Don't Sit Down It's Time to Built Another One

With Transformers month coming to an end, I thought I would attempt a look into the future of the brand. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Michael Bay's last entry in the series, is set to open in the United States in a little less than 4 months. Much has already been said about it, most notably that Megan Fox will not be reprising her role as Mikaela Banes. She will be replaced by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, an English model who'll portray Sam Witwicky's new love interest, Carly. While I'm happy to see the introduction of a canon character (in the G1 series, Carly married Spike Witwicky and eventually became the mother of Daniel), I'm disappointed to see that a model has been cast in the role. The ratio of models who have become good actresses to models who have ended up playing the wooden-faced vamp to Steven Seagal's generic one-liner hero guy strongly favors the latter, I am sad to say, and if Mr. Bay's gratuitous use of Megan Fox as purposeless eye candy is any indicator of what we might expect from Ms. Huntington-Whiteley in the Carly role, I am not holding out much hope for the character. I have nothing against excessive use of closeups on hot chicks, mind you, but my feeling is that you don't need eye candy in a Transformers movie. The giant alien robots that transform into cars and planes are the eye candy! To be honest, I could deal with seeing less attention paid to the human storylines, but if you're going to have a human taking screentime away from Optimus Prime and Megatron, she'd better have something more than good looks to offer us. I won't shoot Rosie down just yet - that wouldn't be fair. No, I shall let her do that herself.

Next is the Cybertronian cast list. It's quite long, at least as far as the Autobots go, and this also makes me worry a bit. Roadbuster and Silverbolt are listed - the former being a member of the Wreckers, who transform into NASCAR stock cars. Unnamed robots appear on both the Autobot and Decepticon cast lists, which are constantly changing. Skids and Mudflap were on it until recently, but they are now being omitted (to my relief). The one thing this film can do without besides empty T&A is comic relief characters. Skids and Mudflap had virtually no role to play in Revenge of the Fallen and had no interactions with any other transformers besides Devastator. They were not acknowledged in any way by any Cybertronian character, not even when they were present in scenes with them. I didn't think they represented racist stereotypes, but I did think they were stupid and unnecessary. Can Bay make Dark of the Moon without a goofball character? I look at the robot cast and I see lots of potential for 3-second appearances on screen, like poor Sideways got in RotF, and the mention of a Cybertronian character that resembles Albert Einstein makes me think that Skids and Mudflap will be present in spirit even if they are ultimately written out.

I will see this film, of course. I freely admit that I am a slave to Hasbro and the Transformers brand, and not even the previous films' failings will be able to keep me out of the theater. While the first two movies left me feeling disappointed as a bound and branded Transformers fanboy, I have to admit that they were entertaining - RotF in a chaotic, Benny Hill kind of way. I know I often sound quite bitter, but I really am looking forward to Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The toys look cool, at least! And hey, Optimus Prime has a trailer this time.

It's Been A While

Hey everybody!

Back after a while with a new blog post. Recently, I've acquired a second ps3, a second laptop, and the book Star Wars:The Force Unleashed. First lets start with the laptop. It's an Acer with a 1 Ghz processor and 3 GBs of RAM, and also boats an AMD processor with their new fusion technology. The way it's been described to me is it is that the graphics chip is integrated into the processor and can run decent 3D games. I happen to like it all though initially I thought it was kinda slow. I also upgraded from home premium to windows 7 ultimate. Now the cool thing with this laptop is if I go to some event or I'm out and about I can make a blog post.
So now to the PS3, it's a slim ps3, the newer style. It's got a 160GB hard drive. That's a huge improvement from the 40 GB I have been dealing with. Now I'm barely playing it, especially since the new laptop is in the house.
Now, The Force Unleashed, after playing a lacking Force Unleashed 2, I saw the book corresponding to the first game and bought it. I'm not reading it fast, and I'm not a big reader so it may be a while. Still, I'll now be able to understand the back story to the first game, and why Starkiller the apprentice befriends a jedi.

