One of the things that make G1 good is the great amount of different toys it churned out. Different factions, gimmicks, a lot of original moldings, ideas and concepts that still are used today to some extent. Ahh I almost forgot the nostalgic factor involved.

 

I'll always have a place for G1 in my memories.

You can post a thousand topics like this, and then a thousand more, and G1 still won't measure up to today's standards. Everything that Superlink/Energon is, G1 will never be, or never reach. It will always be a dorkfest for crybaby fanboys to sit around and whine about because it's gone. ENERGON is good because of character development, a deep and ongoing plot, great drama, light comedy, and pretty awesome character designs. G1 had none of this. G1's robots looked like stacked up boxes, and they never really resembled the toy in the show. Their plots were forgotten about from one episode to another, and the characters never developed. They just sat there as they were, and what Starscream was doing in his first appearance was exactly what he was doing in his last: Plotting against a greater power. You wanna say "But thats Starscream's character!"..but that's a poor excuse. That isn't his character, it's his quirk. He isn't a good character, he's a poorly developed character. Learn the difference. Nostalgia is not a factor and does not increase the value of a product. Anyone who clings to nostalgia is just being blind and foolish, no matter what subject it relates to. I don't care if its your lifestyle, past events, or even Transformers. That's a pathetic way to judge the value of something in your life: By what it means to you now that it's already gone.

If nostalgia wasn't a factor no one would buy reissues and I'd be able to get a complete set of G1 MISB for close to nothing, but I can't.

 

Memories (maybe nostalgia isn't the best way to describe it) is what gives value to anything. If you didn't care about it there's no point in getting it.

While Bodycount's attitude is quite abrasive, he does come in accordance to my reasons for preferring other series to G1:

 

1) The G1 animation was abysmal. Characters bore little semblance to the toys and quality control was non-existent. Today's animation is little more than a slideshow, but at least the detail is approximate to the toys.

 

2) The G1 storylines were equally terrible. The cartoon followed the same "half-hour commercial" format as He-Man and Power Rangers. The storylines of recent TF cartoons are pretty bad as well, but at least there seems to be a marginal effort to try to make the stories more than a "Megatron's evil plot of the day" formula.

 

3) G1 toys are outdated in that they have limited posability and functionality compared with modern TFs. Also, the G1 robot modes were horribly misproportioned.

 

Of course, twenty years ago, I thought they were awesome and compared with other toys of the same time period, they were. But much has changed in toy-making technology over the past 20+ years, and G1 toys just don't measure up to the playability of today's TFs.

 

I do think the TF movie was the best example of TF animation, though. I consider Dreamwave's G1 comics as incredible work, too. But those are the only advantages I see for G1.

Do we have to argue about this every week? It gets old. Toywise, G1 and Energon are very different. On one hand, you have diecast toys with realistic vehicle modes (at least the first few years of G1) but limited robot modes. On the other, you have plastic toys with less realistic vehicle modes but much better robot modes. It's all a matter of personal opinion which you prefer.

 

On the cartoon side, as much as I like the G1 toon, Energon is better. Better storyline and continuity. New characters are actually introduced, they don't just pop up from out of nowhere.

 

I like G1, and I like some Energon. I love the Binaltech/Alternators line because it has the best of both worlds. You like diecast? Get BT. Plastic? Alts. You want realistic vehicle modes? These are the most detailed and realistic modes yet. Articulated robot modes? BT/Alts have them. Now they just need a great tv show, or perhaps the upcoming movie will feature them......

The post says why G1 was so great, it says nothing about energon being better or not. If there are fans who still love G1 like i do its fine. If there are fans who dont like G1 and prefer today's toys that's fine as well. I do enjoy the new stuff coming out and i do not complain about g1 topics or any topic at all.

 

I think the term Tfan refers to being a fan not a fanatic, my friend. Sometimes this forum sounds more like a politics discussion instead of transformers. If G1 is not of your liking, fine but all that flaming does nothing good for this fandom.

 

You say that nostalgia does not increase the value of a product, then why most of todays toys are the toys from 15-20 years ago?

 

Most of us were too young to care for plotting and character development then. Today is another story. So i dont think is fair to compare those because its pretty obvious that todays shows are developed with certain standars in mind, standards that were not important then. Energon is good i give you that, but if you look closely it is based in G1 elements. Unicron, energon, the coming gestalts, Alpha Q is a G1 quintesson, humans in the storylines, etc. Energon is good because it has taken the very best elements of G1 to the next level.

 

As a G1 fan i look forward to that very next level. I will always have a special place for G1 because those were my first experience with Transformers then. Yeah they were blocky and sometimes even ridiculous but they were good in their own. so good that Takara and Hasbro are still releasing them. Predaking is coming up next. The new robotmasters have G1 toys in them, so ther must be something pretty good about G1 yet.

 

Pretty good for 20 year old stacked up boxed like toys, eh?

 

Anyway i look forward to another 20 years of G1. By then, todays toys might look like stacked boxes in the future...

 

Oh BTW the best Transformer ever made is a G1 based toy, Masterpiece Prime.

I have to agree with bodycount. Nostalgia is why it's so great and the fact that for most of us it came first. For alot of people they just can't get past what came first no matter how superior the sucessor is. Like video games, as advanced as they have become, some people wont play past Ms. Pac-man. Once they see more than one button on the controller they think it's complicated and close their minds. Or Beast Wars, "Optimus is a Gorilla! I don't know anything else about the show and toys but I hate it. They're supposed to be cars!"

