I love these threads.

 

yes beast wars may have standardized ball joints. but if you grading on the scale of innovation you still have to go back to G1 as the original innovator. the alt modes were very realistic (fairladyZ anyone?)and they incorporated parts of the vehicle as the robot, not like the latter shellformers from other series'. now admittedly they are mostly bricks but so were most other toys of the time. I have many g.i. joes without arms who can testify to the truth of that statement.

vehicle toys were plain and didn't do anything, action figures were lucky if they had elbows and knees. we can look at g1 and say oh well they don't bend here or there but a lot of toys from that time didn't. hell I had a whole army of little green men I loved who had to be glued just to stand in place. MOST g1's had close to the same poseability as other action figures of the time. wrestling figures didn't have knees or elbows, superhero figures arms went 360 but on a single plain if at all. I had several superhero figures who are just one solid piece of plastic, g I joes couldn't stand up without having their feet on a peg made to help them...stand up. I remember when g I joe came out with that swivel at the bicept and we were all like WOW THEIR ARMS MOVE NOW!!!

 

guess what, bluestreaks did that right of the get go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*did not vote for g1*

animated rules!!!!! totally fell out of love with G1 lately

Voted for Beast Wars! Take that! :P

 

 

How could you waste your vote.. when BT/ALT or G1 only need 3 votes to catchup to Classics???

 

DAMNN YOUUUU.... :tfevil

And your problem with Classics is what again? It was amusing the first few times, now the "Classics be the Devil" posts are just :wtf

 

ahh classics are fine.. TO ME only the BW are the devil. And maybe the animated ones. I havn't given them a fair enough shot to be the devil tho. I really don't like the classics dinobots tho. But remaking duplicates of the original are great for a generation that didn't have them -- but to me, that would make the G1's better. Me personally, I like the BT/ALT's. Different strokes and transformers for different folks - I was just being silly and trying to get more votes in (not from duplicate accts). Because it was so close, I was trying to get a few more BT's or MP votes in to catch up with the Classics - but in the end I don't rally care. I am just finding it interesting the demographics of the site. Thus the more votes - regardless how it turns out - the better picture it paints.

Ah, cool.

Although I feel the need to again point out that the only Dinobot who got a Classics toy was Grimlock.

 

Goki....

You overlook two things, the BW/RiD shellformer advent and the A/E/C/U/Animated stage.

 

BW did expand on innovative concepts like the ball-joint, but it also brought us the shellformer. Shellformers themselves aren't necessarily bad things, but it did reach ridiculous levels, especially in the Beast Wars Neo line.

RiD furthered the trend with the Autobot brothers, who brought shellforming to "new" heights. I would count this as just as much a step back as I would ball-joints a step forward.

 

Also, I really don't see how A/E/C/C/U/Animated lines fit into your explanation. They represent their own "evolutionary" line, IMO. We got Armada to begin with. That was improved upon in Energon, which reached new heights in the form of Cybertron and Classics. Then they branch into Universe and Animated.

Voted for Beast Wars! Take that! :P

 

 

How could you waste your vote.. when BT/ALT or G1 only need 3 votes to catchup to Classics???

 

DAMNN YOUUUU.... :tfevil

And your problem with Classics is what again? It was amusing the first few times, now the "Classics be the Devil" posts are just :wtf

 

ahh classics are fine.. TO ME only the BW are the devil. And maybe the animated ones. I havn't given them a fair enough shot to be the devil tho. I really don't like the classics dinobots tho. But remaking duplicates of the original are great for a generation that didn't have them -- but to me, that would make the G1's better. Me personally, I like the BT/ALT's. Different strokes and transformers for different folks - I was just being silly and trying to get more votes in (not from duplicate accts). Because it was so close, I was trying to get a few more BT's or MP votes in to catch up with the Classics - but in the end I don't rally care. I am just finding it interesting the demographics of the site. Thus the more votes - regardless how it turns out - the better picture it paints.

Ah, cool.

Although I feel the need to again point out that the only Dinobot who got a Classics toy was Grimlock.

 

He's referring to that HORRIBLE 3 pack of Dinobots...

 

 

*Shudders*

JustLOKIPLVY: One reason why Wild Ride is a far more realistic looking ML320 than X-Brawn (who had modified headlights and lacks the Merc. logo) is because of licensing problems that Hasbro had with Mercedes, which Takara didn't have. Porsche no longer allows their vehicles to be used for Transformers which is why Classics and movie Bumblebee weren't VWs and why movie Jazz wasn't a Porsche Turbo.

 

Nomolos: I was never trying to put G1 down - G1 is, for its time, a very good line. It's just that it was at a very early stage of Transformers toy evolution, and as part of that evolution I was pointing out that Beast Wars was one of those pivotal stages. It's not the only be-all-and-end-all pivotal stages, but it certainly is one of them.