BEAST MACHINES!

After three glorious years of Beast Wars, Fox and Bob Skir gave us this abomination...

Ok, I just lost all inspiration for Transformers month. I'm going to let Ken finish up because he knows more about Transformers after this point!

BEAST WARS!

In 1995, I remember finding what at first seemed like a bad idea: animals that turned into robots. It seemed like something out of a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers plot. They kind of looked like Lion King figures in their animal modes. The basic red scales around a yellow-green eye with the toy in the blister pack located there was all I could look at for a few moments before I realized that these were licensed Transformers from Hasbro. Bwah? Fleshy animal modes into animals? No way...

But then I happened to see the cartoon show on the day it debuted and it was flipping fantastic. 

The series was great. It was always the Maximals trying to get home from a pre-historic Earth while trying to stop the evil Predacons led by Megatron; who took his name from the G1 Megatron. Four three wonderful seasons of CGIness, we saw the likes of Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, Rhinox, Dinobot with some additions fight Megatron, Terrorsaur, Waspinator, and a couple more. It was a series where the good guys were often outnumbered by the bad guys; but the casts were both kept small.

Sadly, it came to an end for the next post's topic.

Optimus Prime's Ticket.

According to our friends at Seibertron, Optimus Prime was ticketed by NYC PD for blocking traffic even though Hasbro had the proper permits to have Optimus Prime where he was supposed to be during Toy Fair.

Check it out here: http://www.seibertron.com/transformers/news/optimus-prime-gets-a-ticket/20823/!

Comic Book Independents? Possibly a worthwhile read.

Just saw this and it looks pretty great. Just not enough info on it so far. But the cover collection of comic books shows that this is definitely the indies for comics. TMNT, Elfquest, and Savage Drago for starters. It's looking like it's just a book full of interviews, but it could be worthwhile.

Comic Book Independents

In Which a Blogger Muses Pointlessly About a Culture of Living Machines

When I was a child, I had no real expectations for Transformers beyond what the original animated series and toyline promised: alien robots fighting. Certain things that stand out now as strange didn't seem unusual at all when I was a child. For instance: Why is it that Kup had aged visibly when other robots who were millions of years old did not? Why were robot children depicted among the Lithone? It wasn't until Michael Bay took the franchise in hand that I really started to think about things like this as well as the potential of the basic story. The Transformers is, above all, a story of war, and most of its characters are soldiers. But, surely, Cybertron wasn't entirely populated with military. How was the civilian populace affected when the great war started? Were the Autobots and Decepticons government forces? Disappointed with the aforementioned films and their video game tie-ins, I sought out a MUSH in which to roleplay an original Transformer, and I brought into it all of my questions and ideas about what a living machine and his home planet might really be like. I had lofty aspirations; I hoped to add to the MUSH's canon details about the real role of and reason for sexual dimorphism in the naturally asexual Cybertronians, descriptions of civilian life before the start of the great war and the system of government from which the Autobots may have sprung, and even theories about how Cybertronians are mass-produced. I was clearly overly ambitious in that regard - the MUSH, of course, had its own canon and theme - but playing there did serve to increase my fascination with Cybertronians as a people.

Sadly, nothing I come up with can ever be anything more than fanon! Transformers has several well-developed continuities, each with their own ideas of just what Cybertronians are and where they came from. In my opinion, however, and perhaps this is necessarily so, no continuity has done a satisfactory job of portraying pre-war Cybertron and explaining Transformer physiology.

Toyfair 2011 Transformers DOTM lineup

Thanks to TFormers.com there is a Toy Fair 2011 thumbnail gallery of toys from the forthcoming Transformers: Dark of the Moon toyline.

It's got Wreckers, Crankcase, a messy Optimus Prime and a Ratchet with a giant pizza-cutter to describe a few...

Machine Wars

Machine Wars came after Beast Wars, but we're saving Beast Wars and Beast Machines for Monday/Tuesdayish for the posting. The reason being is that the they have a larger story to explain over this Kay-Bee toy store exclusive line. 

