The Energon Pub

megatronus wrote:Wait... if your argument, and more than that, your very behavior, is being affected by this question, isn't the onus on you to prove that they aren't receiving payments?

But that's how a troll operates. You can't expect one to go against its nature, can you?

"I'm right, so my arguments need no facts! Your facts are inconvenient, so I choose to either dismiss them, or pretend they never were mentioned."

Clearly, Rated X missed his calling, and should have had a career in politics.

Yotsuyasan wrote:

megatronus wrote:Wait... if your argument, and more than that, your very behavior, is being affected by this question, isn't the onus on you to prove that they aren't receiving payments?

But that's how a troll operates. You can't expect one to go against its nature, can you?

I'm not sure I would call Rated X a troll - that might be too strong.

However, I do think he'll move an argument's goal posts or shift the burden of proof in order to maintain his line of reasoning (whether the line of reasoning is logical or not is another question).

megatronus wrote:I'm not sure I would call Rated X a troll - that might be too strong.

He skirts the line sometimes. He shows intelligence and sometimes contributes worthwhile things... but he has somewhat questionable (in my opinion, at least) morals, and when the majority is against him with reason to back them up, he resorts to troll like tactics.

So calling him a troll might have been a bit strong... But he certainly knows their ways and is not afraid to use them.

Rated X wrote:Im not limiting the arguement to Takara's head designer. Im talking about anyone on his team during the G1 era. Im also referring to anyone that was part of the Sunbow Productions G1 team as they played a major role in creating G1 as we know it.

They did their jobs pretty well. It's a cartoon that was made to sell toys. You forget how they sold those rights to Japan when Transformers stopped keeping kids attention.

Oh, let me not forget anyone from Marvel who helped create the original G1 comic.

In his Botcon panel, Bob Budiansky said how he wasn't a fan of drawing robots, and he came up with all those profiles as part of his job. Oh yeah, Marvel also lost or sold off those rights as soon as Transformers stopped being popular.

And anyone from Bandai or whatever companies created the molds for Predaking, the Deluxe Insecticons, and Shockwave because they were not part of the Diaclone line.

Can't say I know enough about where they came from to say anything on that.

If you can without a shadow of doubt prove that every one of these G1 founding fathers is still collecting royalties from Hasbro, then you will have dispelled my arguement.

I present to you this one - If the original producers walked away, sold off, or lost their rights to the series why should they keep getting money?

Paramount is getting the money from the Star Trek franchise, not the original writers or actors.
Disney is getting money from the Star Wars franchise. I don't believe Lucas is getting a penny anymore because he sold the rights.
Hell, technically Disney gets the revenue for Marvel's stuff too since they got bought out.
Why Should Transformers be any different? At least Transformers has been under the Hasbro Corporation since Day 1. (disregarding Kenner's BW Toys, I'm still not sure how that all came about). If anything, you're keeping the franchise alive by giving Hasbro your money.

Hell, if you care about the people who made this franchise so badly, I's surprised I don't hear you championing Michael Bay, or Orci and the other guy getting more money. Thanks to all of their work, toy sales quadrupled in 2007 (I have the info to back that up too if you need it). Sure it's come down since then, but the money pumped into the franchise from his movies guarantees the Generations line we all love. It spurred the popularity of IDW's Transformers series, which causes more money and popularity.

Oh right, you still think Transformers should be as they were 30 years ago with no respect for the evolution of the brand.

Werent you with me when we saw Buster Jones speak ? It sure didn't look like Hasbro took care of him all these years.

I don't recall Buster working for Hasbro? He's an actor, thus part of the various actor guilds/unions. Besides, it's not the job of Hasbro to tell people how to live their lives.

Basically, you're trying to come off as a sympathetic person to justify your anarchy beliefs.

I think I see where you're coming from though. IIRC you're into the hiphop/rap scene where artists get royalties for their work as long as they live. Such practices don't exist in the corporate world despite how badly you seem to want them to.

I understand what you're saying to a point. However I just don't respect the concept of "IP". It's a fairly new concept that didn't exist 20 years ago when the US economy was good. Back then bootlegs made chump change compared to their respective industries and weren't worth the effort to fight in court. Needless to say I'm no fan of big corporations or their monopolies.

