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What is so good about G1?


prime_time

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Some incarnations capture their theme and intent better than others, for any number of reasons. There are properties like Jonny Quest vs... The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest -- if it's possible to properly evoke the sense of exotic locales and deadly intrigue of unexplored lands or strange mysteries, it wasn't done by virtual reality Questworld. >_< Fu Manchu type villains don't exactly work all that well in an age of multiculturalism.

 

G1 was the height of a bygone age of merchandising and commercialism for a generation (or sub-generation, if you will). It's not always the case that the first is the best, although I consider it to be so for this franchise. That is, of course, a biased opinion, but words like "good" and "best" are qualitative to begin with.

 

For instance, '60s GI Joe fans will assert that those era's incarnation was the best, but I think '80s ARAH numerically has more fans with more passionate activity. Although different incarnations/continuities may be of the same overall brand name, there's a large amount of apples-and-oranges going on, particularly with GI Joe. On the whole, I'd say the major factor behind anyone's opinion is really just what they grew up with as children and remember fondly.

 

With G1, I think the '80s were a particularly opportune decade for the giant-japanese-style-robots aesthetic to take off. And the robots-that-turn-into-things concept was a lot bigger than even Transformers could totally have (though Hasbro sure wanted it). The kids of that decade also lived glued to the TV and were well-trained to get their parents to buy them tons of plastic crap. The following decades, by comparison, haven't been that great in terms of any of those factors.

 

Edit: Oh, this was in Toys. I thought it was more of a General question, especially with the cartoon title card image. I don't think the G1 toys were that great themselves. Aside from the typical improvements in manufacturing and engineering, I think current current technology allows for toys to better match the intended character look in features and proportions, and just from a design standpoint. I think the G1 show characters imprinted well on the minds of the kid audience at a time when the audience was at its peak, and hence the toys are a part of that (Goki will probably disagree).

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:inhpoo So as I'm obligated to say, Gen 1 is the great for many reasons but in toys lets begin with a question. What are robots made out of? . . . give up? Metal!! That is what the Gen 1 toys were made of. Now they are made of flimsy and I do mean flimsy plastic. I'm affraid my 25th G.I. Joes will kick there ass. Yes. I will concede on one thing, the articulation isn't really there, but . . . hey (my favorite toy company ever, or as I like to now call them Hasbunny) Why don't you get off your collective assez and make a devastator out of metal with current articulation. Will it break our banks? Ofcourse it will, but will it be worth it, that remains to be seen. I don't buy new toys nor will I ever. I'm not a child. I don't like cute robots. If I wanted to buy something that looks like a bastard of Valkeries and Hello kitty, I'd move to f'in Japan.

Now I come to the cartoon, Animation . . . bleh . . . I agree Sunbow needs to go back and remaster theses, or not to sound like I live in a fantasy world, but even reimagine these as was done with the He-Man cartoon in 2002. Bring back Gen 1 but make it gritty. Not Blotty. Although I haven't seen the new animated series in its entirety, only clips here and there, I'm not impressed with what I saw. At least the story lines of the past where interesting and I can still watch them today and not find them "campy" as one poster said. You can't tell me "The secret of Omega Supreme" wasn't egdey for the 80's. It had betrayal and mind control. ...And dare I say a little pathos? Has A/E/C or even current animated have that? Your honor the defense rests. Also Current doesn't have . . . :krem :krem :krem Kremzeek! Kremzeek! KREMZEEK!

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The awesomeness of G1 cannot be expressed in words. If you weren't a kid when Transformers first hit, you'll never understand. And I don't mean that in a derogatory or critical way. It was just that friggin' cool.

 

I gotta disagree with others on the mediocrity of the toys. Compared to todays stuff, 20 years and a hell of a lot of technological advancements later, yes, today's TF's are vastly improved over G1. But compared to what other toys were available in 1984, as far as play value is concerned, TF's can't be beat.

