The Energon Pub

Hi everyone, I'm continuing on my run of questions lately, mainly for the purpose of getting a feel for the pulse of fandom these days.

So, the question is this: how do you feel about the state of the franchise now, Toys, Films, TV everything?

-Are you happy with what's going on? If so, what's really working for you? What do you want see more of?

-Are you not happy with what's going on? If so, what's not working for you? What do you want to see done differently?

This is not in any way an attempt to start a flame war; it's just to see where everyone is, regardless of where they stand.

Thanks in advance to any who would kindly share their insights! And if you feel the need to go off on a tangent, by all means, give'er!

I tried starting a thread like this a few weeks back and it didn't really go anywherre, but I think it may have been misunderstood. Here's how I feel.

In general, I think the franchise is doing just fine. We keep getting new toys, we're getting a new cartoon, there's comics, a new movie is coming. I think the franchise is doing great.
I think the fandom is really suffering, but just won't admit it on the large scale. The general health of the franchsie is poisoning the fandom. If you didn't like Animated it was because you werre stuck in the past. If you don't like the live action movies it's because you're stuck in the past or you IQ isn't high enough, apparently. If you're an adult and you don't like something, no one cares because it's all about the kids. But when there's ten more Bumblebee repaints, it's because collectors are getting what they want. The fdandom is so full of contradiction, it's almost not worth it anymore. There's so much going wrong in daily life that you get on the boards and hear about how you're old fashioned or stupid or something because of your niche enjoyment of some toys? It runs both ways, pro and contra, so it's clearly a fandom problem. And we all have to out cool each other. The movies didn't save a franchise from the brink of irrelevancy, maybe they did for you, but people knew of this board and Transformers before the live action movie. If a movie needed to be made in order to save the franchise, would a movie have been made? Isn't that an expensive risk to take for somethign that MIGHT jumpstart a line of toys? If you don't like somnething some guys yell at you and tell you that you have a persecution complex. I think the franchise is doing terrific. I think the fandom needs its own League of Shadows intervention. Fandoms don't have to categorically love or dislove anything. We don't have to sacrifice our individual thought to a toy company of all things. If I wanted to blindly accept something I'd turn to religion. I don't need to do that with space robots.

Don't remember if it was here or TFormers or wherever it was. The question was If you could run Hasbro/Takara for a day what would you do...or something to that effect. I admit that I buy the figures whenever I can. Even though I really didn't like the live action movies to well, I still bought a large amount of the figures. I guess my biggest gripe is the history or storyline. It kind of keeps getting reinvented. Or maybe it's just me. As for the toys, the classics line. I believe this is one thing Hasbro needs to take into mind about. The line is mostly geared towards us G1 fans. True there are some awesome figures there. But sometimes it seems like it's becoming a universe line with Dinobot, Hotshot and such. I think Hasbro should have a poll on their site for the next figures, color schemes, and sizes. The franchise is aimed towards kids, which is great, especially with the Beast Wars, Armada, and Animated lines. But ever notice how some of those deluxe figures are a bit tricky to transform, while larger ones are a bit more simple. So for me, it's about the figures since that is their prime source of income. If they could organize it better, then it would feel more stable. And that's my 2 cents.

Thanks for sharing your insights guys! A character poll is an awesome idea!

Also, I too have noticed a rather biting, and at times even childish sense of intolerance directed towards fans who don't jive with Bay's films and/or TF: Animated. I've observed this across 3 major TF fansites too, actually.

In fact, as a Star Wars fan as well, I've never seen "OT Purists" mocked, derided and even marginalized by their fellow fans the same way as TF-G1 fans who don't dig Bay's films or any of the newer series'. Indeed, what's going on with that?

I think the state of the franchise is that it is the best it has ever been.

While I think the movies are great technical achievements in their own right, the story's execution is terrible. I think Bay was a great proof of concept director, but his story technique telling needs work. A lot of work. I consider myself to be a hardcore, or a devoted fan, but when I watch those movies I skip as many scenes as possible, which is a let down for me. I should be able to watch them all the way through by my blind devotion/love for Transformers alone, but I can't.

However, I do appreciate them on a entirely different level. In the years between the movies we got the Classics line, and now the Generations line as well. The animated cartoon totally made up for the movies story wise. The movies create unique opportunities for Hasbro/TakaraTomy to explore the franchise in different ways, such as the War For Cybertron game.