On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

Rated X wrote:However I just don't respect the concept of "IP". It's a fairly new concept that didn't exist 20 years ago when the US economy was good.

It isn't a new concept, it's a newer blanket term covering related concepts that have long existed, including copyright, trademarking, and patenting.

I'm going to take a quick look at my reissue G1 Soundwave. (I don't have a lot of G1 molds handy, he was the closest at hand.)

I'm looking inside the back and it says, "©HASBRO 1974 1983 ©TAKARA CO., LTD. '74, '83 CHINA" Now, before you get confused by the 1974 dates, to quote the TF Wiki for an explination: "However, the date 1974 refers to the introduction of the original Microman franchise due to the way Japanese IP law worked at the time." (That's right, Japanese IP law working for you 39 years ago!) The more relevant date in this case is 1983. Takara and Hasbro have owned the G1 Soundwave mold for 30 years, and your claiming that such concepts didn't exist 20 years ago cannot change it anymore then you claiming the sky is plaid will make it so.

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

It's all well and good that you don't feel that Hasbro deserves your money, but that's a very anti-creator idea, however you present it. Hasbro (or in this case Takara) employs people to make TFs. In fact the guy from Diaclone is still around! If you were so pro-creative you'd support them for keeping legacy staff around by buying official products when you could. That enables creative people to keep their jobs.

But Hasbro has money, so you don't care.

You don't have to feel guilty about how you use your money. It's perfectly valid to say that you don't feel toy "A" is worth price "B" and that you'll spend your money on what you want even if that's a KO. But pro-creative? You're anti-creative, if anything. You talk a great game, but you're the most anti-creative guy in this section.

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

At the risk of backing up Rated X, Cullen did have that sweet Eeyore gig!

But to poke a hole in Rated X's argument... post Transformers, Buster Jones did more work as the second voice of Winston Zeddemore (every episode for multiple years) then he ever did on Transformers (25 episodes plus the movie). And in any case, if his post Transformers career wasn't as stellar as he may have liked, how is that Hasbro's fault? How is Hasbro under any obligation to continue to pay actors for work they have already been compensated for, decades after the fact? If he isn't happy with his career, that is more his agents (or his own) fault then it is Hasbro's.

Yotsuyasan wrote:

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

At the risk of backing up Rated X, Cullen did have that sweet Eeyore gig!

Yeah but I doubt that was "given" to him. He would have auditioned for it just like every other actor/actress (both voice and on-screen talent) do.

This has gotten incredibly stupid, but that's just the way X is.
Thanks to your quoting of him I've read his crap and can respond, so I have a bit of time on my hands:

Buster Jones is an old man, he's been in the music business for 5 decades, he's done voice over work for TF, GI Joe, Ghostbusters and Batman, in fact his last role was in 1998 in Batman.
Looking at his acting career, his most notable and biggest gig is Ghostbusters as Winston.

Peter Cullen and Frank Welker already had established voice actor careers before they did TF, Scooby Do made Frank Welker who he is today, and he doesn't like it when people claim it was Transformers or Megatron.

The thing with Transformers and its creation is this:
The corporate head has an idea to make money, does a bit of thinking and bam comes up with the idea of robots beating the **** out of each other.
Hasbro, motivated by seeing how successful their competitor Tonka was with the Go-Bots, saw Takara's Diaclone and Microchange lines and decided they wanted to import them to have a piece of the transforming robot cake.
After acquiring the licenses, they commissioned Marvel Comics to promote the toy line with a short TV special and a comic mini series.
Marvel did just that, and put together a team that worked with the TF department at Hasbro to create the TV universe, it was a job for all involved, in fact Marvel didn't even care enough for TF to have it as a part of their actual Universe, all they did was create the material for Hasbro. Just like you would contract someone to work on your house. Everyone knew full well that what they did there would end up belonging to someone else, which is why Marvel or someone working on the TF comics decided that whenever a character looked like it would have loads of potential, and didn't want it to fall into the hands of Hasbro, they forced the character to first appear in a different Marvel comic so Marvel would have the rights to it.

Nobody had a special relationship or something with Transformers, it was simply a job for everyone involved, one of the few people who actually enjoyed themselves and actually did end up liking TFs is Simon Furman, who in the beginning also saw it as just another job.

