Furthermore, the toy accuracy of the Beast Wars show models is a lot better than that of G1.

 

This I completely agree on.

But in both cases, the toon designs were intentional decisions. The G1 toys were made more "humanoid" in the toon (particularly the 1984 toys) so as to be more accessible to the target audience. The Beast Wars toys were just scanned into a computer, since by that point they could do stuff like that (and "show accuracy" had become an issue by that point as well).

[Off Topic]

 

MH, your sig is the greatest ever. Where did it come from? Did Mr. America himself have a picture commissioned or is that a fan work?

 

[/Off Topic]

When it comes to the movie toys, I remember Hasbro had Michael Bay's designers change the robots so that the wheels/tires wouldn't come apart as this would present serious problems being duplicated in the toys. This of course was changed at Hasbro's request. I think that Hasbro should have asked for transformations that were SLIGHTLY less complex so that the designers of the toys could come a little bit closer. Keep in mind, I'm not saying G1 simple but the CG designers and the toy designers could have met somewhere towards the middle.

Actually Dreamworks had almost unlimited freedom with designing the movie models. If you look at movie Optimus Prime, his tyres do split in robot mode, whereas they don't in the toy. The designs were still shown to Hasbro for final approval, but basically Hasbro had virtually no interference with the movie designs. If you watch the DVD special features and audio commentary, everyone on the production team praises Hasbro for the incredible (and frankly unprecedented) amount of freedom that they were given in the design process.

 

Basically Dreamworks went and designed the models - Optimus Prime was apparently designed by some Japanese dude that spoke no English (and has over ten thousand moving parts!) :P - and then Hasbro and TakaraTOMY would then design the toys around those Dreamworks movie designs.

 

The only demand I recall being mentioned that was made by Hasbro was that they wanted Prime to have a red chest. Michael Bay explained to Aaron Archer that this would make photography very difficult and more costly - that blue was cheaper and easier to work with, and a compromise was reached by giving Prime a red chest but with blue chopper flames.

 

It's all in the DVD folks. :)

 

But in both cases, the toon designs were intentional decisions. The G1 toys were made more "humanoid" in the toon (particularly the 1984 toys) so as to be more accessible to the target audience.

The toon designs were also just easier to draw! :) We had toy-accurate art in the early G1 comics, but of course, comic art is static. You're just drawing a couple of panels each week or month. With cartoons animators are drawing lots and lots of frames for every minute of air time. So making them less detailed becomes quicker, easier and most importantly - cheaper!

 

The Beast Wars toys were just scanned into a computer, since by that point they could do stuff like that (and "show accuracy" had become an issue by that point as well).

Show-likeness has always been an issue - as I said, I used to talk about it to other kids in 1985... I think it's just that Beast Wars came out after the advent of the internet so that people talking about show likeness became a lot more noticeable. :)

G1

ok people remember this thread is about the toys...NOT SHOW ACCURACY!!! the whole point is that you judge based solely on the merit of the toys without other influence.

ok people remember this thread is about the toys...NOT SHOW ACCURACY!!! the whole point is that you judge based solely on the merit of the toys without other influence.

 

 

For some people, I think show accuracy is a PART of what makes up their satisfaction with a toy line also. I am not saying it should be everything - or even a majority aspect - but I can definately see how some factor that in.

 

With the ALT/BT line, there isn't a show to hold them as accurate to - so it's obviously not as much a factor. I think what attracts many people is:

a) the fact there is finally SCALE and

b) that there is a level playing field - ie, they are all CARS and

c) that there is a return to REALISM - use of actual vehicles.

 

If you return back to G1, the toy line was as popular as it was BECAUSE of the show line and the detail of CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT they put into it. I think people could forgive some less than show accuracy, but the close it was - made many of those toy characters more loved. The longer the toy line went on BEYOND the television series, I think you have less and less people as interested. I find that even now in the MOVIE series - in fact, I refuse to buy any TF that isn't in the movie (even if it's in the game; or reuse of a name). In addition, the dowgrade of toy quality - plastic; stickers; colors - also began to turn many away.

