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

[Spark]

I was digging through Micromasters and started thinking about notions I was absolutely sure of when I was little that I didn't find out were wrong till years later one way or another...

-G1 Hubcap was Bumblebee. Hey, they were both yellow and tiny, but Hubcap had a FACE like on the show!

-G1 Pointblank was a new Hot Rod. ...Er, yeah. I thought this right up until I saw an '87 catalog and Rebirth around '94 or so. Plus, I didn't get a Hot Rod figure until he was reissued in Japan the first time.

-G1 Fixit was so totally Ratchet. I had no idea what the Micromasters' names were until years later.

-G1 Tote was so totally Ironhide. Uh, ditto.


So what goofy things did you believe till you found out otherwise?

This post has been edited by Spark: Aug 21 2009, 05:54 PM

[▲ndrusi]

I could keep the Micromasters separate, but there was no such guy as Ratchet (First Aid was clearly around the entire time). Prowl and Streetwise were the same guy, and his name was Red Alert. Devastator was yellow. There were exactly four Dinobots.

Perhaps the best part of my childhood confusion was that I somehow managed to combine Five Faces of Darkness and The Rebirth into one huge, epic story in my head.

This post has been edited by Andrusi: Apr 5 2008, 09:44 PM

[Spark]

Perhaps the best part of my childhood confusion was that I somehow managed to combine Five Faces of Darkness and The Rebirth into one huge, epic story in my head.

They actually fit together okay if you watch them back to back. Mostly.

[Solarstorm]

I remember being real little and trying to tf my actionmasters into vehicle mode. Same with beastbox. I had lost squalktalk early on, and for some reason thought I could get him to turn into a robot on his own (since he had the face). In both situations I was real little and thought it was just me making a mistake and not transforming them correctly, as opposed to it just not being possible in the first place.

I also used micromasters as equivalents of the bots I didn;t have. The military-like micros (A armored car, tank, black helicopter, and one other) were my combaticons.

[Spark]

Heh, I used to think Skyfall actually had a vehicle mode since theoretically he transforms just like the Pretenders robot innards, so I'd fold his legs outwards and put his arms pointing back like Waverider. Worked okay, actually.

[jamieslan]

I used to think the lines on the crest of the autobot symbol was supposed to be its eyes. It actualy took me a few years to realize the negative space below them was it's optics. *shrug*

[Axaday]

-G1 Hubcap was Bumblebee. Hey, they were both yellow and tiny, but Hubcap had a FACE like on the show!

G1 Hubcap WAS Bumblebee. He got rebuilt in "The Return of Optimus Prime" and took the new name.

[Fangwing]

I used to think the lines on the crest of the autobot symbol was supposed to be its eyes. It actualy took me a few years to realize the negative space below them was it's optics. *shrug*

The Decepticon symbol was seen to me like this, probably until I was about 6:


See? it's a sad little man!

This post has been edited by Dr Fang: Apr 5 2008, 10:41 PM

[Esser-Z]

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)

[Sailor Unicron]

I thought Beast Wars and Transformers were two different franchises. It was during Beast Wars's first run, and I didn't know Transformers even existed.

[Fangwing]

I thought Beast Wars and Transformers were two different franchises. It was during Beast Wars's first run, and I didn't know Transformers even existed.

Through no fault of your own, really. I think a lot of people thought Beast Wars was a Transformers ripoff until the G1 references started coming.

[TVsGrady]

-This one kid from Sunday school was telling me about the Cassetticons, and said "My friend has those tapes. They really play!" Since I didn't have any of my own, I actually believed him at first.

-Since Octane was showcased in the same commercial that introduced the Autobot Triple Changers, I came away thinking Octane was also an Autobot.

-After a while, my memories of TF:TM, "Five Faces of Darkness", and "The Rebirth" all blurred together, and as a result, I spent literally years misremembering that the debuts of Metroplex and Trypticon and Bumblebee's adoption of the name Goldbug had all happened in the movie.

-At the end of "The Return of Optimus Prime", when Galvatron says "There will be no war today", I interpreted it to mean that the Autobot/Decepticon conflict had permanently ended. At the same time, I didn't extrapolate from that that "TRoOP" was the series finale- just that the cartoon would revolve around some other conflict from that point on.