Basically, 12 unique figures were made by Habsro as an exclusive to be sold at Kay-Bee while the Beast Wars figures were being launched.  The characters from G1 were redesigned for Machine Wars. There was no comic book run or cartoon series to support this shortly lived toyline. 

Honestly, the toy run was also lackluster: 

As you can see, Megatron is now a jet. Also about half the size of Optimus Prime. At the same time, Starscream has a huger body. I might dig up more photos if people want. 

Transformers: Generation 2

G2 wasn't exactly the most loved adaptation for Transformer fans, but it helped Hasbro keep their line alive a bit longer. Basically, it was a push of the G1 line that we talked about a couple days ago but with some retooling; like CGI, new faction emblems, and recolorized figures... 

Marvel Comics was really the only original stories for G2. It had Simon Furman still on board and created new storylines and utilized some of the newer characters that the G2 toyline had. The animated cartoon show, on the other hand, was just the same episode from G1 but with a computerized opening and closing credits. As the clip above shows, it basically makes it look like your accessing the data banks to see each episode. 

The toys pretty much kept the main G1 favorites but had them recolored, like the Constructicons went from a pastel green to a yellow. Personally, I liked that change because it made more sense for them to be that color but that's just one of the examples of the good color changes. The Dinobots had a small color change which is not major and the Minibots, like Bumblebee, went to metallics but their colors were the same. Hasbro did some other crazy color schemes using neonish colors that didn't make much sense. As you can see the colors for Starscream change. Other gimmicks were used for the toys; like missile launches, sound effects, color changes, and so forth.  The Aerialbots and Combaticons even got a rap video! 

Marvel Comics run was limited and not all the characters in the cartoon show made it to the toy shelves. Some of the unused prototypes were used in Machine Wars. 

The Eye and What Meets It

It shames me now to admit such, but I used to look with disdain upon those who seemed stuck in their youth, unable to move on to a full understanding and acceptance of contemporary culture. Old people griped about the way things had changed, framing in their minds a mythic "golden age" in which everything was exactly as it should have been. This is what I believed, and I wondered why they couldn't just look fondly back on what had passed while admitting that things had changed for the better. I will be turning 31 on the 14th of this month, and, while 31 is not old, more than ever I feel as though roles have been reversed - I remember very clearly movies, music, toys, and TV shows that were "better" than the ones being produced now. This is not doublethink; I cannot help but wonder whether or not I have become a "good old days" person myself, and I'm embarrassed that I didn't see it coming.

The animated series The Transformers debuted on American television in 1984, when I was 4 years old. This September, the franchise will celebrate a 27 year run on TV alone with yet more territory ahead into which to continue expanding. I said before that Transformers has endured, but I am now compelled to add a caveat: the brand has endured, but the property has changed quite a bit since its inception. I truly want to be able to embrace Michael Bay's vision for Hasbro's robots in disguise, but I find myself no more able to do that than I was able to get into Beast Wars. As Transformers moves forward, I want to move with it, but I'm increasingly frustrated. I find that, for whatever reason, I just can't move on. I've become one of the people I used to mock, but I haven't attained the wisdom to fully understand my new position. Why do I cling to G1? Why is it that the fact that the old transformation sound effect has been all but phased out continues to gall me? Bay's Transformers are sharp, angular, alien, and not all humanoid. Surely, a claim that this is "bad" must be subjective. But I can't help seeing it as objective, in spite of my desire to grow with the franchise I love.

Even 27 years after I first laid eyes on Transformers, the brand continues to teach me. I must accept the way that it's changed; after all, it would surely have stagnated if G1 had never ended. And maybe, if I can give non-G1 continuities a chance, I can avoid becoming mired in fabricated memories of a "golden age" of music, TV, movies, or anything. I may not ever embrace fads like Bieber-fever, and I may always consider Megatron's true alt-mode to be a Walther P38, but if I can learn to continue to grow despite the apparently natural tendency to root myself in the trends and fads of my formative years, I can increase my appreciation for art and language in general as fluid forms of communication and entertainment.

