As if in ideas that seemed to be really bad on paper but were executed so well that you wouldn't believe that it was a bad idea in the first place and then of course ideas that seemed to have potential but got totally wasted. Whether on toyline, storyline or characters or anything. Just thought it'd be some nice thought for food.

 

Energon Powerlinx, enough said.

 

I second that!

 

The most powerful energy source in the universe being childrens' belief in goodness (or something along those lines).
I like RID and all but seriously what the hell?

Last few episodes are among my favourite in the series though.

 

Ooh, I think I'd have to vote for Ratbat as Decepticon leader in the Marvel Comics. You hear that as a concept, and it's like "Whu-fuh? But... he's a cassette! What the hell? How does that work? Is Soundwave taking orders from one of the guys he keeps in his chest?!" But in practise, it was one of Budiansky's master-strokes on the series, and worked remarkably well. Ratbat was one of the most (if not THE most) effective Decepticon leaders in the series.

 

Mini-cons. On paper it sounded awesome, different mini-cons unlocking different powers. In practice it meant you plugged a mini-con in and a missile launcher flipped into place. Very disappointing.

 

Concepts that were bad that were executed brilliantly? Here's one.

Beast modes.

When I first heard of TFs turning into gorillias and cats and whatnot, i was pretty much aghast.. transformers are supposed to be trucks and jets. Horrible, horrible idea.

Then I actually had the pleasure of watching Beast Wars, and it goes without saying how fantastic the execution of the idea was. From a design/toy standpoint, I still prefer them turning into vehicles, but BW's still the gold standard for execution of storyline.

Good ideas executed badly? Transformers Universe. The first time around. Great concept.. expand the rosters, give interesting characters spotlights, good way to reuse some molds.. except for the horrible choices of color, character and distribution.

Here's hoping that version 2.0 fixes all that.

 

Not to mention of course a plausible explanation on it at the first place, with the synth-organic parts protecting them from the energon fields and such.

 

See, that never worked for me. That always made about as much sense as a human having to wear a radiation suit because they're walking through a supermarket.

 

Megatron turning into a batmobile.

His toy is still awesome no matter how un-Megatronish.

 

Beast Wars: lets step away from the base idea of robots turning into regular machines and say that somehow they can go from metal skin to fur!

 

More like a human having to wear overalls if they're wading through knee-deep fertilizer on a farm, or having to wear protective ear coverings/noseplugs because the freezers keeping the supermarket food fresh are running at ten zillion percent capacity, roaring the motors while pumping ozone and burning PCB smoke into the air.

 

Pretenders.....

Oh wait...  

 

Actually, I thought Pretenders worked quite well in Masterforce. Not so great in Marvel Comics. MF, great idea, but the figures weren't over the top, with the exception of Metalhawk.  

 

Animated. The show.  

 

bad on paper:

For the movie, I thought taking away Bumblebee's ability to speak was the worst cheezy idea they could have come up with. To me it took away any chance of developing his character. As it turned out it was fantastic and I was sort of shocked.... because I was so sure I was right about it being such a bad idea.

An animated series and toy line that is simplified and very cartoony. The very idea of a TF series done in the style of Teen Titians seemed like a bad move. It would have been at any time, but after a live action movie with so much detail it was doubly bad. Then there was word that the small cast of Autobots would be fighting humans a lot of the time... and it just sounded horrible. Yet, after seeing the live action film I had a much more open mind to ideas that sound bad and actually almost assumed that Animated would be fantastic..... and it turned out to be just that.

 

Agreed. As a concept it's quite good, but when it was executed, it was extremely poor. Ruined what could have been some really great TF figures.

 

How? Energon is the TF equivalent of food. It's not the equivalent of freezers.

 

this....masterforce is what made me fall in love with the pretenders and i want a f'in metalhawk damnit  

 

this man speaks the truth....the concept of animated originally sounded horriible but it turned out to be the greatest thing since beast wars