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Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby kirbenvost » Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:29 am

Motto: "Deal with it."
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ARGH, curse you guys! I went from 'EW, ARMADA' to perusing eBay listings for Prime & Jetfire. I guess despite the blockiness and simplistic articulation, there's a lot to love about the line. Sounds familiar, eh? :lol: I guess coming into the hobby during Energon I was already spoiled by 'modern' figures and couldn't appreciate Armada at the time. But man, if I ever have a surplus of space and money...some of these guys are mine!
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Handels-Messerschmitt » Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:48 pm

I got back into transformers after G2 and Beast Wars in my childhood with Armada. Most of the figures don't appeal to me as such but I think they were going for a younger audience than usual. I quite like the mini-cons even if many of them weren't as good as they could have been due to any combination of their gimmick, the need of a link socket or just the general chunky style.

It's funny how, in my eyes, the figures got better but the gimmick leaps and bounds worse as the trilogy progressed. I can forgive some clumsy pegs etc because having tiny robots to match your larger robots is perfectly worthwhile. They're accessories that are proper transformers in their own right (mostly, anyway). The energon weapons were at least beefy and worked nicely with each other. The planet keys, though? Oh my goodness. The worst gimmick in so long. A useless accessory that accomplishes nothing a simple button couldn't have done with far less hassle.

But anyway, how about that Armada. Good name, not my favourite line but it justifies its existence through tiny transformers and, I guess, Unicron as well. I can't believe it's been ten years. Ugh. That's what you get for taking a break for five years.
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Bumblevivisector » Mon Oct 15, 2012 6:58 pm

Handels-Messerschmitt wrote:The planet keys, though? Oh my goodness. The worst gimmick in so long. A useless accessory that accomplishes nothing a simple button couldn't have done with far less hassle.

You took the words right outta' my mouth; Force Chips/Cyber Keys also don't display or store too well, leaving collectors like myself who hadn't discovered tackle-boxes at the time with dozens of misplaced accessories. Minicons? Easy to keep organized.

If we're comparing Unicron Trilogy cartoons on the other hand, I'd be interested to hear any argument for Cybertron not blowing its predecessors out of the water, thanks to someone in Japan having the sense to cut ties with the end of Energon and do another 1 season = 1 continuity deal, like Car Robots.

Getting back to Armada, it's interesting that Cyclonus got judged a tad unfavorably, since he seemed to be a lot of people's first Armada toy; when the first Supercons came out, I'd routinely see pegs of just Hot Shot and Demolishor, and I doubt Cyc was shortpacked (though I held out to make him my first Bulk too). I think it's because his Minicon gave him the most visually obvious benefit before you even handled him: the front of his copter mode looked lame until you attached Crumplezone ("HUMP THAT TANK!") and made him a true gunship. Ironically, that first infamous mini-comic was the only time I recall him doing that in any media; he's attached that way at the beginning of the Dreamwave Armada profile books, but to his bulk's robot mode, giving Cyclonus a distressing beer gut. "AND I"LL TURN INTO SOME HUGE, DEFORMED THING!", indeed.

Never bothered with his neon green repaint, though. It started the trend of repainting every other new helicopter mold into Springer, which produced some neat (if non-triple-changing) updates for the Wreckers' leader over the last decade, but Powerlinx Cyclonus was not one of them.

Now, Demolishor did improve once you actually handled him, but it always bugged me that only one set of his shoulder missiles actually launched; it's Has/Tak's weird aversion to certain symmetrical action features that denied us an Animated Bulkhead with both wreckin' balls. Once I played with him, I also found it odd that he was most closely associated with the Land Military Minicons, since he works better with the later Air Military Team. His unique gun-finger design makes him one of many Supercons whose hands can't actually hold weapon-pegs, BUT they make him the only one who can actually hold Thunderwing in shuriken mode, and easily be posed like he's about to throw him! The Land Military Team looks better on Megatron anyway.

