Going back from G1 through as of right now (Bumblebee movie, Siege toy line, Cyberverse toon) Anything is fair game, from characterization to how the toys are made. Anything that has a TF stamp on it.

Here are some of mine, in no particular order

Optimus Prime with a mouth.
It may be something that to some is not that big a deal, but to me, other than Optimus being a truck (more on that below) part of his iconic look was the mouthplate.

Optimus Prime not a semi-truck
And not just any semi-truck, he's a flat nose semi-truck. He's not a fire engine, that's Inferno. He's not some flying bullet train. He's not a lion. im not saying dont have fun and try alternate takes, just dont make it part of any official cannon.

Beast Wars.
Sorry to those who love BW, I'm not one of them, and here's why: even though there was precedent for animal-themed TFs with the Dinobots, Predacons, Insecticons, heck even from day one Ravage and Laserbeak, they still made them out to look like robotic animals, y'know your basic Mecha-Godzilla-esque animal robot. So when Beast Wars came out and made them look like the actual animal, skin and all, i just couldnt get over that, not to mention despite it being new at the time, the 3D animation even then i thought sucked.

TF Armada, Energon cartoon
if G1 was "kid friendly", then these were new born friendly. Part of why i could never really get into some anime is the over reliance on having the kid lead or kid sidekick, and i get why they do it, but these took it to another level.

Not committing to Rodimus Prime
Next to Optimus, Rodimus is my second favorite TF character. And i had no problem whatsoever having RP replace OP after the 86 movie. But once the decision was made to bring back OP my disappointment in how RP has been treated since is probably equal to those who hate and blame him for OP's death

 

Fire Convoy was the fire engine. Lio Convoy was the lion. Neither are G1 Optimus Prime, who has had some different alternate modes himself - in G2, he was a car and an oil tanker while in Titans Return, he was a oil tanker / jet.

 

I wouldn't say any changes are inherently bad for a particular incarnation, but I tend to dislike ones that have a rippling effect. Especially the ones that just don't seem to go away.

I agree with most of yours. Especially Optimus' mouth. I don't hate that idea in-theory, but I feel like it's been used way too much. It seems like they just can't put that genie back in the bottle. There are plenty of other Transformers that lack mouths (in pretty much every continuity), I'm not sure why Optimus needs to have one.

I also don't like the recent trend of Megatron being a jet/alien spaceship. I'd prefer Starscream be the one with a jet mode, and Megatron can be a tank (so Starscream is the air commander).

Soundwave still doesn't really work for me as anything other than a tape deck. I particularly dislike the changes they made to the Prime incarnation of the character.

I guess I'd also say Windblade as a main cast member. Again, it's not bad for a single series, but it's starting to happen in pretty much every story. At this point it's starting to get old. Maybe if she were more of a beloved character, but the general consensus on her presence seems to be less than positive.

 

Bumblebee being a sportscar (specifically a camaro) really annoys me. Namely because his original design with a roof chest is more unique than a generic car nose chest like so many other Autobots (Prowl/Bluestreak/Smokescreen, Jazz, Skids, etc.). This also tends to impact Cliffjumper in more modern takes because guess who nine times out of ten is a straight Bumblebee repaint - even the WFC version I have in my Neo-G1 classics lineup (because no fucking way am I paying secondhand prices for a Classics 2006 or Alterenity Cliffjumper) has a hood/nose chest instead of a roof chest, only reason he's even there is because he at least has a unique headsculpt. The whole 'can't talk' thing also needs to just get abandoned by this point, it stopped being cute way back and while the latest film manages to make it work again, as a gimmick it's long since outlived any value.

 

Figures classes keep shrinking--

Example: A ''leader class" 10 years ago is barely a "voyager class" now.

 

Megatron as a Spartacus knockoff rebelling against a corrupt Autobot caste system. I don't care for how it creates sympathy for the Decepticon cause, especially in continuities where thye've wiped out numerous planets (IDW, I'm looking at you).

Similarly, the idea of an oppressive Autobot caste system in the first place. It gets tiring seeing a piece of media showing undue sympathy for the villainous point of view while trying to drag the heroic one into the mud.

 

Megatron seems to have forgotten his glory days as an egomaniacal purple dinosaur and prattles around as some callous silver warmonger.



:I

 

Bumblebee as a sports car and not talking.

Windblade in every part of media since her inception.

Using stickers on toys again, although this seems to have been rectified.

Bringing relationships into the IDW comics.

Beast Wars. After millions of years of the Autobots and Decepticons living and existing they suddenly go extinct after 300 years? No.

 

the mouth thing...
the g1 bots should just have the g1 earth forms...and whatever was/is decided for their cybertronian forms (the games were good with this).
Making the transformers a little too organic...we already have the bipedal form...the robo pecs are ok, robo abs. The whole male/female dynamic.
Of course, the "Japanese" storylines made them even more organic and anthropomorphized, it was weird and janky, although still enjoyable I didn't really like that aspect of it.

 

The biggest one I didn't like was making the maximalist morph instead of transforming for Beast Machines. I agree about the Optimus mouth plate thing; although that bothers me most when it's his only option. When he has a retractable faceplate like Animated and Cybertron it doesn't bother me.

