The Random Transformers Thoughts Thread

[GoktimusPrime]

I think that I might be one of few people here who still prefers the Deluxe CHUGUR Astrotrain mould over the TR Voyager (bearing in mind that the Deluxe is roughly half the price of the Voyager).

[CaminusPrime]

Anyone think we could see a titans return swoop out of mind wipe? there is the titan master on the way now

[GoktimusPrime]

From here:

People complained about the G1 toys being bricks without articulation, which lead all the way up to the redundant non-transforming action masters, then beast wars went mental with articulation at the expense of everything else.
Articulation on articulation on articulation.
Didn't care for beast wars toys when they came out. Some (not many) have grown on me since. Only one I have is transmetals rhinox, his articulation is minimal and he reminds me of G1 slag, I even keep them together as they look cool together.

I'm glad Beast Wars went mental with articulation, and those experiments led to better overall toys down the line, but to me overly articulated shellformers are not my kind of transformers. Many of them look more like Digimon or pokemon to me than anything I would call transformers.

I don't remember anyone particularly complaining about the lack of articulation on G1 toys, with the rare exception of toys with practically zero articulation like the Throttlebots (which I personally love), Battlechargers, Firecons etc. But on the whole there wasn't widespread criticism over it. And I don't see any lead up towards Action Masters, Hasbro kinda just dropped them on us in 1990-91. And the Action Masters' articulation wasn't even that great, not even by the standards of the day.

As for Beast Wars going "mental on articulation at the expense of everything else" -- how so? Your average Beast Wars figure had 9 points of articulation (head, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees). I don't think that's terribly excessive, and don't forget that late G2 already started this trend with toys like the Laser Rods, Cyberjets etc. Beast Wars refined the concept and ran with it. A lot of toys these days have about 9 points of articulation or more (BW set this standard), such as...
* Combiner Wars Legends Class Shockwave = 9 points
* Titans Return Legends Class Wheelie = 9 points
* Generations Deluxe Class Arcee = 15 points
* Age of Extinction Deluxe Class Bumblebee (concept Camaro) = 13 points
* Combiner Wars Deluxe Class Swindle = 15 points
* Robots In Disguise Warrior Class Thunderhoof = 11 points
* Titans Return Voyager Class Sentinel Prime = 15 points
As we can see, out of this sample of Transformers from a range of recent lines, there's an average of 12 points of articulation. So this means that Beast Wars actually has what would be considered a below-average level of articulation compared to contemporary toys (although still incredibly awesome for 20 years ago ). And Transmetal Rhinox toy has 11 points of articulation, above average even for its time. Seems a bit odd that you consider 9 points to be "mental" but 11 points to be "minimal."

What did Beast Wars' articulation come at the expense of? When I think about some of the more compromised toys from Beast Wars, I cannot think about how they were compromised by articulation. Let's look at Retrax for example; a toy that is heavily compromised by its gimmick (you either love or hate it). It's not the articulation that overwhelms this toy, it's the spring-loaded gimmick. And if anything, it's actually sacrificed articulation. The arms are stuck pointing out to the sides like he wants to hug you or is being crucified; the arms are slave to the gimmick. The head and legs are articulated well enough and aren't influenced by the gimmick at all. The toy is still able to transform just fine.

Action Masters gave us crappy articulation at the expense of being able to transform. Beast Wars gave us good articulation, but the toys were never compromised as a result of this. I love the Flipchangers but I understand that some don't, and they would make a valid argument that the Flipchangers' transformation is slave to the Flipchanger gimmick, and I would totally agree. But none of the Flipchangers are compromised by their articulation though. You compare say Terrorsaur with Airazor, a lot of people would say that Airazor has a more fun and involved transformation, but both toys have the same level of articulation. The difference is that Terrorsaur isa Flipchanger, so his transformation is going to be relatively much simpler than Airazor's, but this has nothing to do with either of these toys sporting 9 points of articulation.

Much preferred toys from the Unicron trilogy lot, particularly Cybertron line, which was one of the best lines ever imo.

I absolutely agree that Cybertron was the best of the Unicron Trilogy, but the previous comments were only aimed at Armada, not Cybertron. Cybertron was the best because those toys had the least intrusive gimmicks compared to Armada and Energon. Even if you totally cannot stand some of their Key activated gimmicks, you can just happily ignore it and enjoy the rest of the toy. Most Cybertron Transformers still enjoyed being articulated and transformable figures, whereas Armada toys sacrificed their articulation for their Mini-Con activated gimmicks.
Let's have a look at a few Cybertron figures...
* Downshift (Deluxe) = 11 points of articulation
* Unicron (Deluxe) = 15 points of articulation
* Starscream (Voyager) = 15 points of articulation
* Optimus Prime (Leader) = 19 points of articulation
etc.

[GoktimusPrime]

(From the MP Dirge news thread)

If we are going by the cartoon then that's the least of our problems, how do all the Decepticons and Dinobots fly in bot mode despite having no visible means of propulsion or lift.

The cartoon was so inconsistent when it came to who could and couldn't fly in robot mode. In early Season 1 it seemed that every Cybertronian could do it, but then after a few eps in most of the Autobots seemed to have lost this ability. The Decepticons almost always can do this, but in "Roll For It" we see Soundwave being transported in tape deck mode aboard one of the Decepticon jets (Starscream?) to Chip Chase's house (and conveniently nobody noticed an F15 parked on the street... must be one heck of a neighbourhood!). The weird thing is, if Decepticons can fly in robot mode at the same speed as the Decepticon jets (i.e. they can achieve supersonic speed), then what's the point of having jet modes (other than to disguise themselves on air force bases, which doesn't happen very often)?

