I just watched the Transformers Slag Podcast video on Earthrise Deluxe Class Arcee and Commander Class Sky Lynx. And I've only know just realised how different each toyline has been. I want to know how you guys/gals feel about each era, yours loves, your hates, and everything in between.

Generation 1/Generation 2
Japanese Continuations
Beast Wars/Beast Machines
Car Robots
Unicron Trilogy
Classics
Generations
Movieverse
Animated
Prime/Robots in Disguise
Prime Wars Trilogy
War For Cybertron

 

Love:
G2 - NEON
JPG1 - Wellspring of original ideas
Classics - Love the modern-day stylization
Generations - Pleasent Updates
Animated - My Childhood
War for Cybertron - Is what I'm collecting.

Indifferent:
G1 - Grandfather clause
Movieverse - Don't own them
Prime/RID - love Wheeljack, Don't like the RID style.
Car Robots - Don't own them

Dislike (hate is a strong word):
Unicron Trilogy - Bricks that didn't age well
Beast Wars/Machines - Not really a fan of anything past the first couple of BW figures Like Primal, Rattrap, Dinobot, Megs, etc. Didn't like anything after that.

@Protoman will be happy to see this.

 

Generation 1: I grew up with G1 (was 8 years old in 1984). They were the beginning for me and will always be special. I love them for what they are and rarely hate them for what they aren't. They started it all. There were transforming toys before they showed up, but, G1 took it to a whole new level and made everything else look like Tootsie Toys by comparison.

Generation 2: G2 came out when I was in high school. I liked the opportunity to get toys I wasn't able to get as a kid (looking at you, BB, Jazz and Sideswipe) and I liked that the show was back on the air. But, I was NOT a fan of the neon. Never was. Never will be.

Japanese Continuations: I had precisely ZERO exposure to the Japanese continuations of the franchise and had no idea they existed until well after getting back into TFs in the late 90's/early 2000's. I have to say that I really don't care for most of the designs...and what little I have seen of the shows has not enticed me to explore them any further.

Beast Wars/Beast Machines: I hated everything about it...at first. I looked at BW as a cheap KO of the TF franchise and was in disbelief that they would take things in such a wildly different direction. They just weren't TFs to me. Long story short, I eventually grew to love the show and characters and even got a few of the toys (though I'm still not a fan of most of them).

Car Robots: I like most of the toys and owned most of them, at one time. But the show...ugh...I tried to like it...I mean, I REALLY TRIED TO LIKE IT. I even forced myself to watch it. I had hoped that it would be the triumphant return to "real" TFs that I had been hoping for after so many years. Alas, it was not to be. It was just too, I don't know, crazy ADHD dumbed down hyper-kiddie horseshit or something. It's been so long that I really don't recall exactly why I disliked it so much. I just remember not enjoying it at all.

Unicron Trilogy: I did not like the shows...felt I was just too old to relate to them. And, the toys were some tough bricks. They were tough...but they were bricks. There are some gems in there, but most of them were just too Fisher-Price for my tastes.

Classics: Now we're getting somewhere. Great details, nice throwbacks to G1, etc. They were the kinds of ideas I had been hoping for. They were fun, and I look back on them as harbingers of the CHUGs that were yet to come.

Generations: What more can I say. G1/G2/BW + articulation + show accuracy (in many incarnations, anyway). Many of them have turned out to be the toys we WISHED we had when the shows first ran.

Movieverse: I've never been a huge movieverse fan, but, I have seen every one of the movies multiples times and enjoy them for what they are. The same goes for the toys. And there are some great ones in there. It's just another facet to the TF Universe.

Animated: Fun toys and fun designs. And, deceptively fun to fiddle with. They look cartoony and whimsical...and they are...but they bring with them a surprising degree of complexity you don't expect. I have watched most of the show and, while entertaining, it just hasn't been able to hold my attention. I still have yet to finish watching the last handful of episodes. For what it's worth, Blitzwing's multiple personality disorder might be my favorite aspect of it. I lost my shit in that episode when he was trying to decide between being a tank or a plane.

Prime: TFP is my third favorite animated TF series behind G1 and BW. I only wish all of the seasons could have been as good as the first season. It held my interest from beginning to end, and I pretty much binge-watched the whole thing. And the toys are excellent. TFP Bulkhead is now one of my favorite TF characters of all time. And his FE toy is excellent.

Robots in Disguise: I have never seen the show, but I do own a few of the toys (Windblade and Fixit). The Windblade is cute and Fixit has the right blend of helpful-quirky-sidekick-support character I tend to go for.