 

BW did expand on innovative concepts like the ball-joint, but it also brought us the shellformer. Shellformers themselves aren't necessarily bad things, but it did reach ridiculous levels, especially in the Beast Wars Neo line.

RiD furthered the trend with the Autobot brothers, who brought shellforming to "new" heights. I would count this as just as much a step back as I would ball-joints a step forward.

Oh we had shellformers in G1... PRETENDERS! Their shells just detached!

You might say "Oh that's different," but au contraire, Pretenders evolved because initially Hasbro pitched to Takara the suggestion of making Transformers that could transform into humans. Takara then pitched back the counter-suggestion of leaving Transformers as robots-to-vehicles, but encasing them in human looking Pretender shells, and monsterous shells for the Decepticons. And thus the concept of Pretenders were born.

 

And G1 had "kibble-formers" - Transformers whose alt modes were incredibly (or entirely) dependent on some kind of accessory. Gunrunner is a classic example of this - what is that toy without its kibble-pack?? (i.e.: the black/orange thing that forms virtually his entire jet mode) - that thing by itself IS the jet!! Gunrunner is just this... thing that clips on the bottom! A lot of the Pretenders had really weak alt modes that were really reliant on detachable kibble parts.

 

Also, I really don't see how A/E/C/C/U/Animated lines fit into your explanation. They represent their own "evolutionary" line, IMO. We got Armada to begin with. That was improved upon in Energon, which reached new heights in the form of Cybertron and Classics. Then they branch into Universe and Animated.

Um... Armada/Energon pretty much branched off in a different evolutionary direction - one concerned with lots of gimmicks (e.g.: Mini-Cons, Power Links).

 

Cybertron brought that evolutionary branch back to its roots with the Cyber Planet Keys, introducing far less intrusive gimmicks that allowed the Transformers to become better action figures that weren't as hampered by gimmicks as much - Cybertron is kinda like an evolutionary link.

 

Classics goes back to where CR/RiD left off of Transformer action figures, less impeded by buttloads of intrusive gimmicks.

 

Universe is a mixed bag...

 

Animated continues on from the movie line in terms of engineering but with a very different aesthetic visual style.

Hasbro tried later to make human TFs with GIJoe but that failed also. It wasn't until Marvel made those TF-like figures (I forget the name) that sold well enough for Hasbro to test the market with Star Wars TFs. That's how I see it anyways.

 

edit: and the "transforming" humans into monsters deal that went down with the Ghostbusters toys didn't count.

guess I was thinking more of the first and second lines. since they're the ones that catch it most for being bricks and stuff.

 

but I don't think classics picks up where rid left off due to the entirely different concepts of tranformations in the toys. IMO classics picks up where cybertron left off. I mean so many of the cyb molds were g1 homages they almost couldve been (and some will be) classics themselves.

I think that we're actually in agreement here, Nomolos.

 

As I said before, I see Armada/Energon as an evolutionary off-shoot, departing from where CR/RiD ended. Cybertron is like an evolutionary link that brings that off-shoot back to the main evolutionary chain which had ended around CR/RiD - so yes, Classics does indeed carry on from Cybertron.

I look at MP Optimus Prime and notice he has some extra details that I don't remember from the show, like his knees and elbows and the "vents" on his shins. These extra details make him less show-accurate but, IMO, make him a better toy.

 

That's true. Prime does have extra's that his G1 cartoon verion didn't have. Likewise, movie toy ANYBODY doesn't have A LOT of the details that their movie versions had. One is an example of enhancing a cartoon design and the other, dumbing down a movie design. If I want to be dumbed down, I'll buy Gobots.

 

 

The movie, on the otherhand, has amazing TF designs. Even though the toys aren't completely accurate to the movie, I still like them a LOT more than what I've seen of the TFA toys.

 

The movie did have SOME amazing designs. So amazing in fact that the toys don't even come close. I agree that they " aren't completely accurate to the movie" because they're too innaccurate to begin with. Two of the most glaring examples for me are the hands on deluxe Jazz and the large chunk of whatever that's supposed to be on the undercarriage of Starscreams F-22 design.

 

When viewing movie Starscreams F-22 mode from the front, it looks more like he's trying to disguise himself as Durian than as a Raptor. What's Durian?

Voted for Beast Wars! Take that! :P

 

Boy, you showed me!

 

Wait, you're saying that the toys suck just because they don't match the show?! Even though the toys came first?! The only way the toys could be more faithful to the show would be for HasTak to build a time machine, travel into the future, make note of the show models created by Mainframe, then travel back in time and modify their toy designs to make them more show like!!!

 

Time machines aside, I did say it should have been "vice-versa." Meaning that the bots should have been created by the CG guys first and then turned over to the toy designers so that they could base the toy designs on the 3-d models. What REALLY bugs me the most is the way Dinobots face was designed on the toy. WTF?

 

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

 

This I completely agree on.