 

And like BW that many say has some of the strongest story lines - the toy lines just didnt live up to the stories. Meaning the accuracy OR story line cannot 'completely' carry a toy line.

 

 

 

ANYWAYS.. just saying - everyone evaluates the quality of a toy line differently. I agree it should not ALL be about SHOW ACCURACY, but I completely understand how it is an ingredient in it.

If you look at movie Optimus Prime, his tyres do split in robot mode, whereas they don't in the toy. The designs were still shown to Hasbro for final approval, but basically Hasbro had virtually no interference with the movie designs. If you watch the DVD special features and audio commentary, everyone on the production team praises Hasbro for the incredible (and frankly unprecedented) amount of freedom that they were given in the design process.

 

Sorry my friend, you're wrong. I said "come apart" but I'll be more descriptive with the word uncoil. Some of the original artwork clearly shows his tires in bot mode looking like they had uncoiled and this was a problem for Hasbro who did have Bay & Co. change the design so that the tires didn't shred(uncoil) apart. Don't believe me?

 

It's all in the DVD folks. :)

 

You're right. On disc two(extras) click "Their War" and then click "Rise of the Autobots." At 9:31 into this segment, you'll here Aaron Archer of Hasbro mention that "the tires were uncoiling and those were just things that were going to become issues for us to make product of."

 

And now you know.

 

And knowing is half the battle.

I have to agree with Valkfan. After losing my ENTIRE collection of Transformers, I still bought back the ENTIRE line of Alternators, and the MPs. While there's not a 100% scale for the MPs and the Alts, they're a lot closer than any previous series. Granted, the MP line isn't really supposed to match up with the Alternators, but they mostly fit in scale with them. Okay, I have to suspend disbelief some, because the Mack Truck is a tad small, while the gun is absurdly big to match Prime's size, and the jets are way too small... (and I DO agree that the Jets should have been smaller than Megs/Prime but not THAT small...)

 

I actually enjoyed the movie, not the designs or characters. While I appreciated the movie for what it is, I hated all the designs from it. Prime's included, and he was the best by far. Bay just went silly with the designs, just because he could. There was no reason Prime had flames... "ribcage" my ass. He just thought it was "edgy" like having Ratchet be a lime green Humvee evac thing. The designs didn't fit the characters at all. And "fit in"? Not by any standard, sorry.

 

I appreciate the complexity in the designs as well, but admit it, the Bay-man had nothing to do with the actual designs. A massive team of designers and artists did the real work. He just made silly requests like "flames and lips on the truck!" and likewise. But when it comes down to it, I'd rather the bots look identifiable and not all blend together. When they're fighting, combined with the shaky-cam style that Bay prefers, you can't tell anyone apart.

 

And why all the ones who weren't supposed to have lips did and the ones who were supposed to didn't, I have no idea. I simply hated Ironhide and Ratchet, and Frenzy took the cake at being the WORST design in the whole movie. Blackout and Brawl are the only 2 Decepticons that were even good designs, and Blackout still ended up looking like something between Terminator and Robocop 2 with the crazy exoskeleton design. And Scorponok never made sense to me anyways, in any continuity. At least the Dinobots had some personality.

 

But, I DID enjoy the movie, it was successful, and it's my opinion. Not starting an argument, everyone has a right to their own opinions. When it comes down to it, Transformers, in any format, are awesome. It's just sad that Michael Bay lost sight of the characters and their familiar robot designs that those of us who MADE it popular over the last 25 have come to love.