Toy wise the toys are really great, despite their problems. I think movies forced Hasbro/TakaraTomy to push the complexity of their engineering to new levels, while animated made them go back to basics and use form to express character. The end result of the two efforts is that we get great toys that really have great character design to them, but are complex to allow a wide range of uses. Finally, in days not seen since the end of the original G1 toy line, the lines between gimmicks, features, and accessories among figures are blurring which adds great value to the line as whole.

As for the comics, I enjoy them for the most part. While they're are continuity and art problems, they are nothing compared to my experiences reading Marvel and DC comics. it sad to see Furman leave the G1 universe, we are reading new voices that bring something new to the franchise as whole. Of course not all of it is paying off now, it does have potential down the road. Even the worse IDW comic still reads better than the Prime's death over a video game comic.

Rodimus the Prime wrote:Thanks for sharing your insights guys! A character poll is an awesome idea!

Also, I too have noticed a rather biting, and at times even childish sense of intolerance directed towards fans who don't jive with Bay's films and/or TF: Animated. I've observed this across 3 major TF fansites too, actually.

In fact, as a Star Wars fan as well, I've never seen "OT Purists" mocked, derided and even marginalized by their fellow fans the same way as TF-G1 fans who don't dig Bay's films or any of the newer series'. Indeed, what's going on with that?

I'm going to address the OT Star Wars idea. For starters, I agree with Chupacabra Convoys' opening line, the franchise in terms of product and stuff, best it's ever been.
My beef is with the fandom. As for the original SW trilogy fans not being as reviled as non-Bay movie TF fans, here's my thought. The new SW trilogy clung to an established mythos, and as far as I see made very few changes in its attempts to be new and relevant. I know that the Bay movies are more faithful to the TF mythos than they are unfaithful to it, but they still ignore things or make changes that some people are unhappy about. Why movie fans can't just accept that some people aren't fans is over my head, honestly. Movie forum's fulla threads that whine and moan that non-=fans just don't accept things, but it seems movie fans can't or won't accept the idea that someone might not like the movies. So everyone's at fault really, there isn;t any side that's more or less tolerant than the other.
I think that the movies made TFs mainstream, whether you add 'again' to that statement or not is up to you. But now, with mainstream attention, some people feel the burning need to be cooler than the rest of the fandom and take the whole "You're stuck in the past" stance. So what if I'm stuck in the past? It's no skin off your nose. You just feel like you have to be more 'cutting edge' and 'tubular' than me, since I'd rather watch a movie from 1986 than 2009. At the end of the day, we're still argueing about toy robots on the Internet, so realistically, who's really the cooler one?
The same goes with the toys. The 07 Botcon Seekers ruined everyones' lives, and what happened was the 07 movie figures were released at the same time as Botcon was happening, like literally over the same weekend. I remember people who went to Botcon were posting how they had their Classics Seekers in their hands and people were posting FU's because they had Voyager Blackout in theirs. So? Then there were arguements about how 'my Target only had one Ironhide, so he's super rare....Botcon figures? Who cares about those??" and there was much butthurt over figure exclusivity, and we all had to PC ourselves into believing that my Dirge was as rare and valuable as your Deluxe Brawl.
Oh god, then Ryan got a case of Target G1 Starscreams, tried to sell them to board members at retail price, and got lambasted for being a 'scalper'. That's what you get for trying to be nice and helpful. So a thread was started to help newer collectors in their toy hunting, and everyone was offended that someone would put them in a different class of collector than other people.
I'm sorry everyone, I reject that doublethink. I rejected it then, and I reject it now, and I'll always reject it. It's stupid. Everything has some line of demarkation that separates things into values and categories, and real true equality is a fiction. IF you look at the thread that has collection pictures in it, or if you click peoples' links and stuff, you see amazing collections. Getter Dragun has stuff some of us have never heard of, or will never see in real life. I don't have Fort Max, and may never have one. You might not have Botcon Seekers. Does anyone really think that a dude with a collection like Getters' and some guy who just bought his first figure are the same level of 'collectors'? Honestly?

I'm sorry if naming Getter upsets him (Sorry GD), but man, this 'everyone belongs to everyone else' plague in the fandom is a poison. Then everyone cries. "Eh, you don't love ROTF. Or you don't love Animated. You're ruining Transformers for me." Honestly? As a fandom, we have a right to not have to love everything. Ive got no problems with Animated, but I don't have to love it. We're Transformers fans, not Communists or religious zealots. It's not required that we love everything. Is it not enough anymore that something makes you happy, but you need to force everyone to love something because you get crybaby if anyone thinks differently?

