thoughts on the Beast-era

"What? Transformers made from animals instead of vehicles and stuff? Doesn't sound so great, throw it to Kenner division, maybe they can make a quick buck or something."
Beast Wars, Machine Wars, Beast Machines... seeing a pattern? Coming soon: "Wars Wars"
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Dominic
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Dominic »

So, regardless, Takara's most recent attempt actually says that CR is even *more* in continuity and that it's on the same Earth. (Of course, these same guys are trying to say the 2007 movie and Animated are in the same continuity. Tomy's insane now.)
This is a big part of the reason I just try to ignore Japanese context. It is worse than many fanfics I have read.

And, it is also a reason not to sort the lines only by virtue of one being in continuity with another. My argument is that the RiD has engineering and aesthetics linking it to the (roughly contemporary) Beast lines. The (spotty) context linking the RiD to the Beast era is just an extra reason to put them together.
And what's wrong with that?
The problem is that "misc" stops being a useful category when it has too many things in it. The category should be for small lines that cannot justify a forum of their own and really did not have much in the way of breadth or longevity. Granted, RiD had a short run. But, it had a fair amount of toys and can be credibly linked to the Beast era.

Of course, as I said in the other thread, Hasbro's indecision about naming their dedicated misc line (Universe, Classics, TFU, Generations) supports your idea of lumping RiD in with those.

...So who thought RiD would be the most popular subject in the Beast forum once Synjo left?
Because TRUKK NOT MUNKY!!!!! is the one true path? :lol:
I know it's the dub, but while Car Robots might try to link the characters to earlier series, RID makes no such attempt with other North American series.
I see what you are saying. But, unless you want to argue that we should have different areas to discuss foreign releases, the two are going to be connected. (Remember what happened at the old Alleyviper boards when we sub-divided by country? We effectively split our own forums.) Sorting lines by context is also difficult because some have little context of their own, such as "Titaniums".

I also see what you were saying about not liking to split toys from their context. (I have often let tech specs make or beak a decision to buy a given toy.) But, in this case, I arguing primarily that engineering and aesthetics should determine where we put RiD.


Dom
-has seen little to like about BW for almost 10 years now. :(
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Sparky Prime
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Sparky Prime »

Onslaught Six wrote:I don't see where you guys are saying "Car Robots was to wait for BM to get dubbed." If that was the case, BM would have come out before 2006 or something there.
That wasn't exactly what I meant.... My point was that Car Robots and Beast Machines were on the air at the same time and Takara would have had to wait for BM to be translated/dubbed if they had gone with that at the time (again like they did with BWMetals). So they skipped BM in favor of doing their own thing that they could put on the air right away.

And you also said they got CR instead of BM, which isn't really true since they did get it eventually, just 7 years later.
Onslaught Six wrote:My argument is that everybody should just ignore RID's fiction, because it's just Car Robots with everything that links it to the Beastverse ripped out.
Except there is nothing that actually, definitively links CR to the Beastverse in the first place (story wise). Not to mention the canon establishes it as being separate.
Dominic wrote:The problem is that "misc" stops being a useful category when it has too many things in it. The category should be for small lines that cannot justify a forum of their own and really did not have much in the way of breadth or longevity. Granted, RiD had a short run. But, it had a fair amount of toys and can be credibly linked to the Beast era.
There are ways to limit what is put into a "misc" category. It's all about establishing parameters for what goes into that forum in the first place. And there have been a few toy lines that have used repaints from previous toylines. I don't see that as reason enough to link them to those other series.
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by mrfriango »

While I think there has been some lovely stuff being put out by the third party groups. Its mostly been G1 era stuff. I'm a little curious if any of them have even considered doing Not-Beast wars.
Maybe some new takes on the older characters. Or even new characters in the vien of Steelcore.
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Dominic
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Dominic »

Give it another 5 years at least. G1 fans are mostly older than Beast era fans.

We did not start seeing significant amounts of third part goods until about 10 years ago, and even then it was sporadic and on a much smaller scale. The significant third party toys (reverse engineered toys and new designs) are still fairly recent.

As a whole, the beast fans likely still need a few more years to grow up and get professionally/financially established before they can start buying $80 dollar Voyagers. G1 fans have proven the market potential for thsoe items. But, an ever worsening economy may offset that by preventing that generation from establishing the stability and confidence needed for those purchases. (I am a G1 fan, and I am not willing to buy third party items partly for economic reasons.)
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Onslaught Six
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Onslaught Six »

You're right, Dom. I would ostensibly say that I 'am' That Generation. When BW started, I was 7, and when it aired on Fox Kids, I was 9--the perfect age when you can start earning a little side money to buy your own toys.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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Tigermegatron
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Tigermegatron »

Dominic wrote:Give it another 5 years at least. G1 fans are mostly older than Beast era fans.

We did not start seeing significant amounts of third part goods until about 10 years ago, and even then it was sporadic and on a much smaller scale. The significant third party toys (reverse engineered toys and new designs) are still fairly recent.

As a whole, the beast fans likely still need a few more years to grow up and get professionally/financially established before they can start buying $80 dollar Voyagers. G1 fans have proven the market potential for thsoe items. But, an ever worsening economy may offset that by preventing that generation from establishing the stability and confidence needed for those purchases. (I am a G1 fan, and I am not willing to buy third party items partly for economic reasons.)
I think the major PROBLEM HERE is most BW toys were already decently articulated Thus their is really no need for 3rd party beast wars toys to get created. Then their is the SECONDARY PROBLEM that most Beastwars CGI core characters got various upgrades in the cartoon & toy line,So 3rd party toys are needed even less now.

The whole selling point of 3rd party toys based off G-1 character toys/media is that the original toys had barely one or two joints & sculpt was low. The Liscensed BW toys already have decent poseabilty & high sculpt.

Honestly their just isn't that many BW toys that I think are worth the effort for 3rd party companies to create. about the only Two I can think of is,1- 1996 cheetor/tigatron mold up sized to a voyager "ONLY" because I love voyagers,Maybe give the beast legs more joints in the knees,ankles & hips. 2- A sleeker,less kibble,non-rubber parts newer Voyager or ultra toy for TM2 megatron,that has better proportions,more sleek,less activated gimmicks & doesn't have fat stubby robot legs with that over sized robot head.
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Onslaught Six
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Re: thoughts on the Beast-era

Post by Onslaught Six »

His head wasn't oversized! It was as big as Ultra Megatron's.
BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.
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