Fairly straight forward, what is that one thing(s) you hate about the Transformers franchise as a whole?
It can be literally anything associated with franchise from characters to plots, shows, movies, ideas, fans, sayings, designs, comics, games, voice actors, directors, creators, Hasbro, toys, wikis, backstories, websites, lore, weird fan-fics, running jokes, human allies, locations, personalities, and literally everything else in between. Anything is fair game.

Let Er' Rip; let the hate fuel through you.

 

How incredibly underdeveloped the planet Cybertron is.

 

How about how incredibly inconsistent the planet is on how it looks and whether or not its a freaking transformers itself

 

"Hate"? As in the Hate Plague? Didn't it almost destroy the entire galaxy(universe)?  I think hate is too brash a word. Nitpick maybe.

Nitpick

1. Not enough funds to get them all
2. Having just enough funds but can't order them normally especially due to the beerbug affecting the supply chains.
3. QC issues on the toys. Seems like some ABS/PVC/POMs are not up to the task.
4. I'm a weirdo too  so nothing to nitpick about (before you see the speck on someone's eye, be aware of your own speck I say) on other opposing views.
5. G1 as in original G1 molds no longer existing to be re-issued.
6. Western retcons.
7. Volcanicus re-issue when it should have been Unite Warriors (I was gunning to get one but SS86 Grimlock has dampened my desire for it as I already have a blinged up PotP Dinos  )
8. SS-86 Wheelie not being fully articulated.
9. ER Arcee geting the short end of the stick compared to Lifeline
10.All the waiting is murder! 

 

All of it

 

That hasbro doesn’t use any cool ideas like having a wreckers spin off or an anthology series

and how hasbro is just doing G1 again over and over. Even though I liked siege and cyberverse I really wish that they would use new designs and reinvent some of these characters

 

The "usual":

• lack of stock
• massively increased prices (from 50 to over a 100% increase within a couple of years)
  
• the gaps in figures
• the lack of accessories
• the bad quality insurance of late.
• how some end up being more like a backward design
• paint over parts instead of doing the figures "right".

Then the sheer amount of exclusives with most used for the main characters instead of the secondary, special ones.

Overall, all stuff that it due to Hasbro being cheap and trying to save every cent they can and over charging us for it so that they can make as much profit as possible.

 

What I hate the most about Transformers? The overreliance on Optimus and Megatron.

I know they're iconic, but I always found them pretty boring and one-note as characters. I would rather focus on other characters and either leave OP and Megs out of it. Their overuse really has soured me towards them over the years.

 

1. Because the series us "to sell toys" this means alot of stupid business decisions happen, from Hasbro or other parties.
2. Optimus and Megatron are in almost every adaptation, which is probably done not to isolate viewers with unfamiliar characters.
3. The previous leader class height is seemingly gone.
4. Some series aren't even focused on the title characters.
5. The fact G1 comics and cartoons have hundreds of characters, but only a handful are important enough.

I have more, but that will be for a later date.

 

I wouldn't necessarily say that I "hate" anything about the franchise. However, I very much dislike the live movies. Now granted, I stopped after the Dark of the Moon. Since I didn't like what I had seen from the first three movies, I didn't feel it necessary to continue.

 

The one thing I hate most is the fact that most shows have cluttered casts with characters who don't need to exist because...

They don't really contribute anything to the story.

They never develop as characters, as in learning and growing as the story progresses, they just sort of stay the same.

The character is portrayed inconsistently for no reason.

They only exist to die.

They take screen time away from other characters who don't have these problems.

Or some combination of the above.

The Beast Era was NEARLY perfect with a small cast that allowed for every character to develop naturally and actually leave a memorable impact on the story. I say NEARLY perfect because there were some minor problems and nothing is actually prefect, that's by definition an impossible goal to reach. But the Beast Era did set the bar pretty high for what I feel should be the golden standard and nothing sense then has really lived up to it.

RID2001 had a decent story but has too many characters that are easily forgotten.

UT was a freaking mess.

The live action films a freaking mess. The first one kept the cast small but since the majority of the characters don't even show up till the climax of the movie they still don't get enough screen time to leave any sort of impact. It's freaking aweful that the Transformers are little more than set pieces, they aren't even characters in their own movies... except for Bumblebee, not the movie like literally the character Bumblebee is the only one who is an actual character.

Animated was good but there are more than 5 Autobots in that series... Everyone else is either a supporting character or a background character and it kinda feels repetitive when the core cast NEVER CHANGES! I actually would of liked that series more if the Elite Guard were permanently added to the main cast instead of only being around for a couple of episodes and then leaving. If Sari were treated as an actual member of the Autobots cause she literally is an Autobot but they still treat her as a supporting human character despite being a Cybertronian. This is fine early on because they didn't know she wasn't human at that time but I'm talking season 3 Sari. Omega Supreme also needed to be treated as an actual character and part of the team once he was revealed but instead he's still just treated as a prop rather than a character.