Traaaansformerrrrrs! More than meets the eye!

So this is going to be about Generation One; just another great item to come out of 1984 besides Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and myself. As we went over earlier, the Diaclones and Microman toy lines from Takara were the ancestor toy lines that helped spawned the Cybertronian beings.

So in 1984, Hasbro launched Transformers. Thanks to a business relationship with Marvel working on G.I. Joe, Hasbro had the connections from Marvel to figure out how to repackage and redo the Diaclones into Autobots and Decepticons. So the story starts off with, at the present time which was 1984 where a volcanic eruption dislodges a probe or something similar enough to scan the era and to rebuild and reformat the beings in the crashed in the Ark, an Autobot space vessel that crashed on a primitive Earth millions of years ago.

Now, the life forms are given new modes to function with. Originally, the Transformers were robots that turned into Cybertron based designed vehicles but to blend in better on Earth, they were adapting more Earthly designs; like sports cars, boom boxes, guns, mach trucks, Winnebagos… yeah an awesome hot rod was upgraded into a flaming Winnebago.

The story basically is that the Autobots had a scout ship out for a resource run but was attacked by the Decepticons, led by Megatron and the ship, the Ark, crashed into Earth. Coincidentally, the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime was onboard. Now, the Autobots and Decepticons wake up on an alien planet, Earth to be forced to adapt for survival.

The Autobots make allies with the humans as they try to show they are peaceful when not harassed by Decepticons and even become involved in Earth’s military tests and studies to defeat the Decepticons. Megatron sometimes makes allies with some interesting humans who are definitely not savory characters. Megatron also spends a good part of his time dealing with his plans being thwarted by Starscream; a proud warrior of the Decepticons who believes he should be leading the forces. 

The first season pretty much included ground based vehicles such as cars, tanks, jeeps, and other automobiles for Autobots while the Decepticons were more of aerial assault vehicles like jets, planes, and handguns. Yes, the mighty Megatron was a giant gun… but not all the time; since he would often need for Starscream or Soundwave to fire him.

Throughout the second season, Transformers of different flavors showed up. The Autobots gained the Dinobots; dinosaur based forms that were built by Wheeljack and Ratchet to aid in the battles against the Decepticons. Almost as a trade off, the Dinobots lacked on average intelligence but had brute strength and aggression. Being that they were almost uncontrollable at times, Optimus Prime had the Dinobots quarantined and would activate them as needed. Though, the Ark’s computer, Teletran-1, was capable of releasing the Dinobots as needed. The Decepticons were given an almost equal competitive edge as they gained the Insecticons. The Insecticon army was almost as lethal as the Dinobots and some more tricks. As the name implies, the Insecticons were insects in essence and had some cool tricks like replicating themselves for a drone army. Megatron did his best to use these to his advantage but also was aware of how these swarms would betray him.

The other great character sets included the Combiner teams; a team of Autobots or Decepticons who had the unique ability to combine into a larger robotic being. These teams would often have a gimmick; Defensor was emergency response vehicles like a fire truck and squad car while Devestator was a group of construction vehicles. Generally made up of five to six members, these characters were fully functioning Transformers with both robot and vehicle modes but can then turn into a body part of the larger mech.

In 1986, the character groups started to change. More plots were taken off Earth and into space combat zones. This was influenced from Transformers: The Movie being released. Despite not being the blockbuster that Hasbro was hoping for, it was the turning point for the line. Newer characters from Cybertron and other worlds were introduced. Optimus Prime and Megatron were both killed in the movie so the newer episodes reflected a change for the factions. Optimus Prime was replaced by Hot Rod; who became Rodimus Prime to lead the Autobots while Megatron was rebuilt by a planet eating Transformer known as Unicron to fight against opposition. Even though no longer Megatron, Galvatron had still had his personality for the most part and killed Starscream to reclaim the Decepticon Empire. And as the name implies, the Decepticons quickly used deception to destroy Unicron; but with the aid of the Autobots who were also being threatened by planetary devastation by Unicron. 