The whole concept of loving working on TF came about when actual fans started working on it after having grown up with TF. That means a good deal of the people working on it now.

And IP and copyright aren't new concepts, for America it's a relatively new concept, since America only really started caring or protecting it at around the end of the 19th century. And has rebooted and reworked the laws ever since. The whole reason for the existence of public domain movies, comics and music is due to the US's rebooting of the laws, basically killing all copyrights that where filed before 1922, and then rebooting it so many times that people couldn't keep up or didn't care.

Oh and Predaking was created by Hasbo/ Takara, not Bandai, he wasn't part of Diaclone due to the fact that he was created specifically for Transformers since Diaclone was already replaced with TF at that time.

And creator rights don't actually have anything to do with this, since it's just a job, people work on this stuff under contracts, based on ideas by their bosses.


But since X doesn't care about that, since it's not based on his fantasies he presents as facts. I'll do the same as he does.

Rated X steals money from homeless people in order to buy KOs, since Ko companies have money and he hates that. On top of that the damn homeless people dare to have change and somehow insist on keeping it instead of giving it to him.
Rated X also does not work, not because nobody would employ him, but because he doesn't like the idea of someone paying him for his work while at the same time earning money from Rated X's work. After all, the guy should pay Rated X just for being there, he should also make no money at all and not take money from customers while paying Rated X out of his own savings.

I mean, with facts like that, how could anyone disagree with me?

Enter Ebay....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/KO-TF-Masterpie ... 3cd6a871da

daimchoc wrote:Enter Ebay....

Okay... When I complained about your posting a link to where one could buy these before, you said, to paraphrase, "But I have to prove they exist!" I didn't like it, but fair enough.

You proved it. No one disbelieved you. What does posting a link to that eBay auction prove?

All it does is reinforce my point that, by having the news article that appears on the front page linked to an active forum thread, in the long run the "Buyer Beware" articles do more to promote knock off products to people who have no moral or ethical qualms with buying such things, rather then following their intended purpose of warning people interested in the legitimate toys to be careful in their purchasing.

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

Uh....The lead role (robot) in most of the G1 cartoon, the Michael Bay saga, and TF Prime....

If that's not opportunity, then what is ?

Rated X wrote:

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

Uh....The lead role (robot) in most of the G1 cartoon, the Michael Bay saga, and TF Prime....

If that's not opportunity, then what is ?

I'm sure it has nothing to do with Mr. Cullen's talents or his work ethic. Nope it was all just to keep the little guy down

Cullen had to audition like everybody else. Hasbro isn't responsible for the careers of everybody they've ever hired, especially when they didn't actually hire them.

daimchoc wrote:Enter Ebay....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/KO-TF-Masterpie ... 3cd6a871da

Thanks

Yotsuyasan wrote:

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

At the risk of backing up Rated X, Cullen did have that sweet Eeyore gig!

But to poke a hole in Rated X's argument... post Transformers, Buster Jones did more work as the second voice of Winston Zeddemore (every episode for multiple years) then he ever did on Transformers (25 episodes plus the movie). And in any case, if his post Transformers career wasn't as stellar as he may have liked, how is that Hasbro's fault? How is Hasbro under any obligation to continue to pay actors for work they have already been compensated for, decades after the fact? If he isn't happy with his career, that is more his agents (or his own) fault then it is Hasbro's.

You had to be at Botcon 2012. This dude came on stage and played "The Doc" on a Transformers script reading. Everybody from Funpub was too embarrassed to tap him on the shoulder and say "Buster, that was G.I. Joe, you played Blaster on the Transformers show". This guy was out of it, doesn't look like he was given much opportunities after the classic 80's cartoon era came to a close. And in my opinion Blaster was among the top 5 most Iconic voices on the series along with Prime, Megatron, Starscream, and Jazz. Anyways Im just using him as an example of how some people who were iconic to the 80's Transformers industry are shafted today while Hasbro still keeps others paid in full. I know comparing voice actors to toy designers may seem like apples and oranges, but if you look at them all as 80's TF related employees on the payroll it shows who was hung out to dry.

