Is a Generations Astrotrain Voyager toy needed? I think so..

[Sparky Prime]

My problem is that Hasbro hasn't attempted anything new like that with TF SINCE around the BM era, at least until we just started getting Beast Hunters this year. And as I've said, I'm extremely happy with the introduction of the Predacons, and what they represent. I'm almost cautiously optimistic about where Hasbro'll take the franchise after TFPrime.

I have to agree. It would be nice is Hasbro tried something a little more original like they did with Beast Wars after G1. Completely new characters, rather than yet another re-envisioned version of the same characters.

[Shockwave]

What you want is to have been there for the beginning in G1. Seriously. Imagine it. Imagine living in a world where everything Transformers was new and had never been done before. That's exactly what G1 was and I know you and O6 have mentioned not feeling like you've really missed anything by not having been around for it, but ya kinda have and this is it. Because that's sort of one the things that made G1 so great and why those of us that were there cling to it so much is partially because of that. There are other reasons too which I've mentioned before, but this is one of the biggest ones. I mean, really picture it: Cars and trucks turning into robots? New! Jets? New! Walkman and tapes? New! Dinosaurs, bugs, more than one alt mode? New! New! New!

Hey, I was there for that, after a fashion. TF blew me away when I found out about it as a kid, I didn't even know I was looking at a 'Generation 2' of the line when I was getting Hubcap, and Constructicons, and the like, so I still got that exciting 'New!' thing going on. Robots turning into cars? New! Construction vehicles that combine? New! Dinosaurs, super-posable jets with pressure missiles, and light up laser classic cars? New, new, new indeed! And I still got that when BW and BM rolled around. Realistic animals, robot animals, mutant stuck-together animals, crazy twisted cyborg animals, living alien vehicles? One new after the other. So no, my problem isn't that I missed living through having my mind blown by crazy new toy robot concepts, clearly I got all that. My problem is that Hasbro hasn't attempted anything new like that with TF SINCE around the BM era, at least until we just started getting Beast Hunters this year. And as I've said, I'm extremely happy with the introduction of the Predacons, and what they represent. I'm almost cautiously optimistic about where Hasbro'll take the franchise after TFPrime.

Fair enough, especially if you were unaware of G1 at the time (although I have to now ask the obviously stupid question that did you not think it weird that it was called "Generation 2")? But yeah, everything was more or less still new up through the Beast era and you're right that it pretty much became stagnant after that. I suppose this is also why so many of us keep calling for a continuation of G1 so that we can keep getting new characters and to see the Transformers setting continue to get expanded. And in a round about way I suppose this also answers the "why" of the thread question: No, we don't want to see another retread of Astrotrain for Generations. We want them to keep updating characters from G1 that haven't been updated and continue to give us new characters as well (like Drift, Junk Heap, Black Shadow, etc...).

Actually, now that I think about it, RID was mostly new characters and the UT had some retreads, but a lot of new characters as well, I guess things didn't really start to get stagnant until the Movieverse came along. I think maybe this is why some people say that Michael Bay ruined the franchise, because his movies effectively proved that certain characters sell and so now Hasbro has to put those same characters into every Transformers toyline. Where as before this they just relied on profit from recognition of the brand name Transformers itself.

[JediTricks]

Hey, Gigatron is badass. Cybertron Megs sucked.

Defend that statement please. I only remember RID Megatron being a bumbling, generic cartoon villain who ran away a lot and mistreated his handful of loyal idiots.

Okay. Gigatron was a parody of Deathsaurus. I win.

In all seriousness, when Gigs actually shows up in the cartoon (which isn't often; he usually hangs back at base) he's treated as a legitimate threat who can cause some serious damage. The Predacons are stupid, sure, but once Scourge and the Combaticons turn up, everything gets a lot more serious.

I'm not talking about how he's treated, I'm talking about how he acted. He generally acted in a way that wasn't consistent with how the Autobots treated him, which is to say he wasn't an effective villain despite how they perceived him.

Now come up with more new characters than just leaders since that's what that conversation was talking about. Come up with hundreds of new characters. Keep coming up with them. Also come up with Transformers characters that capture audiences' imaginations as well as the main guys because the brand is in jeopardy when it's not recognizable to audiences.

Okay I'll play.....

