For my part:

 

(Warning: rambling stream of consciousness forthcoming. Feel free to skip; I feel free to gush, so we're even.)

 

Must have watched at least a little G1 as a kid, though I think I missed most of it. Passed up the chance to buy the G1 DVDs before they suddenly became insanely expensive. (D'oh!) I did have a fair number of G1 toys as a youth, which instilled some nostolgia for the G1 designs, and also helped instill a love of really good toys in me that lasts to this day. Yay engineering!

 

I've never read any TF comics. (Or most other comics either, really.)

 

Missed G2; never even got a single toy from it.

 

Encountered BW as toys in the store. Bought the one that turns into a preying mantis based entirely on toy design. Things snowballed from there. (Though not actually a completist (usually), I am susceptible to the urge.) I did not see the show at all until *years* later, when I bought the DVD box sets. (After missing the G1 ones, I would not make that mistake again.) That is one awesome show.

 

Beast machines did not impress me. I bought most of the toys on momentum from BW but they were fairly lackluster. Didn't see the show until I bought the DVDs; it was okay. The transmorfing was unimpressive, and BM seemed not to care too much about respecting the characterization established in BW, which severely annoyed me. Also didn't get into the pseudoreligious or herbological angles.

 

A/E: I can't keep these straight. Bought a lot of toys, but quality varied wildly, often dipping pretty low. What little I saw of the shows did not impress me at all. Stilted animation, annoying stupid kids. I never did see Kicker though, so I can't speak of him. The toys I liked best were the G1 homages; they trilled my nostolgia for the G1 toy designs.

 

C: AWESOME toys, mostly; bought nearly all of them (excepting repaints). Never saw any of the show. I dunno if there were many G1 homages in this line, and don't really care. They toys stand (or in some cases fall) on their own merits. (The one that turns into Wheeljack the green muscle car is awesome though.)

 

Alternators: Excellent toys. Homageriffic. Dang hard to find.

 

MP: OP & Megs: Pure joy. Starsgreen: pass. Maybe if they hadn't shown me that first prototype... but they did, and now MP-3 looks all the worse for every change. I don't have macross nostolgia, and colors are WTF (blue abs? It's not even for the alt mode!!), so nopers. Maybe the repaint. Maybe. It it isn't reviewed as a display-only piece again.

 

Classics: Mostly awesome with a few stinkers. Bought them all, including the stinkers. (Devastator is much imporved if you buy two and lose all the black/grey parts. (I found it at half-price.)) The homages to G1 were mostly excellent, the toys themselves built on Cybertron's design principles.

 

Movie: Ugly, ugly, ugly! What little I've seen of the movie clips and screenshots (I haven't been looking very hard) looks appallingly bad. They look to be more transmorfers than transformers, and all the kibbly little details wash together to look like mixed crap in the little clips. (That might work better on the big screen, though.) The heads, hands, and feet were clearly designed to be as crappy and stupid as possible and succeed marvelously. There are reasons nothing has evolved spindly mislengthed fingers or toes, Bay! Jeez!

 

The movie is going to have to be spectacularly good on other fronts to compensate for its craptacular designs. Possible, I suppose, but it's very difficult to keep suspending disbelief. My comments and concerns on the subject have unintentionally convinced my brother not to go see the movie.

 

The G1 connection is tenuous, with only prime coming through as an actual match. Mostly they're just name-recycles on totally new designs, which is mostly okay. The new Starscream design is sort of deliberately urinating on the classic Starscream design though (a design that had survived through the A/E/C series relatively untouched; now only Prime's design remains relatively unscathed). Movie megatron looks like an unimpressive pile of shredded scrap metal, but he always looks different each go-round, so no harm no foul. His Galvatronish starship design in Energon was better looking, though.

 

Regarding the movie toys, they are much improved by the constraints of toy design. They actually transform, for example, and have excellent designs and engineering, mostly devoted to hiding the kibblycraptastic robot parts amongst the smooth blocks of alt mode. I've bought the ones that didn't look like crap to me, which was mostly the autobots (sans old bumblebee; I don't need two of him) plus the smaller decepticons (tank and fork-thing, plus the snowtruck and red car). No FABs or smaller yet. Ironhide is poor (and looks like crap), the decepticons are medicore (and look like crap, though they carry it off better because they're supposed to look that way). The non-movie decepticons fare better; the snowtruck is awesome in pretty much every way. (It even has a face!) The autobots I've got are mostly great toys, except for Ironhide; mostly they look good, though non-leader prime is too movie accurate, and so a little too kibblycraptastic for my tastes. Leader prime's look works well, though.

 

(The real gear toys vary. The gamepad totally sucks, the binoculars are awesome in every way, and the others are distributed between the two.)

 

 

Summary: I don't like the movie designs, and I do like the old G1 designs, so I much be a rabid G1 fanboy. That's how it works, right?

