/tfg/ - Transformers General

old thread: I can’t believe that Thundercracker decided to make a Megastar movie.

How come all the cool-looking robots were in old stuff like Beast Wars while today you get generic block guys?

Too bad Reflector can't be cameraman.

hethey ded. Twice.

So do you think there was any tension between Starscream and Soundwave? Soundwave was also infatuated with Megatron. He probably didn't fuck either of them, sadly.

BeastWars is an outlier. Like furfags.

Could someone storytime the annual?

you can go to the previous thread and read it there.

It's not in the hydra thread or on readcomicsonline yet. So right now the PDF version is the only one.

>all the cool-looking robots were in old stuff like Beast Wars
>old stuff
>Beast Wars
>while today you get generic block guys

You do know G1 came first right, and Beast Wars is actually newer and also what said.

So if G1 is old-fashioned, why are they still making it?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you never experiment, you stagnate.

The new series has a G1 feel because they're between art styles with Bayformers and Aligned ending and want to see what the kids dig. That's another reason it's the sort of show it is, too.

James Roberts

The Grand Architect finally makes his move. Lost Light #19 - #25. #NoTurningBack

Which one of us has seen @ejsu28’s phenomenal pencils for Lost Light #19? Clue: it’s not you.

Aw, sweet. Sega is making another TF arcade game.

by the way, has Starscream: The Movie been storytimed?

I'm really curious how this is playing out?

Like how is gonna tie Cyberutopia with Unicron?

Answering a question from the last thread, Dispensor is not hard to find. Just selling at a 2x markup.

Be careful, there’s a non-transforming super deform version.

>shark bitch in visionaries fucked up waspinator
i dont give a shit about kup, he should have died long ago, but I hope waspy regains control and bites her head off

literally why the fuck did they think it was a good idea for Visionaries to have unlikeable characters beating the shit out of beloved Transformers and assume Transformers fans will love it.

Like WHY?

The creator is psycho,

>E. J. Su

I can't remember the last time he drew an issue.

Man, the Generations book has a lot of cool things in it. Too bad it ends with G2. Is there a similar book for things from Beast Wars and beyond? Vault barely touches on subjects.

I didnt know anything about the Visionaries before they killed Kup but now I fucking hate them, their writer and anyone involved with the project. Well done Hasbro and IDW.

Yes.

Drama.

Kup dies every other year. Fucker's old.

>I didnt know anything about the Visionaries before

Virtually nobody did. It was such an obscure toy line with such an awkward gimmick.

Be that as it may, they seem to want to make it last this time.

Yeah, sure they will.

Pretender Shell GI Joes?

>no one will ever do anything cool with Reflector
>no one will ever do anything with Reflector, period

I can see it now...

Thundercracker writes the script
Viewfinder as director
Spectro in charge of lighting
Spyglass in charge of filming

Reflector has no potential

That green either has his helmet on backwards or someone forgot to cut a hole in the front. Either way he has some difficult times ahead.

Says you.

Half the characters that the IDW trotted out and made into fan favorites had "no potential" either.

It's supposed to be a visor.

I had all of these as a kid, btw, I fucking loved this line.

Have you read Spotlight Megatron?

This.

I love the Scavengers. Misfire is the only one with a good toy, Krok has a decent-ish one. Both came out after the comic got rolling.
The rest have no secent merchandise at all, and none of them were never important in any way in any continuity.

I think the only thing IDW didn’t improve or make cool is Minicons since all of them but Nickel died offscreen, and Pretenders which they didn’t even try.

Iwas hoping they’d do the Japanese Headmaster continuity for the west, but I guess that won’t happen now.

Flywheels got a Titan Master. Spinister WOULD have gotten one in the next trilogy, but he lost.

And Furman did Pretenders. Thunderwing was pretty cool, I thought.

Kinky

Yes, he is.

>I think the only thing IDW didn’t improve or make cool is Minicons since all of them but Nickel died offscreen
At least Nickel is cool though, barring her awful nightmare fuel lips.

Looking forward to his inevitable revival.

next time when they're bringing dudes back, can we bring Hardhead back next.

Spinister, Krok, and Misfire all had fairly distinct designs among G1 guys and unique profiles, even if they didn't do much. Flywheels was fucked and got ripped to shreds at the first opportunity.

>Flywheels was fucked and got ripped to shreds at the first opportunity.

I will never not be mad about that.

I don't even understand why. I got over Pipes, and Trailcutter, but Flywheels just stuck with me. It doesn't even make sense at this point.

I agree.

I hope more continuities take a page from the Scavangers and create makeshift teams out of obscure, forgotten and underused characters.