I like to think I'm fairly open-minded. While there's lots of stuff out there I've never seen much less heard of - I've never seen Animated and never even knew of RiD or Beast Machines until I got on this site - I'd like to think that I'd give just about anything TF a good try. I don't love everything and I'm usually one of those who love something everyone else hates -and that's fine. I don't mind a little friendly arguing, but I do agree that there are times things can get a little heated and out of hand. Take into consideration too, that we're all sitting here in the relative safety of our homes and it's hard to read someone's mood when they're typing to a message board - no facial expressions, no body language, no vocalization. I don't think I'm a "better" fan than anyone else and would never put someone down because they liked something I don't or vice-versa - which is a lot different than just putting my opinion out there. At the core, we'll all the same - we are passionate Transformers fans.

I think the movies helped bring TF screaming back into the forefront, and they probably have never been more popular. I think that's great for the fans, regardless of how we feel about story lines and continuities. It means that we keep getting toys, comics, books, video games and movies - a little something for everyone.

I'm sorry for mentioning anything about the movie. This topic was about the franchise. I was going in the direction of why we get figures in the classics line. Like Powerglide and Seaspray that were minibots turn into giants in comparison to Optimus and Ironhide. Don't get me totally wrong, in some ways I like having them bigger now. But why did Warpath and Cosmos get the short end of the stick. The other thing I was mentioning was the transforming rate system. Like Classics Silverbolt vs SS. One is just fold a couple of parts and lay it down. The other is just a little more complicated, yet simple enough. Yet they both have a rating of 2. This is just my thoughts on it, but Silverbolt should have been rated a 1. Then there are times when Hasbro posts their pictures for figures that are mistransformed. I mean they designed the things, they should know what the finished products should look like. I admit I'm a G1 fan, but I do like just about anything that comes out that is Transformers. As for the franchise it does look good. I'm so massively happy that they finally made a Unicron for crying out loud. I'd go stand in line if a BW Neo version came out. As for the repaints that always come out, I'm fine with. That's like Hasbro's trademark thing to do. But I wish that they would do some Q&A or polls or something on their repaints. Just an example here, but the Drift Figure being redoc'ed as Blurr with Rifle, and new head sculpt. I'm really liking it. At least they retooled him some to fit more with the character. I have no gripe about the movie other then, I just feel it's more about the characters, The Transformers, then the humans. Which the movies where human heavy. But that was Bay's approach I guess, to see it from the humans side compared to what were kind of use to. Now if he had done something like GoGaigar, Gundam, or even GoBots. Would it have been good. I would have to say yeah, I think it would. But, enough about my ramblings. Sorry yet again.

Rodimus the Prime wrote:Thanks for sharing your insights guys! A character poll is an awesome idea!

Also, I too have noticed a rather biting, and at times even childish sense of intolerance directed towards fans who don't jive with Bay's films and/or TF: Animated. I've observed this across 3 major TF fansites too, actually.

In fact, as a Star Wars fan as well, I've never seen "OT Purists" mocked, derided and even marginalized by their fellow fans the same way as TF-G1 fans who don't dig Bay's films or any of the newer series'. Indeed, what's going on with that?

Bashing the movie became a fad that a lot of people went way overboard with because it was the cool thing to do at the time. After several months of it some of us movie supporters got really REALLY sick of it. I'm ok with someone not liking the movie, but a lot of people were literally just making things up to complain about. I guess some of us are still used to the absurd trolling.

I'm psyched about the state of the franchise right now.

1. My favorite toy as a kid is more popular now than they've ever been.

2. I'm back into Transformers, and they're as fun and cool to me now as when I was a kid.

3. The toys are better than they've ever been. The engineering on these things is just amazing. Plus, I'm an adult now with a job, so I can buy them whenever I want, lol!

4. A new cartoon is coming out. I can't even wait!

5. A new movie is coming out. Again, I can't even wait!

How can anyone be disappointed? Maybe you don't like the current "bayverse" designs (I do), but you have to be happy overall, IMO.

I'm happy with the franchise, the toys, and the toons.

I've had plenty of times that I've found a figure that made me think: WTF was Hasbro thinking? but I just smile and move on. When it comes to transformers I'm pretty easy to please. Plus I'm a completionist. Gotta catch..e'hem...Collect them all...cough.


