 1 Megatron or The Fallen or Bonecrusher. They sort of look like generic video game villains or something.

I find ROTF Alice's robot form to look super goofy and ugly. Anther great concept that I don't feel was visually executed well.