Instead of using the same core cast of characters that they've been using in The Movie-verse,2008 Animated & TFP/BH. I'd prefer they use other MTMTE core characters & even some 1986 core charactrers. Here's some replacement core characters ideas below.

That's wrong, you're missing the point of that discussion, Gomess was talking about ALL NEW characters, not simply replacing one with another.

Now come up with more new characters than just leaders since that's what that conversation was talking about. Come up with hundreds of new characters. Keep coming up with them. Also come up with Transformers characters that capture audiences' imaginations as well as the main guys because the brand is in jeopardy when it's not recognizable to audiences.

Didn't the Kenner guys who dreamed up Beast Wars have to do just that? They seemed to make it work okay. I mean, how hard could it be to bottle lightning twice, right?

You mean thrice since we're talking about doing it yet again. Keep in mind, when Hasbro let Kenner come up with all-new characters, they basically had given up on the brand and told Kenner to just do whatever they wanted to try out one last attempt because Hasbro as a design house had run the brand into the ground and couldn't see a way out. Hasbro felt at that point that they had nothing to lose, they had no valuable IP left in Transformers to protect. Now is a different story though, and unlike those days, now Hasbro copyrights every new character name whenever possible so each new character is an added expense before it even reaches the screen or toy.

I want new *everything*.

What you want is to have been there for the beginning in G1. Seriously. Imagine it. Imagine living in a world where everything Transformers was new and had never been done before. That's exactly what G1 was and I know you and O6 have mentioned not feeling like you've really missed anything by not having been around for it, but ya kinda have and this is it. Because that's sort of one the things that made G1 so great and why those of us that were there cling to it so much is partially because of that. There are other reasons too which I've mentioned before, but this is one of the biggest ones. I mean, really picture it: Cars and trucks turning into robots? New! Jets? New! Walkman and tapes? New! Dinosaurs, bugs, more than one alt mode? New! New! New!

What he wants is not robots, not Optimus and Megs, just things turning into guys. He likes that the Beast Hunters beast characters don't look like robots in bot mode. He's said as much in a few posts. He's burned out on the Transformers as an idea and a lore.


So Prowl, what's "new" then as a concept? Aside from Transtech, what can you do with the Transformers concept? Do you want to go back to Microman/Diaclone-style storytelling, where Bumblebee and Soundwave are actual size? What elements of Transformers do you feel still hold up and should be carried forward: aliens, robots, changing, stealth, disguise, everyday recognizable objects, unending war, what? How does a new iteration of an idea such as those in the Bay films not feel new to you?

[BWprowl]

Fair enough, especially if you were unaware of G1 at the time (although I have to now ask the obviously stupid question that did you not think it weird that it was called "Generation 2")?

Have I emphasized before how monumentally stupid I was as a child? I literally never noticed the words 'Generation 2' on any of the packaging. I seriously never saw it on there. It was a miracle I even knew the names of most of the toys I had, and the only reason I recalled the faction names for them was because they were printed on each one of the toys. At the time, I thought the 'Transformers' toys I was getting were the only ones there had ever been, so I was obviously struck by dissonance of the Dinobots being grey in the cartoon when the Grimlock I had was blue, or that when they 'finally' made a toy of Megatron, he looked nothing like that white guy who turned into a gun I'd seen in the show. When I was watching Beast Wars, the few times the G1 Autobot symbol popped up I didn't recognize it as such, only vaguely recalling it as a general 'Transformers' logo, since to me, the Autobot logo had always been Optimus Prime's head. It never occured to me that there had been Transformers toys before the ones I had, or that those had been part of a 'revival' of an earlier brand.

We want them to keep updating characters from G1 that haven't been updated and continue to give us new characters as well (like Drift, Junk Heap, Black Shadow, etc...).

Just an FYI, Black Shadow's not a new character. His original toy came out in TF VIctory over in Japan as a retool of Thunderwing, hence why Hasbro appropriated the new Thunderwing mold into a new Black Shadow.

Actually, now that I think about it, RID was mostly new characters and the UT had some retreads, but a lot of new characters as well, I guess things didn't really start to get stagnant until the Movieverse came along.