[Spark]

-This one kid from Sunday school was telling me about the Cassetticons, and said "My friend has those tapes. They really play!" Since I didn't have any of my own, I actually believed him at first.

I think everyone's had an idiot friend that said that at some point. Also, Soundwave and/or Blaster (whichever one you didn't have) could totally play tapes.

[Chip]

I interpreted one of the early Soundwave commercials ot mean that everyone had a little guy that popped out of his chest. When I finally got a Transformer, Twin Twist, I figured that his gun's natural ability to fold into a little rectangle, shrink, and be stowed in his chest just wasn't the kind of thing a toy could be expected to represent.

My schedule didn't allow me to watch post-movie eps regularly, so a helpful kid in the lunch line filled me in on what had happened to the human characters. Sparkplug didn't show up anymore because Snapgragon had EATEN HIM, and SPAT OUT HIS SKELETON. It's possible he was misremembering Overkill vs. Daniel. It's also possible he was insane.

I remember a kid at camp explaining to me that the cool thing about rubsigns was that there were Decepticon versions of ALL the Mini-Bots, and he had a Decepticon Beachcomber. I realize now that he was talking about Mini-Spies, and probably had a blue Jeep... I wasn't aware of Mini-Spies at the time, as they weren't in catalogs.

Oh, and from 1987 through around 2000 or so I mistransformed Fort Max. I had his chest window going the wrong way in city mode.

[Xaaron]

I had a lot of trouble with the Skyfire / Jetfire thing. I had never seen the toy, so I had no idea why this guy had two different names. I think I even scribbled over the name "Jetfire" in my Transformers Universe #2 and wrote in "Skyfire" in pencil. A similar problem occurred with the coloring books that called Cliffjumper "Blow-Out".

I believed in blue Bluestreak.

Not quite childhood, but in the early days of the internet there was a Character List on some site naming every episode each character appeared in. It said Topspin and Twin Twist appeared in The Ultimate Weapon, and I really took it to heart. Years later, I finally admitted they didn't after going through the DVD frame. by. frame.

I also had problems accepting the Transformers: Generation 2 cartoon. I was so excited that Transformers was back on the air, I didn't realize at first that it was just a bunch of repeats. The first G2 episode I saw was "The Core", which didn't help since the animation was obviously different, and it was one of those episodes I either missed completely or didn't remember from G1. But as I was watching it, my neurons kept misfiring because the Constructicons weren't YELLOW! How could this be a G2 cartoon if they were still green?!

I thought Electro would last forever.

[Spark]

When I was a kid, I had no idea what the hell was up with Headmasters and Powermasters, whether they were little guys driving regular Transformers or Transformers that could eject their heads and run away when they got beaten or were people who built Transformers suits to work with the other Transformers. I just knew they were AWESOME.

[Kil]

For years I "remembered" that the two generic Autobots who died in the acid vat inside Unicron in TFTM were Wheeljack and Ironhide.

[Moroboshi Ataru]

Despite being born in '81, my childhood G1 viewing experience went: G1 season one (On video), Movie, season 3. As a result, I thought that every 1985 toy/character in the movie not featured in the first season (For instance, Triple Changers, Coneheads, Blaster and Perceptor) had his first appearance IN the movie. I had no idea that they were in the cartoon before the movie, or that such a thing as "season two" of the cartoon even existed until I saw G2 on TV in 1995. Similarly, I thought the first appearance of the 1986 combiners was in Five Faces of Darkness, and had no idea that the Combaticons, Stunticons and Aerialbots had proper introductions before the movie.

The first time I watched Beast Wars (In the middle of the first season), I thought they were supposed to be renamed versions of G1 characters, and kept trying in vain to identify which G1 characters they were meant to be. (This was, uh, when I was 16, so not exactly "early"... >_>)

The first time I saw Nightbeat, I thought he was a new version of Tracks (Blue car with flames). I...think the misconception stuck for a short time after I actually *owned* the figure...

[Kalidor]

In 4th grade I was pretty convinced I'd saw an Orange colored Optimus Prime who had his exact trailer but it didn't open before the red Prime came out.

[Razorsaw]

Before I heard his name or saw him transform, I believed Gas Skunk was a scorpion.