 

The matrix of leadership picking the next Space Pope. Perhaps our Good Guys have heard of a little thing called Democracy?

Get rid of Stoic Prime while we're at it. Instead of a matrix, have a toaster with a little sign saying "You must have this much emotional range to lead" on it.

Similarly, Prime should either be a honorific akin to knighthood or a rank like in Animated. It shouldn't really be a lineage of rulers if Optimus is one and definitely shouldn't be demigods.

Finally on the connected subject, no Space Gods should ever be 100 percent proven to exist. Nothing wrong with transformers being religious or spiritual but they exist in the same world as real human religions and should have the same amount of faith and doubt.

Ok, I'm done. I have some major problems with the shadow of the matrix over the franchise. More general dislikes to follow

Sports car Bumblebee seems to be dying a quiet death, but I remember a time in Prime where I was feeling like everyone was going to be a badass warrior who transforms into a sellable concept vehicle. Cute awkward Bee for the win.

After the mess IDW became, step back on Shockwave as the resident Decepticon mad scientist. There are plenty of other people for that role who hopefully won't be so ridiculous.

Prowl the Prick. Between him and Cyclops, I feel like the idea someone can be both logical and a generally nice guy is a major newsflash in the comics industry. People can still have a good reason to dislike him, but no more postwar war crimes at least please?

Finally, I echo Honorbound relating to faction morality. IDW history kind of looks like shattered glass until you realize the Decepticons are still the ones blowing up planets. You can have honorable Decepticons and despicable Autobots, but they should be the exceptions who prove the rule. Megatron's motto is "Peace through Tyranny" for crying out loud. Does that sound like a freedom fighter to you?

 

Transformers can scan anything at anytime and change their forms every second. Hate that. Why can't bumblebee just scan megatrons tank form and attack him back that way. Takes away from their car forms if they can just change it at will. Why not scan a jet form and chase after them if they are flying away? Hate that change.

 

Hate Optimus with a mouth SO MUCH

 

Megatron as something other than a gun. The "submarine mode" workaround has been a success for former gun-mode-having guys like Shockwave and Sixshot. It's Megatron's turn to get back to the mode that made him so unique.

 

"There are no female transformers"/"We need to have complex explainations for why some robots appear human to these aliens called 'humans'."

Just have them be female or male. No big deal made.

 

Beast Wars is my favorite series but I absolutely hate this version of Cheetor from season 3.



I actually like Beast Machines but Optimus should be easily recognizable. A casual fan should be able to look at him and instantly know who it is. You can't do that with this thing, a casual fan would have no clue who the hell this is.

I'm using him as an example because he's by far the worst one but most of the Maximals designs in this series are terrible and seem more like downgrades than upgrades... Except for Cheetor who actually still looks better than the above mentioned Cheetor.

Transformers Armada... Hey here's an idea, lets take a great cast, the same actors who worked on Beast Wars and Beast Machines and put them in a different continuity with writers and directors who hate Transformers... I can tell the actors have a passion for what they do, even when they have shit to work with they still put their all into this but the writing just wasn't there and no one other than the actors seemed to care. Garry Chalk as Optimus Primal, awesome, love him, even when his voice is coming out of that terrible BM design. Garry Chalk as Optimus Prime... why are you constantly calling everyone by the wrong name, why do your colors randomly change, why are you trying to continue war while Megatron is the one trying to end it? There are so many problems with the series I'd rather pretend it doesn't exist. The designs are actually really good but the story and characters are terrible.

Micheal Bay... again stop hiring people who hate Transformers to work on Transformers. At least Optimus looks better than Beast Machines but the transformations do not need to be so overly complex, in fact the overly complex designs look physically impossible to transform. I freaking hate these things.

Animated... I actually like the series, I like the characters, but the overly exaggerated cartoony animation style I could do without. I would really like to see a lot of these designs redone without the Animated proportions. Also I get what they were going for with a younger Optimus but I don't think David Kaye really works as Optimus... He's a much better Megatron.

RID2015 Decepticons... I know there were characters like this in G1 too such as Skylynx and Trypticon but I freaking hate transformers who don't have proper robot modes. I wouldn't mind them having both beast and vehicle modes if they were triple changers that included a proper robot mode on top of that. I think a better change would of been to update those G1 guys who don't have proper robot modes and give them actual robot modes. If Grimlock can transform into a robot then why can't Trypticon, they're both T-Rexes. It makes no sense that for Grimlock the T-Rex is an alternate beast mode but for Trypticon the same beast mode is his robot mode.

 

Windblade being forced into every form of media, mainly.

The mute gimmick with Bumblebee, I'm not saying it could never work or be endearing, I just think that particular quirk / disability would serve other characters much better than him. It way overstayed its welcome in the films, Prime's version of it was a bit less annoying, but it would've been better if he was just able to speak.

Personally, as much as I enjoy hearing the Sunbow-based voice for Soundwave, I really prefer when he speaks 'normally'. He can still have a cool, vocoded baritone while not speaking 100% robotic. I loved Prime Soundwave, he was easily one of the best characters in that show, but when he finally talks it's in his horrible Dr. Claw movie voice, and he just paraphrases a line that only really made sense in the context of the first movie. Cute, but they could've done something more interesting / original.

