Once upon a time transformers rocked. Awesome classics toys, awesome masterpiece toys, kick-ass TFA toys. Then the transformer movie came out. A popcorn flick with explosions, shiny pretty cars, peter cullen's lovely voice, and plot holes big enough for Optimus to drive through. But it was forgivable since TFA stepped up and made me feel like a kid watching it saturday mornings while I ate my cereal. I also found myself buying up trade paperbacks and reading through the comics put out by IDW. It was like a wonderful giant robot dream!
Now-a-days I see the beloved transformers franchise is having it's soul sucked away thanks to Hasbro's moronic decisions. They allowed the movies and the dreadful toys associated with them continue on. If that weren't bad enough, they sold out to Discovery channel which meant TFA and their association with Cartoon Network was axed. And on top of all that, they allowed IDW to ruin what was an entertaining comic with the most ridiculous plot lines ever.
The dream is now a nightmare.
I have one last gleam of transformer love left, and that is the henkei comic bun-bun artist, Naoto Tsushima. I ordered a transformer manga he illustrated which arrived yesterday. It is pure love. I also want to get the stargate battles one, but i will have to wait on that for the moment.
I want to love transformers, but Hasbro is making it really hard. I find my geeky interests wandering into reading various manga series instead... even if my deepest love is for giant transforming robots.
I hear ya. And I doubt we're along. There's obviously Naladahc, but I've heard the same gripes more or less from fans everywhere. Hell the TFWire Podcast stopped because there basically wasn't enough interest from it's producers or material for shows.
It's really sad that Hasbro has more or less driven the brand into the ground, The single shot we've seen of Bumblebee from the new show and this whole War for Cybertron push both come off as rather bland so I don't see there being a fix anytime soon.
I think one issue I have is the whole inconsistent time-line etc. It was all good through Beast Machines, then RiD could maybe be fudged but probably not, then Armada took things and rebooted them but ok, at least it was longish. Animated could actually be some sort of pseudo prequel to Beast Wars/Sequel to G1 if you fudge a bit and don't always assume that the same name = the same character. (I envision BA, and Waspinator starting the Predacons with Grimlock... or something...)
Anyway, it's all over the place and there are too many origin stories that don't mesh at all etc.
The irony is I've always told people I don't care as much for the story aspect as I do the engineering aspect. I guess part of my problem is I just find the Bayformer toys to be ugly.
Posted by: JoshMiller | March 23, 2010 at 09:27 PM
As if Hasbro could give a f#ck about us anymore - not when they're making a fortune from Bayformers & all that Ironman tripe in the stores. Then there's TakTom delaying my USB Hub Blaster again, & again, & again... -_-
Posted by: The_Black_Sheep | May 03, 2010 at 01:03 AM
It doesn't look so much disappointing to me. Maybe because I have come to like transformer just recently. But thanks for sharing those thoughts.
Posted by: Manga downloads | September 06, 2010 at 08:34 PM