It always bugged how Primal and Megatron are literally the only characters whose names aren't puns on what kind of...

It always bugged how Primal and Megatron are literally the only characters whose names aren't puns on what kind of animal they are. Couldn't they have spent a little more time in the writing room coming up with more fitting names for the main hero and villain? Like Apetimus Prime and Tyrannotron? Or Optimonkey Prime and Megatrex?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ant
youtube.com/watch?v=TsYortvV8zg
youtu.be/ZQzXdox9wbQ
youtube.com/watch?v=9hJkvwoddxY
transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Glass)
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Brand recognition trumps puns.

Well I mean Primal sounds like Primate, except I guess Primal is already a real word soo.. yeah.

-Quickstrike
-SIlverbolt
-Depth Charge
-Rampage
-Airrazor

Rampage

optimus primal is a pun on primate, a group of animals that include gorillas and some types of monkeys.

megatron is not a pun just too much of a brand recognition thing.

>Megatron has an immortal on his team for 2 seasons
>still can't win

Also Inferno I'd say

inferno was a fire ant

Because literally everyone hated Megatron. There were only two Predacons who didn't try to turn on Megatron at one point or another, and one of them died at the beginning of S2 (Scorponok) and the other has brain damage (Inferno)

Everyone hated him

Yeah but "Inferno" isn't a direct reference to ants. Its more so his fire obsession.

It's also an (ironic) reference to G1 Inferno. Who was an Autobot who turned into a firetruck. Beast Wars Inferno was a Maximal protoform, after all.

To be fair, one of the original Predacons was named Rampage. So the name is kind of grandfathered in.

...

Keep in mind the original idea was that Primal and BW Megs were actually the G1 versions and the Beast Wars were going to be a true sequel set hundreds of years after the original show.

He had a team of idiots/assholes ready to betray him the first real chance they got. It's amazing he got as far as he did with that crew

>Beasties
get that shit out of here, Canada

it's still weird to me originally they were a bat and a crocodile to me.

Rampage was a mad dog with the barest of leashes holding him in check, not like Megatron could direct him to do something and expect his order to be followed to the letter. It was more like if Megs needed something blown to bits, he pointed Rampage in the general direction and let him run wild.

And like said, Rampage was always just itching for a chance to off Megs
>episode with proto-human tribe
>Megs orders Rampage to blow up a mountain to test his time travel theory
>Rampage first points his cannon right at Megs
>Megs just gives him a "fucking try it" kind of smirk

I really wish season 2 got more episodes. If it got 26 like season 1 I think we'd have seen rampage do a bit more. Can you imagine an episode where the maximals get the spark chamber of rampage? Dinobot would be like "he's ours now, we're using him" and Optimus would want to ask him to work for them. We never see Optimus really face the moral dilemma of having to dump him on some planet.

When a name is reused for a separate character than what they're usually billed as, there's an in-universe and an out-of-universe reason why.

In universe, the new character is named after the old one, either as a legacy or to remember them. so BW Primal and BW Megs named themselves after their G1 counterparts, and RID15 Grimlock took a popular Dinobot name after the original FoC Grimlock.

Out of universe, it's for marketing reasons. Some names at certain points in time are too popular to not use in the current line up of toys, so they get bundled with the names even if lore wise or character wise it doesn't make much sense. Most recent example is again Grimlock from RID15, named to capitalize on the success of Age of Extiniction, despite the fact that the Uniend/Aligned continuity family already had a Grimlock several years earlier.

There's also the less common (at least these days) tendency to lose trademarks for integral characters, so when Hasbro manages to get them back they staple the name to a random Minicon to get their foot in the door. The purple, one eyed one handed Decepticon from the Unicron trilogy was Shockblast, and it wasn't until Cybertron that Hasbro got the name back and tossed it on a meaningless jet Minicon to maintain the name trademark.

m8 u dum?

>Keep in mind the original idea was that Primal and BW Megs were actually the G1 versions and the Beast Wars were going to be a true sequel set hundreds of years after the original show.
It was going to be set on modern day/near-futuristic Earth, actually - the comic included with the Bat-Optimus vs. Mega-Crocodile two-pack had them fighting over human genetics labs, and Rattrap's bio mentioned him hanging out in city streets and alleys.

It was changed cuz obviously, making an entire city (or cities) filled with humans and cars and shit is beyond most CGI cartoons even today, let alone back in 1995, so Mainframe set the show on a more-or-less desolate planet, and the writers didn't decide whether it was prehistoric Earth or not until the first season finale.

No ones talking to you, CANADA.

.....But, uh, thanks for making that show for us.

