What drew you to Transformers?

Was it anything gender-specific, like admiration for the strong male or female heroes in the saga?

Or is it simply a gender-neutral thing, because you can enjoy transforming mecha wars no matter what gender you are?

 

Gender-neutral reasons for me, the different lore the writers come up with is what drew me in along with interesting and entertaining characters.

 

Gender neutral. I didn't even know about female characters until later on. I just got into transformers because the characters were interesting and also because giant fricking robots fighting other giant fricking robots is cool  

 

Gender neutral. I've just always found robots really interesting for some reason.

As a child, I remember watching and really liking the "G2" cartoon, and I absolutely loved Beast Wars and asked for figures from it(my mother really liked the BW cartoon as well). I think as a child the concept of robots with genders was a little strange to me, but it didn't really matter much to me.

 

How many guys do you think got into Transformers for 'gender-specific' reasons? Or would you automatically assume their reasons had nothing to do with gender and not ask such questions? And what about the LGBTQ fans?

We're all giant robot fans here. Period. Geez.  

--Moony

 

Where and when I grew up, most boys enjoyed Transformers and most girls liked She-Ra for being a strong female warrior.

Times have changed for the better, now girls can enjoy Transformers and boys can enjoy My Little Pony. I was just curious about what attracted girls to TF, if it was anything specific.

 

Thread won right here!

 

I'm still in love with she-ra and the like. Red Sonja is a childhood hero of mine. Strong beautiful women sexiness aside, are awesome! Like my wife. She's my fucking heroine. Love the woman and man as equals side by side ruling the universe damn it

 

Before you ask gender specific questions about something that is NOT gender specific, ask yourself 'Would I ask a <opposite gender from the question> the same question?' And if the answer is 'no', then realize you are probably making sexist assumptions about the people you're asking the question of. Just because you didn't see girls that liked TF (or boys that liked MLP) in your area doesn't mean they didn't exist, it just means you didn't know them or they didn't trust you enough to tell you.

--Moony

 

I grew up watching the original cartoon and playing with my cousins and neighbors toys.

I was annoyed by the beastformers and was excited to see the live action movie... up until I actually saw it and was mortified.

I wasn't impressed with Animated, I like Prime and RiD.

The first TF that I ever bought for myself was FoC Ratbat. I now have a small, growing collection.

 

I do rather like/appreciate it when there is more women presence in the series even if it's not the original/sole draw.

 

What drew me in was the 2007 Transformers Burger King commercial. I was amused by Optimus ordering the Whopper and I was like "who the heck even is that?" When it was revealed that they were advertising the movie Transformers I was like "WHA?! that movie with the scary alien-looking things? there are good robots, too?? oh snap I gotta see it now."

The rest was history.

AndnowI'mattractedtogiantrobotswtf

 

I loved She-ra as a kid. I used to go over to my cousin's house and watch that all the time. Maybe it's due to me having a bunch of sisters and a bunch of women cousins all near my age that I never got the whole "gender specific" stuff. I liked what my friends liked. When my cousin and I would team we'd have the autobots join forces with Barbie and the Turtles.

 

She-ra was better than He-Man as a show anyway ^^

 

I saw Beast Wars on TV, and I thought the graphics were sooo coool!!! And they were animals, then the animals turned into robots and I was like, omg this is everything I need in my life. And I made my mom take me to Toys R Us, because I needed all the things. And my mom got me cheetor and primal, and they were out of stock on Dinobot.

I'm going to answer for my baby girl too, just in case. She has a lot of toys, and really enjoys her Rescue Bots Blades. She sits and transforms it back and forth. I'm sure it's not a gender specific thing, because Blades isn't pink with purple frills? I'm not sure what you meant by gender specific. She really loves Optimus's voice. She gets excited when she hears him. I play clips on youtube, she flails her little arms. She has a toy Optimus that says movie phrases and she presses the button over and over.

 

I think it's a valid question. The marketing skews heavily (and deliberately) male, as does the "gender" of most of the characters. Us dudes may not consciously be into Transformers for "gender-specific" reasons, but the fact remains that we're being catered to. There's a lot of discussion going on these days about representation in media and how important it is to a lot of people when they want to connect with storytelling in popular media. Transformers is not so hot in terms of gender representation, so it's interesting to know why someone outside the target demographic finds it compelling. I'd be just as interested to know how guys get into MLP, Strawberry Shortcake, or Jem and the Holograms.

 

i love me some She-ra. I love me my super heroines.

I've always advocated for more female Cybertronian characters and I wish we have a decent female Cybertronian in Bay's live-action movies.

 

I watched Jem and the Holograms. I liked the music that was played during the show.