gothsaurus wrote:Confirmed on wikipedia.... Casey Kasem (Cliffjumper/Bluestreak/Teletran 1) left the show, during the third season [7]
That is true. Also Scatman Crothers died some time in '86 and so while we Jazz win a race in Part 1 of Five Faces of Darkness, we do not hear his voice. You do see Jazz and Bumblebee running in the backgroud on Cybretron when the planet is attacked by Tornadron in "the Call of the Primatives"
The easiest way to think about who lived on is to look at which Autobots (or Decepticons) were being sold as toys at the time the third season came out. Looking at the toy catalogs from 1986, we see that the 2nd series minibots like Cosmos, Warpath, Powerglide, Beachcomber and Seaspray survived and received at least the odd series background representation if not a line or too. They are also joined by the newer minibots (recolours of the 1st Series minibots) with Pipes, Swerve, Outback, Tailgate being repaints of Huffer (also slight retool), Gears, Brawn, and Windcharger, respectively. Hubcap, a Cliffjumper and Bumblebee retool, did not appear in the 3rd season.
Here's the link to the Lukis Bros site where you can view the catalogs for yourself.
http://www.unicron.us/tf1986/Notice that their are no Autobot cars, but the Deluxe Autobots, Roadbuster and Whirl are there. They never appeared in the cartoon to begin with, so their absence after the movie does not matter. The same goes for the Deluxe Insecticons as well. The only Decepticons to not survive the movie where Skywarp and Thundercracker and the Insecticons. Strangely enough, the Insecticons were still being sold despite being killed off. And I would not make a case for their survival (or clones for that matter) based on their appearance in FFoD because of the numerous animation errors in the 3rd season.
Starscream's ghost appeared in two brilliant episodes of the third season, but that is of no surprise as his toy was still being sold!
Look at the catalogs and notice that they have the Protectobots, Aerialbots, Stunticons, Combaticons and even the Constructions, but only the Constructicons appeared in the movie. Hell, the ad for the '86 movie came at the end of the commercial for Omega Supreme and he wasn't even in the movie, and but survived it and appeared in season three.
There are supposed script drafts, cut scenes and whatnot that prove that characters like Smokescreen and Shockwave died during the movie, so perhaps you should dig around for those if you want to decide on your own personal canon.
For me, the biggest problem with the movie is that the combiner teams and Omega were not in it, having only recently been introduced to the 2nd season of the cartoon while the movie was simultaneous was being produced. So, I think that absence from a movie does not mean death. Therefore, I still consider Sunstreaker, Hoist, Tracks, Sidewipe, etc to be alive.
It's really great to watch the first several episodes of the Japanese Headmasters to see how the old and new characters might have interacted. It's a little more than what we see in the Ultra Magnus commercial where they load up Sideswipe, Prowl, Smokecreen and I think, Jazz onto his car carrier mode.
Anyway, you can check out the third season on YouTube if you don't have it, or ask here if you want to know which episode a certain mini-bot appeared in. Because that is basically it. The 2nd series mini-bots, Cliffjumper, Bumblebee and Jazz survived and we have 3rd series cartoon evidence of that....otherwise it's a bunch of speculation and personal theories.
Btw, what do you think of the whole Skywarp/Bombshell became Cyclonus/Armada debate? lol. Dead Autobots is an easy one compared to that!
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