Rated X wrote:

Yotsuyasan wrote:

Burn wrote:

Rated X wrote:On Buster, he went from being the voice of a major G1 character to a struggling musician living life gig by gig. A lot of talent just wasn't pushed or given the opportunities that Peter Cullen was. To me that's a damn shame.

What opportunities was Peter Cullen given? Care to back that up with evidence as well?

At the risk of backing up Rated X, Cullen did have that sweet Eeyore gig!

But to poke a hole in Rated X's argument... post Transformers, Buster Jones did more work as the second voice of Winston Zeddemore (every episode for multiple years) then he ever did on Transformers (25 episodes plus the movie). And in any case, if his post Transformers career wasn't as stellar as he may have liked, how is that Hasbro's fault? How is Hasbro under any obligation to continue to pay actors for work they have already been compensated for, decades after the fact? If he isn't happy with his career, that is more his agents (or his own) fault then it is Hasbro's.

You had to be at Botcon 2012. This dude came on stage and played "The Doc" on a Transformers script reading. Everybody from Funpub was too embarrassed to tap him on the shoulder and say "Buster, that was G.I. Joe, you played Blaster on the Transformers show". This guy was out of it, doesn't look like he was given much opportunities after the classic 80's cartoon era came to a close. And in my opinion Blaster was among the top 5 most Iconic voices on the series along with Prime, Megatron, Starscream, and Jazz. Anyways Im just using him as an example of how some people who were iconic to the 80's Transformers industry are shafted today while Hasbro still keeps others paid in full. I know comparing voice actors to toy designers may seem like apples and oranges, but if you look at them all as 80's TF related employees on the payroll it shows who was hung out to dry.

You definitely have a point, but it appears to me that as far as Hasbro is concerned, the only truly iconic "voice" of Transformers as far as characters go is Optimus Prime. Everyone else has been done by others or even in different ways by the same voice actors who originally portrayed them. Optimus is the only one who has for the most part remained consistent.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVED Blaster. He was one of my all time favorite Autobots. But the reality is, he doesn't even exist in most of the post-G1 Transformers fiction, probably for the same reason that most characters outside of a core cast of 4~5 don't. The only truly consistent characters that seem to ALWAYS be there are Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, Ratchet and *sometimes* Soundwave. The rest are either discarded or changed so dramatically that it seems Hasbro is only using the names again to keep the copyrights to it.

So you want these guys to be on "Transformers welfare" for a job they did 30 years ago, which they were paid for?

xyl360 wrote:You definitely have a point, but it appears to me that as far as Hasbro is concerned, the only truly iconic "voice" of Transformers as far as characters go is Optimus Prime. Everyone else has been done by others or even in different ways by the same voice actors who originally portrayed them. Optimus is the only one who has for the most part remained consistent.

I don't think he does have a point. The roll of Blaster was one job. And most of the time in the acting world, jobs are limited things. You do it and you move on. And once you're finished with it, unless you have an awesome agent with mad contract negotiating skills, any responsibility the company you were working for has towards you is done. (And frankly, for a part in a cartoon which was a glorified toy commercial, anyone who did try getting such a contract would likely have been shown the door.)

No, I wasn't at the convention that Rated X keeps talking about that proves how Hasbro utterly sucks and what a victim of them Buster Jones has been. But that was one appearance, and Rated X extrapolates Mr. Jones entire post-Transformers life from it? Maybe Jones was just having a bad day. Or maybe his roll in Transformers wasn't that important to him, and when he was told he was appearing because of that work he did for Hasbro back in the '80s, he didn't really care to worry about which work that was. I don't know, because I don't have him handy to personally ask him what went down that day. Does Rated X have this hypothetical first hand knowledge, or is he simply speculating based on what he saw from the audience?

And even if it wasn't just one bad day, but his life as a whole isn't that great, how is that Hasbro's responsibility? Are they obligated to continue hiring actors for other work after the initial job they are hired for is done? Next you'll say that Hasbro has to set up a pension fund for them, and after they pass away pay survivor benefits to their families in perpetuity until the end of time.

Yes, Peter Cullen does still get more work from Hasbro. But you know what? Optimus Prime is still a heavily used character. Blaster is not. And even then, it isn't like they used Peter Cullen at all between G1 and the first live action film. Other people played the part in other shows before then. He was cast in the film to throw the G1 fans a bone, and even then he had to audition for the part just like any other actor. Frank Welker wasn't as lucky with his Megatron audition.