Prime kept introducing characters just to kill them. I get it, you want to be super dark and show that characters can actually die but it's not actually that dark if you never kill anyone who actually matters. Characters shouldn't exist just to die, they should die as a natural progression of the story. Code of a Hero is the Golden standard for how you kill off a character so it actually MEANS something. Imagine if Dinobot died in the first episode when we didn't even know who he was yet. He would of been quickly forgotten and no one would care. That's how Prime treated death like the act of killing a character in of itself was suppose to mean something but without knowing who that character was, without any sort of attachment to them, it's means nothing. And Prime also introduced a walking plot hole who's character made no sense what so ever and he took screen time away from another character by essentially replacing her as Jack's partner. Gawd I hate Smokescreen.

RID2015 Kinda of had the same issue as Animated with keeping the core cast of Autobots nearly the same for the entire series. Even when they did introduce new characters they wouldn't stick around as the show would find some excuse to write them out of the story. They were essentially guest characters who could of been so much more than that. And on the Decepticon side the villains were mostly monster of week types with some recurring villains but the vast majority of the Decepticons were forgettable.

Rescue Bots also has that same issue with staying focused on a small group of Autobots with other Autobots playing supporting guest roles and never really joining the team. Though oddly in this case some of my favorite characters in the original show are all guest characters, Salvage, High Tide, Quickshadow, I don't actually care about anyone in the main cast. Which is really weird... but I think it's because I just find them boring one note characters who don't really change all that much except for Heatwave who was kind of a jerk originally and hated working with the humans but the current Heatwave who actually likes humans... is still kind of a jerk but now he's a jerk with a soft side... I don't know I just don't like any of the main cast. Rescue Bots Academy I do like Whirl though so nice that they finally got a main character I actually like and the original main cast are now supporting characters. But it's still really weird that the show keeps introducing characters who aren't really part of the main cast and probably never will be.

Cyberverse has thankfully moved beyond being the Bumblebee and Windblade show that it started out as. But it still has a huge cast of mostly forgettable characters who just exist and don't add anything to the story. I love Thunderhowl's design I really want to like his character in the show... but he has ONE good episode and then disappears into the background. It's not even really a good episode it's just the only one where he's actually a character. Hammerbyte again I really like the design, he's a shark I love aquatic transformers so of course I'm going to like his design... but he's only in one episode, does nothing and never appears again.

Prime Wars Trilogy, has a bunch of characters who don't really do anything. There's a fembot in the show who I don't even freaking know her name. I don't think they ever even said her name. They keep calling her the Mistress of Flame but that sounds like more of a title than a name. And I don't even know what that title means. She gets killed by Overlord and I'm kind of glad they got rid of her cause she didn't really need to exist in the first place. They treated her like she was someone important but never explained why she was important. She didn't actually do anything or contribute anything to the story other than taking up screen time from actual important characters who were actually doing things. They could of used that screen time to develop Victorion as actual individual characters but instead she was portrayed as just a giant robot who doesn't transform... Overlord also wanted to kill Megatron for some reason but after 3 seasons of that being the one driving goal for the character we never actually find out why he hated Megatron and all that build up lead to NOTHING.

Siege also had an issue of there being too many characters. Some of the side characters might still be developed more in later seasons but some of them were killed off already and didn't do much of anything before they died... like

Spoiler

Ultra Magnus seemingly betrays the Autobots to work out a deal with the Decepticons. He ends up not agreeing to a deal with the Decepticons which he should of known was going to happen in the first place since Optimus literally already told him that before he went there, then he becomes a prisoner even though he single handedly took out several Decepticons earlier he can't do the same thing to get out of there? And then he sends a message back to the Autobots about their plans and gets killed. Essentially nothing Ulta Magnus did the entire time he was alive made any freaking sense to the point where I was glad he died so I didn't have to deal with him anymore. He was easily the worst thing in the entire show.

Anyway... the Beast Era for me set a golden standard for the ideal number of characters a series should have and a minimum amount of screen time a character should have to be developed as a fully fleshed out character. I mean just look at Transmutate, she only has one episode but it's an episode that focuses on her as a character not just as a prop or plot device. They spend the time wisely to make you care about her before they kill her. If she were a Prime character they would of killed her in the first 5 minutes of the episode and focused on the other characters reactions to her death as the primary focus of the episode. She wouldn't be a real character just something that motivates the other characters. Beast Wars actually makes her a legitimate character in the episode and actually spends very little time dwelling on the aftermath of her death, just giving a brief moment for Silverbolt and Rampage to each morn in their own way and that was really all they needed to do, it didn't have to be a driving motivation for an entire episode, but we did need to see her as a real person and not just a prop. I mean technically she still was a driving motivation for other characters but their interactions with her ALIVE are so much more meaningful as you can really feel for her as apposed to STARTING with her death and trying to make it meaningful without showing that she was even a person. It's hard to care about a death if the character never really existed in the first place.

