What was your reaction when you sat in that seat in the theater in August 1986, and you all waited to see your favorite Transformers on the big screen, and we all saw that giant planet (Unicron) and the names of the actors of the new Transformers. What was your reaction when you saw the new names in the introduction at the beginning like Galvatron, Kup, Unicron, Blurr, Hot Rod, Ultra Magnus, Arcee, Kup? Did you knew at the time that some of the season 1and 2 Autobots and Decepticons were gonna die? Or you simply thought "Oh more Autobots to help Optimus defeat the Decepticons". or "New Decepticons to help Megatron defeat the Autobots". Thanks
As far as Unicron goes, it was like "Wow, this big planet just ate up a much smaller planet for no reason! How's anyone going to beat that?" With the new Autobots, I didn't make too much of it initially. I kind of waited for the established bots to help get them known as Autobot heroes as well. When the established Autobots were killed off one by one leaving very few of them around by movie's end (fewer by season 3's start), I wasn't left with a lot of want to continue watching the series. I saw the new bots as not nearly enough to sustain interest. New Decepticons hardly did much for me either. Having just watched a slew of favorites get blown away, it wasn't that surprising even at 6 years old to watch them go all new for the bad guys either. My brother bought a Galvatron that Christmas, but overall interest kind of died in Transformers at that time along with most everything that made it popular enough to get to that point (Transformers: The Movie). I tried to believe like everyone else that Transformers: The Movie was a positive and not a negative for years. It damn near killed Transformers entirely at that point. By the next year they made the last G1 episodes they were going to make and the toyline dwindled down considerably into 1991/1992. It wasn't until Beast Wars started that this downward trend halted...10 years later.
My biggest surprise was Orson Wells voicing a cartoon movie until Optimus was murdered. Then I was like WTH are they doing?!
Well we did all know most of the characters going in from the toyline. Then the commercials showed Arcee, gave a taste of the music, and hinted at Prime dieing. Did I expect all the dieing? F no. Loved all the new characters, infact I was looking forward to them. One of my favorite things about TFs back then was getting new characters all the time. Had no idea how any of it would play out..... like Galvatron from Megatron, or that Hot Rod became Rodimus Prime. With Hot Rod, as the movie went on it was pretty obvious how it was going to end...... but that didn't make it any less awesome. I did know about Unicron transforming because of some flier (or something) I got in the mail promoting the movie. Loved everything about the experience.... it was beyond imagination.
I'm with Repainted on this one. The new characters had just barely hit store shelves. They hadn't been on television yet, so they weren't exactly flying off the shelves. Hasbro really miscalculated with the toy line. What they didn't seem to realize is that a large appeal of the toys was that you could re-create their television exploits at home. Most kids seemed to have at least one Decepticon and one Autobot toy (Optimus and Soundwave here) so you could recreate battles at home. But suddenly, your toys weren't part of the story anymore so you couldn't have your own versions of the television adventures. In hindsight, it would have been wiser to slowly phase out the line rather than just throw out most of the favorites and start over. While in hindsight it's fairly predictable that the giant mechanical being in a movie about transformable mechanical beings would himself be able to change form, I did not expect Unicron's transformation. In my defense, it is kind of pointless.
I actually didn't notice they were new. The cartoon had so many characters, I didn't keep track of who was who
As a kid I liked Hot Rod and Ultra Magnus and Kup to a lesser extent. I had the Blurr toy but I never really cared about him, Springer or Arcee. I don't remember having much of a reaction to them when I saw the movie, the main things I remember was being sad that Starscream, Ironhide and Prowl died and wondering where Snarl was. I honestly didn't even care at all that Optimus died.
I can't remember exactly how much I knew before going to the theater that day. I knew there were new TFs, about Unicron, about Prime dying, but I just don't know to what extent I knew all of these things. I don't remember being surprised by anything really except the violence, which made the experience so much better. Funny how less than 90 minutes in August of 1986 could have such a profound impact on one's life.