Autobot Genocide wrote:

daimchoc wrote:Enter Ebay....

Thanks

It's sad Buster's career didn't take off, but I don't see what it has to do with Hasbro or Takara. In relation to this discussion, buying a Takara KO isn't even punishing the right people. It certainly isn't supporting Buster in his life.

Let's take your logic to it's endpoint. Who deserves to get paid? Not anyone who makes movies. Actors all have the same gig, therefore all movie production is just as evil as Hasbro is. None of them deserve to get your dollar. Nobody in TV deserves to get paid either, under the same logic. It's fine to KO any movie and TV related merchandise since they don't pay support to any actors. Comics? I won't even get into how many people and merchandise don't deserve money with comics. And only original creators deserve money? I guess anything based off Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, or any old novels, movies, TV shows, or popular myths and stories don't deserve to be paid either. And that's only directly. If you think nobody deserved to get paid just because their idea is similar to an earlier one we may as well strike out all fiction altogether.

So, basically, nobody anywhere ever deserves to be paid. Except, MAYBE, for musicians and independent comic and novelists. If they give creator credit to everyone involved in production.

But you're pro-creator. So pro-creator.

Yotsuyasan wrote:

xyl360 wrote:You definitely have a point, but it appears to me that as far as Hasbro is concerned, the only truly iconic "voice" of Transformers as far as characters go is Optimus Prime. Everyone else has been done by others or even in different ways by the same voice actors who originally portrayed them. Optimus is the only one who has for the most part remained consistent.

I don't think he does have a point. The roll of Blaster was one job. And most of the time in the acting world, jobs are limited things. You do it and you move on. And once you're finished with it, unless you have an awesome agent with mad contract negotiating skills, any responsibility the company you were working for has towards you is done. (And frankly, for a part in a cartoon which was a glorified toy commercial, anyone who did try getting such a contract would likely have been shown the door.)

Yes, Peter Cullen does still get more work from Hasbro. But you know what? Optimus Prime is still a heavily used character. Blaster is not. And even then, it isn't like they used Peter Cullen at all between G1 and the first live action film. Other people played the part in other shows before then. He was cast in the film to throw the G1 fans a bone, and even then he had to audition for the part just like any other actor. Frank Welker wasn't as lucky with his Megatron audition.

No, you're absolutely right. The only point I really agreed with was that they haven't used Blaster much, that's all. I didn't agree that Hasbro owed this guy (or anyone else who's worked for them in the past) anything.

Hell, you hear Scott Mcneil joke about it all the time at conventions that "frickin' SpongeBob" played Waspinator instead of him . It happens, that's life and voice acting is just a job. I'm certain he would have preferred to be the one hired to do it (if only for the money, after all, it is a job), but that doesn't mean he blames Hasbro or whoever made the call not to use him for doing any harm to his career in any way. He just goes out there, auditions for other roles/parts/shows/movies etc. and he either gets it or he doesn't. That's the way it is for actors and artists of every kind, including voice actors. Whatever the creative controllers behind a particular medium want in order to fulfill their vision is what they shall have, assuming they can find it. If that does not include an actor who had taken on the same role in some other medium or previous incarnation, then so be it. That's life.

I mean heck, I wasn't one of the guys bitching that Bay didn't use Welker for Megatron. I really didn't care. I didn't like the way they portrayed Megatron most of the time (especially in the first film) where he sounded closer to a Dinobot/monster than an intelligent villain/nemesis, but that was their vision for his character in that version of the Transformers. I doubt Welker would have been able to fix what I didn't like about it simply because he'd still have to do what the voice directors tell him and say the lines in the way that they wanted.

So i was just gonna buy these then noticed i couldn't see any BS weapons and sent the seller a message and he replied you will receive whats in the photo , guess i'll wait for more to pop up to see if these are all packaged without BS tools.

Autobot Genocide wrote:So i was just gonna buy these then noticed i couldn't see any BS weapons and sent the seller a message and he replied you will receive whats in the photo , guess i'll wait for more to pop up to see if these are all packaged without BS tools.

Er ... do you mean the thrusters on his back? Those are integrated into the design for the MP.