I've been sipping on a two liter bottle of straight vodka for twelve hours now and I'm actually roughly halfway through it now. I'd say that should just about do the trick!

Granted, 80 proof Jenkins vodka for $9.99 isn't exactly "top shelf"...but then again neither was the cartoon, lol.

 

 

at least i didnt calculate it to the day,hour and minutes 

 

First off, don't you ever make an assumption on whether someone else enjoyed somethign or not. That's ridiculous and probably insulting. You know nothing about what or how other people enjoyed anything.

Second off, I never said anything about the G1 cartoon being scientific and realistic. I said I wanted it to be coheerent and cohesive, that I wanted Rumble to be colored like the Rumble toy I own and Frenzy like Frenzy's. That things make sense within the context of the franchise (hello, multiple origin stories) and that simple, basic, professional effort be made for the product. Or to sum it up: consistency.

Third, Thundercats was indeed better animated. It doesn't matter what your friends found boring or not (BTW, your homework for tonight, look up anecdotal evidence and find why you just destroyed your own argument with it), the fact of the matter is that the Thundercats were animated better than the TFs. Entertainment value, 'boredom' factors, well written or not doesn't enter into it. This is purely animation. Clean lines. Fluid animation. Consistent scale. People colored the right colors. No mistakes, like characters being where they shouldn't be (hi Sideswipe standing next to Megatron in Con HQ), characters talking to themselves (Starscream giving an order to Starscream), two of the same character being in the same scene (Optimus and Optimus both trying to save the Washington Monument) and a plethora of other errors. And unlike Windcharger (shows up in Call of the Primitives in season 3), once a Thundercat character really died, you don't see them again unless in flashbacks.

Don't be so dismissive about things, either. Who the hell cares about origin stories? Probably every single Transformers fan who ever posted any theory, solid or assinine, about why X or Y origin story fits in A or B ways and whatnot. Trying to fix the damaged origin stories of the G1 cartoon is something that's the bread and butter of TF fans since day 1 of alt.toys.transformers and continues to this very day.

And Macross was better animated indeed. It had less errors, which in itself makes it better. Look, you don't have to be perfect to be better, just better. Apparently you don't understand that, but better is just better. Not perfect. Just better. It's not like a football team has to score more points than their opponent and makes sure the other team doesn't score, resulting in a perfect game. They just need to be better than the other team.

I know for a fact I had damn plenty of fun playing with the toys, but here's the thing you're never going to understand - it was in SPITE of the show, not BECAUSE of it. A lot of us long time Transformers fans are the exact same way.

We understood that the show was extremely flawed and often a letdown. And we made our Transformers universe better while playing with our toys. That's real imagination, not aping the last episode you saw.

It's long been my contention that the Toy Bios were the best part of G1. The comics were second best with the Marvel Universe comics, which were basically the Toy Bios expanded on being solidly between. No one really seems to appreciate the Toy Bios though.  

Yes, TFs also had a "real" break with no show and no toys. G1 ended. Died, if you will. G2 came about later. No unique show for it either (just a repackage of some G1 eps), and only a 12 issue comic series for new material. Want to keep shifting goalposts or just accept that TFs also had periods of time when not sold on shelves and had no new shows?

Kamen Rider and Ultraman are from Japan. North America is not the entire world. Kamen Rider has been on TV in America, when V3 played on TV in Hawaii in the 70s and Dragon Knight came here...2008? 2009? Something around then. Ultraman was on TV in America as well, with the Tiga series on Fox earlier in the 2ks. It's got a few series released in series box format (whole series one price) in Target and a few series put on streaming services like Crunchyroll.

Just to point out: Just because Takara released something doesn't mean anything in regards to Hasbro, the American market, or the TV show in question that ended. This part of the discussion isn't talking about worldwide, it's talking about TFs being off the shelves in America. And for a time they were off the shelves in Japan and Europe, also.

 

For whatever it's worth, setting aside the animated movie for the moment, I find the original Thundercats cartoon to be as good as the original Transformers cartoon. However, I'll take the original Transformers toys over the original Thundercats toys.

 

you should hahaha

 

I think one problem many people have, is looking at things objectively. As I mentioned earlier, the cartoon wasn't very good. That doesn't mean I dislike G1. For me personally, I like the idea of G1, more than any of it's particular media. In all honesty, that's probably the case for a lot of people. Other than the movie, I haven't watched the cartoon in ages, and really have no desire to. I'm fine with simply liking G1 in broad strokes. Some people don't seem to get that. They don't think you can like something, while also criticizing it. You either like the whole thing, or you must hate it all. I don't get into these kinds of debates often. Because trying to explain this concept to someone who just doesn't get it, can get frustrating very fast.

 

I don't know, part of me just thinks we're all far too old to have this discussion.