After the movie, Hasbro was faced with trying to figure out newer gimmicks to sell the merchandise. We started to get the Whatevermasters; Headmasters (Transformer team ups with smaller Transformer that turned into the head), Targetmasters (regular Transformer with guns that were Transformers), and the lesser known Universemasters (Transformers from Eternia that turned into copyright infringement; also known as Masters of the Universe. Optimus He-Man…). The cartoon show was dropped in 1987 and the toy line was left to be only supported by Marvel’s comic book run. The line was then again with new gimmicks such as the Pretenders and Micromasters. The Pretenders were Transformers who had a robot and vehicle mode but also had a Pretender shell to disguise in. These Pretenders camouflages were in forms of humans, aliens, anamorphic creatures, skeleton samurais, and MTV music video stars. The Micromasters were smaller Transformers that were even smaller than the Minibots and were like the hybrid of a Transformer and a Micro Machine.  Some of sets were themed like jets while some of the sets were also bases.  In 1990, the last run of the US Transformers were released; more Micromasters and the new Actionmasters. If the Micromasters were the hybrid of Micro Machines and Transformers, Actionmasters were the G.I. Joe hybrid. These were roughly the same size of a Joe figure and lacked the transforming part of Transformers. They had characters from throughout the series and some new characters. To still fit the Transformer line, they had weapons and vehicles that would transform.

While Transformers halted in 1990 for the US market, Transformers lingered overseas for a while until 1993. In the UK, the series continued with the comic books and some more figures. Japan, however, was able to have more. The cartoon run continued from a different animation studio and more characters were released and introduced through Takara.

Transformers: Generation 2 would later kick off the revamp for Transformers. It was not exactly a full relaunch either.  But that’s a post for another day… 

Disapointment

So, it's been a little while since I have posted. I guess it's also cause I'm good at driving a greyhound. Only Scott will understand that joke! Anyway, I was disappointed by two things today. My plan to have a car within the next few weeks has been axed. I also bought Star Wars:Knights of The Old Republic 2 for my PC. To my surprise, it doesn't run on any of the computers in the house! Windows 7 won't run it and neither does my XP laptop as it's not strong enough. I was looking forward to customizing my jedi! Guess I'm returning it. You think they would have put a patch out or something.

Game on.

I'm taking some time off to see a game with my older brother. More posts later tonight.

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Tune In To HUB.

Hasbro's tv network is launching the next part of the Transformers series this afternoon. Check your guides!

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So WHO OR WHAT ARE THE TRANSFORMERS?

To explain who or what the Transformers are, I might want to start off with something more of a backstory. No, not about how Optimus Prime was Orion Pax prior to the Great War starting off. Let's go more back to a company in the early 80's called Takara. Takara is like the Japanese version of Hasbro. A lot of inventive and new ideas were coming out of this company. Like something called Diaclones.

So what are the Diaclones? Hmm, I am not exactly too sure but they look like the idea of Transformers but with human pilots. Imagine MASK, as we talked about a couple weeks where you would be able to have a vehicle that you can drive and then it would turn into a combat vehicle. In this case, a giant robotic exo-skeleton and maybe if you were lucky, Ripley would hang out with you if you had one of these.

Optimus Diaclone! 

So to the left, we have the Takara action figure of who Optimus Prime would later be created from. Notice that the color scheme is virtually identical to our beloved Optimus Prime.  You can actually read up all about the Diaclones being merged into Generation 1 over here: http://www.toyarchive.com/Diaclone.html and check out the ones that never made the crossover.

The other toy genetics that went into Transformers were Microman. The Mighty Mighty Megatron himself came from a toy called Browning.

