The Energon Pub

Mon Jul 13, 2009 7:04 pm

Does anyone have high quality video or screen caps of the toy commercial animation? (Better than the grainy YouTube video) Some of the characters animated there were never seen elsewhere and I was hoping to find better caps besides those on the Wikipedia commercial page. I figure someone somewhere has to have either a clip or a piece of art or something.

News Credits: 462 · Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:05 pm

No such videos exist. They've never made high quality versions of G1 toy commercials.

News Credits: 2 · Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:01 pm

I think he means the original television broadcast res instead of the crap res YouTube uploads.

Now whether those tapes still exist (probably on Betamax!), only Hasbro and their various ad agencies know for sure. I've never seen anything that wasn't 2nd generation or worse copies.

Who knows, maybe if enough of us contact Hasbro they'll release the commercials on DVD. :-?

News Credits: 462 · Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:08 pm

Shout!'s G1 DVDs will have some G1 toy commercials on them, but they are in the televised quality from way back when thy first aired.

News Credits: 1 · Tue Jul 21, 2009 6:36 pm

Sabrblade wrote:Shout!'s G1 DVDs will have some G1 toy commercials on them, but they are in the televised quality from way back when thy first aired.

Holy cow those brought back memories! They look, actually, *EXACTLY* as they did in the 80s with regards to graininess.

What I can't figure out is why they blurred out the kids' faces. It was...unsettling.

HK, and the PSA made me laugh so hard I almost wet myself. Were we ever that gullible?

Mon Jul 27, 2009 9:51 am

hellkitty wrote:What I can't figure out is why they blurred out the kids' faces. It was...unsettling.

Could be a couple of reasons.

For example:

1. The original contract to use there likeness lasted a short period of time.
2. The original contract was for a specific territory (eg, the ads could only be shown in the US not in the UK or canada)
3. The original contract did not extent to distribution on home video.

It can be a real pain the ass when hiring actors for this sort of thing, To show the advert in more area's you basically have to pay the actors more. So sometimes the producers limit the agreement so they only pay a certain amount, which means the producer can be limited in where and what they can do with the final product. Essentially by blurring the face of the actors they are able to distribute the ad wherever they like without paying more money.

News Credits: 462 · Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:12 am

Nightscreech wrote:
hellkitty wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:What I can't figure out is why they blurred out the kids' faces. It was...unsettling.

Could be a couple of reasons.

For example:

1. The original contract to use there likeness lasted a short period of time.
2. The original contract was for a specific territory (eg, the ads could only be shown in the US not in the UK or canada)
3. The original contract did not extent to distribution on home video.

It can be a real pain the ass when hiring actors for this sort of thing, To show the advert in more area's you basically have to pay the actors more. So sometimes the producers limit the agreement so they only pay a certain amount, which means the producer can be limited in where and what they can do with the final product. Essentially by blurring the face of the actors they are able to distribute the ad wherever they like without paying more money.

I never said that. She did.

Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:48 pm

I heard and read about rumors that Takara released a VHS tape (I think it was a VHS tape) called Transformers: Hero which was a collection of various Diaclone and Japanese Transformers toy commericals from G1 to Zone and while I'm not 100% sure if had any American ads (if it did my guess would be it was the ones with only animation and not the ones with the kid's head turning into Ultra Magnus' head) or not, but if did or does even exisit I wouldn't mind knowing more about it.