Your Early Transformer Misconceptions., Because like everyone else, you were little and dumb. Options

[Nevermore]

I tried my best to make sense of both the cartoon and the Marvel comics, considering the bizarre incomplete selection of stories we got in Germany, and the confusing order we got them in.*

However, I do remember that, due to TF:TM not airing until several years after we got the cartoon (which started with season 3 here), I, like several other kids I was talking to, thought that "Rodimus Prime" and "Optimus Prime" were brothers (they had the same family name, after all!), and none of us were aware of the Hot Rod incarnation (and its significance), which barely ever showed up in the episodes we got.

* Seriously. I watched the whole cartoon in English and read the entire Marvel run, both US and UK, as an adult, and then looked up the release/airing order for those stories in Germany. It made no sense at all.

This post has been edited by Nevermore: Apr 6 2008, 03:49 AM

[Blot]

I still remember a kid trading me "Ultra Magnus", or possibly "Omega Supreme" for my Broadside.

How could I refuse? This giant white robot was bigger than Broadside! Of course he was more awesome.

(The toy was actually Metroplex, and I didn't think for one second he was a "city". Why would a city have wheels? He was a HUGE truck!)

[Sailor Unicron]

Just thought of a couple more.

When I first joined the TF fanbase, the only series I knew of was the Unicron Trilogy. So, for example, whenever someone mentioned G1 Ironhide I always thought of E. Ironhide, since he was the only Ironhide I knew. It was like that for a while, until I received some soundclips from the G1 series. Those soundclips inspired me to pick up the G1 Season 1 DVD, and the rest as they say is history.

Also, my mom bought me a Masterpiece Optimus for Christmas one year, but at the time I didn't have a clue what Transformers were. I just wanted it because it was a cool looking robot, and I've harbored a very strong passion for robots ever since I was little.

[Fishbug]

I was just young enough to miss getting onboard the franchise at the ground floor, so Micromasters were my first TFs, and, while knowing who Optimus Prime and Megatron were, I decided that Roadhandler was the Autobot leader, because he had a crown, and Big Shot was the Decepticon leader because he had a big mohawk.

[Gryllid]

I somehow never actually saw a Mini-Spy, and assumed the commercial was just referring to the minibots like Bumblebee et al. (Apparently I never really noticed that the "Mini-Spies" were ALL Autobots?)

[mignash]

My original timeline went like this: Machine Wars --> Beast Wars --> Beast Machines. Apparently, I thought MW was G1. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-fire.gif)

Silly, Machine Wars was "Generation 3", at least ot me...

For the longest time I thought all Transformers after 1986 had rub symbols, and the few i owned were missing them or they got pulled off. I didn't realize until the days of the internet that they had no rub sumbols on toys after 1988. So my Triggercon Windsweeper NEVER had one.

After the Constructicons first appeared on the TV show a friend of mine told me they made toys. I didn't believe him at first, then after learning it was true, i said there was no way they combined! That would be too hard to do in a toy.... ad they did!

This post has been edited by mignash: Apr 6 2008, 10:09 AM

[Anonymous X]

I thought a fair few G1 characters didn't have toys - how could blame me though, seeing as we missed out on them? I figured that Swoop and Shockwave had toys because they were on the 1985 back-of-packaging mural, but many others like Sky Lynx I thought were creations of Marvel comics.

[tec]

Most kids during my time kept confuseing Go-Bots and Transformers

[MightyMegs]

I thought Optimus and Ultra Magnus were the same character... and that Manus' white cab was Prime' colorless, lifeless body from Transformers: The Movie.

[son of unicron]

i was fairly sure that there were like, 9 seasons of the g1 cartoon...

and taht there was a unicron toy after the movie came out, and my friend had it, he would just never bring it over.

[Powered Convoy]

I thought that Masterpiece Optimus Prime was the same Optimus figure I had as a kid. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/icon-fire.gif)

Seriously though, I thought there was a blue Bluestreak (why wouldn't I?). That G1 Arcee came out in Japan. That red Tracks was released in the US at some point. That Skids was exceptionally rare for an Autobot car (or some limited release). I thought Gutcruncher's jet was going to be Skywarp (until I saw more than just the illustrated art).

I don't think anything I thought was too out there considering the sources I had back then (the cartoon and catalogues/what I saw in stores).

Randy

[Blot]

Oh, and while I'm at it:

Growing up, and seeing the giant dark HUGE dinosaur in the closet of a person's house. That must be Grimlock, there's no other T-Rex robot! Man, he's HUGE! And darker than on the show.

