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

[JediTricks]

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?"

I've never had that happen. And I never thought of Blaster as a Boom Box because he's so dopey small looking, always reminded me of one of those cheap tape deck radios you could buy at a drug store that wanted to LOOK like a boom box.

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

Uhhhh... ok. Well, your votes are public, I just didn't think anybody wanted me to send their usernames to Hasbro. Plus, I totally screwed up the email table by not giving it color, so it would have been extremely confusing.

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.)

Firing a projectile would result in the destruction of that projectile long before it could hit anything. Firing a beam weapon would cause it to distort and diffuse before it hits its target unless it was using more energy than even Transformers usually messes around with.

Anyway, I'm not talking about Blastoff as a character, only his alt mode's role as a military fighting-themed vehicle:

Onslaught: I'll carry in the other fighting vehicles and fire off projectiles from the 2 large cannons on my truck bed!
Brawl: I'll stomp over the enemy with my strong tracks, then fire my main gun in any direction from my turret!
Swindle: I'll transport several soldiers across the battlefield while one of them mans the cab-mounted gun!
Vortex: I'll move quickly into battle and then hover in place over the enemy while I rain down fire from my chin gun!
Blast Off: I'll fly far away from the battle into orbit where I'll deliver and repair satellites and human space station components! I can only defend myself by clogging my engines with my bot-mode gun!

See the disconnect?

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.

Comics schmomics! Blaster as a figure looked stupid in both modes and in the cartoon was a doofus. We all know he's just a crappy reaction to how cool Soundwave was. At best, like a Zune to the iPod Touch, but really more like one of those no-name cheapo MP3 players you see at Frys or even TRU, all brightly colored and horribly plasticky and obvious junk.

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.

And a new camo colorscheme. And the fact that he's a "character" instead of an ultra-generic, cheap piece of animation.

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.

And again, Drift's faction-shift was arbitrary, tacked onto the character after he was designed. How can it be the keystone to the character when it was added after the fact? And as far as I know, it's never been particularly important to the larger story, not even in Spotlight Drift.

[andersonh1]

And again, Drift's faction-shift was arbitrary, tacked onto the character after he was designed. How can it be the keystone to the character when it was added after the fact? And as far as I know, it's never been particularly important to the larger story, not even in Spotlight Drift.

I thought Drift's faction-shift was a key component of his character, or at least his move away from being a Decepticon was. The key thing about Drift is that he gives a glimpse of what a post-war future could look like. If a formerly violent and murderous Decepticon like Drift can turn away from that life, then there's hope that others could as well.

JT, is it the character or the hype originally surrounding him that's the problem?

[138 Scourge]

We all know he's just a crappy reaction to how cool Soundwave was.

Oh, no doubt about it. Especially when he got tape dudes of his own. That just screamed out "Hey, kids, it's everything you like about Soundwave, but as an Autobot!". None of that worked out nearly as well, though.

That said, I do have inexplicable affection for Blaster. And even if his tapes weren't near as cool as the proper Decepticon tapes, I sort of like those, too. And I flipped right out when they appeared in the movie, too. So I dunno, a crappy knockoff, but a likable crappy knockoff, I guess.

He was pretty rad in the comics, though.

[Dominic]

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.

Given how much just about everything sells through here, it is hard for me to gauge sales. Unless something sells through very very quickly (early waves of 25A Joes) or very slowly (Tunder Mudflap), it is tough for me to make a call. There have been plenty of items people report as warming shelves that I see in quantity.

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

Maybe some equation to weight the characters points based on total number of people who cast votes for the character, regardless of vote ranking? I imagine there is some kind of statistically valid way of doing this.

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.

I am not saying that "official" = "good". There is plenty of official crap. The difference between your claims and the Yee/Furman sourcebook is that the sourcebook was official. It was published by a party licensed to produce a TF sourcebook. Copyright owners and those working for them regularly make decisions about context, tone and content. Yee and Furman made some transparently foolish and self-indulgent choices. I am not disputing that. But, they had the right to make them. They might get over-written. But, they still provide official/canonical basis for people who want to use ideas from the sourcebook.

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.

If the particular group is hard-core fans or people who were fans *back*then*, I could be argued to have been using "iconic" wrongly, but that does not make Soundwave less dated.

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.

Even discounting the (not unreasonable) concern Americans had about Sputnik, the Cold War was as much about posturing as it was about military might. The space race had military applications, and anyone who thinks that the relevant research and development was purely civilian/commercial is a fool. (I am not saying there is anything wrong with the space program as a result. But, there was a military component to the whole thing.)

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.

Not seeing this at all.

Blast Off: I'll fly far away from the battle into orbit where I'll deliver and repair satellites and human space station components! I can only defend myself by clogging my engines with my bot-mode gun!