So it seems like Hasbro executives were in a USA meeting and were like, "Well, these molds and toys are amazing. However, let's market them differently. Let's nix the humans. Yeah, robotic beings that turn into cars, vans, jets, trucks, tape decks, and guns!"

And thus that is how TRANSFORMERS was born...

Who are the Transformers?

So this a basic question but a loaded one.

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All Sentient Beings

February is Transformers month! Honestly, if I had my way, 2011 would be Transformers year! I've been a fan of Transformers since I was old enough to self-identify as a fan of anything, and before that I watched the show religiously, often with my father, who was fascinated by my own growing fascination with the world and the things in it.

If I have any particular cognitive aptitude, it is for seeing how things could be disassembled and reassembled to create new things. I am obsessed with order and the philosophy of function. Transformers toys were a puzzle, first and foremost, and solving them gave me tremendous satisfaction. Add to this the fact that, when I had figured out how to change the vehicle into the robot, I now had more than just a toy - I had a character to play with. A lot of G1 Transformers toys were bricks. Knees and elbows were uncommon, as were individual legs. To play with them, you had to rely heavily on your imagination. Transformers were giant robot aliens that fought each other, which is cool enough, but the transforming gimmick and the story behind the toyline were precisely the kind of thing my analytical mind sought to latch onto while it developed. But there was another connection - something else about Transformers that burned a love for the franchise into my brain before I really knew what was so great about the characters. That has to do with my dad.

My mother left when I was 7 and my brother was 2. She was never very present, and treated me coldly. But my father took eagerly to dadhood, sharing in my constant discovery of the world with enthusiasm to match my own. On the rare occasion that I see him holding and interacting with my little cousins, his joy in watching them experiment and learn and be amazed simply shines out of him. My first experiences with Transformers are inextricable from early happy memories of spending time with my dad. Even now, he marvels at my ever-expanding collection of G1 figures, and if he is bored when I am showing him my newest acquisitions he certainly doesn't let it show. Optimus Prime was always my favorite, which is certainly nothing new. And I'm talking G1 Optimus here. He was noble and kind, and he reminded me of my father. While Megatron was an egotist, often berating his underlings, Prime treated every Autobot as an equal. He was flawed, he felt every failure deeply, but he never gave up. Even when he was beaten, wounded fatally and at Megatron's mercy, he gave the last of his power in a titanic act of defiance. I am not afraid to admit that, even at 30 years old, I still get a chill and a lump in my throat while watching that poignant exchange in the 1986 movie in which the Autobot leader refuses to cow before the Decepticon tyrant:

Megatron: "I would have waited an eternity for this - it's over, Prime."
Optimus Prime: "NEVER!"

In the prelude to this fight, Megatron asks Prime why he should throw away his life so recklessly. Prime responds with trash talk, but we know the real reason - he walks into one-on-one combat with Megatron without hesitation because it is the right thing to do to save the lives of hundreds of innocents. He isn't proud, but does not allow himself the luxury of fear.
This is my father. Prime was a mirror image of all the good things about my dad that inspired me to be a good person, too.

Transformers persists. The toys are far more complex. The stories are convoluted, ranging from dark and adult to childishly simple, and offer varying degrees of entertainment value. What is it that has given this franchise such longevity? I can't speak for anyone else, but I know what it is that keeps me loving Transformers. The characters Hasbro and Marvel developed for the G1 Transformers fired my young imagination, even while some of the episodes of that first TV series skirted the edge of ridiculousness, and positive associations with my father, who endured as a source of love and acceptance even through a childhood that would come to be marred by ridicule, emasculation, and intense abuse are why I have remained faithful through endlessly-branching continuities and why I will continue to love the core of what Transformers is long after I am "too old" to buy G1 figures off the wall at my local hobby shop without raising eyebrows.

Mobile Updates!

So our story begins with a horrible and crippling stomach ache last week followed by a lot of coughing, sneezing, post nasal drip, and a mock coma state.

Now as the medicine wears out and my body attempts to regain, we kick of TRANSFORMERS MONTH.

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