New characters are super-cool, but I still want to see them take it all the way and reinvent the entire franchise from the ground up. Beast Hunters is kind of a happy medium, I supposed, keeping the same ol' guys around in new hats and giving them a whole new faction of new-altmode, new-design-philosophy, new-character guys to fight.

I think maybe this is why some people say that Michael Bay ruined the franchise, because his movies effectively proved that certain characters sell and so now Hasbro has to put those same characters into every Transformers toyline.

You're giving those people too much credit. They say the movies ruined the franchise for the same reason they said Armada ruined the franchise, or Beast Machines ruined the franchise, or Beast Wars ruined the franchise, or Headmasters and Powermasters and Pretenders ruined the franchise: because it was different from what came before.

What he wants is not robots, not Optimus and Megs, just things turning into guys. He likes that the Beast Hunters beast characters don't look like robots in bot mode. He's said as much in a few posts. He's burned out on the Transformers as an idea and a lore.

Hey now, I appreciate the ‘robots’ angle of TF and feel that it’s essential to the toys working as well as they do. My appreciation for Beast Hunters isn’t that they don’t look like robots, I think they do still have robot nature prevalent in them and appreciate that, but more that they don’t look like what’s become the standard ‘stack of boxes’ old-school robot look that’s dictated TF aesthetics since RiD. To me, they still look like Transformers, but Transformers I’ve never seen before. Which is exactly what I want.

I have no problem with the lore itself, I’d just like to see it move *forwards* rather than backwards. I got all excited when we were first hearing about Transtech, before they scrapped it, because we were going to go ahead and see what would happen on the new, technoorganic Cybertron and the reformatted Transformers there, with altmodes that blurred the line between beast and vehicle, weapon and transport. Instead, they scrapped that and took us back to basics with Armada: cars and planes fighting on present-day Earth.

So Prowl, what's "new" then as a concept? Aside from Transtech, what can you do with the Transformers concept? Do you want to go back to Microman/Diaclone-style storytelling, where Bumblebee and Soundwave are actual size? What elements of Transformers do you feel still hold up and should be carried forward: aliens, robots, changing, stealth, disguise, everyday recognizable objects, unending war, what? How does a new iteration of an idea such as those in the Bay films not feel new to you?

Interestingly, Six asked a similar question of me when I brought this up some time ago, and I responded by starting this thread Where I threw out a bunch of hypothetical ‘new’ TF lines just to show that it *could* be done, that the franchise still had plenty of options left to keep life into it. As for specific elements, aliens, robots, and changing are about all I need. As long as you have alien robots from planet Cybertron turning into stuff, you can go pretty much anywhere as far as I’m concerned.

Don’t know how the Bay movies seem terribly ‘new’, they were still focused entirely around yet another retread of ‘Autobots and Decepticons turn into trucks and planes and fight on Earth’. It did focus heavily on the idea of one team working directly alongside the Earth military, which was an interesting idea, but that didn’t get pushed as far as it could have (no Autobots turning directly into troop transports or something, no humans using transforming mech-suits to fight alongside the Autobots on a more level field, no Decepticons with their own armies of human allies, only a few dissenting interlopers). The fresh robot designs were nice, but those have mostly run their course and I wouldn’t mind seeing the looks tweaked again when Trans4mers comes out.

[Shockwave]

Fair enough, especially if you were unaware of G1 at the time (although I have to now ask the obviously stupid question that did you not think it weird that it was called "Generation 2")?

Have I emphasized before how monumentally stupid I was as a child? I literally never noticed the words 'Generation 2' on any of the packaging. I seriously never saw it on there. It was a miracle I even knew the names of most of the toys I had, and the only reason I recalled the faction names for them was because they were printed on each one of the toys. At the time, I thought the 'Transformers' toys I was getting were the only ones there had ever been, so I was obviously struck by dissonance of the Dinobots being grey in the cartoon when the Grimlock I had was blue, or that when they 'finally' made a toy of Megatron, he looked nothing like that white guy who turned into a gun I'd seen in the show. When I was watching Beast Wars, the few times the G1 Autobot symbol popped up I didn't recognize it as such, only vaguely recalling it as a general 'Transformers' logo, since to me, the Autobot logo had always been Optimus Prime's head. It never occured to me that there had been Transformers toys before the ones I had, or that those had been part of a 'revival' of an earlier brand.