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:inhpoo So as I'm obligated to say, Gen 1 is the great for many reasons but in toys lets begin with a question. What are robots made out of? . . . give up? Metal!! That is what the Gen 1 toys were made of. Now they are made of flimsy and I do mean flimsy plastic. I'm affraid my 25th G.I. Joes will kick there ass. Yes. I will concede on one thing, the articulation isn't really there, but . . . hey (my favorite toy company ever, or as I like to now call them Hasbunny) Why don't you get off your collective assez and make a devastator out of metal with current articulation. Will it break our banks? Ofcourse it will, but will it be worth it, that remains to be seen. I don't buy new toys nor will I ever. I'm not a child. I don't like cute robots. If I wanted to buy something that looks like a bastard of Valkeries and Hello kitty, I'd move to f'in Japan.

Now I come to the cartoon, Animation . . . bleh . . . I agree Sunbow needs to go back and remaster theses, or not to sound like I live in a fantasy world, but even reimagine these as was done with the He-Man cartoon in 2002. Bring back Gen 1 but make it gritty. Not Blotty. Although I haven't seen the new animated series in its entirety, only clips here and there, I'm not impressed with what I saw. At least the story lines of the past where interesting and I can still watch them today and not find them "campy" as one poster said. You can't tell me "The secret of Omega Supreme" wasn't egdey for the 80's. It had betrayal and mind control. ...And dare I say a little pathos? Has A/E/C or even current animated have that? Your honor the defense rests. Also Current doesn't have . . . :krem :krem :krem Kremzeek! Kremzeek! KREMZEEK!

Die-cast sucks. Personally, I think the step away from it was an improvement. Nowadays, most TFs with die-cast are made worse by its inclusion (MP-01 Prime who collapses under his weight, Binaltechs who chip if you try to transform them, etc).

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to say that G1 had more variety is a little unfair... it covered almost half of the entire tf span.. 82-90ish.... no line since then has come close, most last little over 2 years.

 

G1 was more free, they didn't have the handicap of what came before and having to live up to a set standard. there were no exausted ideas or overused characters... in fact they didn't reuse a character until around the time of pretenders. some ideas were better than others of course... headmasters = good, pretenders = bad, powermasters = somewhere in the middle

 

some concepts haven't been revisited but are very worthy like the clones wingspan and pounce

 

G1 only limited by the imaginations of writers/designers. they didn't worry as much about cartoon accuracy ti produce a toy of a great character.

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:inhpoo So as I'm obligated to say, Gen 1 is the great for many reasons but in toys lets begin with a question. What are robots made out of? . . . give up? Metal!! That is what the Gen 1 toys were made of. Now they are made of flimsy and I do mean flimsy plastic. I'm affraid my 25th G.I. Joes will kick there ass. Yes. I will concede on one thing, the articulation isn't really there, but . . . hey (my favorite toy company ever, or as I like to now call them Hasbunny) Why don't you get off your collective assez and make a devastator out of metal with current articulation. Will it break our banks? Ofcourse it will, but will it be worth it, that remains to be seen. I don't buy new toys nor will I ever. I'm not a child. I don't like cute robots. If I wanted to buy something that looks like a bastard of Valkeries and Hello kitty, I'd move to f'in Japan.

Now I come to the cartoon, Animation . . . bleh . . . I agree Sunbow needs to go back and remaster theses, or not to sound like I live in a fantasy world, but even reimagine these as was done with the He-Man cartoon in 2002. Bring back Gen 1 but make it gritty. Not Blotty. Although I haven't seen the new animated series in its entirety, only clips here and there, I'm not impressed with what I saw. At least the story lines of the past where interesting and I can still watch them today and not find them "campy" as one poster said. You can't tell me "The secret of Omega Supreme" wasn't egdey for the 80's. It had betrayal and mind control. ...And dare I say a little pathos? Has A/E/C or even current animated have that? Your honor the defense rests. Also Current doesn't have . . . :krem :krem :krem Kremzeek! Kremzeek! KREMZEEK!

prime_time, please ignore this.

If you've heard of G1 fans being stubborn, ignorant, fanboys who are unwilling to change, then this is why. He does not represent G1 fans as a whole, only a small, yet vocal, minority.

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to say that G1 had more variety is a little unfair... it covered almost half of the entire tf span.. 82-90ish.... no line since then has come close, most last little over 2 years.

 

Beast Wars lasted damn near 6 years.

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prime_time, please ignore this.

