Transformers Legacy toyline

[Lobjob]

I'll always pine for Armada and the rest of the Unicron trilogy. Literally the only downside for the toyline is "knees", but guys like Scavenger don't need knees.

If the show had been dubbed and translated properly i'm sure it would have been fine, because that second half is good. Their execution in the shows leave a lot to be desired, but the stuff Aaron Archer and the rest of the team came up with concept wise was super ambitious and expansive.

Sometimes i get nostalgic for psuedo homages or the naming philosophy of calling someone Smokescreen who looks nothing like the first guy to have that name.

 

[Blot]

I always preferred a toy that moved over one that didn't, so even if I was the right age for Armada, I probably still would have ignored it.

 

[The Predaking]

I can't rewatch Prime. It's so self-serious and dreary. And Animated rubbed me the wrong way when it was out and nothing's really done much to change my mind on it.

Prime has a lot going for it though.

Spoiler

That end of season 1 arc when you find that Unicron is Earth! Freaking crazy idea at the time!
Optimus losing his memory and joining up with his friend Megatronus.
3 Actual character deaths before we get to the end, not to mention the zombiefication of several of them.
Wreckers! We get wreckers for the first time!
The best Soundwave since G1.
Probably the best Starscream that we will ever get.
Bumblebee's first words are FREAKING EPIC!

A lot of folks didn't like animated, but it has some great things going too.

Spoiler

The Freaking Ark, that we have been seeing the entire show, gets magically repaired, and suddenly transforms into Omega Supreme!
"Decepticons! Transform and rise up!"
A competent Starscream that actually takes out Megatron himself and leads the Decepticons.
The main crew are just some no bodies, has-beens, and wash-outs on a back water world.
Freaking Tick chin!
Introduces some now staple characters.
Davd Kaye kills it as Optimus Prime!

 

[The Predaking]

Cloudcover has arrived! Just need to find the G2 Lasercycle in the wild now.

 

[The Predaking]

I don't mind a slow pace. I would argue that Armada's second half had more impact because that slow (even, tedious, perhaps) first half lulled us into complacency. Nobody expected it to escalate like that.

It looks better and better every time something else has Unicron show up too quickly.

Slow pace is one thing, but Armada was ridiculously slow. So much time between actual dialog and plot.

*Shudders*

 

[The Predaking]

I bought most of the Armada line and regret having done so. Ginmicks over quality. I'm glad we're finally getting better figures although omitting the Minicons for dinner if these releases was a bad idea.

I got pretty much all of it too, skipping a lot of the Minicon repaints, and now I just let my kids play with them, but they want my TFs.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

I got pretty much all of it too, skipping a lot of the Minicon repaints, and now I just let my kids play with them, but they want my TFs.

I got most of the Japanese and American micron repaints but I also gave away some microns and regret it now.

 

[Shadewing]

Prime has a lot going for it though.

Spoiler

That end of season 1 arc when you find that Unicron is Earth! Freaking crazy idea at the time!
Optimus losing his memory and joining up with his friend Megatronus.
3 Actual character deaths before we get to the end, not to mention the zombiefication of several of them.
Wreckers! We get wreckers for the first time!
The best Soundwave since G1.
Probably the best Starscream that we will ever get.
Bumblebee's first words are FREAKING EPIC!

Too bad Prime wastes all its time trying to make every moment seem as epic as epically possible to the point its bland and boring as hug until Smokescreen shows up.

 

[Dake]

I always said TFP had some of the best characters to date, in some of the most boring situations. With the exception of Prime himself, nearly everyone was fantastic in that show.

 

[lastmaximal]

I kind of wrote Armada off after the first third or so, just coming back for a few key episodes and the finale. Energon same thing. As much for the quality issues as for the difficulty at the time of obtaining copies of the shows, which didn't air locally. It just got to be too much work for too little enjoyment.

Don't really feel like I missed out on that much, partly because I followed the TOYLINES with rapt interest. Armada was a lot of fun ideas and sculpts that really invited the imagination (because the toys themselves would do one thing really well, and not the rest). Energon gave me clear plastic weapons and spark crystals and lots of inventiveness. And Cybertron is still that rarified peak of "a little of everything, including a sharp dose of new" that many lines since then haven't really delivered, for my tastes.

That trilogy just gives me so much good nostalgia I can't bring myself to drop many of the figures from the lines all these years later.

 

[Gizmoboy]

TFP is still my favorite series to date.

 

[Shadewing]

I always said TFP had some of the best characters to date, in some of the most boring situations. With the exception of Prime himself, nearly everyone was fantastic in that show.

I'd add Bumblebeep and Soundwave to the list of exceptions, personally. Though Prime does give me some of my favorite Decepticons; Knockout, Breakdown, Dreadwing, Airachnid (Hasbro, give us a Legacy leader class Airachnid, you cowards).

