Mkall wrote:AllNewSuperRobot wrote:I was thinking on something recently and thought this the best place to pose the question.
Boats, ships, hovercraft, fish et al
Why don't water-based altmodes work/sell within Transformers?
Is it the pragmatic logistics that hold back their popularity or widespread use? Beast Wars, for example, had many aquatic based bots in the toyline. But even Depthcharge and Rampage didn't exactly fight/move with physics in mind, in their final encounter.
Outside of BW, for every Tidal Wave or Broadside. There are fifty cars, planes and trucks etc
Can/should anything be done to address the disparity? Or is it warranted??
I hate to use the 'R' word in a genre where giant robots come from space and turn into vehicles to fight one another, but I'm thinking the answer is Realism.
Both cars and planes can play in the same playspace with air adding another dimension, they can still interact well enough with one another. Boats and the like have a much less interactive environment by design, which may limit how kids use them and limits the environments that cartoons can use them too.
Al that said, I love boats and want to see more of them. I'm just not hopeful.
I'm not sure who it was, but I remember someone mentioning it was a safety issue? Like they had to keep placing "toy does not actually float" on the box? Not sure if it's true or just a dumb rumor, though. It certainly is a dumb reason for me.
PerfectVision wrote:BIONICLE has a submarine era.
There is a TV series that i have watched:it's called ZAK STORM,some sea adventures where you could put some transforming boat in."Never boring" is the good status to me.
Now that would be a very ambitious change of setting,unprobable.You can always hope for a minority but even that seems abandonned.
Christian Faber does seem to have a thing for underwater environments anyway.
It might be different, but a fully aquatic colony world would certainly be interesting. Certainly a lot more plausible than a world where the entire culture revolves around Formula 1. And with enough research and creativity, it's easy to avoid making the ocean "boring"; there's just so much potential for lifeforms and unexplored regions within.
AllNewSuperRobot wrote:It's no secret I'm a big fan of redecos and minor retool variants.
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The aesthetic of mass production has always been something I find appealing within Transformers. As it suits the idea of a robotic race, better than any other concept such as Protoforms or budding.
To that end, I'm wondering if we could take it a step further? Applying the idea to other forms. A standardised aesthetic that would for example, integrate Grimlock, BW Megatron, Trypticon, Snapdragon etc Sharing engineering in spite of size or function disparity. The same ethos applied to Optimus Prime and Motormaster, Hoist and Kup etc, etc
Forever removing problematic licensing. While at the same time bringing a distinct uniformity to Transformers entire line.
I can see a few reasons this wouldn't work.
From a Watsonian perspective, even vehicles or machines with the same basic function will be different depending on the specific purposes (a military jet and a cargo jet are as different as a Seeker and a carrier jet-bot), technological evolution (BW Megatron and G1 Grimlock should be as similar as a smartphone and a flip-phone) or origin (just compare cars from different companies, even if within the same style, and you have bots from different cities or colonies). Then you add the Transformers' nature as a living species with individual personalities and identities, and aside from members of an organized group (like the military, a gang or government), they will have distinct bodies to mark their individuality.
And from a Doylist perspective, well, those wouldn't be very interesting toys. There's only so many times a parent or adult fan will accept buying the same toy with small changes in design, if only to save money on another more necessary or interesting thing. One good example of this are the
Starriors; I loved their story, but I have no doubt the fact every toy with the same body-type was pratically the same killed the line. I think the only "standardized" action figure line I know that actually worked was early BIONICLE, and even then they benefited from high customization possibilities.
, actual ones not the JP ones. Did you watch Dominion as they have an "accurate" looking velociraptor in there. 
