We've got Hall of Fame voting going on up there

[Onslaught Six]

No worries, man. You listed your opinion, and that's all anyone ever asked.

Besides, given all the other TF sites, I'm finding it difficult to believe the five we're asked to vote on in the end won't likely include Grimlock, Soundwave and Shockwave. I'd say Hot Rod is also a possible contender for the list. The other guy will likely be a first-year Autobot Car--Jazz or Prowl, possibly Ironhide. Jetfire's a stretch but I could see it happening.

Besides--there's always next year, which will either once again have Hasbro choose four inductees and let us pick the other one, or let us pick all five. In the former case, I can't see some of the top "losers" from this grouping to not get in. If Soundwave and Shockwave don't make it this year, they surely will next year.

[Dominic]

Trekkie,

How did you screw it for everyone? You voted for your favorites according to the system as outlined. I disagree with a couple of your choices. But, you voted correctly. The system for counting votes is flawed, but that has nothing to do with you or how you voted.

I just wish I bulleted for a couple of characters.

Dom

[Shockwave]

I just thought it was an example of what you meant by characters getting artificially boosted. I basically voted "TeH ShOckWaVe is KEWL!!" as opposed to actually taking the Shockwave approach and logically analyzing that "hm. I like Shockwave. But Soundwave is more recognizable and therefore I should put Soundwave first." I just didn't realize that where things are on the list was going to count, I assumed it would just be one vote equals one point.

[Dominic]

I just thought it was an example of what you meant by characters getting artificially boosted.

When I said counting would be artificially inflated, I was criticizing the counting system. if you like Shockwave, then it makes perfect sense to vote for him as #1.

I just wish I voted for Jazz.

Ah well, next year....

Dom

[Shockwave]

I didn't think it mattered where they were on the list, I was just assuming it was x number of people voted for character y so character y therefore gets x votes. So I just picked the five I thought most iconic, but didn't put them in the order of most to least which apparently was what we were supposed to do. Objectively speaking, I actually think Soundwave is more iconic than Shockwave and therefore should have put Soundwave first.

Shockwave
-Is actually surprised that "the other tape deck guy" didn't get any votes.

[Onslaught Six]

Blaster is a possible contender for next year or probably the year after.

A seriously good way to look at this is by looking at the 25th GI Joe line. At the beginning, we got a bunch of characters who even the most casual of fans would recognize--Duke, CC, Destro, Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Baroness, Gung Ho, etc. As the line went on, we started to get more and more obscure characters thrown into the mix. You had guys who were mid-tier that only people who watched the show back in the day would remember (Zartan, Firefly, Stalker--guys who would probably equate to dudes like Soundwave and Shockwave and Jazz), and then after that we started getting really obscure with guys like Barbecue, Major Bludd, Crankcase, and a bunch of dumb Viper specialist troops I don't care about. These are guys who would probably equate to fan-favourite characters who the public wouldn't recognize. Guys like Onslaught, or Springer, or Blurr or Cyclonus or even Galvatron. I'd probably put Blaster in that third category--maybe the second if he's lucky.

[JediTricks]

So, Hasbro requested expanded details on our vote. Luckily for them, I had already done the breakdown in the spreadsheet I ran for the poll, and was able to output them the data for the top 5 to the finest point within minutes of their request. I prefaced that we had limited time to poll our readers so they understood the low amount of votes, then sent the exact vote counts (I took your names off the data, so the votes are anonymous in the email) for the top 5. They seemed quite happy with that data. I think it means Grimlock or Soundwave is going to win.

You know what else is published with official sanction? ...Kicker.

Hey now. If not for the "you can only vote for Transformers" rule, Kicker would've had all *five* of my slots. Which would've given him fifteen points, and a shot at the Hall of Fame. Which he rightfully deserves.

Fine, then in your mind, replace "Kicker" with "Billy and Fred" in my comment then. (I stand by my "Kicker sucks big time" claim though.)

