The numerous betrayals of the Transformers franchise
Captain Scumbone submitted this to me a long time ago. I have been busy/lazy and just put it and his tiny photos up. It’s funny. AF
By Captain Scumbone
Were you one of the few moviegoers intelligent enough to be enraged, deafened and bored simultaneously by Michael Bay’s latest billion-dollar crapsplosion? I was. I was also a lifelong fan of Transformers long before Michael Bay raped his first childhood. Will I still forgive our violent Cybertronian friends, despite the fact that the movie felt like 3 hours of being beaten by a gong while stuck in a poorly-wired rave?
History says yes.
I’ll be honest here. I’m an adult, and I play with Transformers. They’re hard not to love somehow, despite the fact that the franchise has committed numerous acts of near-suicidal betrayal over the many long years that it’s been around. The original contender for the Robots in Disguise was the forgettable Go-Bots franchise, which faded into obscurity simply by merit of holistically sucking. The “Challenge of the Go-Bots” cartoon was doomed from the beginning, as it was made by Scholastic productions. The term “scholastic” could make a child cringe like few other terms, notably “long series of vaccinations”, “back to school sale” or “sleep-over with Mr. Jackson.” (Too soon?)
Go-Bots aside, the betrayals inflicted upon us by Transformers started in 1984, with the original animated movie. It wasn’t necessarily that they killed off the entire cast of characters to make room for a new crop of toys…..
“He’s got another puzzle for you…”
…it was that these toys SUCKED. Sure, the toys were usually unposable and often shoddily made, but at least they LOOKED like stuff. What does our friend Wheelie here look like? An oompa-loompa that transforms into a wheeled suppository. To add to the fun, he spoke in a squeaky, effeminate voice, and always rhymed.
While my interest in the Transformers diminished after the movie, I had not yet discovered tits or booze, so I found a reason to cling to it. (They resurrected Starscream, specifically. I love that guy. Sometimes, in an uncomfortable way.) But shortly afterward, someone in charge of the toys died or went mad, and his replacement/malevolent alternate personality came to the following conclusion….”Transforming space robots that live to murder each other with intense violence are okay…but these things need a gimmick!”
Enter the following terrible ideas….Headmasters. Because a sentient robot would love to have its head removed and rebuilt into a tiny mech with an unreliable humanoid in it. Oh, and they can’t transform without their organic partner, pretty much rendering many of them helpless. There’s also the fact that if you think about it, the humanoid pilot might become terrified, or just be in there for too long…and think about this part…Poop. Inside their head.
“Who here needs to be housebroken?”
Pretenders. Because giant robots, many of whom would be individually capable of destroying an well-armed nation, would rather, for example, disguise themselves as openly homosexual gladiators than big goddamned tanks. The actual toys inside didn’t even try to look like anything much more than a crude robot doing Pilates.
Action Masters. This is where the wheels totally came off, pun intended. This conceptual abortion entailed Transformers that did not, in fact, transform. Nor were the toys particularly poseable…in fact, many actual Transformers were considerably more poseable. Perhaps, this idea represents exactly when some marketing manager realized exactly how stupid and contemptible children actually were, with their ever-increasing penchant for inhaling or choking on small parts, eating lead paint, and getting inappropriate objects firmly lodged in more or less any accomodating hole. Perhaps also, someone in charge of the toy line was murdered and replaced by their Bizarro World counterpart, and decided that no gimmick whatsoever was better than too many.
Micro Masters. Remember trick or treating, back when little boys didn’t have man-boobs and Aspergers? Would you have preferred a “Fun” sized 100 grand bar to a “mundane, every day” sized one? Unless you were advanced enough to be anorexic at 6, you’d do what I did, and perform half-assed costume changes and keep going back to the door of the wonderful bastards who handed out the big ones, until they went for the rifle. (then you’d egg their Volvo back to the Bronze Age.) Part of the fun of Transformers before the toy line went tits-up was that some of them were fricking huge.
Fortress Maximus, Autobot hero, topples and kills local child
So by this logic, making Transformers roughly the size of Pez was a poor idea. Again, I sense the foul hand of a Bizarro at work. (Image 5-caption “Little Frankie realized “Hey, I can cram like a hundred of these fuckers up me!”)
I admit, at that point, I gave up for a long time. I largely ignored the horribly Japanese trio of imported excrement that Cartoon Network aired in the early 2000’s, contenting myself with the aforementioned quest for tits and alcohol. The first live movie re-ignited my interest somewhat, but what really brought that familiar feeling of betrayal back for me was, of course, Revenge of the Fallen. Thus, I humbly submit that Mr. Bay should be accepted wholeheartedly by fans of Transformers, old and young. Let us keep the fires of betrayal and disappointment burning forever!
I’m Captain Scumbone, and I approve this message.
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In the 1984 Transformers movie, when Unicron starts devouring one of the moon bases, the guy actually says “shit” remember this was 1984 and it was a kids movie. Anyways I found that part funny
I always liked how this robot that could shoot and walk and talk would consent to turning into a volkswagen beetle. it’s like yeah right, let me relinquish all of my powers and morph into a 75hp economy car.