(Toy in question? Trypticon.)


And when I was at work the other day, me and a customer were idly chattin' about the movie line, as he was buying Real Gears, and I got hit with another classic. "Man, they should have updated that one robot for the movie or somethin'. You know the guy. He turns into a stereo, and was evil. I think his name was Sound Byte".

[The_Fortress_Max...]

- Not really a misconception but...I remember being afraid of both Transformers: The Movie, The Return of Optimus Prime and Dark Awakening when I was young. I couldn't watch them, because many of the moments scared me.

- I could, for the most part, keep the characters straight from what I remember, however I tended to use figures in place of characters I didn't own at the time. I used to use Nightbeat for Hot Rod, Scattershot for Scorponok and Metroplex for Fortress Maximus. Of course when I'd finally purchase a character, that would stop.

- I think I used to think the Junkions were evil.

- When I was really little I knew a kid with like 30 Transformers, all of which I didn't own, I thought he must have had the biggest Transformer collection ever.

- I'd say at about five or six I had memorized, and still have memorized the entire TFTM start to finish. One morning, at about 6am I got up really early while my parents were still asleep, I bet I was six by then, and I made a Unicron mask. I re-enacted the whole movie with all the figures start to finish. I played Unicron, of course. However I recall that I'd get certain "adult words" wrong, like dubious...which I'd say "to be us".

This post has been edited by The_Fortress_Maximus: Apr 6 2008, 11:50 AM

[Cybersnark]

I thought Swoop and Wheelie were girls. Swoop had the narrow face, high-pitched voice, longer legs, narrow waist, protruding chest, and "ponytail." Wheelie had the high-pitched voice, hips, and tomboyish baseball cap.

It might have come from the fact that my grade school actually had female bullies and tomboys who played sports better than most of the guys. Never thought there was anything unusual about it; of course there'd be a female Dinobot.

[Magnusblitz]

I started with G2, so I naturally assumed that the toy colors were all the "correct ones". Needless to say, this made me very confused when all the Dinobots were grey, the Constructicons were lime green, the Combaticons were just plain dull, all the Aerialbots colors were messed up, etc...

It was also very, very difficult to reconcile the G2 comic with the few G1 episodes on TV and VHS at the time. G2 #2 in particular was a pain (Hot Spot? I think I just assumed Fortress Maximus was a robot-only mode bot created as a sort of exosuit for Spike who had somehow gained its own split personality). And all the Decepticons were pretty hard to identify (since while the Autobots had most of the 1984-86 running around, the 'Cons were still mainly made up of 1987+ characters).

[Spectre]

For some reason I didn't think Megatron actually had an alternate mode. I don't know if I just never saw an episode where he transformed, or what. He sure didn't look like he had any car or jet parts on him.

[Powered Convoy]

I assumed the 1974 marking on Megatron was originally when he was made (I seemed to know back then that he came from a line before Transformers over in Japan - how I even knew this I do not know). For a long time I assumed Skywarp's teleporting ability was invisibility like Mirage. I was under the assumption that Starscream was physically the weakest of the Decepticon jets (that Skywarp had the strength of a 9, Thundercracker a 8, and Starscream a 6). This was from the fact that I had Skywarp when I was very young (my very first TF at the age of 5), and mis-interpreted his Intelligence as Strength and saw Starscream in a store years later and thought his Strength of a 6 was very weak for the character (despite it actually being a 7 - which I probably thought was too weak as well).

Randy

[Donocropolis]

When I was 5 or 6, I got my first "Transformer" (actually, the Go-bot Zeemon) for Christmas. I ran all around the house with him driving as a car and then singing the Transformers theme song every time I transformed him into a robot or back. For some reason, I was sure the song not only played every time anyone transformed, but was actually a vital part of the process. In fact, there were a couple of times I played with him where he would be stuck in car mode due to the fact that his radio was broken, preventing him from playing the song and thereby transforming.

[Stormrave]

I got Elita One and Arcee mixed together and thought they were the same person. I also figured she'd broken up with Optimus, just like Powerglide forgot about Moonracer when he met Astoria.

[▲ndrusi]

Oh, I just remembered! I thought Optimus Prime was made up for the show, and when they eventually made a toy of him, they couldn't figure out how to get him to transform correctly, and that was why the Optimus Prime toy had a truck chest and a truck back (see, I didn't know there was another toy before the Powermaster). Then when G2 came out I thought it was cool how they made a new Optimus Prime toy that transformed the same way as the Optimus Prime on the show. Wasn't sure why they randomly decided to give the new Bumblebee toy a faceplate, though.