Come on people, not the thread for arguing about minor hyperbole, let's just respect the old gent. Rest In Peace Mr. Orenstein, and thank you for the contribution you made to make all of this happen.

 

Rest in Peace, thank you for bringing us the giant alien robots we all know and love. Thank you, Mr Orenstein, rest in peace.

 

May his soul rest in peace....Till all are one!

 

Till all are one! ✨ 

 

R.I.P. He's now one with the Matrix.

 

R.I.P. Mr. Orenstein, thank you for your passion and for helping create the Transformers franchise.

 

My sympathy to his family and friends.
Rest in peace, Mr Orenstein. Your legacy moved the hearts of millions.

 

If this isn't the thread for arguing about the extent of his contributions, which is it?

The thing is that nobody is denying that he did lead an amazing and fascinating life full of stories that have their own stories. It's just that whenever the media have been reporting on the man in the past two decades, instead of focusing on the gajillion other things he did, they often inflated the one thing where he was only one of many, many contributors to the whole thing and claimed that he did it all by himself somehow. And why? Because Transformers is a well-known brand these days and means attention.

Orenstein himself never really seemed to overplay his contribution. It often seemed more like he was willing to talk about all the various things he had done, the reporter found out that he was involved in the creation of Transformers, and then made that the focus of the story even though Orenstein had never intended that. If anything, it's disrespectful to the man to reduce him to this one aspect when he did so much more.

 

Baruch Dayan Emet, respectfully.

He certainly lived a very interesting life. Even if his contribution to this franchise is easily downplayed (Though inventing the rubsign is nothing that small), Johnny Lightning Cars and the Poker table cam sure aren't, along with his solutions to help survive the holocaust.

Personally I see this as little more then the "True Fan" argument in another guise. Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile or the assembly line, but he was the first to bring them together and revolutionized the industry for it. I'm a teacher, so if one day someone mourns my death and says I taught them a valuable life lesson, should it be downplayed as part of my job and that someone else could've done that too? In fact perhaps omitting trust fund babies, doesn't everyone do things in pursuit of gain?

Regardless, saying that realizing there's potential in a toy isn't just doing their job either. Remember store purchasers, whose entire job is picking popular toys to stock unanimously passed on Barbie that year at Toy Fair. Mattel passed on Star Wars as a franchise that wouldn't make Mattel any money to make toys from. The industry is full of people who didn't see the future in brands that later shaped American culture. Orenstein, who owned toy companies in the past, did, with shape changing robots and recognized that they shouldn't just be imported, but rebranded and repackaged. Then, with all the other types of robot changing products came up with the rubsign, a gimmick still on current Transformers (Selects Galvatron).

 

Till all are one! ✨ 

 

RIP Henry. I didn't really know about you until the news popped up on the TFW2005 home page, but having read your TFWiki article, you had a hell of a life! 100 patents? I'd love to just get one on my resume  

Thank you for your contribution to The Transformers  

 

 

98 years is a pretty damn good run, thanks for everything.

 

RIP

 

RIP Mr. Orenstein. Had he not initially pitched the Transforming toy idea to Hasbro, things would have turned out a lot differently. I think his contribution was a great one.

 

May he Rest In Peace! We may not have known his name, but he helped create our childhood in the 80s and beyond!

 

It all starts with someone seeing the opportunity for success, which Mr. Orenstein did.

 

RIP to the one who made all of our childhood dreams come true.;(

 

RIP

 

I came to pay my respects as well. RIP to the one man who made so many fans dreams come true with TFs. Without him, TFs would cease to exist. May God rest his soul and may we all thank him for what he gave us. Til all are one.. 

 

Till all are one! ✨