Prime Wars Trilogy: I didn't get back into collecting until December 2017 (tail end of TR). So, I missed the excitement of watching most of the Prime Wars unfold. However, upon my return to collecting, I was greeted with a literal shit-ton of the kinds of TF remakes I had always hoped would happen. It was like a dream come true. I bought TR Blurr at Walmart in December 2017 and it has snowballed since then.

War For Cybertron; I look at the WFC trilogy as a more refined and higher quality continuation of the Prime Wars Trilogy. For the most part, they have better construction, better paint, more imaginative transformations and are overall higher quality than the previous trilogy. I love Siege, Earthrise appears to be basically following in Siege's footsteps and I am anxious to see what the future holds.

 

Well, I grew up with G1, both loving it and being terribly disappointed by it. And taunted by poor distribution.

And then there was Siege, which was so very close to what I wanted 30-something years ago. Never thought I would buy anything from HasTak; I have in fact dropped a fair chunk of change on Siege, and will be buying large parts of Earthrise. Still terribly disappointed by the whole micro-master/battle-master thing, still being taunted by poor distribution.

In between, HasTak didn't really exist or produce anything (especially not Beast Wars or the strange Japanese cartoons). But a bunch of other companies started to do amazing things...

 

Generation 1

Pros: Huge part of my childhood

The cartoon gave us some fantastic voice acting and background music.

The Seekers were the Stormtroopers of G1 and were more like the Borg in portrayal than the traditional sadistic, thuggish bad guys a lot of Decepticons were depicted as.

Collecting the Marvel UK comic.

The Animated Movie.

Cons: Started the vehicle scale inconsistency that's frustrated me for 35 years.

The Hasbro designed toys of later years looked kiddy and garish after the model like designs of the imported Diaclones and Microman toys.

Decepticons always woefully outnumbered. No army building Seekers.

The G1 cartoon had too many badly written and animated episodes, mostly in Season 2. Didn't live up to the high standard of writing in the pilot.

The army of unnamed Seekers were phased out in Season 1.

Crap like Alpha Trion, Kremzeek, Primacron and Lord Chumley.

The Marvel US comics suffered from terrible colouring.

Simon Furman ignored his Marvel UK stories when he started writing the US comics, destroying continuity.

Generations 2

Pros: The G2 comic though I only read the 5 UK issues which I still have.

The Laser Rods

Cons: I was in college so felt too old to be collecting toys. Ah, the naivety of youth!

Electro's Gold plastic.

Cartoon was just jazzed up G1 episodes.

Japanese Continuations

Pros: Expanding the G1 universe is always a positive. My first exposure was the Takara Reissue Stepper which I had no idea was a Japanese only G1 character. I thought Takara were giving us new G1 characters.

Cons: The Godawful English dubs and music of each shows.

Beast Wars:

Pros: The show was a continuation of G1 that could be tied to the Marvel comic.

Megatron, Inferno, Terrorsaur, Air Razor and Waspinator.

Cons: Terrible music and theme tune.
Small cast.
Rattrap's robot face having buck teeth and his grating voice.
Dinobot's voice was corny taking away from a well written character.
Quickstrike was grating and one dimensional.
Terrorsaur and Scorponok died.
Rattrap and Quickstrike lived.
Silverbolt, Cheetor, Tigatron and Waspinator had animal styled heads in robot mode.

Beast Machines

Pros: Well written series that I enjoyed when I discovered it in my early twenties.

Cons: Episodes could be repetitive.
Boringly small cast.
Vehicon designs were terrible and their characters one dimensional.
Megatron, Rhinox and Silverbolt lost their charm.
Rattrap was alive.

Robots in Disguise 2000

Pros: cool theme tune.

Nice toys.
Scourge and Skybite were likeable villains.

Cons:
Know all kid character.
Show very anime like Pokemon which I detest.
Predacons outnumbered.

Unicron Trilogy

Pros: Some nice toys like Starscream, Megatron, Hoist and Demolisher.
New factions like Mini-cons, Terrorcons and Omni-cons.
Dreamwave comic was good.
PS2 game is still the best Transformers game and one of the best console games regardless of whether you're a Transformers fan.

Cons: Continuing the Pokemon style with knowall kids.
Terrible writing and voice acting especially Energon Ironhide.
The excellent designs of previous lines like the Autobot Brothers and Beast Wars scouts were replaced by garbage like Scavenger in Armada.
Deluxe cars AND jets.
Energon and Cybertron reverted to better design quality.
Introduction of the Legend class.
Introduced the worst gimmick ever with Cyber Planet Keys.