Matthew Martin
@Matty0984

@TheJohnBarber so is The Falling pretty much the Power of the Primes event or is that still something to come or has Unicron kind of put the kibosh on POTP and this is the final chapter of the Prime Wars Triolgy

John Barber
@TheJohnBarber

I don't really know anything about POTP. At one time the TF comics were going to do a tie-in with the then-not-yet-named third Prime Wars thing, which worked out because RID/TF/OP had been building to the Onyx Prime story since issue, what, RID 28? Something like that.

Scotty P.
@Scotty__P

Replying to @Jalaguy and 2 others

Possible leftover? Or maybe a happy accident, which feels less likely but not impossible. It's not like Primal's some obscure nobody


John Barber
@TheJohnBarber

I just put Primal in because he's a big character, so why not use him? I saw on TFwiki that Beachcomber and Seaspray were in OP as toy tie-ins, but they're just there because they hadn't been in the book in forever. (I do think I own the newish Seaspray toy, though).

>I just put Primal in because he's a big character, so why not use him? I saw on TFwiki that Beachcomber and Seaspray were in OP as toy tie-ins, but they're just there because they hadn't been in the book in forever. (I do think I own the newish Seaspray toy, though).
TFWiki btfo

>At one time the TF comics were going to do a tie-in with the then-not-yet-named third Prime Wars thing

Maybe they finally realized people hate forced tie-ins.

Hey fuck you. It's not often that the big bad leader of an evil group ends up being a fucking snail.

Shark seems to be the leader

Then IDW already fucked up. Darkstorm turned into a snail in the OG cartoons, and Virulina was the shark. This was hilarious when you consider that most of their fights were nowhere near water and the leader of the Spectral Knights turns into a fucking lion.

I'm kind of annoyed that, despite the new Trypticon toy getting so many design cues from this, Full-Tilt can't attach his gun on his arm like that.

Turning into a snail is worse than a gun. At least guns have offensive capabilities.

Nice.

That's what made it so hilarious. They hamfistedly wanted you to root for the good guys by pitting a lion against a snail. The even dumber thing about it is he only got the snail because the wizard decided on it based on how he crawled his way out of a pitfall trap.

If they wanted to make this work, should have them into anthro animals of roughly the same size and give the snail dude acidic mucous and spiky parts on his shell that can come off and be used as a weapon.

I was missing Seaspray so it was nice to finally have confirmation he's still around.

I just assumed he went native on a planet when no one was looking.

>never watched or even heard of Visionaries
>Decide to look up YouTube clips

>heroes all turn into generic "cool" animals...lions, cheetahs, bears, hawks

>villains turn into snail, an armadillo who just curls up and waits to be punted away, a to-scale beetle to get stepped on

Holy shit, no wonder this franchise vanished into obscurity. (ok, I will allow though that the other villains got cool totem animals)

optimus issue 16 when
optimus annual when

Some of the villain animals were mistakes. Darkstorm was a pretty rad villain, though.

Should have been Tyranosaurus, Scorpion, Pteranodon, Wasp, Tarantula, Black Widow Spider, Fire Ant, Cobrascorpion, Giant Enemy Crab, and Cyborg Velociraptor.

>armadillo who just curls up and waits to be punted away
So a Pierson's Puppeteer.

They also have some other magic with their staffs. Darkstorm for example, has the power to progress and reverse decay.

Pretty sure he'll come back in the upcoming Wreckers story.

Check the last thread there's literally a link for it.

Spotlight Seaspray when?

Crosswise, pls. Go back to TFW.

Never seen Visionaries but it looks like they were playing with the creepy/gross factor with villains.

Speaking of guys we haven't seen in awhile, is Cliffjumper still alive?

Hasbro owns Go-bots, right?
I’m shocked they didn’t die horribly for humor.

It happens time to time but they actually don't own the rights to the cartoon/toy models themselves so they have to be careful with the homages.

Yeah, he's hanging out in some country, Yurmomba or something like that.

>but they actually don't own the rights to the cartoon/toy models themselve

So just what DO they own? The whole thing confuses me.

The names, the character designs, and the general concept.

thanks.

Any chance of a non-pdf version coming out?

Short answer: They own the brand name, charterer names and plot/origin story. They do not own the original cartoon and designs(Hanna-Barbera Productions has exclusive writes due to how Tonka signed agreements for the show) or the toy designs ( Tonka only licensed from Bandai, they didn't buy the rights like Hasbro did Dieclone, the original TF molds)

>the character designs
They do not own that. People need to stop spreading that misinformation of ignorance. They can make a Leader One but the moment he looks to much like Eagle Robo Bandai comes knocking wanting their cut of the profits.

