TF Views

It says something when I'm not excited for a generic dude. Generic side dudes used to be my thing, man! But Scoop is just straight up nobody. He didn't even have a cool Japan appearance or anything because the double Targetmasters weren't released there!

Being a nobody, story-context-wise, is no problem. Venom is a nobody, Doublecross is a nobody, hell up until relatively recently Monstructor was a nobody, and I love all of those guys. But all those guys actually looked cool and interesting, or had neat aspects to them. Scoop...you could stick him in the background of any TF crowd scene and I legitimately would not be able to tell you that he was a genuine, specific Transformer and not just some generic arrangement of boxes the artist threw together to fill out the crowd.

Well, even those guys have something redeeming or interesting about their characters--they're obscure or they're part of interesting subgroups or have something cool about them. Scoop is just...a dude. Who has two Targetmasters, for some reason. (I have NO idea what significance that's supposed to imply.)

Originally the same could have been said about Skywarp and Thundercracker. In G1 (both cartoon and comic) not much was done with their characters other than just being "random background troopers". Sometimes you just need a random background nobody.

But they weren't, they had personalities. Thundy didn't really get his rebel thing going through, but Skywarp was definitely the "stupid one."

Maybe for the first four issues of the comic and the beginning few episodes of the cartoon, but after that they were pretty much "Decepticon Stormtroopers".

Scoop is indeed just some dude. And he does look generic, in a way. I think his design looks good, if not particularly flashy. I dint know really, I just looked at him in the store and thought "Yeah, this looks pretty okay". And like Shocky said, sometimes you need just generic background guys, they can be the most fun. If you're a kid making up adventures for these guys, you already know what Starscream and Bumblebee and Grimlock are about, a dude like this you can kind of fill in your own thing.

And it helps that the toy's really good at its job. Be a good robot, be a cool bulldozer, and be fun to turn from one thing to another. It does all those pretty well.

O6, I'm not sure what you mean by the significance of the double-targetmaster gimmick. I don't think there is any, it just means he has two sidekicks that turn into guns and the guns can combine. Little bit of extra fiddle value.

That's what I mean, though. Double Targetmasters is literally the only gimmick actually stupider than Targetmasters. "Instead of arguing with my sentient gun partner all the time, it just argues with itself! Neat, huh?"

Whereas Pretenders and Headmasters and dudes like Soundeave have interesting and cool gimmicks, Targetmasters Except Two Of Them doesn't really have anything unique or interesting going for them. Imagine if there were, like, Double Pretenders. Pretenders but they have Pretender shells.

Onslaught Six wrote:Targetmasters Except Two Of Them doesn't really have anything unique or interesting going for them.

Well, the guns can combine, and, uh...

Imagine if there were, like, Double Pretenders. Pretenders but they have Pretender shells.

I'm honestly not sure if you're being sarcastic or not.

Onslaught Six wrote:That's what I mean, though. Double Targetmasters is literally the only gimmick actually stupider than Targetmasters. "Instead of arguing with my sentient gun partner all the time, it just argues with itself! Neat, huh?"

Whereas Pretenders and Headmasters and dudes like Soundeave have interesting and cool gimmicks, Targetmasters Except Two Of Them doesn't really have anything unique or interesting going for them. Imagine if there were, like, Double Pretenders. Pretenders but they have Pretender shells.

Alternately "Now I have two guns that can pretty much aim themselves and I can combine them into a bigger gun, besides. Ho Ho Ho." I mean, sure it's sort of dumb, but no dumber than Head or Power Masters. Story-wise it's silly, toy-wise it's pretty cool.

And here I was just going to say that Pretenders that had two Pretender shells sounded great, then Prowl went and reminded me they existed.