 

I like G1 but it was really limited. I started collecting the G1 figures I never had so I could finally touch them and see how they transform in person. When ever I would open them and take them out of the box I would be happy.It was fun to put the stickers on but then I'd be sitting there thinking to myself"I paid how much for this tiny unposable toy?""I gotta stop." I'm always dissapointed by the same thing I hated as a child, no articulation in bot mode. Then the show. I still enjoy it but, just like when a was a child, all the errors and sloppy drawing takes away from the overall experience. I also hate that all the decepticons were interchangable for the most part. No mind of their own always in the shadow of Megatron and Starscream.

 

So to answer the question Why is G1 so great, it's our memories. When we were younger there wasn't nothing out there like it (Save for Go-bots but their toys weren't all that).

 

If Hasbro started giving their new Transformers new names and likenesses maybe we wouldn't feel so forced to compare the new toys and shows to the original. Or if people would be more open and just realize these new toys and shows are more marketed toward kids who know nothing about G1 things would be alot easier.

There's one thing that always interested me about G1: the scope.

 

Sure, the toys were blocks and the show was very 80's. However, the concept of G1 was a complete integration of their world into our world. You had two age-old armies in a neverending war stationed in and around contemporary Earth, and it FELT like it. There were about 75 toys by the end of the second year and almost as many characters in the show, and goodness knows how many total by the end of the G1 run.

 

Beast Wars/Machines, RiD, Energon, and Armada all have a less grounded feeling. Usually it's relatively small factions set in a world that doesn't look particularly familiar. The Beast stuff in particular was claustrophobic because there wasn't a large population to interact with, in a jaggedy CGI world. To me, these series feel more like a few invading alien troops who happen to make a pit stop on Earth for some key battles before bopping back home, rather than immersing us with them and vice versa. There was, of course, some space bridge and Unicron and Cybertron stuff in the mix to expand the universe, but nothing feels as connected or familiar.

 

Bodycount, on the off chance you're reading this, I'm well aware of your dislike of G1 and your support of Energon and Armada; but I don't see you saying too much about Beast stuff. I'm honestly and non-flaming curious what your views were on those since that's so different than G1 AND the modern vehicular series.

You can post a thousand topics like this, and then a thousand more, and G1 still won't measure up to today's standards. Everything that Superlink/Energon is, G1 will never be, or never reach.

*SNIP!*

Bodycount, your ingestion of items found under your sink needs to stop. Seriously, get over yourself and let those of us who enjoy G1 do so. I don't recall beating you with fanboyish abuse EVER, so in the future phrase what you say more carefully. Your bizarre paranoia about G1 doesn't make a whole lot of sense, considering the repaints you do and considering that about %99 of everything being released as TF today has strong ties to G1, particularly in Energon. No, ESPECIALLY in Energon.

For the record, Energon is crap. The comic is good, the toys are cool and damn better than Armada, but the show is just utter trash. G1 may not shine like a jewel (especially season three... ugh!), but that was what we had back then and it was like nothing else out there and there was a hell of a lot more character development (not to mention more characters) to work with. Sure, the stories were more than a little far fetched or outright silly and they kept falling back on stuff they seemingly pulled out of their asses after intense drug usage.

Energon is a piss poor dub of a show that can't escape G1 influence all over it. The CG is pretty sloppy, it looks neat for awhile, but since everyone is essentially a cel-shaded frame with a screen for a face, it gets old quick. Look at their mouths and expressions, not to mention their postures and movements. Last time I saw robots looking that awkward ALL THE TIME, I was examining Gobots that didn't pose or transform well after being flung nine stories from a rooftop. I watch anime religiously, there's no excuse for what this show is besides incompetence. I like the toyline a lot, but the show is just utter crap and amounts to an aesthetically superior Armada and little more.

The only shows to date that were really worth their salt were Beast Wars and Beast Machines. I don't care how odd BM was, it has DEEP character development and despite it splitting the fandom into camps I have yet to see anything better to come out since.

Beast Wars is the hardest one to top, everything about it was brilliant from the voice acting to the direction to the concept itself. The concept took a bit to get used to, but there's nothing in the franchise that can come close and BW only had to draw on a few key points mostly found in the movie as opposed to Armada/Energon which boil down to extremely long elseworld-esque interpretations of the movie and season three of G1.

 

Your... "take" on nostalgia brings all sorts of things into question! Planet of birth, grasp of the word "nostalgia", where the hell you got this fanatical hatred of the root that spawned that which you love. Why does it seem like such a burden on you that I can get G1 Stepper, Sideswipe and Astrotrain or I get my G1 DVDs? It's like loathing the RX-78 Gundam and the original Gundam series, yet obsessing over something like Gundam Wing and then all but crying yourself to sleep because there's vast quantities of swag and merchandise aimed at the original Gundam fans and less for Wing. That'd be you being a minority in the collector's market, get used to it. Considering TF has has had.... oh... 20 years to grow old and brick-like, there's been a void for those of us who want it back and the secondary market isn't seeing to our needs, if Has/Tak will then you've no right to complain. That being the case, who the hell do you think you are to tell us how we should feel about that which we hold dear?!? I honestly can't handle this inflammatory nonsense you parade around. This should be loooong out of your system by now. You're as bad as the G1 fanboys you so passionately detest, you're painting with a broad brush and lashing out at anything G1 related which is the kind of logic that is going to collapse in on itself like a flan in a cupboard considering your attachment to the current main line and its apparent attachment to the original line.

 

Please, stop with the frothing anti-G1 crap. I'm a pretty moderate fella, but I don't hesitate to tell guys screaming "It's not G1" where to shove it. You've become as bad, if not worse. It's time to chill out and cease this inflammatory absurdity. It's one thing to express an opinion, but it's another thing entirely to salt the majority of the fandom and the franchise with uncalled for slander.

transformers are transformers. G1 G2 energon armada whatever. Just keep em coming. :thumb