The criteria I tried to use when judging who should be in any Hall of Fame had to do with longevity and recognizability. What characters and figures have been around since the beginning and have made enough of an impression to not only be remembered, but also in some cases to have multiple versions of the figure made throughout the various Transformer lines? No character created in the last few years is going to qualify, because there hasn't been enough time for them to really get established as a permanent fixture of the franchise.

Another consideration was which characters feature prominently in fiction? And again, longevity was a factor. It's very telling that the current Transformers comics from IDW feature characters from G1. We're not reading the continuing adventures of the AEC characters, even if they did have a comic when the toyline was actually at retail. We're reading about the 84-85 cast, along with the more well-known 86 characters.

Makes a lot of sense.

Hot Shot has gotten several toys throughout his original toylines, was included in Universe, and then got thrown into Animated. (In fact, he was going to be Bumblebee, and would've been if the movie didn't have some say.)

Hot Shot may be trending towards having long-term staying power, but then again he may not. He reminds me of Cheetor: very prominent in the franchise for a number of years and meant to be the out front, identifiable character. But Cheetor hasn't been seen since 2001, with the exception of the Universe remake. Time will tell if Hot Shot continues to appear or if he's done. From my point of view, he seems to be sputtering out, not remaining prominent.

Things could change. Look at Bumblebee... very prominent kid-I.D. character in G1, then he was simply gone and off the radar for years and years until the movie put him out front again. That led to him being in Animated, and now he's everywhere and hall of fame material, when just a few years ago he was one of many characters who had a turn in the spotlight and were then forgotten.

Cheetor's popularity has been trending down for years now, even though they did make other figures of him recently. He's not as well recognized and he's not used in the fiction and he's not all that well thought of.

Cheetor was also one of the Armada BW repaints.

Entirely immaterial to the discussion at hand, totally beside the point. Just because there was a repaint doesn't mean he's a lasting character.

Cheetor had the Titanium figure and the Robot Heroes figure, too. So he's been around some for the last few years.

IMO, that means that the brand management remembers Cheetor, not the public. Both the Titanium and the RH 2pack he was in didn't sell all that well, even within the sales of their lines.

I think the thing about Wheeljack and Drift came from a Hasbro panel at BotCon, but I'm not gonna swear to it. I'll try to find it later, when I'm on my proper computer.

Wasn't Botcon '09, I can attest to that. Nor was it mentioned at the SDCC '09 Transformers Hasbro panel. And I can't imagine they would mention it in '08.

I was just saying a case could be made. I am not making said case nor will I get behind it as I happen to agree with you.

I understand, that's why I didn't say in my reply that it was YOUR theory, I was responding to THE theory.

As for Acid and Sunny, well, I liked Sunstorm at first and then he got crammed down our throats and I got sick of him. Their both retcon. Acid Storm loses additional points with me because I feel like we got him instead of a mass release US Classics Thundercracker. I know, I know, "Go buy a Botcon or Henkei one". Bite me! I'm not going to!

How is either a retcon? They both show up clearly in the old cartoon, even if they are unnamed in the original cartoon. I am not defending Hasbro's decision not to release Thundercracker. But, we got Acid Storm independent of Thundercracker not coming out. As much as Thundergate stunk for all of us, Acid Storm had nothing to do with it.

Oh come on, don't be arbitrary, you know these guys didn't have those names, personalities, backstories, or abilities when they were created.

As much as I liked RiD, I did not see any of those characters sticking, even then. I do see Barricade sticking.

Pretty subjective of you, sport. The only reason we have a new Barricade figure in the last 3 years is because he's the only recognizable car Decepticon to have a humanoid buddy in the movie saga. He didn't show up in Animated, and that line got a Blackout who has NEVER gotten a second figure. Blackout showed up in the 2nd movie, Barricade did not. You haven't made a good case for how he's sticking.

Wha? Drift is a US only character. Either way, using existing characters to fill the rolls taken by Sunstorm or Drift woudl have involved re-writing existing characters.