 

Animated, I appreciate how they're focusing on the stories, but I hate the designs as well. Too Teen Titan for me. I can't stand that animation style. I can't even bring myself to watch it. And despite HOW "story-driven" any of the series have been, it's the actual designs that always made or broke them for me. I like how Japan has given us a story for the Binaltechs, but seriously? I'd buy them without any sort of story at all. Leave the stories to the comics, they were much better than any of the senseless plots in any of the cartoons. Cartoon shows were commercials made to sell toys to kids, not to tell great stories. Watch the G1 cartoon now, there's a basic plot that gets run into the ground by about 4 episodes in, and they totally jump the shark in any episode not introducing new toys, and end up introducing silly alien races or plot devices. It was fun when we were 4, but the stories simply were badly written. I do like Ultra Magnus from Animated, oddly. At least he's not a white Prime!

 

I really dig the idea behind Classics, although I'm refraining from buying them. They're mostly good designs, and the characters have been pretty well chosen so far. There's the occasional repaint copout like Ultra Magnus, but in general, they're pretty sharp. Especially Sunstreaker and Prowl... they're not licensed vehicles, but look close enough to still count. And the designs are FANTASTIC updates!

 

The design aspect that seems to have been lost over time is the ability for Transformers to hide in plain site. The 2007 movie characters are the first to do that in a long time besides the Alts and MPs. After the G1 designs went all "future" on us, I stopped liking them. Besides a select few, I never did like any of the TF:The Movie characters (nor any after, really), aside from Ultra Magnus, Springer and Hot Rod. No longer were they "Robots in Disguise", they were just "Robots that turn into something semi-robotic-with-wings-or-wheels".

 

Alternators were the first series in a LONG time to give us any sort of scale, AND to immaculately transform into real-world replicas of existing vehicles. While I love G1, let's face it... The new designs that keep the old spirit of G1 with today's manufacturing technology blows them out of the water. Plus, it's nice to see our old favorites with a (mostly) sensible update.

Very interesting! Did they explain why red was more difficult and costly?

Not that I recall.

 

If you return back to G1, the toy line was as popular as it was BECAUSE of the show line and the detail of CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT they put into it.

Umm... that's not entirely true. The G1 toys came first and already reaped over US$100,000,000 before the show aired. Of course, the cartoon made what was already an incredibly popular toyline even more popular - I would never try to deny the powerful impact that the TV show had on the franchise, but to say that the cartoon was solely responsible for the success of the franchise is inaccurate. The G1 cartoon ran from 1985-87 whereas the G1 toyline ran from 1984-1993.

 

ANYWAYS.. just saying - everyone evaluates the quality of a toy line differently. I agree it should not ALL be about SHOW ACCURACY, but I completely understand how it is an ingredient in it.

I agree. I personally don't care too much about show accuracy, and there are many great toys that never appear in shows (although most G1 characters who never appeared in the show did appear in the comics, e.g.: Deluxe Autobots).

 

And now you know.

 

And knowing is half the battle.

"What's the other half?"

 

"Violence."

 

;)

ok people remember this thread is about the toys...NOT SHOW ACCURACY!!! the whole point is that you judge based solely on the merit of the toys without other influence.

 

Eh, but on toys that are so intertwined with the show that their on, you have to have some sort of "precision" to the media that they're represented in. I mean, you can't have a He-Man figure that looks nothing like the He-Man on TV. But it shouldn't end up as an argument about how show- or movie-accurate the toys are.

 

If someone doesn't like a line because it looks nothing like the TV show it's linked to though, is a valid argument for not liking the line. No matter how well-engineered the figures are. If they look nothing like their animated counterpart, that's half of the fun taken out of it right there.

 

As a kid, I always played with figures based off their TV personalities. If you don't have that, then it's just a robot that turns into a truck. It's not Optimus Prime without the story. Which is the only reason that I don't think that something like Alternators doesn't need a background, because it's more for collectors. Stuff like Animated, would be pointless without a show to tie in with it and provide a cohesive story.

 

One of the big reasons I can see why people don't like any of the movie toys that didn't actually show up in the film is that they have no basis in that storyline. How do they fit in? Granted, Incinerator may look cool to some, but where was he in the movie? I know it's up to imagination, but if a line is heavier on non-media related figures than the ones that actually showed up, that could be a very valid reason for not liking the series.