The Thing that irked me about Optimus (if i may call him Optimus...) was that when he "transformed" into the big 18 wheeler truck, his trailer deal would just roll in from out of frame, regardless of where it may have been before...

I can recall several times that this was a hotly debated topic, between myself and some pretty serious-for-an-eight-year-old Transformer apologists.

i still cry "bullshit, cause there was no way it just happened to be just out of the way everywhere the fucker went.

Does anyone remember (no googling!) the name of the two weird construction dudes they were chummy with? Where they related?

Megatron was a wonderful toy to give an eight year old as well... the fucking thing looked remarkably like a genuine handgun (this was before they turned all the toy guns orange).

one more question to prove my geekitude, who was that purple weird dude back on the home planet that would occasionally pop up? He never came with from what ever the planet was called... a purple laser gun with a yellow eye?

I like Transformers just fine.

But I like The Blue Mask, Berlin, and Legendary Hearts better. Maybe even Coney Island Baby.

This site has a great Transformers vs GoBots breakdown!

Surfrider wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:Wait, are you sure? I vaguely recall the Go-Bots being in American stores first, but Transformers were ripped off from a Japanese line that may have existed before Go-Bots. For evidence, i refer you to the Macross Veritech-ripoff Autobot Jetfire.

By the way: Go-Bots = CRAP.

Utterly correct. The Transformers were going way before Go-Bots. Even in europe. Go-Bots sucked a big one.

Jetfire was incredible.

Well the Macross Veritech is not Transformers, but rather Robotech, from a series of 3 japanese cartoons that were rearranged to make a teeve show aired in America (after GoBots and Transformers were already on the air in 94), beginning in 1985. And the Transformer that was a ripoff of the Robotech robot (Jetfire or Skyfire, depending on the source of the name) wasn't even one of the original Transformer series, at least not by release in the US. He didn't come along until later.

Transformers began in 1984, according to Hasbro.

The GoBots were in America by 1984, but had begun in Japan 4 years earlier... according to whoever the hell made this site

The GoBots toys predated the Transformers toys at the stores I went to as a kid, anyway. When GoBots were still quite new, and transformers were not even on the scene yet, I traded two GoBots for about 100 Star Wars action figures and a myriad of guns for them. Score!

DefinitelyNOTtheSWEDE wrote:Does anyone remember (no googling!) the name of the two weird construction dudes they were chummy with? Where they related?

The kid in the cartoon was Spike Witwicky, but i forget the name of his dad. In the comic book his name was Buster Witwicky.

one more question to prove my geekitude, who was that purple weird dude back on the home planet that would occasionally pop up? He never came with from what ever the planet was called... a purple laser gun with a yellow eye?

Shockwave. What's my prize?

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:I like Transformers just fine.

But I like The Blue Mask, Berlin, and Legendary Hearts better. Maybe even Coney Island Baby.

Spoken like a true neophyte.

same wrote: i used to have this big go-bots toy that looked like an at-at, the big walking tanks from the empire strikes back. in fact, when i was a kid that's what i used it for.

Thank you for reminding me of this. I had forgotten about it.
It was their headquarters or some such shit.

DrAwkward wrote:

DefinitelyNOTtheSWEDE wrote:one more question to prove my geekitude, who was that purple weird dude back on the home planet that would occasionally pop up? He never came with from what ever the planet was called... a purple laser gun with a yellow eye?

Shockwave. What's my prize?

Shockwave did actually come to earth in one of the later series. He wasn't always stuck on Cybertron, but someone had to be. He was a dick anyway. He had a rubbish voice and he was definitely gae for Megatron. He would never have got anywhere with Megatron. He had too much competion from SOUNDWAVE and STARSCREAM. (starscream and megatron were always fighting i know, but it was the tension. Obsession i tell you!)

Does anyone else remember the cool shapes they changed into back on Cybertron? They were brilliant! Like instead of cars they would just be sort of streamlined cuboid type shapes, or a strange triangle instead of a plane. Great.
They really did have to leave though. The planet's resources just weren't abundant enough to make any more energon cubes!

shcokwave was a bad muthafukka. i was seriously scared of him. he seemed to have all the knowledge of the world and had this im-really-bad vibe going on around him (a cyclope decepticton... fuck!), while megatron was also bad but more in a standard "look at me i'm a psycho, admire me" way, so i wasn't really affraid of him.
megatron was hittler and shockwave was goebbels.
plush shockwave transformed into a giant flying gun. not that he used a gun, he became one. and could fly. even cybertrone couldn't do it in his gun form.

Matt larcombe wrote:Hard to argue with that. I'm a confirmed Transformers nut myself. When Prime died i cried....uh, as a kid. Ok, so i still cry when that happens...i mean, why the hell did they have to kill Prime? At least they brought him back later on.

Yeah, but that two-part episode was horrible!

I think it was explained somewhere as it got "Teleported" to him every time he transformed.
It used to piss me off as well.

One of my favorite cheap-ass bullshit role-playing conventions is the concept of a "pocket universe." That shit can explain anything. "Hey, where did Prime's trailer go when he was in robot mode?" "Oh, he has it in holding in a pocket universe." "How did all those crazy trinkets emerge from Parker Lewis' best pal Steiner's trenchcoat?" "It contained a pocket universe."

EDIT: By the way, i can't believe wikipedia has an entry on pocket universes.

I like The Transformers because they are robots.

I, too, am a robot.

DrAwkward wrote:One of my favorite cheap-ass bullshit role-playing conventions is the concept of a "pocket universe." That shit can explain anything. "Hey, where did Prime's trailer go when he was in robot mode?" "Oh, he has it in holding in a pocket universe." "How did all those crazy trinkets emerge from Parker Lewis' best pal Steiner's trenchcoat?" "It contained a pocket universe."

EDIT: By the way, i can't believe wikipedia has an entry on pocket universes.

I should check the wiki link to see if they address this, but...

Was Bugs Bunny not the ultimate master of this? He very effectively wielded both the bag of holding and the portable hole.

Oh, an anvil to drop on your head? No problem, I'll just pull it, or anything else I'd like, out of this sack right here...

One of my best friends told me how he and his friends used to play D&D... they were like gazillionth level whatevers... and he had a bag of holding with something like 50,000 skeletons in it. So they'd come upon a dungeon or cave or whatnot, and he'd just open the bag and 50,000 skeletons would march on in and kill everything.

WTF, does that sound dorktastic or what?