The Energon Pub

Misconceptions and urban legends about Transformers

Before you say it, yes, I do know the movie is called "Suburban Commando", & not Urban...but it was a most Urbane film, hohoho! [In Freezer's voice]

Link to a fun article, read, discuss what you learned, or what you believe is wrong with this article. I want humor, nostalgia, and random...

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Misconceptions_and_urban_legends_about_Transformers

I will point this out to those who have stated that only Takara designs the Transformer toys, to begin:

"However, ever since 1988[10], most "main" line toys released both in Japan and the Western hemisphere (such as the Unicron Trilogy, Alternators, the 2007 Movie line and Universe/Henkei! Henkei!) have been designed and developed in cooperation between Hasbro (or its subsidiary Kenner) and Takara (now TakaraTomy). (For the specifics of this joint venture development process, see the article about toys.)"

Yup. Its been known for quite sometime that the design process is not just monopolized by Tomy/Takara's designers. Henkei Mirage for example wasn't designed by the Japanese and iirc, the henkei Seekers and Cyclonus was from the imaginative mind of DonFig. Maybe during the Diaclone days up to the end of Season 2. By the time of the 1986 Movie, Floro Dery was responsible (as in conceptualizingthe design and not the transition into the toys) for a lot of the movie toys (except of course for Ultra Magnus, Metroplex (the toy) and Unicron(?).)

Exactly fenrir', however I myself have seen this myth repeated even on these forums not that long ago.

There are some other very neat facts on that wiki.

I think you misunderstood what they where saying, Hasbro designes the majority of the toys, however it's the Takara designers that take those designs and turn them into toys. Including the final steps of the designing process.

Dead Metal wrote:I think you misunderstood what they where saying, Hasbro designes the majority of the toys, however it's the Takara designers that take those designs and turn them into toys. Including the final steps of the designing process.

Yes, LOL, I'm aware of this too, and do understand. The comments I have read are usually along the lines of, "Hasbro just sells and reproduces what Tomy designs and manufactures", and/or "Hasbro has no [or very little] say in the design of transformer toys".

You and I know that Hasbro and Takara are partners, and that Hasbro has a huge say in the development. Many others do as well, even on this forum.

But the misconception is there, also by people on these forums and casuals. I'm citing the article for this point. And I have seen this misconception repeated by others before. Before I registered on this forum back in Sept.

I think you get my point, please, don't ask me to quote someone who has repeated this myth as I do not want to start a fight ^^

[EDIT:To further clarify, I am referring to comments, not from my 3rd Party & MP thread, but from others, the myth was repeated in the context of even very recent series such as "Prime", "Animated", the anime trilogy and the RiD series, even as far back as the Beast series (plural) and G2.]

I will quote something else from the article to get more discussion going.

Powermaster Optimus Prime was the first, original Optimus Prime toy.

This one claims that the Powermaster Optimus Prime toy, originally released in 1988, is the original, first Optimus Prime toy ever released, rather than the earlier, non-Powermaster toy, which is an entirely different mold and was originally available in 1984. This phenomenon is particularly common in eBay auctions, where Powermaster Optimus Prime toys are frequently advertised as "ORIGINAL Optimus Prime"....

I wonder if this is also a confusion with the original diaclone toy, which funny enough, was actually the original Ultra Magnus based toy, IE with the car-hauler trailer/armor. Optimus/Convoy in the TF G1 line wasn't a 100% complete reproduction of the original Diaclone toy.

Tronus_Rex wrote:

Powermaster Optimus Prime was the first, original Optimus Prime toy.

This one claims that the Powermaster Optimus Prime toy, originally released in 1988, is the original, first Optimus Prime toy ever released, rather than the earlier, non-Powermaster toy, which is an entirely different mold and was originally available in 1984. This phenomenon is particularly common in eBay auctions, where Powermaster Optimus Prime toys are frequently advertised as "ORIGINAL Optimus Prime"....

I wonder if this is also a confusion with the original diaclone toy, which funny enough, was actually the original Ultra Magnus based toy, IE with the car-hauler trailer/armor. Optimus/Convoy in the TF G1 line wasn't a 100% complete reproduction of the original Diaclone toy.

Actually no. Optimus Prime did have complete Diaclone counterpart which included his trailer and Roller plus pilots. The colors even match, the only real deco change was that the stripe on the trailer had "Diaclone" on it. In the same line, it got a new trailer which resulted in Ultra Magnus' ancestor. Now, differences in molding are plenty, but minor.

The confusion actually stems from the fact Europe got the media years later than the original G1 toys. In other words, they did get Transformer toys, but no associated cartoon. By the time the cartoon did air, they were well into the "-master" era.

Tronus_Rex wrote:

Dead Metal wrote:I think you misunderstood what they where saying, Hasbro designes the majority of the toys, however it's the Takara designers that take those designs and turn them into toys. Including the final steps of the designing process.

Yes, LOL, I'm aware of this too, and do understand. The comments I have read are usually along the lines of, "Hasbro just sells and reproduces what Tomy designs and manufactures", and/or "Hasbro has no [or very little] say in the design of transformer toys".

You and I know that Hasbro and Takara are partners, and that Hasbro has a huge say in the development. Many others do as well, even on this forum.

But the misconception is there, also by people on these forums and casuals. I'm citing the article for this point. And I have seen this misconception repeated by others before. Before I registered on this forum back in Sept.

I think you get my point, please, don't ask me to quote someone who has repeated this myth as I do not want to start a fight ^^

[EDIT:To further clarify, I am referring to comments, not from my 3rd Party & MP thread, but from others, the myth was repeated in the context of even very recent series such as "Prime", "Animated", the anime trilogy and the RiD series, even as far back as the Beast series (plural) and G2.]

I will quote something else from the article to get more discussion going.

Well, in same cases they are right, like the MPs, save for MP 1. There are also main-line figures that are all Takara or even Hasbro. Like those Go combiners.

However, a good deal of those are probably, as you said, by uninformed people, like those weabos who go on about how the original G1 cartoon was anime.

people commonly confuse Soundwave's two bipedal humanoid looking cassettes. Regardless of their names, one of them is black and the other is purple.

craggy wrote:people commonly confuse Soundwave's two bipedal humanoid looking cassettes. Regardless of their names, one of them is black and the other is purple.

Oh, you made me laugh. Out loud, even.

Va'al wrote:

craggy wrote:people commonly confuse Soundwave's two bipedal humanoid looking cassettes. Regardless of their names, one of them is black and the other is purple.

Oh, you made me laugh. Out loud, even.

Ah...sigh, I'm pretty sure youre confused too and have it backwards.

Code: Select all

Regardless of their names, one of them is black and the other is purple.

Isn't it that one is Royal purple & grape(?) and the other black AND red. [ At least in "City of Steel", if I remember correctly, for the continuity error. ]

Oh, remember that Optimus was a crocodile/aligator before Megatron was in Beast Wars?





"OMG!...Why?!"

we were all crocodiles first.