Blast-off would work as a communications platform. Communications and intelligence are as important as bombs. And, the dream has long been to have an orbital weapons platform.

I always assumed the engines and gun were integrated in some way.

Comics schmomics! Blaster as a figure looked stupid in both modes and in the cartoon was a doofus. We all know he's just a crappy reaction to how cool Soundwave was.

So, moving pictures are a priority factor now? Again, you are ignoring official source material that you do not like. And, are you really taking points off for Blaster not having a scaled alternate mode? When I first saw the tapes, I thought they were too small to be real tapes until I saw my aunt's answering machine. It was not until years later that I realized they made micro-cassette players like Soundwave.

That said, I do have inexplicable affection for Blaster. And even if his tapes weren't near as cool as the proper Decepticon tapes, I sort of like those, too. And I flipped right out when they appeared in the movie, too. So I dunno, a crappy knockoff, but a likable crappy knockoff, I guess.

I rather liked Steeljaw and Ramhorn actually. Steeljaw had one of my favorite transformations schemes on a tape. (The switchblade face is still tons of fun.) And, I actually liked Ramhorn's missiles better than Ravage's. Both were more durable than many of the Decepticon tapes.

And a new camo colorscheme. And the fact that he's a "character" instead of an ultra-generic, cheap piece of animation.

So what, they tweaked the color scheme? And, are you, a fan of "Star Wars", really willing to whip out the "they gave him a name when he did not have one in the moving pictures" card? Do you really want to go there? Do you really want to argue that Ponda Baba and Evazan should have been called Ass-Mouth and Scar-Face?

They took a nameless character from a scene in the cartoon and gave him a name. They did not change anything about the status quo with Acid Storm. (A case could be made for Sunstorm.) They came up with a new character that could reasonably been assumed to have been present at any given time. There were tons of Decepticon troops. Frankly, I could do with a few more of them, even if that winds up cancelling out some of my custom figures.

How can it be the keystone to the character when it was added after the fact? And as far as I know, it's never been particularly important to the larger story, not even in Spotlight Drift.

The character's first and most important appearance makes use of the faction switching. Said switching is important to the story. Before AHM, Drift was a vague idea. McCarthy did not use Drift until AHM, making Drift's definition there more important.

To expand on what Anderson said, Drift and Sunstreaker both show that the faction lines are not inevitable. They can be blurred, crossed, or even erased, meaning neither faction nor its leaders have a monopoly on anyone's loyalty.


Dom
-would rather the Drift figure had a Cybertronian alternate form.

[Shockwave]

In the case of Acid Storm and Sunstorm (and I would argue for "assface and pignose" as well) it's all retcon. The G1 cartoon happened and ended. Then, years later, Hasbro tacked on some back story for a couple of bots seen in two seconds of film. Same with Evazan and Ass face. Lucas added their names later (I still remember having the original Ponda Boba figure and it said "walruss man" on the card, not Ponda Boba. That was retcon too. A case could be made for Star Wars as it's fairly likeley that Lucas had actual names for them at the time, but they just never came out on film. The same is very unlikely to be said for Hasbro.

[Dominic]

I see what you are saying in that it is a retcon because they did not originally have names. But, the changes are minor. (Hey, look, that guy presumably had a name, and now we know it.)

[Shockwave]

True, but retcon is retcon, regardless of how minor the changes are. I see what you are saying with the lack of Thundercracker not being Acid Storm's fault, but I'm not blaming AS, I'm blaming Hasbro. I think they wanted to release a character in that mold, but really didn't want to release Thundercracker. So they basically dreamed up back story for Acid Storm instead. That's why I think we got Acid instead of TC. I really honestly believe that if they were going to release another character in that mold, it should have been TC, and any character released that wasn't TC is therefore a character we got instead of TC. That's my perception of the situation and I have to confess that that perception isn't going to change any time soon.

[Onslaught Six]

While that's partially probably true, Hasbro likely, in some way, counts Thundercracker as "already been done." The blame could equally go to the Starscream repaint that came out a few waves earlier/later. And Thrust is not a reasonable excuse, as it's been 3+ years since Thrust's Botcon release in '07--and this release has different parts from the Henkei release.

EDIT: First nominee has been revealed. Surprise, it's Soundwave! Seriously. This guy is going to win it. There is 'no question.'

[Shockwave]

I preordered Thrust on bbts and the pics on there look like repaints of the Henkei one? I've owned the Henkei one last year so when I get the new one I can compare it. You're right about the Starscream repaint though and I kind of had the same thought about it too.

[Onslaught Six]

Er, yeah, I'm an idiot. I mean it's got the same parts as the Henkei release--different from the Botcon set. Wordfail!