 

(Thanks for putting up with (or skipping past) my rambling, even if it was somewhat off-topic. I just felt like it, you know?)

I was a big fan of the RID toys and A/E/C Toys. But the reason many say all those shows sucked is because.... They SUCKED.

 

I watched G1, voltron and thundercats all when I was a kid. Loved'em. G1 is 90% still watchable. Thundercats is ok. Voltron is beyond unwatchable. I am ashamed I enjoyed it as a kid.

 

I think all those post BM shows are gonna turn into Voltron level "I can't belive I watched that crap" even for the kids who liked them.

 

Any one know what happened to Mainframe? Why they don't make AWSOME Tf shows anymore? Instead we get dubbed photoshopformers. He-Man had less shot repetition.

 

Oh and is the pig f---er who threatend Bay here?

 

... No?*

 

Then can we stop brining it up EVERY OTHER POST? One moron who forgot to take his meds is hardly a cohesive reason not Starscream about the the Bhey formers, or to tell anyone who does to "shut up" "move on" or "get over it".

 

How do we know that the death threat douche wasn't a BM nut who was pissed Prime wasn't a monkey, or a RiD fan who wanted a firetruck and Giant Hand megs... actually megs does kinda look like that... Hmm...

 

I digress.

 

 

 

*If he is here: Bhey humps yer Mom.

 

I agree. There are plenty of shows that I watched as a kid but cannot watch today. I think my enjoyment of G1 goes beyond nostalgia. The show does have a certain charm to it and I get this sense there was hard work put into the show. Between the actors who did great voice work to the music and the fact that, while the animation was reused, they at least tried to make it look like transformations happened right there in the scene. The stories ranged from good to silly, but never bad.

 

Beast Wars was good. I don't like Beast Machines, but that's more because of the tone of the show and the thinking behind the whole concept. Rid is fun camp, but Armada was just lousy. Energon wasn't any better and Cybertron was only good for the toys.

The great thing about the G1 comics was that I enjoyed reading them as a kid, and I still enjoy reading them now. The G1 cartoons on the other hand, I just laugh at it when I watch it now... so campy!

 

And the idea of Kevin Smith making a TF film is laughable - aside from the budget thing, if anyone thinks that Kevin Smith has a high opinion of Transformers fans, go watch Clerks 2. :P

 

That's awesome. And thanks for posting that; now I don't need to rent the movie. :tflaugh

i love g1 (despite being born 2 years after it ended). it had some great episodes and charecters. but i realize that there was alot of bad things about it also. mainly season 3 wjich started the long running trend of idiotic charecters. i feel that the movie was good, but after starscream died it started going downhill. i don't like some of the newer stuff. but not because it isn't exactly like g1. the desings are diferent but alot of them are still cool. they're robots in disquise, and there original forms just wouldn't fit in nowadays. i don't like some of the newer stuff for for reasons such as making most of the villians total dumbasses and hot shot. in cybertron i didn't like prime because he was a wuss who was afraid of making contact with anyone not from cybertron and he couldn't do any thing he he wasn't powerlinked with some one or using someone elses weapon. also i don't like skywarp not being in the newer series.

i feel that the movie was good, but after starscream died it started going downhill.

 

This is an important point. Too me TFs post OP and megs has always felt like G1.5. So when I hear the " there was a g1 movie, it bombed." I think well... sorta. We got half a G1 movie which I think most will agree rocked then we got half a 1.5 movie that would have been cool if the transition into it wasn't like going to a one armed dentist. I bet if they kill prime in the first 20 min. of this movie that it tanks too.

The general consensus for G1.5 are the final year (1993) G1 figures that were also repackaged as G2, e.g.: Obliterators, Lightformers, Trakkons etc. Otherwise everything from 1984-1992 (and as aforementioned, part of 1993) is considered G1.

 

The Decepticon Trakkon "Fearswoop," a typical example of a G1.5 Transformer...

Left: G1 Fearswoop, released in early 1993, right: G2 Fearswoop, released in later 1993 after Hasbro had started their new "Transformers Generation 2" line.

He did say "to him" dude...

Perdon?? G1 and the classic movie are awesome forever and ever.

There's no problem with liking G1.

 

So what is the problem? People being Afterburners - on either side of the fence.

 

Oh and that Clerks 2 clip was roffle. Now I never need to rent it either.

TL;DR

 

Basically, 'there is nothing worng with being a G1 fan. However, it is the attitude with which some fans act, as if nothing but G1 can be good. Those select few treat everything that is not G1 as below standard, for the mere reason that it is not G1. One cannot reason with those kinds of people, for they are not open for new interpretations, therefore to prevent them from taking part in the conversation, it is usually established beforehand that those kinds of attitudes are not welcome.