I agree Nostalgia..

Plus back in the day that show was the S**T lol .. We were kids , we didnt care about story plots and how things looked and such, that stuff only matters when you get older .. It was great stuff back then .. Brings back some great memories for me.. And i think its more of the G1 toys that everyone loves more then the show.. I got into transformers from the beginning but personally my favorite TF Show was Beast Wars and Beast Machines .. But its always nice to throw on some G1 and get a good laugh and relive some memories , like me and all my friends gathering at someone house to watch the cartoon and then afterwards going out with all our toys and having huge battles.. Great stuff ...

 

Nostalgia and characterization. It's why when there is a character in a later series based on the original or has the same name as a previous character they are always compared to the original. The original had their own very individual personalities. That's why even though many characters looked similar you could always tell them apart. Is it the greatest thing ever, no but it was no more cheezy than the live action shows at the time. Knight Rider and A-team had similar silly plots. Transformers was animated so they could do things that would be visual impressive and imaginative to an young child. Though looking on it now I can point out several things wrong with it I still remember fondly when Megatron forced Prime to warp Cybertron into earth's orbit. Like all shows not every episode was good, but years later we remember mainly the good ones and G1 had several of those. They were experimenting back then and not writing the episodes from a template. That's probably why I fondly remember G1 and GI Joe.

 

G1 is so much fun, so many awesome memories. I enjoy watching it as much as an adult as I did as a child.
Of course I really enjoy Beast Wars, Beast Machines(What I've seen of it), TFTM and the new Animated Series as well. Only series I have trouble with are the Cybertron/Armada stuff.
These series are all meant to entertain and I really feel they all deliver in different ways.

 

its prolly just snarf doing that to you.

btw dude sometimes after i shower when im towelling up, ill be like 'ancient spirits of evil, transform this decayed form into MUMM RA THE EVER LIVING HEEYYAAAARRGHHHH and chuck the towel like its mummy wrapping.

that always creeps the wife out.

 

plus, autokitty just doesnt do it for me.

also, also, with g1, theres been progression thru the years with media beyond TV which gives it the appearance that it ages better. so you feel like the brand grew with you as opposed to just being stuck in the 80s.

 

They're really all covering up their love for G2. I've since gotten past that...well I never was very Geewun to begin with, BUT STILL!!!
They're all afraid that their love for the trippy color schemes might be frowned upon by other members, when really EVERYBODY loves them.
Its all a god damn conspiracy I tells yah...
DN

 

its the gay agenda i tell you, its everywhere. but mostly from behind you.

 

LOL 

 

This is an excellent point!  

 

Pure nostalgia, like most people here.

I do dig Beast Wars and Cybertron though.

 

While I watched the G2 incarnation of the G1 show (which only differed by the addition of a few new CGI intros), I can state that it was a great program for kids- likable characters with well-defined personalities, non-stop action, and the ability to continue the storyline in your own living room.

 

Nostalgia. I loved g1 as a kid, but now I can't sit through a single episode.

 

I'd like to point out the fact that G1 is so revered because to alot of ppl G1 IS the Transformers. Hasbro has taken the license and mutated and added many, many visions and continuities, but much like Spider Man or the Hulk or Batman the characters were created and toyed with, alternate universe versions, movie versions, animated versions......it's just that Hasbro more radically changes the different lines for Transformers. But the G1 characters are the original transformers....to those who saw them as "The Transformers" see what comes after just different takes on the franchise, an abandoning of the original continuity, clones and copies and alternate versions of "The Transformers". I've come to accept it but by god I need to make my own one, true continuity and be done with it.

To me it's very frustrating because I can't have one, streamlined continuity to work from for story. I'm constantly tweaking toys to explain how they can be part of the original timeline. What I NEED to do is sit down and write out exactly where the characters go from the final G1 eps. Really, it's not that difficult to merge the current animated with G1. One of the biggest issues is the young Prime, and of course Ratchet....

 

It was a kid's show, not an intricate Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was translated into a tv cartoon. It was a fun show for 5 to 8 year old boys to enjoy when they got home back from school and captivated their imaginations worldwide. Without it, we wouldn't even be having this pointless discussion.
Of course the cartoon's going to seem silly or even cheesy when seen through an adult's perspective. That's the way I feel about most of the 80's cartoons, especially MOTU and ThunderCats. Does it mean I hate those cartoons or the great moments of childhood they provided me with? No.

 

fiction doesnt win pulitzer prizes. fiction wins booker prizes  

 

Transformers is fiction?!?  I'd never have known by how seriously some take it.
As for me, I like G1 because of the characters. Over 3 seasons, 80 comics issues, a movie, and countless hours of battle on my bedroom carpet, the characters grew with me. I don't hate the new series' that came after, but they will always be "alternate realities" to G1, or "based on" G1 to me.
(and now I STILL have the characters stories to enjoy thanks to IDW   )

 

Imagination - The concept of SENTIENT transforming robots was so new, it just sucked you in as a kid, it was a world you want to be a part of and escape to, where to show left off was where your imagination began - playing with the toys, adding depth to a world outside of what was on the small screen.

Archtypes - all the characters had their niche and part to play, Optimus, Bumblebee, Jazz, Megatron, Starcream, Soundwave, etc, all had their "thing" that made them unique, relatable, and unforgetable. And why older fans are more attacted to G1 that still has their favorite characters over completely new characters they know nothing about.

Voice talent - some of the best in the business, those actors gave great performances we could believe in as kids, their conviction in the words they delivered made it "real" in spite of any animation flaws. It's the same reason a live actions show like the original Dr. Who or Blake's 7 can endure bad special effects and still be considered a quality show because of the acting. For example, Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime, and Optimus Prime is our hero, there is no other way to say it.

The Applejacks factor - Moonscream said it well. We watch what we like, G1 has that inexplicable something that just grabs hold of us and we want to watch it again and again no mater what anyone else says. G1 is still my favorite show ever, and I'm not sure I could ever fully say why.

 

I second that. We never had the cartoon in New Zealand at the time and I never saw them on VHS so my experience of Transformers was through the toys themselves and the Marvel comics. The cartoon is ok I guess but certainly has a few problems. I remember first seeing Beast Wars though and thinking "WOW, that's a cool re-interpretation of Transformers".

G1 is where it all began for me so that's why I love it 

 

It's still mostly kids. Hasbro's core business is still flogging toys to kids, which is the reason why it's doing so well. For every adult fan there's probably about about a thousand kids who buy Transformers.

Nothing wrong with animal forms  

As for fun - it's still there. You're just too old to appreciate it now  

I spent several hours the other day watching G1 eps to fill out Blaster's TF Wiki article, and let me tell you, listening to the Rock/Big Band Music fusion they keep playing whenever Jazz/Blaster/Soundwave or somebody plays 'rock' music 14 times in a row will make you go insane.

Bad argument that I've seen before. If G1 as we knew it wasn't around, then there would have been some other version of Transformers which would possibly become known as 'Generation 1' later on.