I got nothing against the fandom either...except the ones that got something against me for some stupid reason... they all can die.

Catalyst Prime wrote:I got nothing against the fandom either...except the ones that got something against me for some stupid reason*... they all can die.

*accidentally falls down stairs and snaps neck*

"Aaaahhhh-Ugk!"

JK

*Rank missing

Energon Is My Drug wrote:I'm psyched about the state of the franchise right now.

1. My favorite toy as a kid is more popular now than they've ever been.

2. I'm back into Transformers, and they're as fun and cool to me now as when I was a kid.

My first transformer that I ever had/still have is Jazz. And their retooling him, So looking forward to getting him. And as for getting back into Transformers, Beast Wars did it for me. I Skipped Beast Machines and RiD, but I'm slowly going back and picking these guys up too.

In my opinion I think the franchise has both its good and bad points at the moment.

GOOD: We're seeing some proper toy releases that improve on the g1 80s releases EX: Masterpiece Line(only gripe is the multiple Prime repaints, need to move on to other characters!), Classics, Generations, and some Reissues (Was able to get two Reissue Soundwaves and an Optimus a while back, what I only dreamed of having since I was about 3). Its cool how these figures I never owned as a kid, are now available to me at an older age when I can actually buy them, LOL! These figures, sneakers, and records are what have become my addictions.

BAD: Too many story and design changes going on. No animation geared towards G1. I really wish a G1 accurate mini-series or direct to DVD (like Marvel and DC) animated flick would drop (could you imagine how cool a proper Wreckers film would be?). That would calm down alot of the beef between G1 and Bayformer, Animated fans. It would provide a greater balance between them.

And in regards to the movies and the other incarnations. I'll be first in line to say that I hate them. Both as an adaptation and as a stand-alone film. I've been strictly a G1 fan since I caught the original series on tv. But, I won't hate anyone who begs to differ with my views.

Energon Is My Drug wrote:I'm psyched about the state of the franchise right now.

1. My favorite toy as a kid is more popular now than they've ever been.

2. I'm back into Transformers, and they're as fun and cool to me now as when I was a kid.

3. The toys are better than they've ever been. The engineering on these things is just amazing. Plus, I'm an adult now with a job, so I can buy them whenever I want, lol!

4. A new cartoon is coming out. I can't even wait!

5. A new movie is coming out. Again, I can't even wait!

How can anyone be disappointed? Maybe you don't like the current "bayverse" designs (I do), but you have to be happy overall, IMO.

Agreed, 100%

Evil_the_Nub wrote:Agreed, 100%

Thanks!

this is a fairly complex question.

on the business side of things i dont think the franchise has ever BEEN this good.

even at its height in the 80s the first movie tanked .

now we've multiple movies, comic book series and whole different lines of toys so from that point of view its storming ahead . TF is firmly established now as a part of pop culture.

but from a personal point of view im conflicted.

the movies, though visualy and technically marvelous, are complete travestys as films. theres just so little in it thats to do with the transformers themselves. im not a great lover of the designs either. though not slavishly G1 i would insist that if you can get prime to "look" like prime there was no reason not to do the same to ironhide ratchtet and co. and with the voices they have already being confirmed as coming from monitoring the net theres NO reason they shouldnt sound like their G1 coutnerparts either.

the comics are a complete ****.

IDW started off brilliantly with a wonderfully reinvented and expanded lore for their universe, but chucked it out for editorial reasons to "reinvent" it and now were left with a decidely inferior product that is so bad ive actually dropped it. something i never thought id do. at this stage they may as well call the book "SPIKE : andhistransformresmates. "

on the plus side.

the toys are amazing and have never been this technically good. yes im not a fan of the movieverse designs but even ill tip the hat to the lads that did revenge of the falln prime. its practically a masterpeice and a huge leap from the first one.

the best thing for me though is the generations line.

im geting the drift one and i cant wait for the straxus one (come on we all know thats who it is ). with the possibility of ones like impactor down the line its the most exciting thing ive seen in the franchise in ages.

the computer games have never been this good. ok WFC isnt perfect but its a GOOD game which is a step in the right direction and opens the doors to other title now its done so well. with a bit of luck we may even get speciality games featuring special teams or the dinobots

ill reserve judgemtn on the new series till i see it. i wasnt mad on animated but will conced for what it was it was good (bit like beast machines, if you forget that its trying to be TF its a good series).

as im mainly a comic fan im alot more despondant about the franchise and im not a great fan of some of the toy designs , particularly when knock off companies like fans project can pump on vastly superior looking product - seriouly which bruticus would YOU want- but theres alot to feel good about.

and hey maybe even the third film wont be bad !