No series since then has ever been able to reach that bar and set it up higher. And it's a shame because that golden standard that the Beast Era set, it's also what made me a Transformers fan in the first place. It's the first and ONLY time I've seen any sort of fiction where every character mattered. Even if it was a small role it still added something to the over all story, it was still memorable despite my stupid Swiss cheese brain. I keep watching Transformers hoping for something better. I don't think it's ever gotten worse... except for Armada and the Bayverse those are freaking terrible trash fires... but most of the other stuff has just been good... Nothing GREAT nothing I absolutely LOVE because it did something new that's been missing before, just OK, they're mildly enjoyable kids shows. But I really want more Transformers cartoons that strive to be more than that.

Children's media in general, the 90's was a great era where kids shows were actually trying to be more than just generic kids shows, that's why so many people still love them as adults. Back in the 80's they didn't really care and for some reason by the time Armada was being made we had returned back to they don't really care. I want people to put the same amount of care and effort into children's shows that they would put into shows aimed at adults. I don't mean adult humor and references to sex still keep it age appropriate just don't totally ignore previously established continuity just because you think your audience are too stupid to notice. And given the current trend of shorter runs... stop shortening the run time just cause you think kids are too stupid to pay attention for more than 5 minutes. Just in general if you treat your audience like idiots it's going to hurt the quality of the show you're trying to make. Part of the reason Beast Wars was so good is because they treated it like Shakespeare... some times literally having actual lines from Hamlet in the show that I never even understood as a kid. They didn't dumb things down for the audience they made it worth rewatching as an adult.

I think Rescue Bots also is really good at not dumbing things down for their audience and they have a much younger audience than other Transformers shows. A lot of Preschool shows annoy the crap out of me with how they just give kids the answer rather than giving them a chance to figure it out themselves... and yet still insert painfully long pauses where the kids are suppose to figure things out despite them not even needing the pause because they're literally given the answer. Freaking hate Blues Clues and Dora the Explorer. They treat the audience like they're not even capable of learning. Rescue Bots I actually enjoy watching even though I'm WAY too old for it. But I do still wish they would give the supporting cast more to do. It's really weird that I like the supporting cast more than the main cast.

 

After all these years we never gotten a Cybertron playset to display our figures with.

I am blown away we are finally getting the Titan Class Ark.

 

I swear to fucking God, we need more world building on Cybertron.

Also, I want Cybertronian culture to seem unique. I want it to feel like an actual race of robots and not GIANT METAL FUCKING HUMANS, HASBRO.

I guess there's only one studio who can do that now....

 

I don't mind them having some resemblance to humans and being a bit close to us, but I know that when you have TFs doing... "necessities" to put it politely, you crossed the line, because that, at least for me, is just wrong:


^This is still cringe inducing to this day.

So IMO, if people want to go with giving Cybertronians human traits, it's fine by me, but no "necessities", please. That is just going too far.  

 

Took the words right outta my mouth.

 

Not enough G1 Masterpiece. My wallet is happy though.

 

TAKARA WHERE IS MY MP DESZARAS?

 

The fans that complain about the over reliance of G1 but know fully well that's the bread n butter of the franchise.

 

It is, but you can't rely too much on it. A good amount of G1 with a good amount of new stuff feels the same while feeling fun and unique. That's when Transformers is at its best. It's why I want Hasbro to hire Studio TRIGGER to make a TF anime(You have no reason not to, Hasbro). Check this thread out:
Studio Trigger is really fond of Transformers

 

I'm gonna have to disagree with this. Ignoring the mess behind Tigerhawk's development, I'd still say even Beast Wars had one character that got the short end of the character development stick.

Scorponok appeared in all but two episodes of the twenty six in season 1 before he was killed off, but I don't feel like he left much of an impact. He had little personality besides being loyal and dumb, and even then his intelligence fluctuated between episodes. The closest thing he got to a spotlight episode was Gorilla Warfare, and even that wasn't really focusing on him. Heck, he was chosen to get killed off because there was nothing to miss if they did. The way had to be cleared for new toys, and he was the prime candidate for removal. Beast Wars may have well developed it's characters, but I wouldn't say it developed them all.