I love how in the toys G1 Prowl became an owl.

are you?

crowd scenes were incredibly expensive for CG animation in the mid 90's. It was by far the most expensive thing outside of creating character models themselves. I don't think any shot in beast wars ever contains more than 6 characters doing anything, certainly not in season 1. Season 2 perhaps, but animating a city was right out of the question. The plot of beast wars was very much a result of the technology.

It's fascinating how limitations of budget and the push of marketing new toys can create unique and meaningful storylines that wouldn't exist without those pressures.

If you can stand the retard dropping in and out of a horrible Boston accent, it's worth looking at Movie Blob's (Bob Chipman) review of the '86 Transformers movie. Basically, the need to advertise new toys forced the writers to kill off most of the original cast, creating a coming of age type story where the hero (Hot Rod) doesn't really have a mentor to guide him.

>main hero and villain
That's why they didn't

Hot Rod had Kup.

So did Lost Light and Rom vs TF get delayed

Adding to that, wasn't the whole Standing Stones thing, which eventually lead to the entire Vok side plot, only in the show because Mainframe happened to have a Stonehenge model on their computers and the writers decided to build a story around it?

I had no idea that was the story behind that.

The vok subplot was interesting , I just wish they had a better conclusion.

oh wait it's tuesday, not wednesday

it is Wednesday my dudes

Dinobot II wouldn't have betrayed him if Depth Charge hadn't killed Rampage

It's still Tuesday where it counts for comic releases

Still fucking pissed they renamed it that title in its home country.

Seriously, we allow the darker aspects of the show to go through uncensored, yet the title can't keep the 'Wars' part of its name? Hardly a fair trade off if you ask me.

>Scorpions and Cobra both strike quickly
>Silverbolt has silver-colored wings and flies quickly
>Depthcharge is a deep sea combat specialist
>Rampage's life is angry pain and sadism
>Airrazor can fly

Said immortal hated his boss' guts.

>It's fascinating how limitations of budget and the push of marketing new toys can create unique and meaningful storylines that wouldn't exist without those pressures.
It worked for the original Star Wars films.

>>Megatron has an immortal on his team for 2 seasons
There was one with him from the beginning. Nobody gave him much notice, except Starscream.

He's a Fire Ant!

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ant

>Optimus Primal.
>Not a pun.
Wat?

Waspinator would have been killed off at the end of Season 1 had the writers not loved the bug-brained moron, so Terrorsaur ended up dying in his place. Scorpinok was gonna die no matter what, though.

I mean, come on now. This should've been obvious from his debut.

Poor Scorponok.

I mean as others have said, Primal is kind of an animal pun, and regardless, it still sounds enough like "Optimus Prime" anyway to still have that brand recognition thing

Also, it was kind of that way a lot of times in G1 anyway. Oh, you're telling me the small yellow transformer is called Bumblebee? The one who happens to talk black is named Jazz? The one who turns into recording equipment is named Soundwave? Transformers have always had "punny" names more often than not with exceptions of the leaders who just have generic "robot" names, Beast Wars was no exception, it just became more animal based since they turned into them

>The one who turns into recording equipment is named Soundwave
That was more or less a tie-in with sony's walkman.

youtube.com/watch?v=TsYortvV8zg

Optimus Prime means Best First and Megatron comes from Megaton and Electron, words associated with explosive destruction in warfare.

youtu.be/ZQzXdox9wbQ

MEGATROOOOOOOOOON!

youtube.com/watch?v=9hJkvwoddxY

Yesssss...

>Say goodbye to the universe, Maximals. The future has changed. Yes! The Autobots LOSE! Evil TRIUMPHS! And you... YOU NO LONGER EXIST!!!

scorponok was completely redundant after Inferno, and everyone agrees Inferno was better

I sometimes with the Maximals had a bigger cast

Killing off 2 members in the same episode kind of sucked and were just sent back to Cheetor and Rat Trap quips

2 Maximal toys had CG renders but were never put in the show

Because they didn't flesh out Scorponok beyond "loyal". Hell, in different episodes he jumps all the way around from the communications officer/computer guy to speaking like Hulk.

Speaking of Beasties/Beast Wars

MOTHERFUCKING MASTERPIECE DINOBOT!!!

Sizes comparison to the other two Masterpieces

...

God that is an awful raptor

Compared to other dinobot toys....especially ones trying to be as screen acurate as possible like the Masterpiece. It is amazing!!!

I wish Rampage had a bit more development. I loved those brief moments where he was filled with self-loathing or at least aware of what a nightmare his existence was.
His mourning of Transmutate is an underrated moment in the series.

It was an awful raptor in the show, and the whole point of these figures is to be show accurate as possible, since the show came out after the toys and the show designs weren't always the same as what the toys were.