If anyone is familiar with the Now Playing podcast, one time they reviewed Transformers: The Movie and one of the hosts compared it to his time working at Chucky Cheese and the kids running amok with their new toys and pizza, and just the general irrational frenzy of childhood.

And talking about continuity errors make me think of this family moment when my cousin was like 5 years old. We were all having dinner and out of nowhere she goes:

"I don't like that show..."

Her Dad asked, "What show?"

"The one about the girl and horse...let's watch it..."

Cue the entire table erupting with laughter, except me at 10 years old, thinking I was really smart, asking "Why did she say that?" My Grandma replied, "At that age, they don't know what they're saying."

I don't think we can fully identify with G1's vibe unless we can put ourselves in that moment of life where nothing had to make sense. I've said this before, to pick on G1 is like picking on a 5 year old because he can't read Hamlet yet. I'm not saying kid's entertainment should be dumbed down (i.e. Teletubbies). But it should be recognized that kids view the world differently from adults.

 

I think the world-building stumbled a bit, post-Animated/07 Movie. This is primarily due to Hasbro's insistence that every price point includes at least three versions of Bumblebee and Optimus Prime. Pre-Animated, Optimus might get a leader figure and a deluxe at most. Megatron would get one figure with an obligatory "Galvatron" update, but that wasn't too bad. But now, new characters are stifled by characters that Hasbro knows will sell well instead.

 

To the OP, thirty plus years on and we're here still talking about it, what do you think?

The thing is G1 is timeless and has a charm that no incarnation of transformers has been able to replicate to date, it's no wonder why TT and hasbro keep going back to the G1 well, hoping to find that spark but have constantly failed to do so given the amount of second rate, tasteless and laughable imitations they've spawned since the Sunbow series finished in 87, harsh but true. Just look at whom most official(CW, Masterpiece & classics) and third parties(MP's) are catering to? That's right, G1 fans, bitches, read and weep Yeast wars fanboys. G1 is where all the money is at.

I keep hearing the; "It's a twenty two minute toy commercial!" Brace yourselves for the truth, guys, they're all toy commercials from Beast wars to Armada, sorry fanboys. The only reason people tend to bring this up is because they are butthurt that G1....as with many other things, just did it better and it will continue to do so!

G1 FTW!

 

Yeah some of the criticism of G1 can come off like jealousy because G1 is really the only incarnation to achieve "iconic" status. The later shows are well remembered if you're into the fandom, and I'm sure a lot of kids enjoy TF Prime and Rescue Bots (as they should), but G1 is still the face of the franchise in many ways. It's like how some Star Trek: Next Generation fans would prefer everyone just forget about the original series.

 

And that is the crux of the matter, outside of the these forums, most people including friends and family of mine were or are under the impression that there wasn't any transformers between the end of Sunbow G1 and the beginning of the movieverse, pretty much summing up my thoughts of everything post Sunbow G1.....inconsequential, irrelevant and forgettable at best and not iconic in anyway whatsoever!

I think you're actually doing those shows disrespect by comparing them to subsequent incarnation of transformers. Those shows were hits, not in their own right, but hits, period, I remember nerds going crazy for them when I was in school and after. There was and has been no such love for anything post G1 with the exception of the movieverse!

 

There is something to be said about being the first (and also successful, of course).

 

Sure, I get that and I love TNG, DS9, and Voyager (and parts of Enterprise, mainly the Jeffrey Combs parts, Hi, Ratchet!). It's just that I'm always encountering TNG fans who are needlessly embarrassed by the original series. And I don't think your average viewer is going to be as knowledgeable about the characters in the newer shows. Of course, I think everyone in the world should make themselves familiar with DS9, amazingly written show (and three more Combs characters!).

But anyway, I get that Beast Wars reignited interest in the franchise after the G1 cartoon kinda petered away. It can certainly be thanked for that. And there's no shame in simply being part of a larger franchise even if it didn't end up reaching that same iconic status. That's just how society is, most people are more concerned with today's groceries than the second incarnation of a cartoon show. But they have just enough time to remember the first.

 

And that is the defence the fanboys use to justify everything, why their shows aren't as popular as G1. Let's look at Batman, the earlier iterations were mostly campy as perfectly captured by the Adam West show (one of my personal favourites!), then came along Frank Miller with his darker and grittier version, emulated very well by the TAS and Nolan movies, as iconic as West's is, let's be honest, Miller's version has become somewhat the definitive, go to version for Batman, it wasn't the first interpretation of that character but clearly there is something about that (Miller's)interpretation of Batman that resonates more with people than the interpretations before and after it.

If any of the incarnations of TF's post G1 resonated more with the fans, believe me, G1 would have been supplanted as the 'got to' incarnation but this clearly hasn't been the case.

It's not about who strikes first but who strikes hardest and G1 did just that!