We want them to keep updating characters from G1 that haven't been updated and continue to give us new characters as well (like Drift, Junk Heap, Black Shadow, etc...).

Just an FYI, Black Shadow's not a new character. His original toy came out in TF VIctory over in Japan as a retool of Thunderwing, hence why Hasbro appropriated the new Thunderwing mold into a new Black Shadow.

Actually, now that I think about it, RID was mostly new characters and the UT had some retreads, but a lot of new characters as well, I guess things didn't really start to get stagnant until the Movieverse came along.

New characters are super-cool, but I still want to see them take it all the way and reinvent the entire franchise from the ground up. Beast Hunters is kind of a happy medium, I supposed, keeping the same ol' guys around in new hats and giving them a whole new faction of new-altmode, new-design-philosophy, new-character guys to fight.

I think maybe this is why some people say that Michael Bay ruined the franchise, because his movies effectively proved that certain characters sell and so now Hasbro has to put those same characters into every Transformers toyline.

You're giving those people too much credit. They say the movies ruined the franchise for the same reason they said Armada ruined the franchise, or Beast Machines ruined the franchise, or Beast Wars ruined the franchise, or Headmasters and Powermasters and Pretenders ruined the franchise: because it was different from what came before.

What he wants is not robots, not Optimus and Megs, just things turning into guys. He likes that the Beast Hunters beast characters don't look like robots in bot mode. He's said as much in a few posts. He's burned out on the Transformers as an idea and a lore.

Hey now, I appreciate the ‘robots’ angle of TF and feel that it’s essential to the toys working as well as they do. My appreciation for Beast Hunters isn’t that they don’t look like robots, I think they do still have robot nature prevalent in them and appreciate that, but more that they don’t look like what’s become the standard ‘stack of boxes’ old-school robot look that’s dictated TF aesthetics since RiD. To me, they still look like Transformers, but Transformers I’ve never seen before. Which is exactly what I want.

I have no problem with the lore itself, I’d just like to see it move *forwards* rather than backwards. I got all excited when we were first hearing about Transtech, before they scrapped it, because we were going to go ahead and see what would happen on the new, technoorganic Cybertron and the reformatted Transformers there, with altmodes that blurred the line between beast and vehicle, weapon and transport. Instead, they scrapped that and took us back to basics with Armada: cars and planes fighting on present-day Earth.

So Prowl, what's "new" then as a concept? Aside from Transtech, what can you do with the Transformers concept? Do you want to go back to Microman/Diaclone-style storytelling, where Bumblebee and Soundwave are actual size? What elements of Transformers do you feel still hold up and should be carried forward: aliens, robots, changing, stealth, disguise, everyday recognizable objects, unending war, what? How does a new iteration of an idea such as those in the Bay films not feel new to you?

Interestingly, Six asked a similar question of me when I brought this up some time ago, and I responded by starting this thread Where I threw out a bunch of hypothetical ‘new’ TF lines just to show that it *could* be done, that the franchise still had plenty of options left to keep life into it. As for specific elements, aliens, robots, and changing are about all I need. As long as you have alien robots from planet Cybertron turning into stuff, you can go pretty much anywhere as far as I’m concerned.

Don’t know how the Bay movies seem terribly ‘new’, they were still focused entirely around yet another retread of ‘Autobots and Decepticons turn into trucks and planes and fight on Earth’. It did focus heavily on the idea of one team working directly alongside the Earth military, which was an interesting idea, but that didn’t get pushed as far as it could have (no Autobots turning directly into troop transports or something, no humans using transforming mech-suits to fight alongside the Autobots on a more level field, no Decepticons with their own armies of human allies, only a few dissenting interlopers). The fresh robot designs were nice, but those have mostly run their course and I wouldn’t mind seeing the looks tweaked again when Trans4mers comes out.

Lol, it's all good dude, I just had to ask the question I wasn't the most attentive kid either so no worries.

I didn't know that about Black Shadow. I'm hugely unfamiliar with Japanese Transformers so really, for me, they could pretty much just import like, Masterforce or something and it would be completely new to me.

A line full of new characters could give us new alt modes that haven't been done before and that would be something. There's still a lot of potential out there I think.

As for the Bay movies, I wasn't talking about those fans those guys are idiots. I was talking about other fans who maybe feel that way but just haven't been able to articulate it. I might actually start a thread about that over a TFW and see what happens.