Hell I would say the original toy version of Dinobot had a better looking raptor, robot kibble aside, but that's not what Masterpiece figures is all about.

>flesh-colored dinobot
Lame
The Fox Kids repaint was cool though

Well, when I said "more accurate" I of course ment show/screen accurate...not toy accurate!

One of the biggest issues people seem to have (which I personally don't have and don't understand) is the "outdated" graphics of the show (seemingly ignoring how it was pioneering at the time). All they really need to do would be to redo the series with modern day CGI... BUT!!! keep it faithful to the original.

Basically recreate the episodes as they were, shot for shot. No need to re-record lines, just use a 5.1 mix of the original audio. No redubbing! In going down this route, you not only get a new audience into Beast Wars, but you open the door to additional episodes that can take place in any of the 3 original seasons. More episodes that take place in Season 2 and 3 (which remember were 13 episodes each, not 26 like the 1st season) can allow more screen-time to latter character additions (ie. Depth Charge, Rampage, TigerHawk). We could even see that infamous canned episode, "Dark Glass" (transformers.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Glass) finally produced.

I think it looks pretty good as far as show accuracy goes, which, in the show Dinobot was a pretty silly looking Raptor, they even got that weird squigly upper jaw and tiny weak looking snake tail.

This is actually the Dinobot toy I had in childhood, I always wanted the original one for some reason, something about the translucent plastic and fleshy pink color appealed to me. Plus, the blue face.

Yeah but that price tag
>Most expensive MP to date at $250

Pic related is where it's going to be at, friend. Get with this guy when he's available
>Actually has two hands

Just look at this sexy beast

I haven't seen Beast Wars/Machines, is it good?

Beast Wars S1 is good, with the finale being where it becomes excellent. There's a big difference in tone between S1 and S2/S3.

Beast Machines isn't as awful as some would have you believe, but it's a huge shift from BW and it can get annoyingly grimdark at points.

And absolutely none of them are puns or a reference to a specific animal, which is what the op is complaining about.

Is that supposed to be Transmetal II Megatron?

Does he come with the powdered wig he wore in Quickstrike's mock-trial?

I had so many dreams about the season premiere during that hiatus, and they were all awesome. One involved time travel.

>Primal won POTP
>under chaos
Are you ready for some Star Saber tier character assassination from IDW?

>mfw I realised G1 and BW Megs share a trabsformation
>also a t-rex is perfect for a living gun analogue

Batman and Killer Croc. Though I prefer the King Kong vs. Barney colored T-Rex idea more

He is Light-Chaos. Like Sun Wukong or Shiva

>New Primal update
>he turns into a hoverboard
JUST

I wanna know why they let Optimus have a new name when he merged and became Optimal Optimus but they didn't change Megatrons name to Mega Megatron or Galvatron when he became a dragon

Megatron's name is important to him. Primal is presumably less attached, given he already permuted it from Optimus Prime. The manbot clearly appreciates a good pun.

I don't know, but Optimal Optimus is unique in that he is the only character to have a Transmetal form, and then get yet another Transmetal form, as opposed to a Transmetal 2 form

Oh hey, same guy did DBS's first intro.

I thought it was an autobot form or a mishmash of the two which is why he became huge

Yep

If he doesn't I'm rioting

Which toy would you like to have seen in the show? Pic very much related.

Yeah on second thought, it doesn't really have the "animalistic in robot mode" traits Transmetals have so I suppose you could consider it something different entirely from both Transmetal and Transmetal 2 in terms of aesthetics.

>tfw no leader class figure that doesn't shatter like sugar glass

I think nearly EVERY BW toy has a CG model thanks to Takara, but they aren't show quality.

He had fur on his robot arms that was covered by the blast plates in other modes.

Here's hoping that Masterpiece Dino Megatron eventually happens....it will be the biggest Masterpiece.

...and it better come with the rubber ducky!

Rubber ducky and powdered-wig accessories FTW!

I still have the Batimus Prime toy. Don't know what happened to Crocatron.

You know, Megatron's victory would have been short-lived once Unicron came rolling in with no Matrix to stop him, but I don't think he was thinking that far ahead.

It's entirely possible he didn't even know about Unicron. He didn't even know about STARSCREAM BEING TREACHEROUS, despite having the information on hand for Blackarachnia to look up.

Speaking of which, people give Blackarachnia a raw deal. Everyone always says she was just tarantulas with tits, but she wasn't even a scientist at all. She was a historian/engineer/tactician and had a huge list of accomplishments to her name by the end of the series.

Nobody loves Scorpinok

>thread makes me think of how I've had my Torca for almost 20 years with no GPS
>Pull him out and transform him gently
>This happens

You jinxed me Sup Forums

gotta look into those third party replacement parts

Or a Lion

Damnit user