Drift was created to be an homage to Transformers' Japanese heritage, his design is more Gundam-like and he's a drift car, something that is popular only in Japan. This is his purpose as stated by Shane McCarthy, the character's creator.

So, is that bandwagon getting a little full there?

Liking something simply because it's not popular is exactly the same thing as liking something because it is, you are letting others' opinions guide your choices. I am not doing that here, can you say the same? I tried to give Drift the benefit of the doubt, but he didn't get better.

Kinda was actually....

This is a load of crap. Drift was designed before the switching factions element, that was an afterthought as admitted by the character's creator, and Shane McCarthy didn't know that it had been done before such as with Jetfire/Skyfire, Blackarachnia (twice, in the opposite direction), Dinobot, BM Rhinox, Armada Wheeljack, and then movie 2 Wheelie and Jetfire.

In all seriousness, I cannot shake the feeling that many of the problems with Drift, Acid Storm and Sunstorm are due to the fact that they came out after 1986 despite being placed into a G1 contest. "
Oh no, unfamiliar characters. Geewun cannevereverever change!"

This is also a load of crap. You're just generalizing and writing your fellow fans' worldscripts without any objective thought.

For a character to be legitimately *iconic*, they should have recognition beyond just the "insiders". Barricade has that.

For a character to be legitimately iconic, it should have recognition AS a character instead of merely an alt mode. If you showed people an image of Barricade's bot mode without coloring, just gray, how many do you think would know him?

I do not know of any way off the top of my head. Maybe a "if a character gets over X amount of votes in any slot under 3 they get an extra 50%"? I am sure there is a valid way to do it.

Well, until you can find a coherent and proven method better than this, I am going to discount your criticisms of it.

All of those things are official. You are cherry picking what you think should be official. This is as bad as writing fanfic and calling it official.

Then you've just made my point, because that's what the BW Sourcebook is doing and you've said as much in the past. You've said the BW Sourcebook has cherrypicked for its own canon. If you can say with a straight face that every ridiculous claim made in a G1 comic book is canon, then any source like that including the sourcebook can be called suspect because they go forward without great merit, and are easily overwritten later when convenient to Hasbro's needs.

For someone to be iconic, you need to be able to take them 'out' of Transformers fiction altogether and look at their outside appearances in other media. This is how everyone else knows them.

When Soundwave or Grimlock shows up in Family Guy or Robot Chicken, and someone who hasn't seen Transformers beyond the G1 cartoon twenty years ago goes, "Oh wow, it's Soundwave!" then that's the definition of iconic.

So very true!

I can see that arguement. On the other hand, I look at Soundwave and think "old and dated". Like "Happy Days", which was deliberately retro, Soundwave seems very past tense. I would argue that "iconic" would be more current.

I think the Diet Mountain Dew has gotten to your brain. So Hercules isn't iconic because he's not "new"? Icon: a sign or representation that stands for its object by virtue of a resemblance or analogy to it. Nope, no mention there of "current". Culture Icon: a symbol, a logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized, and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group. A representation of an object or person, or that object or person may come to be regarded as having a special status as particularly representative of, or important to, or loved by, a particular group of people, a place, or a period in history. Why look, that's the exact OPPOSITE of what you're saying.

Those guys are timeless though. Soundwave looks to be very much a product of the 80s, if not earlier. This is not unlike the Combaticons. (There are people my age who do not understand why Blastoff is a space shuttle in a military themed set.)

I don't think you know what the word "iconic" really means, or how it applies to Transformers. Transformers is ALL of Transformers, not just the latest, hottest thing. The latest, hottest thing is usually a reflection on something that's truly iconic. Soundwave is an '80s icon outside of Transformers as well as a regular icon within Transformers, that's powerful stuff. Hell, Soundwave's head is the genesis of the Decepticon faction symbol, it doesn't get much more Transformers-iconic than that!