One huge one that comes to mind is the flanderization of Starscream over the years, for those unaware, when a character is flanderized it means when a single, often minor trait becomes their sole defining trait. For him it would be cowardice or incompetence. His tech spec describes someone incredibly dangerous, intelligent and in command of the aerial warriors of the Decepticons, he's second-in-command for a reason. It also describes that he's good at what he does, but will overestimate himself. But generally most writers take that to mean he's always fucking things up, when he should be a Machiavellian sociopath who is discreetly vying for leadership. That doesn't mean he can never fuck up, but he should be far more of a threat than he's been portrayed as.

How The Liege Maximo was turned into a painfully boring and idiotic clone of Loki from Marvel. Similarly how The Fallen has been less menacing each time he's brought back, it's such a relief to see Flame Toys making a newer figure of his best portrayal. I truly wish Simon Furman got to create his fully fledged story about the 13, he would have certainly done them justice, at least more than Aligned or IDW did.

 

- that's the big one for me. I feel that if they must handle things like that there should at least be some sort of cost to reformatting. It's too damn easy and just lazy writing. The idea that they can just reformat on a whim to impress some teenagers, or because 'its upgrade time'. It undermines the whole concept and makes it into something else. 'Transmorphers' might be a more fitting term.

 

I'll be perfectly honest in that beyond the raw G1 flavor, Megatron having a gun mode is entirely useless since he can't really even fire himself and more often than not he relied on his traitorous second in command to use him. And how much more powerful WAS he as a gun compared to robot mode when the gun's scope translated into a fusion canon that could hook up to a black hole?

I feel that a tank is very much keeping in line with the 'gun' mode (since what are tanks but rediculously huge guns) while also embodying the kind of monster Megatron should be - no matter what you put in front of him short of a freakin' ocean, he can not be stopped. Any obstacle, any challenge he will destroy with sheer brute strength and firepower. And all the ocean will do is slow him down simply by the reality of water density while he walks along the ocean floor (or simply flies over it if he has that ability).

I agree with you about Windblade being basically the new Bumblebee in terms of uncreativve copy-paste overexposure, just to get that out of the way.

But OH MY GOD I can not agree enough about how badly the Thirteen got fucked up. Until Aligned came about, The Thirteen being a slow-burn development was fantastic because it allowed the development of each individual member as standalone characters, while affording mystery about the rest.

And then Hasbro decided to rush everything and made that bullshit Covenant of Primus where they just took the existing stuff, made up some of the most idiotic filler characters who were hardly more than just ideas given form and name, and topped it all off with Prime literally becoming Robot Jesus as the Thirteenth OG Prime incarnated. It was made even funnier/depressing when they flanderized The Fallen into becoming evil not because of temptation of power from Unicron, but because of some bullshit love triangle nonsense which ended up with Solus Prime becoming a giant hole in Cybertron that farted out Sparks. I think the only two ideas that the Covenant/Aligned introduced that weren't inherently dumb as shit were Alpha Trion being a Thirteen (people basically considered him one by that point anyway given his role over the years) and The Fallen originally being named Megatronus (since Gladiator D-16 naming himself after the equivalent of the Cybertronian Judas is actually appropriate - the design of Fallen in the Covenant is total ass though and he isn't even on fire!). Even the Ask Vector Prime thing implied how dumb the Covenant was when it essentially made it potentially canon that Alchemist Prime is in fact the true Maccaddam who operates the Old Oil Houses (which is my personal head cannon as well because it would take the power of a demigod to make a place where Bots and Cons wouldn't kill each other on sight but instead just get drunk out of their minds together), which makes a lot more sense.

Honestly, if/when the next franchise reboot happens and we can abandon aligned once and for all, I hope they let the Covenant stuff get nixed and allow people to organically develop the Thirteen properly. No Solus Prime, no love triangles, and certainly not Optimus "Jesus" Prime.

 

Doritoscream-This is such a hideous design. What was Bay thinking?

Samurai Wheeljack-He never needed to be a samurai to kick ass.

Optimus the Face Stealer-I understand he's at war and that he will kill. But having him steal Koh's shtick was dumb and completely outta character.

The real Witwickys-Sparkplug, Spike, Carly and Danny= Good friends and allies. Sam Witwicky is an obnoxious, ungrateful, uncaring shithead who needed an attitude check and was friend to no one.

Acid Storm being a girl-That was a dumb, nonsensical move, when they coulda brought in plenty of kick ass girl Decepticons.

And I grant thee, Chins of Power-Horrible design. Do they use those things to crush organics like falling tetris blocks? Do they swing another Chinformer around and tell them to aim for the optics? Do they use those puppies for pick-axes?

Bee bop a loo bop-No. More. Beeplebee. No. More. Silent. Bee. No. More. Radio. Bee! NO!! Its annoying and has worn out its welcome. I come from a time where a tf could have their body parts scattered to the 4 winds, be put back together again and still live. These are a highly technologically advanced people. They can fix his bloody voice box.