OptiMagnus wrote:This!
Dagon, you are the most intelligent person I've met on this site.
Liar.
OptiMagnus wrote:I think this post says a lot.
And to clarify on my post (since I was half asleep when I wrote it), in summary, I believe that if Transformers had never been taken a step farther to highten its appeal, it would begin to have a hazy future. For example, Pokemon is still around today, but it has lost its appeal to kids from when it was popular in '99-'00. It is still successful, but is it really immortal by staying the way it is? I personally don't believe so. There is always a new fad the kids will turn to and leave behind the previous one, so sometimes the only way the old fad can compete is to do something big.
I think Pokemon is a terrific example of what we're talking about here. When it first was popular, there were what, 150 monsters and two or three video games and the cartoon. Now, it's like ten years on and there's like a thousand monsters, and in my uneducated opinion, most of them don't look like anything anymore. For example, a Ratata looks like a rat, so there's some sense behind the name, while some of the new creatures just seem like their names are a jumble of letters. No disrespect to Pokemon, I bought my girlfriend Black and Fire Red for her birthday this year, so I may not get it, but I don't oppose it.
But, is Pokemon still viable because kids are supposed to like it because it's been around and is popular, or does it still have the same appeal? In terms of TF, the mainstream appeal may have been lost over the years between G1 and 07, but it was hardly gone and forgotten. I know Optimagnus, that you are a younger fan in terms of your age, but just because you weren't a TF fan in 1998 does not at all mean that 1998 was a slumping period for the brand, just the same as my not being a Pokemon fan in 1998 does not at all mean that Pokemon was less or not at all popular in 1998.
I think we need to reach this comprimise that says yeah, the newer movies have brought about a whole new demographic and group of fans to the franchise. Of that,, there is no denying. But a lot of people try to spin that in to either/or thinking. EITHER the brand has been popular for almost 30 years OR it's solely because of the movies that we still get toys and fans. I just happen to think that the second part of that equation is utter bull****. I bought Transformers in 2000, seven years before the first movie, so it should be real, real obvious that the brand was still in existance prior to the movie. No where in that statement do I say the movie has not done good for the franchise, right? So why is it so hard to acknowledge that?
Even if you don't wet yourself over the movies, you absolutely must acknowledge that from a commerical standpoint, that is, the marketing and selling of the pieces of the brand such as toys and comics and posters and tickets and blah blah blah blah blah, have been terrific for the franchise. But if it weren't for 25 or so years of fandom and history, there would have been zero need to make a film in 2007 in the first place. You don't have to totally love the past or the present eras, but you can't ignore one and place all the glory at the feet of the other either.
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