Your teachers in high school frequently threw chalk at you did they not? (They should have.)

The space program was started during the Cold War to give us a military, technological and political advantage over the USSR.

-and, when they designed the Combaticons, people would have remembered that...damned kids and your video game music and internet....I want my prune juice and nap time.....

Pretty thin. Blast Off has no real reason to be with that military theme, NASA is a civilian space agency, not a branch of the military. The rest of the Combaticons can, you know, engage in COMBAT in their alt modes, they are all military vehicles. The shuttle has no such use, and your interpretation is the worst kind of retconning, especially with that unearned air of educational elitism that came with it. Your teachers should have thrown chalkboard erasers at you for using such ivy-league political-philosophical nonsense to justify Blast Off being on the team. My grandfather was an engineer on the Space Shuttle and the crawler, your logic is entirely flawed, the shuttle was seen as a benign device, a craft that was cheap enough to eventually act as a public bus to get the everyman into orbit. By your logic, every computer is a weapon from the cold war, the microcassette technology that Soundwave emulates is a military advance, pretty much any technological advance of the last 50 years could be attributed that way and stuck on the Combaticons team. Armada Laserbeak certainly would be viable.

I would have thought that whether or not something is dated has no bearing on how iconic it is. Iconic things stand the test of time and are remembered whether or not they are ever updated into something modern.

Precisely!

I still think we're defining iconic differently. I still define it as recognizable, regardless of current revelance. Prince is iconic in the music industry but, to the best of my knowledge, has not produced anything relevant for over a decade. That still doesn't make him any less iconic. However, the music he produced happened and people the world over were aware of it. That makes him iconic. The soundwave toy and accompanying fiction were mass produced and people all over the world are aware of it and remember it. That makes him iconic. Something doesn't need to be current in order to be iconic. It helps, but not required.

Excellent point. Michael Jackson is best remembered as an icon for Thriller, including visually, which he hadn't touched upon in over a decade by the time of his death. Frank Sinatra was an icon by STAYING TRUE to his non-current roots in sound and style.

And if we take Soundwave as a symbol meant to make people instantly think "Transformers", then the dated appearance of his alt. mode doesn't hurt at all.

It's like...when you need a symbol that's meant to instantly make people think "telephone", you don't show a picture of a slightly rounded rectangle, right? Even though the old-style phone and rotary dial is hopelessly dated, it's still more evocative of the idea it's supposed to represent.

Nice, I like this!

And within Transformers, Soundwave still resonates by his roles, by what he did when we first saw him, as well as by how he looked.

Ooh, ooh, or if you want someone next to you to roll down their window, you do that 'winding' motion with your hands, even though most cars nowadays have power windows!

That works even on kids who have NEVER SEEN A WINDOW CRANK!

Yup. That's how Hasbro's going to merge all the sites' poll results too.

I can see why Hasbro would use that method when counting the numbers submitted by forums, as it is easier. But, it could lead to some characters being bumped up or down.

When I first read this, I didn't know what you meant, but now that I understand it, I fear I may have done just that with Shockwave. Even though I know Shockwave isn't as recognizable in the mainstream pop culture consciousness as Soundwave, I felt compelled to list him first which probably skewed his points higher than they probably should have been. So great, I really did try to be fairly objective with my list, but feel like I may have screwed it for everyone. So let me just apologize to everyone now: sorry dudes.

Shockwave
-Is wondering if I'm actually worthy of my username now.

Why apologize? You even stated you voted out of zealotry when you voted. You made a strategic choice to advance your preferred character, how is that anything other than what you wanted to see happen? You felt strongly enough to move Shockwave up higher in your vote because advancing him meant that much to you, that's passion, Transformers fans' passion should be part of this vote. I don't care for strategic voting, but I recognize and understand its place.

True, you weren't logical and Shockwavey about it, but sometimes one has to break the mold to remind people what the mold was meant to be in the first place.