Great post! I echo some of your sentiments! Especially regarding Bay's films.

I too have been marveling at the evolution of the engineering in the toys. I'd just bought the Drift figure recently, and while I haven't the slightest idea who he is save for what was written on his bio card, he's one of my favourites! A Transformer...that can hold a Sword...with both hands!!! I grew up in the 80's, and for those that don't know, if you grew up in the 80's, chances are that at some point...you wanted to be a NINJA! Because Ninjas were everywhere and they were cool! To have a Transformer that can store a sword on his back, like a NINJA, or at his side Samurai style and pose two handed...man, it's like I don't even have the words it's that deliciously awesome!


With respect to everything else...I have concerns about where things are going, truth be told. It's hard to put my finger on still, but there's something not feeling right about Hasbro's stated direction for TF:Prime and the attempt for one big cherry-picked master-continuity. I echo the similar sentiments some people have expressed on this already. My own take is that it's hard to describe, but it feels small to me, like Hasbro is taking one of the more interesting and vibrant aspects of the franchise and bottle-necking it into something smaller and more convenient to manage.

I'm also concerned about Hasbro's use of the Hub for their new show that they want to run for up to 7 seasons. I don't get the Hub, and I've already got what I'd thought was one of the more pricier cable set-up options. I'm not interested enough in what I've seen to justify upping my cable bill substantially just to see it. I can't help but wonder how many other fans are in that boat too (I know one here is, from what he'd said in another thread). Can the show succeed while being aired on high-end cable, while competing against the ratings titan of Clone Wars? (For those that don't know, Clone Wars was given a place in the Guinness Book of World records, for highest ever rated Sci-Fi cartoon).
My concern is that if Prime doesn't do well, and there's no movies for a while, Tfs could be in trouble in the near future.

@ Rodimus the Prime:
Really? I thought it would be on the regular Discovery channel. Maybe it will be on iTunes. But I do agree it is a huge gamble for Hasbro. The no toys aspect doesn't bother me so much, but the exclusiveness of the show does. While I do applaud Hasbro's ambitious attempt, only time will tell wheather or not it will pay off. As always I'll give Hasbro the benefit of doubt. I do want to read up on the creative staff. Usually Hasbro is pretty hands off with creators.

There is a lot going on for TF right now, as mentioned before, something for everyone. Transformers just keeps expanding as a multiverse, with so many different continuities out there to choose from. Even if they never made another show or comic I'm not sure I'd have the time and resources to have read and watched it all!

Even if you don't like the Bayverse movies, toys or comics, you can still think of them as the crappy day job the franchise has to work in order to pay for all the really good colletor's stuff like Masterpeice, Generations and re-issue figures.

IDW has done a good service with the franchise in that they have multiple story lines going on, agains something for everyone, as well as archival tombs for the old Marvel run.

The multi-media aspect of W4C and the upcoming related (?) Transformers: Prime is really getting me excited. In recent years a healthy franchise needs toys, games, tv, movie, comics, events, you name it. Transformers not only has all that, it's a multi-verse of multi-media.

Change is good, and growth isn't painless, but in storytelling, change is gradual, and in real life, growth is tended.

I agree that TF as a franchise, as an anything, is in the best position that it's ever been, but am unsure about its' condition: I have reservations as to whether its' status today will be considered healthy in the future, when all have the leisure to look back in retrospect.

There has been a lot of arguing going on but without it I think respect levels for the TF tangents would be much, much lower. The fact that we, as fans, argue, seperates the degree of the topic into workable and problematic, which is contributing to the status the franchise will be in after today.In many instances it seems that the fans have been the only ones to care about what others perhaps should never have gotten wrong.Sometimes I have even referred to the treatment about some historical TF events as abuse.

Many of the problems are based on executive decisions of their time, and in many instances the fanbase has highlighted and corrected the mistakes of the executives ALONE. In defence of designers:a great deal of stuff that was not considered Transformers when it came out greatly assisted the stuff that came later but often hampered the stuff that came out before.With this in mind, the levels of alteration within any given aspect of any given bot vary wildly so the fans are right to push the designers to be mindful of the original appeal or beauty of any given change.They were educational toys when I got involved in G1 and I at least want them to stay that way.