 

That is a good example of how a later incarnation of a character can often "take over" from the original. And you would think if G1 was so silly and worthless that it would have been easy for the later shows to destroy its memory. But clearly that hasn't happened!

Of course, this is when the cliche "oh it's just nostalgia talking" rebuttal is dusted off...again, lol.

 

Of course it's where the money's at. 30-40 year olds have the most disposable income or children to indoctrine into liking what their parents like.

 

No... it wasn't that great... but at the same time, it was still one of the better cartoons happening on Saturday morning in the mid-80s, so it's no surprise that it got a lot of kids excited. It's all relative, and by the standards of the time, it left a big impression.

But even at the time, I rolled my eyes at certain episodes, or noticed the plentiful errors. And by the time Season 3 rolled around... ugh, what a mess!

But really, the only fiction you're talking about above seems to be the G1 cartoon, and that's not all that G1 was. It was also supplemented by the intersecting but distinct continuities of the US and UK comics... which weren't always great, but were often more sophisticated than the TV cartoon. At the time, I mostly preferred the comic book versions of the characters.

And of course, G1 for me really comes back down to the original bios. I used to browse through the toy sections of the store, and voraciously read the profiles for each character I could find on the shelves. In a very real way, the details there hinted at a much larger and more exciting world than the cartoon OR the comics ever captured... which is as it should be, I guess. After all, they WERE toys, and the bios encouraged you to make up your own stories, whether you had all the main characters at home, or whether you just owned a handful of B-listers. They all had character! Compare that to today, when a series typically doesn't have more than 5 or 6 significant characters in each faction...

When the long-form bios were collected and published as the Transformers Universe series, I think that was a crucial phase for G1. The style that profiles were written showed an unusual depth compared to other toy lines out there, presenting an array of characters that were rich in both their idiosyncracies and their technical details. So far, we haven't seen that level matched by any of the subsequent series.

For me, that's the core of my enduring interest in Transformers... not the actual continuity of events and adventures retold on the TV cartoon, but rather the potential of the setting, and the whole field of characters it provided to spark the imagination. In that sense, I think it really was pretty great.

To clarify, while I don't have the same personal or nostalgic affection for the new fictions, I don't judge them based on their "G1 accuracy". They're TV shows for kids... they're not meant to capture an adult sensibility or level of sophistication, and they don't have the anchors of nostalgia. So I judge them on their own merits. For the most part, although I give each series a shot, I don't follow them (I also don't watch the G1 cartoons on any kind of regular basis... I don't think I've gone through the whole series since they were on TV when I was a kid).

Beast Wars was alright, but the concept never appealed to me. Small cast, largely empty world, no cultural interaction, and the whole "organic animal" aspect of it just left me cold. Certainly well-written for the time, but in retrospect the CG animation is kind of an eyesore, and the nonstop screaming guitar solo soundtrack annoys me. It's just not my thing.

Animated was actually a lot of fun. They had some neat twists on old characters, which adds some appeal for an oldschooler like me, and the light tone brought a certain energy to the affair. The RID and the Unicron Trilogy were kind of lame... the 'toyetic' writing and marketing of the series really overwhelmed my interest in the characters or events... though thanks to the quality of the hand-drawn anime, I still love that Prime/Galvatron fight at the end of Armada.

Bayformers...? Okay, let's just state something for the record here... THEY ARE BAD MOVIES. I'm a big cinema guy, and watching any of the Bayformers movies for me is like being force-fed bits of my own vomit. As much as I've tried to enjoy them as popcorn spectacles, their dumbness, utter lack of narrative panache, and overall agenda aimed at the lowest common denominator, always sucks any fun out of the adventure. They are aggressively bad, so I can't even appreciate them as inoffensive distractions.

This is not an opinion reserved for Transformers movies. This is purely based on them being terrible movies. There are a lot of shit movies I don't even bother with, but probably the only reason I DO subject myself to the Bay movies is out of some kind of misplaced feeling of obligation to the Transformers brand. So I don't dislike them because I'm a "geewunner" (although I am). I just think they are bad movies.

Prime? Couldn't get into it. The balance of the stupider, kid-friendly plot elements with the self-consciously darker content was just wrong for me. Sure, it tried at times to be more "adult" in tone... but not for smart adults. The depth of the writing still hovered around the level of your average 10-year-old. I just got bored.

The dynamism of the new RID's art style is really fetching... I've only watched bits and pieces of the show, and although it looks silly, it also looks like it might be fun. I'll give it a shot.

zmog

 

It's ALL G1 at the end of the day, whether Geewunners want to admit it or not is their personal problem.

Was the '84-'90 run of the Cartoon/Comics/Toys any good? Yes. Not "perfect" by any means, but good enough for me to still be here and buying Combiner Wars Prowl like it was still 1984.

Mileage will vary.

 

for the record, Miller's version of Batman is far closer to the "first version" then the Adam West one ever was.