Names and plot. That's all, I think the creators of Go-bots basically rented the original Machine Robo designs and they gave Barbera complete rights to the cartoon as a way of getting made for free on their end. Hasbro only has that much because that's all Tonka had after the buyout in 1991. This is why you never see Hasbro try and revive the original GoBot cast in any shape or form because they don't actually own anything but the title and setting.

Thanks, Nevermore.

They can't use the original molds. The actual designs are fine, hence them using new art they made of Cy-Kill for Ask Vector Prime.

After watching the first three episodes, no wonder this show flopped.

>Convoluted setting that wastes the idea of being an alien world
>Trash armor designs
>Totem forms appear like summons, but behave like transformations after they already form and wear off quickly
>And a bunch of them are worse than simply being a person anyway
>One-shot magic which outright fails often and is generally underwhelming
>Villain organization hierarchy is fucked since everyone but ALLCAPS STARSCREAM is pathetic in fighting ability (who is the only guy other than Darkstorm who gets a fantastic creature as his totem for reasons), so can't even have "obey me or I'll kick your asses" to enforce rule
>Refer to the heroic party as the Spectral Knights before they adopt the name
>Really shit jokes like botanical garden or magic device repair man

If I was a child in the 1980s who got one of these as toy, I'd probably try to trade it for literally anything else at school.

Tonka in 1983 made a licensing agreement with Popy to use their Machine Robo brand. What that means is they were given rights that would be up for renewal in 1990 that allowed them to use the toys in their Go-bot toyline. Transfomers smashed them out a few years later and Tonka didn't renew the license meaning they wouldn't be allowed to use the toys or likeness of them anymore with their Go-Bot Brand. In 1991 Hasbro bought Tonka and gained the Go-bot name as well as all the materiel and lore that came with that except the toy and show designs because Tonka never owned those only licensed them.
Similar situations that suffer fates of same interest for a time: G1 Transformers Reflector, Shockwave, and Jetfire were all licensed agreements and not owned by Hasbro like the diaclone toys were. Rom the Space knight suffered this issue for a long time as well till Hasbro recently got him back.

>Gamble your very existence on revenge against the Maximals for the injustice done against your race

No other Megatron will ever be this based.

Hasbro has owned ROM since 1991.

Actually that got some issues, they were told Time Warner still held the rights and It was subsequently replaced. That was a big blunder that got a few people in trouble.

Not the toy, there is a long history with that and the issues that came with it. How can you know about the buyout but be ignorant of all the details?

That new art was a mug shot that kept them safe, again, they can cheat here and there but they don't own them, otherwise we would have already seen a lot of those designs used. And they don't because they are not getting dragged under a 3 way throw down between Bandi, and WB.

Because he's Boco.

I know about it. Hasbro got ROM in 1991 when they bought Tonka. Who merged with Kenner in 1987. Who merged with Parker Brothers (the creators of ROM) in 1985. This gave Hasbro the name, the backstory, the original toy design, and the name (but not any design, because PB never made one) of the Dire Wraiths.

Hasbro just never did anything with it and let Marvel do their thing with their ROM comic.

And then he turns into guy connected to tubes wearing a muzzle

Bing McCoy owed the rights to the patent and got a big cut on royalties until recently. Think like George Lucus was with Star Wars where Hasbro owned the rights to make the toys but George had the final say.

Creator's rights were a mistake.

>the original toy design
Bing McCoy owned the patent till 2014

Actually three names were on it but McCoy was the last to give his parts on the rights, or rather his family was.

>The actual designs are fine
They are not, not even close, we have interviews all the way back in 2002(or was it 05?) where Aaron Archer shared they wanted to use Go-bot names and characters but were having issues where Hasbro was concerned about the (at the time) Bandia's growing power in the west as well as WBs power share of the cartoon because they could name a bot Leader-1 or CyKill (and they did) but if they made them look to much like the cartoon or toy as such they might be facing a suit and they didn't want that. Aaron said they got close with a jet minicon they made for a deluxe Optimus that they were going to name Leader-1 but changed the last minute to Over-Run because Hasbro wasn't in a position to trade blows with a bigger company.

So instead Leader-1 was Megatron's partner.
Ha.

There were a lot of crazy name swaps and what not at that time thanks to them discovering the sea of lost names due to copywrite issues (they lost Bumblebee, Shockwave, Ratchet, Skids, and Prowl, with Wheeljack, Red Alert, Cyclonus, and many others with just months away of being lost at the end of 2002) so we got a lot of weird named robots for that decade.

made a mistake, Brawn, not Prowl was lost at that time.