 

[The Predaking]

I'd add Bumblebeep and Soundwave to the list of exceptions, personally. Though Prime does give me some of my favorite Decepticons; Knockout, Breakdown, Dreadwing, Airachnid (Hasbro, give us a Legacy leader class Airachnid, you cowards).

I will grant you that Bumblebee is a bit annoying through the series, but it all pays off when he finally speaks. One of the most Epic moments in all TF fiction.


Soundwave I will argue that. That is one stone-cold badass loyal Decepticon. Starscream and Airachnid found out the hard way not to mess with him.

 

[ZacWilliam1]

One thing I've noticed on my latest attempt to watch through Armada (watched 2 more last night. Still not at the 1/2 way point) is that the kids are kinda awful.

And listen i generally like kid sidekicks just fine. Every other TF show I can think I'm either fine with or actively like the humans fine. The Armada kids though are all just a hair too much of their 1 personality trait.

Carlos is very dumb
Rad is very enthusiastic (and dumb)
Alexa is always over serious "mom" of the group
Fred is fat and whiny
Billy is a jerk

Almost all the kids dialogue seems to be flat boring, plot exposition, or stupidity. They say the way to write good kids/teens is the same as how to write for them, to not "write down" to their age and it feels like Armada is writing down about 8 years younger than these kids.

Heck, Billy and Fred starting as bullies and becoming part of the team should be the kind of plot that absolutely wins me over in a cartoon but it's nothing here.


-ZacWilliam, I think you could make a good fun show with these characters but these writers and this voice director did not do it.

 

[lastmaximal]

In a similar sense the Prime toys capture my imagination way more than the show (I am oddly more fond of RID2015 in terms of shows, go figure).

The show hit a rut fairly early on and kept finding new ruts despite the occasional interesting ideas. In the end, the voice acting -- always happy to hear Gina Torres, this was the most interesting Steve Blum had been in a while, holy damn Tony Todd, and Combs is Cranky Ratchet forever -- stands out in my memory far more than the narrative bits.

But the toys were great. Loved the engineering and designs (although there were some growing pains as they sorted out what they could do with shrinking budgets, and just plain weird choices like straight upsized Legion class figures), especially with the inventiveness and design fun of Beast Hunters and RID2015, and wanted more.

 

[Echowarrior]

A new Scavenger could be cool. I'd be happy ditching working treads for greater long term durability. The original treads have held up surprisingly well, but I don't trust today's materials to be as good.

The treads on mine, sadly, have deteriorated pretty badly. One's even broken in half - I've had to patch it up with duct tape. His Energon repaint has fared just as well.

 

[Superomegaprime]

With Prime, I kind of noped out during the first season as the ep after Megatron's return, was pretty boring, thou seeing the ep titles for the finally of the first season, peeked my interst, by that point, I would say the writers had found their mojo, for the most part by then, Prime season 1 was not great, the humans didn't endeer themselves to me that much and I was left with a bunch of questions that never really got answered in the show, we know how Acree and Cliffjumper got to Earth, but what about the rest of the Autobots, how did they get to Earth and make contact with the miltray, of course, a question I did kind of wonder, exactly why the human kids were given free reign of the Autobot base, let alone bought there! In terms of toys, Prime was the one that really could be considered the ones that set the stage for Studio Series and the WFC/LEGACY in terms of appearance and scale, the first edition OP is still a awesome figure!!

 

[Undead Scottsman]

Prime is probably my third favorite show (Behind Animated and Beast Wars) though Earthspark is already a firery contender, but I'll have to wait until it's done before ranking it.

It was just a really solid show with great characters and an actually took the "robots in disguise" idea seriously, which is a rarity in the toons.

 

[Shadewing]

One of my biggest issue with Prime's characters, is the Autobots as a whole. They work too well together. Yes, you get occasional outbursts from Doc Grumpy, or occasional PTSD from Arcee; but largely they're just the getalong gang; there's no real inner conflict with the team, like you see in BW or Animated. You don't get much personalities conflicts that drive any interesting smaller plots, becuase that's just not epic.

Though another issue I have with the series is the bag of lies we were handed pre-series. Stuff like things having consquinces, or how they're killing a main character off to prove no one is ever safe in this series. The series never really follows through on any of it. They kill Cliffjumper, but can you really call him a main character? He's just a hyped up red shirt. No one else on the main cast ever dies or even really gets threatened; but Starscream will certainly never let you forget that one time he actually killed an Autobot. For a series hyped up to be all edgy and epic, it certainly was boring, safe, and sterlized.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

I came to Prime later, so I guess I just judged it on it's own merits instead of whatever pre-release hype was around it.

I was still annoyed they canceled Animated.