The Dinobots also started off with the ability to fly in robot mode for quite some time, but then started losing it. In "Desertion of the Dinobots" Swoop was the only flier, and even then only in Dinobot mode. He even mentioned that his ability to fly in Dinobot mode was impaired after his wing was damaged by an automated defence system^axe tied to a rope. And in The Transformers The Movie and Season 3 eps, we don't see any of the Dinobots flying in robot mode. The Dinobots appear to free-fall down to fight Devastator, and they are later seen flying to attack Unicron, but that was in space. We don't see them flying in a gravity environment.

The G1 cartoon seems to have been the only series that did this too, with all other series maintaining greater and often more realistic rules when it came to flight. In the G1 comics it was only those with flight modes who could fly (and only in those modes). Even Megatron, Soundwave etc. had to be transported inside the cockpits of Decepticon jets. So did Galvatron who could mass-shrink when he transformed into his pistol mode (which is never seen in the G1 cartoon); although alternate universe Galvatron II's pistol mode was gigantic (don't know if he deliberately chose not to mass-shift (as he was attacking Autobase), or if he was incapable of doing so). All post G2 cartoon series also avoided showing Cybertronians just "magically" flying. In Beast Wars when Megatron became a Transmetal he delighted in telling Optimus Primal that flight was no longer his advantage. For some odd reason, flight was deemed as a Decepticon racial trait in Animated.

Okay, physics got really ridiculous in Age of Extinction (even by Bayformer standards) with the magical floating cubes and Optimus Prime's Astroboy legs. But prior to that the portrayal of flight in the first three films was handled reasonably well IMO. Even if Jetwing Optimus Prime did spend 20 minutes dangling upside down.

[Ozgardian]

What's with TR Fortress Maximus's tech specs? Obviously it's out of 10, yeah!?
Going up to 20 leads us to believe that when Maxy's in robot mode he needs to have Emissary attached to cerebros's head mode to achieve the full 20/20. But if that's the case then that would make Cerebros 10/10 when combined with Emissary which makes his specs equal to Maxy when Maxy's not combined, I kinda find that a bit hard to swallow! Just sayin', what a stupid way to revise the tech spec system if that's the case or not.
Would've also been nice if they were to do a tech spec build, the results of combining with Blaster & Prime.

...I know, I'm nitpicking.

[GoktimusPrime]

The Titans Return tech specs are all just complete rubbish. Practically zero creativity placed into writing the bios... every bio pretty much reads, "This robot kicks butt." (-_-)

[Ozgardian]

It's a real shame they don't put in the effort these days to plan out in depth tech specs & it reflects the shallowness when cartoons & movies are made from empty characters. Surely well thought out bios & good character development increases sales.
One of my favourites was G2 Hooligan "Sometimes goes too far, was nearly dismantled after putting sugar in Megatron's fueltank!". Still puts a smile on my face everytime I picture that.

[GoktimusPrime]

That's because G1/G2 tech specs were written by Marvel. They knew how to make each individual Transformer toy distinctive and interesting, not because they had kick-butt powers, but because of their individual quirks like the one you've just mentioned about Hooligan. After G2 ended Marvel stopped writing tech spec bios for Transformers. Kenner wrote the bios for Beast Wars, which initially wasn't that great but got better after the cartoon came out and Kenner/Hasbro decided to write subsequent BW tech specs based on the cartoon continuity. Beast Machines actually had decently written tech spec bios, and Transformers Cybertron were also pretty good. My favourite is Shortround who is literally described as a Transformer who collects Transformers toys. I can imagine his fellow Decepticons walking into his quarters to find shelves full of action figures based on themselves and their enemies (kinda like how Poh from Kung Fu Panda has action figures based on the Furious Five (with the Mantis toy being 1:1 scale ) ).

But most tech spec bios outside of that have been pretty rubbish.

[GoktimusPrime]

It's interesting when I think back to how I voiced many of my toys before they ever appeared on screen (as well as how I choose to voice toys that have never had screen appearances). I initially gave Blaster a more generic sounding Autobot voice and he never spoke "street," but rather spoke more like Soundwave (but without the monotone voice). And it was really funny when I'd make him say, "Eject: eject!" But of course the Autobot Cassettes didn't come out until a year after Blaster did, so in 1985 I was using Decepticon Cassettes in Blaster. I imagined that these Decepticon Cassettes had been captured by Blaster and then forced to fight for the Autobots. In other words, they were slaves of the Autobots! But my child mind at the time never processed it that way.

These days I voice Bludgeon by doing an impersonation of George Takei's voice -- so he sounds like Master Yoketron from TF Animated (or Alpha Trion from TFP). I find that Takei's voice works just as well for villains as it does for sage-like goodies.

The way that I originally voiced Wheelie was more like Blaster's voice in the cartoon; i.e. talking normally most of the time but occasionally making rhymes when the situation called for it. Kinda like Sky-Byte with his haikus. Voicing Wheelie after watching TFTM got harder because I'd have to sit and try to think of a rhymes. Thankfully Wheelie is a rubbish toy so I didn't play with him very often.

[SMHFConvoy]

It wouldn't take much to make combiners using the titan masters and their vehicles, sort of like the micromaster combiners