Classics

Pros: Some nice updates of older characters.

Cons: Continuing the use of the Legend class.

Generations:

Pros: see Classics

Cons: see Classics

Movieverse

Pros: 07 movie was good and genuinely funny. Funnier than most modern comedies.
Franchise was more accepted by the general public.
Some nice toys like Wreckage and the Real Gears.
The Transformers villains were good though Shockwave and Starscream were wasted and Lockdown's voice was corny.

Cons: The sequels tried too hard to be funny.
Some designs like Starscream, Ironhide, Drift, Frenzy, Brains, Que and the Twins were appalling.
Characters with good designs like Jolt, Arcee, Long Haul, Stinger, Canopy were kept in the background and killed off quickly.

Animated

Pros: Transformers characters were well written apart from Soundwave, Ironhide and the Constructicons.

Cons: Horrible human villains.
Stylised aesthetic doesn't fit with any other line.

Prime/Robots in Disguise:

Pros: Prime was a more mature written show.
RID gave the Decepticons characters.

Cons: Stylised aesthetic.
Miko was annoying.
Raf and the RID kid were knowalls.
Bulkhead lost the charm of his Animated self.
Megatron's skull face was terrible.
Worst Starscream design though he was a good character in the show.
Smokescreen was Hot Rod in every way bar name and colour scheme.
Smokescreen didn't become a Prime.

Prime Wars Trilogy

Pros: A few of us liked the show especially Megatron.
Nice updates of G1 characters like Blurr, Tailgate, the Constructicons and Sixshot.
Loads of nicely updated but obscure G1 characters.
New characters like Off Road and Slash.
Titans Return brought the Legend class closer to the old Scout class and the Titanmasters could pilot or drive the vehicles.

Cons: Primemasters replaced Titanmasters. The Pretender shells were nice but the inner bot turning into a glyph instead of a head made it the second worse gimmick of the franchise after Cyber Planet Keys.

The box sets tended to be expensive poorly distributed, in Ireland at least.
The Battletrap duo reverted to the pre TR legend size.
Octane's Titanmaster couldn't sit in the truck cab or jet cockpit.
Blitzwing wasn't repainted as Flywheels or Overcharge.
While otherwise good toys, the unpainted, dull grey plastic drained the character and life from Titans Return Megatron and Galvatron.
The Silverbolt mold wasn't great but was retooled as Cyclonus, Scattershot and Hun-gurrr.
The Ravage and Laserbeak molds are terrible.
The Takara colour schemes of some characters like Hardhead and Blurr were significantly better than their Hasbro counterparts with some like Hardhead and Brainstorm having different facesculpts. They were more expensive to buy online too due to postage.
The Takara Technobots used different molds for Nosecone and Lightspeed with Strafe being heavily retooled along with the Computron head sculpt.
Hasbro Computron's head was a straight repaint of the ugly Superion head.
Hasbro Devestator needed 3 third party upgrade kits before it was acceptable.
Certain characters shown in the Japanese Manga during Titans Return didn't get toys like Sureshot's character model which used Quake's Titanmaster on Full Tilt's body and Bludgeon which used Quake's body with Getaway's Titanmaster and I think, Weirdwolf's sword.
Wheelie's alt mode doesn'tclip together well.
IT'S BEEN SLAGGING EXPENSIVE!!

War For Cybertron

Pros: Siege Seeker mold.
Promising Netflix series.
Eight Tetra Jet Seekers so far.
New characters like Scrapface.
Modern updates of rare G1 characters like Aragorn and comic and cartoon original characters like Impactor and the Rainmakers.
New upcoming toys like Snapdragon look fantastic.

Cons: Expensive and poorly distributed exclusives.
Apeface's gorilla head can't open and close it's mouth, the unrealistic painted teeth look crap as does the visor.
He's made from the same dull grey plastic as Titans Return Megatron and the ape mode doesn't clip together very well.
His jet mode is as blocky as Titans Return Ravage's jaguar mode.

It's continuing to be bloody expensive.

I was well into typing this when I remembered this the toy thread and since I'd mentioned cartoon and comic book stuff in the earlier sections, I just kept going to keep it somewhat consistent.

Despite the relative flaws and expense, the Prime Trilogy, Siege and now Earthrise has been the greatest era of the franchise in regards to the toys.

P.S. I can honestly say this is the longest post I've typed since I joined this site 12 years ago.