Besides, the points breakdown tell a strong story, you didn't sway it much, he would have come in somewhere within a few points of where he did anyway, he certainly wouldn't have swayed the top 2.

I didn't think it mattered where they were on the list, I was just assuming it was x number of people voted for character y so character y therefore gets x votes. So I just picked the five I thought most iconic, but didn't put them in the order of most to least which apparently was what we were supposed to do. Objectively speaking, I actually think Soundwave is more iconic than Shockwave and therefore should have put Soundwave first.

Ah, I didn't understand that you didn't read the rules. Oh well, like I said, no big loss. If you had voted Shockwave as #3 instead of #1, he still would have made the list, only 1 or 2 slots lower.

-Is actually surprised that "the other tape deck guy" didn't get any votes.

It never fails to surprise me that anybody likes Blaster. I always thought Blaster sucked, it surprises me that folks got excited over his re-release. It's a sucky character, a sucky cartoon guy, and a sucky toy.

[Shockwave]

Well I only mentioned Blaster because when I talk to non fans who remember "the tape deck guy" the next question they ask (about 50% of the time) is "wait, the walkman or the boom box?"

Thanks everyone, I don't feel too bad about my votes now, especially knowing that I didn't sway it much. That at least still makes it an honest list as I really do believe Shockwave should be there, if not necessarily before Soundwave or Grimlock.

[Onslaught Six]

(I took your names off the data, so the votes are anonymous in the email)

Damnit, I'm trying to build name recognition here. I'm actually kind of hoping somebody sues me so I can publicize that.

Pretty thin. Blast Off has no real reason to be with that military theme, NASA is a civilian space agency, not a branch of the military. The rest of the Combaticons can, you know, engage in COMBAT in their alt modes, they are all military vehicles. The shuttle has no such use, and your interpretation is the worst kind of retconning, especially with that unearned air of educational elitism that came with it. Your teachers should have thrown chalkboard erasers at you for using such ivy-league political-philosophical nonsense to justify Blast Off being on the team. My grandfather was an engineer on the Space Shuttle and the crawler, your logic is entirely flawed, the shuttle was seen as a benign device, a craft that was cheap enough to eventually act as a public bus to get the everyman into orbit. By your logic, every computer is a weapon from the cold war, the microcassette technology that Soundwave emulates is a military advance, pretty much any technological advance of the last 50 years could be attributed that way and stuck on the Combaticons team. Armada Laserbeak certainly would be viable.

Blastoff is the sniper. He waits out in space, observes, and then comes in for the kill. (Okay, in objective terms--that probably wouldn't work too well, what with the actual time it would take to get down there. But in a sense it works.)

-Is actually surprised that "the other tape deck guy" didn't get any votes.

It never fails to surprise me that anybody likes Blaster. I always thought Blaster sucked, it surprises me that folks got excited over his re-release. It's a sucky character, a sucky cartoon guy, and a sucky toy.

Blaster was a badass on the same level as Ratchet in the comics. He was so cool, Japan made him stand behind Prime and Megs in that united Autobot/Decepticon alliance thing for two panels of G2.

[Dominic]

Oh come on, don't be arbitrary, you know these guys didn't have those names, personalities, backstories, or abilities when they were created.

I can see arguing that Sunstorm is a retcon. But, Acidstorm's bio note is consistent with his appearance on the old cartoon. He is a guy who works with two of his buddies to do terrible things with the weather. All Hasbro did was add a name.

Drift was created to be an homage to Transformers' Japanese heritage, his design is more Gundam-like and he's a drift car, something that is popular only in Japan. This is his purpose as stated by Shane McCarthy, the character's creator.

I misunderstoon what you were saying. I saw the anime influence on Drift. I thought you were saying he was a specific Takara/Diaclone reference.

In any case, the only character you listed that might have been able to fill Drift's role in AHM is G1 Jetfire, and that would have required some re-writing of IDW continuity.

Dom
-taking in an in class test and will post more later.