Large amounts of what's going on today has been affected directly from outside-the new technology, the corrected oversights, the knowledge that TF films will generate fans, the knowledge that the classics line will sell. Little of it is a new contribution from the people within the design matrix, who will repaint/color, remold from the same character pool but sometimes the inappropriate AltMode pool (from a fan standpoint and not only), rarely creating a sincerely new character, referring to a typical quote as a motto, continuing to build insanely different sized bots even in the same team-which alone is no longer required as a technological stopping point.
Even the people designing Transformers today are not people who grew up with Transformers in very many instances.It's possible that the fans are the only ones (continuously) defending the heart/spirit of the original vision from what to me is the superficialist view.The Japanese Banzai guy-did he get into the Hall of Fame? He made the best transforming transormers that there ever were.

Without mincing words, Hasbro is in good health (I assume) in their move to convert from a Megacorporation to a Capital Megacorporation, but the Transformers franchise, which is Great for Hasbro, is risking having its' blood sucked out.Fans are amongst the few who, as a side-effect of defending their entry point into TF fandom, are likely saving Hasbro TFs from going the way of Kenner TFs.

I'm liking some aspects of it such as the generations but I'm hating the fact Hasbro is becoming more of an entertainment company rather than just a toy company and how every thing is based of Michael Bay's crap fest I miss the days when everything was based of G1 or Beastwars respectively I like the powercore combiners as it is a completely new concept and is the way minicons should have been years agohonestly the last time transformers had a somewhat golden age was 2000-2005 now we pretty much at a bronze age after energon things got pretty stupid with cybertron and now the movie verse crap

Sky-Quake wrote:I'm liking some aspects of it such as the generations but I'm hating the fact Hasbro is becoming more of an entertainment company rather than just a toy company and how every thing is based of Michael Bay's crap fest I miss the days when everything was based of G1 or Beastwars respectively I like the powercore combiners as it is a completely new concept and is the way minicons should have been years agohonestly the last time transformers had a somewhat golden age was 2000-2005 now we pretty much at a bronze age after energon things got pretty stupid with cybertron and now the movie verse crap

What? The Cybertron toys are widely considered to be the best of the Armada triology toys. They capped off that golden age with great sculpts, a huge cast, and a large diversity in toy types.

Counterpunch wrote:

Sky-Quake wrote:I'm liking some aspects of it such as the generations but I'm hating the fact Hasbro is becoming more of an entertainment company rather than just a toy company and how every thing is based of Michael Bay's crap fest I miss the days when everything was based of G1 or Beastwars respectively I like the powercore combiners as it is a completely new concept and is the way minicons should have been years agohonestly the last time transformers had a somewhat golden age was 2000-2005 now we pretty much at a bronze age after energon things got pretty stupid with cybertron and now the movie verse crap

What? The Cybertron toys are widely considered to be the best of the Armada triology toys. They capped off that golden age with great sculpts, a huge cast, and a large diversity in toy types.

Yeah, I thought Energon was kind of over doing it with the whole combiner aspect for the Autobots. It was cool, but it sometimes made other elements of the design suffer. Case in point: Optimus and Prowl. Meanwhile the cons had a lot of solid figures.

Energon Is My Drug wrote:I'm psyched about the state of the franchise right now.

1. My favorite toy as a kid is more popular now than they've ever been.

2. I'm back into Transformers, and they're as fun and cool to me now as when I was a kid.

3. The toys are better than they've ever been. The engineering on these things is just amazing. Plus, I'm an adult now with a job, so I can buy them whenever I want, lol!

4. A new cartoon is coming out. I can't even wait!

5. A new movie is coming out. Again, I can't even wait!

How can anyone be disappointed? Maybe you don't like the current "bayverse" designs (I do), but you have to be happy overall, IMO.

Thats what I'm saying! Take that stick out your ass and realize that the franchise is more alive than ever. All the people complaining about this stuff ruining the franchise forever. Look at Beast Wars, it ruined everything Transformers was about, giant robots transforming into vehicles. But look how much every one loved it. The movies and Animated didnt ruin the franchise anymore than Beast Wars or even G1 did. If it wasnt for the movies or Animated I wouldnt give a **** about TFs. The movies are just G1 for a whole new generation. The things some people say are stupid and confusing about the movies, where the same with G1. Stupid is the new "corny" and G1 was a crapload of corny. And the movies didnt confuse me at all, I understood everything.