If you've heard of G1 fans being stubborn, ignorant, fanboys who are unwilling to change, then this is why. He does not represent G1 fans as a whole, only a small, yet vocal, minority.

True that. :pfx

 

I like G1 because of nostalgia & not much else. I'm not gonna go ranting on about it though. :word

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:inhpoo So as I'm obligated to say, Gen 1 is the great for many reasons but in toys lets begin with a question. What are robots made out of? . . . give up? Metal!! That is what the Gen 1 toys were made of. Now they are made of flimsy and I do mean flimsy plastic. I'm affraid my 25th G.I. Joes will kick there ass. Yes. I will concede on one thing, the articulation isn't really there, but . . . hey (my favorite toy company ever, or as I like to now call them Hasbunny) Why don't you get off your collective assez and make a devastator out of metal with current articulation. Will it break our banks? Ofcourse it will, but will it be worth it, that remains to be seen. I don't buy new toys nor will I ever. I'm not a child. I don't like cute robots. If I wanted to buy something that looks like a bastard of Valkeries and Hello kitty, I'd move to f'in Japan.

Now I come to the cartoon, Animation . . . bleh . . . I agree Sunbow needs to go back and remaster theses, or not to sound like I live in a fantasy world, but even reimagine these as was done with the He-Man cartoon in 2002. Bring back Gen 1 but make it gritty. Not Blotty. Although I haven't seen the new animated series in its entirety, only clips here and there, I'm not impressed with what I saw. At least the story lines of the past where interesting and I can still watch them today and not find them "campy" as one poster said. You can't tell me "The secret of Omega Supreme" wasn't egdey for the 80's. It had betrayal and mind control. ...And dare I say a little pathos? Has A/E/C or even current animated have that? Your honor the defense rests. Also Current doesn't have . . . :krem :krem :krem Kremzeek! Kremzeek! KREMZEEK!

 

:rofl

 

I love it when people argue the die cast issue and how everything during G1 was so great because they were all metal and what not. Jebus, I can't decide whether this is a seriousness or sarcasm. Though G1 did have die cast in the original construction about 85% of the toy was still plastic. The only thing that really made the line remotely cooler than what we have now is the chrome and rubber tires. Aside from that the words non articulate bricks come to mind.

 

Flimsy plastic? Have you even collected any of the recent toys? The thinnest plastic IMO out of any line was used for the adult orientated Alt line and to a lesser extant the recent movie line. Anything the A/E/C/C lines was built with durability in mind. Even without metal in the construction I think a lot of these could bust a skull in two with enough inertia. Not too say get hit in the head with a G1 Prime repeatedly wouldn't hurt plenty but I don't think it would survive quite as well as say Cybertron Voyager Vector Prime or any of the bricktacular Armada bots.

 

Why I think the toys are significantly better.

 

Larger, better design/asthetics

Durable construction that's made to last

ARTICULATION AND A FULL RANGE OF MOVEMENT (Beast Wars/Beast Machines/RID and later Energon and onward)

Paint applications opposed to sticker sheets (I hate sticker sheets, collecting vintage toys with already applied stickers is pain because finding one that isn't MISB and has decent stickers is frustrating as hell. (Looks at vintage MASK collection)

More unique and puzzling transformations (Especially with the movie bots where Hasbro had to really think outside the box to make the designs fit into each alt mold.

No sh*ty minibot designs. With the exception of minicons even the basic size characters throughout most of the recent lines are better designed and articulated.

SHOW ACCURATE TOYS (RID and onward came pretty damn close to capturing the character on screen. Something G1 could never really pull off because the toyline for the most part came from a variety of different lines and were drawn up as animation models later on. (I will however say Omega Supreme looked pretty damn close to his cartoon representation) As I recall the Original G1 OS was mostly all plastic as were most of the toys after the first series)

 

I'd get into why I think everything AFTER G1 is significantly better but won't bother. Besides Beast Wars basically says all that needs to be said.

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Basically, the G1 cartoon is the basis that everything else is based on.

 

I think the G1 Comics and the Japanese toy designers who created the TF's should also be acknowledged.

 

I have such fond affection for the pre-movie G1 toys because they were the first TFs I owned and the characters that got me hooked on the series. There's a lot of my childhood invested in my G1 collection and that's why its so precious to me.

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