[Tigermegatron]

A line full of new characters could give us new alt modes that haven't been done before and that would be something. There's still a lot of potential out there I think.

Hasbro is already doing this with the 2013 Beast Hunters Predacons. The majority of them are all new characters,with never before seen robot modes & never before seen alt modes.

PCC was a TF toy line chock full of newer characters & toys designs in all modes.

Hasbro will never again do a TF toy line with a cartoon or movie tie in with the majority of them being new characters with never before seen designs in all modes. BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR IS THAT HASBRO SWAPS OUT "SOME" OF THE CURRENT CORE CAST ON BOTH FACTION SIDES WITH OTHER MTMTE/1986 CORE CAST CHARACTERS/TOYS. TF4 MOVIE/TOYS PROMISES TO DO THIS.

Hasbro always slips in at least one or two+newer Characters with newer designs when ever they do a newer TF toy line with a media tie in like a cartoon series or movie. HASBRO WILL NEVER AGAIN DO A 100% NEW CAST OF NEVER BEFORE SEEN CHARACTERS/TOYS SUPPORTED BY A CARTOON/MOVIE.

[Shockwave]

Yes Deathy, we get it: You REALLY REALLY want a rehash of G1 1986 Season 3 post movie characters. Not gonna happen. At least not more than it already has in all likelyhood. Let it go... Season 3 of G1 sucked anyway. Seasons 1 and 2 were far superior.

Besides, we were talking about toy lines, not cartoons and... um... well... Power Core Combiners. That is all. It happened once recently and therefore it could happen again.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD COULD YOU QUIT TYPING IN EPICALLY LONG WINDED ENDLESS WALLS OF TEXTS IN ALL CAPS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS OR SOMETHING!!!

[Tigermegatron]

Yes Deathy, we get it: You REALLY REALLY want a rehash of G1 1986 Season 3 post movie characters. Not gonna happen. At least not more than it already has in all likelyhood. Let it go... Season 3 of G1 sucked anyway. Seasons 1 and 2 were far superior.

Besides, we were talking about toy lines, not cartoons and... um... well... Power Core Combiners. That is all. It happened once recently and therefore it could happen again.

You need to improve on your reading comprehension & memory skills. Because in my Recent reply I wrote the following: "BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR IS THAT HASBRO SWAPS OUT "SOME" OF THE CURRENT CORE CAST ON BOTH FACTION SIDES WITH OTHER MTMTE/1986 CORE CAST CHARACTERS/TOYS."

I mentioned MTMTE characters & 1986 TF characters,Not just 1986 characters.

I was talking about both the toys & cartoons,not just the cartoons. As often times the cartoons & toy lines mirror each other. you need to read the whole reply,not just a few words or parts & pieces.

Shockwave,you admitted to just skimming thru replies then posting wrongly informed counter replies in the past. Please try to read the full reply then post a correctly informed counter reply.

[Shockwave]

I was mostly replying to the endless constant calling that you do for a rehash of G1 Post movie. The reason I skim through your epic walls of text is because it's the same damn thing every time. Galvatron this, Rodimus Prime and Ultra Magnus that... Dude, we get it, you can quit writing epic walls about it.

And really, your posts wouldn't be so tedious if you actually embraced the art of abbreviation. Mabye you could just say things like "you all know how I feel about Galvatron" or some such, but no, it's useless text wall after useless text wall. I'm sorry, I guess I just got irritated at seeing the same wall of text for the bajillionth time.

[Gomess]

Tigs is just excited about the idea of a TF series with no Optimus Prime or Megatron. And who can blame him??

Please be aware I acknowledge the fact that such a series wouldn't be a Wise Investment for Hasbro as they currently are. But I'm also not much of a fan of Hasbro as they currently are!

They're in a difficult position. The decisions that were made on the content of the Bay movies have apparently made it near-impossible to construct the rest of the franchise within that same universe, resulting in another mish-mash of simultaneous continuities just when I thought we were seeing a concise, franchise-wide reboot that'd be sticking around for the long-term.

And with such long-term singular universes, you eventually get allowed to kill off Optimus Prime and Megatron. ...And then you lose all your fans and money and have to start over. I get it, Hasbro, business r hard