Did Armada end up 'forcing' adult collectors to actually play with their toys than any other Transformers line? Perhaps that should be its distinction down the ages.
Last edited by Bumblevivisector on Mon Oct 15, 2012 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Hip-Hoptimus Rime » Mon Oct 15, 2012 8:01 pm

Motto: "Nobody has to look for trouble."
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What a great read! Thank you guys, that was informative and fun.

Armada is 4th in number in my collection, after the 3 Movie lines. About 79 Armada figs, including about 30 Minicons. All those little guys make it easy to pad the count, I suppose. Nonetheless, it's one of my favorite lines.

Jetfire was my first from this line, I remember being stunned and thrilled when I first saw him in the store. I've been a huge space shuttle geek for 30+ years, and Jetfire was an amazing nexus of two of my geeknesses. I'm going to go dig him out of storage now...
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby xyl360 » Mon Oct 15, 2012 8:40 pm

Sabrblade wrote:
xyl360 wrote:Thanks for the history lesson guys :). Fascinating stuff. Thanks also for confirming that there were only 4 Beast Wars repainst/remolds in Armada. I was never certain if there were more or not, but now I know :).
They said there were 5. four Deluxes as Super-Cons, and one Mega as a Max-Con.
Cheetor
Airazor
Rhinox
Terrorsaur
Predacon

Ah, right, I forgot about Predacon (BW Megs repaint). I've got him too so I'm all set.

Thanks :)!
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Sabrblade » Mon Oct 15, 2012 10:31 pm

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Bumblevivisector wrote:If we're comparing Unicron Trilogy cartoons on the other hand, I'd be interested to hear any argument for Cybertron not blowing its predecessors out of the water, thanks to someone in Japan having the sense to cut ties with the end of Energon and do another 1 season = 1 continuity deal, like Car Robots.
Even though it was retconned into being another sequel later in both countries. Even in Japan, Galaxy Force is officially considered a sequel to Micron Densetsu and Super Link. Guess it was a good thing that a few trace elements of the first two made it into the third series. ;)

Though, could it really be considered a retcon when it was originally intended by both Hasbro and Takara to be another sequel? All that happened with the cartoon was that either GONZO didn't get the memo or outright ignored the memo and wrote it as a new series despite what the higher ups wanted, thus leading to a lot of headaches that both companies (Hasbro especially) wound up having to try and fix to make it fit the original vision for the series.
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Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Counterpunch » Tue Oct 16, 2012 1:02 pm

Motto: "Everything I do is divinely sanctioned."
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Emerging Prime was punching the Unicron Singularity which caused the Cybertron series to happen, its toys to be amazing, and Lori's tsundere powers to be over 9000.
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Sabrblade » Tue Oct 16, 2012 1:19 pm

Motto: "Can't do a job halfway. What's worth doing is worth doing well, I say."
Weapon: Saber Blade
Counterpunch wrote:Emerging Prime was punching the Unicron Singularity which caused the Cybertron series to happen, its toys to be amazing, and Lori's tsundere powers to be over 9000.
Man, I love this fandom. I got all those references. :lol:

Though, I'm more partial to this:
"When there's gold feathers, punch behind you!!"

Shadowman wrote:This is Sabrblade we're talking about. His ability to store trivial information about TV shows is downright superhuman.
Caelus wrote:My wife pointed out something interesting about the prehistoric Predacons. I said that everyone was complaining because transforming for them mostly consisted of them just standing up-right. She essentially said, 'So? That's what our ancestors did.'
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Re: Seibertron.com Treasures: The Armada Anniversary Article

Postby Marcdachamp » Thu Oct 18, 2012 11:58 am

Aw, man. Great article, guys. Armada started right before my senior year of high school. I'm coming up on my 10-year-reunion this year. I've gotten rid of some of my Armada figures, but my favorites are NOT going anywhere. Unicron is still sitting on the same bookshelf he's been since I picked him up in summer of '03. He's fighting the Dark of the Moon Dinobot minicons. It works as both a G1 homage and an Armada homage. :grin:

This year, I also added a very cool piece to my Armada collection: a page of original Andrew Wildman art from the UK Armada comic. It features Starscream and Demolishor in all their glory. So awesome.
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