What do you all think and how long the series could have gone for and how come ?

 

Of course it would have gone on, and it probably would have lasted as long as it did in reality. The sole reason character were killed in the Movie is due to Hasbro not considering the attachments kids made to their favorite characters.

 

Why do you think it would have lasted the same amount of time ?

 

Because the popularity of the franchise was waning. That's why the show was cancelled. I don't think Optimus and Megatron being around for the post-movie season would've changed that. Most kids' franchises, especially ones based on particular toy lines, have limited lifespans before they need to be reinvented or revitalized.

 

So why did the Gi. Joe series get a sequel then ?

 

Limited lifespan doesn't mean the same lifespan. GI Joe toys sold better for longer before they too petered out. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ran for like 6 or 7 seasons, longer than basically anything else from that era. But it too eventually petered out and the show reaper came for it like it does for everything.

It also helped the GI Joe side of things that a) Hasbro wouldn't have had to make any decisions about that series with consideration for another company like they do with Takara and the Transformers and b) the story goes that Hasbro only did the sequel because DIC came to them and offered them a tremendously cheap deal to make the sequel. They may not have gotten that same option with the Transformers.

 

W

What did they have to consider to do with Takara with the Transformers ?

 

Well, for Transformers Hasbro basically brought in a bunch of different toys and then put them all together into one cartoon. Most of the toys were from Takara, and so Hasbro had to take their opinions into account. The most famous example is Jetfire, whose toy was a Macross Valkyrie. In the US of the time, Macross wasn't released and so selling that toy in Transformers packaging wasn't a problem. But in Japan, Valkyries were still being sold. Takara would understandably not want to help advertise a competitor's toy, so in Japan Jetfire's episodes got shifted around.

 

Was not G.I Joe a real American hero made by Toei Animation.

 

Correct, Toei animated it, but what does that have to do with what Grun was talking about?

 

Did that mean the choices were effect with that as well ?

 

For G.I.Joe, that is completely Hasbro's property so they don't have to consult the way they did with Transformers (which was part owned by Takara).

Toei and other Japanese companies did a lot of work for US cartoons of that era, including things like The Real Ghostbusters or Silverhawks.

 

So if the Transformers series would have gone on the same amount of time regardless was there any point on bringing Back Optimus prime ?

 

Takara co-owns the brand. It was largely created originally with their toys and they have final say over how the brand is used in Japan and other parts of Asia that are under their umbrella. But they also do have input (if not always final say) on larger decisions that effect the brand as a whole. To this day they are still often at least partially responsible for the design and creation of new toys and have shared input on some of the TV series if they were meant primarily for both markets (most notably the Unicron Trilogy. In spite of being a Japanese production Hasbro was involved in the planning and production of those series to some extent because it was always intended that they would air on both sides of the Pacific.)

I would imagine that Takara's presence helps them work with Japanese animation studios as well because they would have a closer relationship and more familiarity with how the Japanese business world works.

The show was visually created by Toei, just like Transformers (at least until they started having some of the episodes made by other studios like AKOM) but that was just a client being paid to do a job. Hasbro agreed to pay Toei however much money to animate scripts that they got from writers they also paid for separately from Toei. But that's what their relationship is. It's not the same thing as Takara having actual ownership over part of the brand.

Was there any point? Probably not. It was the kind of decision that TV shows sometimes make (adding or bringing back characters on a show that has declining ratings in an attempt to boost its popularity) but it doesn't always make a difference. And for a show like The Transformers where the actual point of the show is to advertise the toys it probably has even less impact because the reasons kids would stop wanting the toys will not necessarily be tied to whether or not they watch the TV show or like the characters on it. It's going to be the original audience aging out of the range where the toys interest them, younger kids not getting into the franchise because something else is popular to them, other things taking away attention and popularity (like video games. A lot of kids in the late 80s would've had their interest diverted to the revived market for home video game consoles like the NES), and a bunch of other things.

It's a complicated situation that had a lot of factors playing into it. Almost no one thing would've been enough to change what happened. Maybe they get the full 4th season that was planned before the series was cancelled. Maybe they choose to adopt and dub the Headmasters anime as a cost-saving measure like the DIC-made GI Joe show later on. It's hard to say for sure. But it seems unlikely.

For one thing Hasbro had already given more and more episodes of Transformers to AKOM for animation because AKOM was less expensive than Toei for animating the show (and you could tell by the quality of work they did). By the end of the series they were already trying to save more money on that show. GI Joe, on other hand, was animated entirely by Toei. The shift to AKOM for animation was their GI-Joe-to-DIC cost-cutting measure. More than half of the last season, plus the Rebirth "season 4/series finale" were AKOM's work (16 of 30 S3 episodes, plus all 3 Rebirth ones). It didn't save the series from Hasbro's decision to pull the plug during the planning stages of season 4, turning The Rebirth from a season premiere into a 5-part finale. Then a 3-part finale to save even more money. That's a pretty strong indication that the money just didn't add up for them to continue no matter what was happening.

 

The Ghost of the death of Optimus Prime(and everyone else) obviously would not haunt the franchise.

 

Just my personal opinion. Even if Optimus, Ironhide, Prowl, etc didn't die, the brand probably still dies off around the Spring of 89.

 

Even if they did not discontinue the toys and not have them killed off in the movie ?

 

Now you're getting into a different thing. Because the characters died as a result of the toys being discontinued, not the other way around. And the toys were discontinued because they'd been sold for the last 2 years and by that point most people that were into Transformers likely already had those characters if they wanted them/could get them. Hasbro made the decision to discontinue those figures independent of the movie's script. They were getting discontinued no matter what. It was just that the script writers hit on the idea of "oh, if you're getting rid of them then why don't we kill those characters to narratively make way for the new ones that are coming?" without knowing that people would react as badly as they did. Maybe if you had a time machine and showed the reaction to the writers in 1985 you could have them find a way to shuffle out Optimus and Megatron and the others without brutally murdering them on screen, but you're not going to convince toy executives that the figures that are already selling less well than they did a year ago need to be kept around for them to potentially lose money on.

All product lines need to refresh regularly. They can't just keep Optimus and company on the shelves forever because even if they do continue to see sales, it will be diminishing returns to the point that it's no longer worth it.

 

Alright, several people have given answers, and yet it seems none of them have stuck, or none of them were satisfactory. What kind of answer exactly are you looking for?

 

The answer he's looking for is one too horrifying for all of us to comprehend and give to him.