I love reading statements that Armada had a large storyarc, or gripping plot, or other nonsense. They spent 52 episodes delving into a plot that shouldn't have covered more than two dozen. And the funniest thing is that G1, a series that was primarily episodic and one where the writers had to invent things as they went along, covered the SAME story arc. I've already covered this in a previous post, but I think it bears repeating:

 

Bots and Cons at war

Bots and Cons bring war to earth because it possesses something that will give them the edge in battle.

Bots befriend humans

Transformers with combining abilities threaten to tip the balance of the war

Giant, planet eating transformer named Unicron is an approaching threat

Bots and Cons band together to fight Unicron

Prime and Megs have an all out brawl to the death

Prime dies (though not really) and a young pain in the ass with the first name 'Hot' takes command

 

That's Armada's huge overall storyarc! Sounds pretty familiar to me. So basically, to achieve the genius that was Armada, take the story that G1 covered despite being an 'episodic' show, castrate Prime, stretch it out to the point where the majority of the episode is silent staring, make the giant alien robots background characters, add some human children with two-digit IQs and make them the stars, have one of those children be Prime's Consigliari, sissify the fight scenes (yes, excluding the finale, which was alright), remove lines like "I've never seen anything this beautiful in the entire galaxy! All right, give me the bomb." and replace them with lines like "When are we eating?", have everyone yell "Transform" as they transform, and name every fifth character Leader 1. That's the recipe for an epic story, huh? Trust me, twenty years from now, nobody's going to give a rat's ass about Armada.

in japan hotshot was named Hotrod.

Well then I guess in Japan the plagarism was even more blatant than what we got Stateside.

well in japan G1 Hot Rod's name was Hot Rodimus.

Just a comparison on popularity.

 

When Transformers came out it outsold every toy out there. It set all kinds of records back then. Cabbage Patch Kids, Voltron, He-Man, GI Joe, etc.. Nothing could touch Transformers. The show was equally popular. It had an afternoon timeslot and not a 5:00 am or a 5:30 am timeslot.

 

If Armada/Energon is so great, how come the toys aren't that popular (except among us)? Also, why is the show one of the most poorly rated on Cartoon Network? If it is so popular why does it have a crappy timeslot? Kids obviously don't really like it or it would be huge and be shown at reasonable hours.

 

The toys are cool. I like the Energon/Armada toys. I think they are great. The shows are decent (I'm just glad there is still a Transformer series on). The bottom line about popularity is that the newer lines don't carry a fraction of the popularity that the original G1 line did. You can't argue with numbers. Kids aren't really that interested in the new stuff. Not like kids were back then. Except for maybe kids in Japan.

Just a comparison on popularity.

 

When Transformers came out it outsold every toy out there. It set all kinds of records back then. Cabbage Patch Kids, Voltron, He-Man, GI Joe, etc.. Nothing could touch Transformers. The show was equally popular. It had an afternoon timeslot and not a 5:00 am or a 5:30 am timeslot.

 

If Armada/Energon is so great, how come the toys aren't that popular (except among us)? Also, why is the show one of the most poorly rated on Cartoon Network? If it is so popular why does it have a crappy timeslot? Kids obviously don't really like it or it would be huge and be shown at reasonable hours.

 

The toys are cool. I like the Energon/Armada toys. I think they are great. The shows are decent (I'm just glad there is still a Transformer series on). The bottom line about popularity is that the newer lines don't carry a fraction of the popularity that the original G1 line did. Kids aren't really that interested in the new stuff. Not like kids were back then. Except for maybe kids in Japan.

You're absolutely right. Transformers is not what it once was. Back then it was one of THE BIG BRANDS. Now it's a well-performing property, but nothing like it was in the 80's. (And BTW don't flame me -- I'm comparing G1 when it was out to Energon now.) The main thing that keeps it "exciting" nowadays is all the fans who grew up with TFs (whether that be G1, BW, or whatever).

 

Shoot, the toy industry in general isn't what it once was. All of the $$$ is in video games now. Toy sales have been steadily decreasing for some time now b/c of that. I don't think we'll ever see a return of a TF series that was as popular, at the time, as G1, simply because things have changed. Toys aren't as big as they used to be.

 

One more thing: I think we all ASSUME that TFs should be doing really well as a brand, and that all the kids should love them, simply because they're TFs and since we loved them, kids today should love them too. But Diesel is right -- why isn't Energon on network television, 5 days a week? Or even weekends? It's just one option among many, and CN isn't stupid -- they know that most of the people interested in TFs nowadays are teen/adult fans. Energon would be playing twice a day on every channel if the ratings justified it. But they don't.

 

My son loves TFs, but a great deal of that comes from my enthusiasm for them. If not for my influence, he would probably just be into Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles and Sonic and all that other stuff on the Fox Box.

I just wanted to say that I agree with peteynorth's post above on the similarities between G1 and Armada. He is exactly right. Actually, you could somewhat argue BW had the same general premise as G1, although it had a much better overall plot. Anyways, for me as a TF fan, I am just happy to see Transformers shows still being made. By the way, why does everyone say that TF the movie doesn't count as part of G1?

By the way, why does everyone say that TF the movie doesn't count as part of G1?

Who says that? I mean, duh -- it was only the high point of G1.

By the way, why does everyone say that TF the movie doesn't count as part of G1?

They probably don't want to acknowledge that it was good and a part of G1.

A well written TF show would get on a major network, and despite the competition from video games, would get clamored for by kids (maybe not like '85, but pretty close). BW came out of nowhere, showed up on obscure channels at crappy times too. But by the second season Fox was clamoring to get it on their network. Well, by the time everything got worked out, BW had run its course. Fox reaired some of it and then it was now time for BM, that well-written but joyless, humorless, overly dramatic, preachy, kid-repellant show. The suits at Hasbro must of seen the poor performance of BM, been unable to see the difference between BW and BM and lumped them together and figured that shows like that (with respectable writers) just didn't work anymore, saw the popularity of Chimpokumon and its ilk, and decided that that direction would be best. RiD was a success (oddly enough, the sales were up drastically before the show even aired, so I'm not sure how much impact the show had on its success).

 

Not sure why Hasbro and Fox parted ways, but they did and CN got Armada. Now, Hasbro reps will non-specifically say that they were pleased with the ratings, but the one item I saw pertaining to the ratings of the show from CN (a top 100 list for Toonami) really didn't make it look like the show was doing too well. And then, realizing how bad Armada was, CN slowly started putting it into worse and worse time slots. Now Energon, a much better show than Armada, is suffering for Armada's suckitude.

 

I guess I kind of got of course here. Anyway, a show like BW could get on a major network like Fox Kids and get a good time slot. Hasbro just needs to put its foot down with Takara and insist that they hire a decent writing team. I still don't know what the hell they were smoking when they fired Forward and DiTillio.