The Energon Pub

Ever wonder, even if its too horrible to contimplate, but what if this type of fan genre had no toys to begin with, and it was simply books, comics and movies? Would it have been able to survive the 80s till now? what would it have been like? would we have had to buy models similar to Gundam to get our 3-D robot fix??

There are other fans, clubs, and websites to shows and movies that have no toy representations, so I am certainly glad we do have them. And for all those out there who say, nothing, because the series originated as atoy line, this is a hypothetical question about, what if the mythos began not as a toyline, and continued without toys...

Every thing stemmed from the toys otherwise there would of never been Cartoons,Movies or Comics

I mean without the toys to start things how can you have the rest?

Wheeljack35 wrote:Every thing stemmed from the toys otherwise there would of never been Cartoons,Movies or Comics

I mean without the toys to start things how can you have the rest?

In some respects the toys didnt start the mythos. The toys for the most part existed in other lines.

It was the marketing and profiles created by hasbro and marvel that really created the transformers as we know them now.

In my opinion it was the fiction that created G1 and i grew up with the cartoons and the comics.
As far as would the francise work without a toyline it impossible to answer but characters have existed in the fandom for years without representation in toy form.
Arcee went years without representation as did many characters from G2 like the liege maximo or jhiaxus and are still known in the community so perhaps give the best indication of what would have happened to the francise withhout the toylines

Yes but Hasbro put all the lines together

The toys came out before anything else

I feel it would have run the same course as "VITOR, STARFIRE CHAMPION"

The origional stories where good, but with all the animation flaws, people would have lost intrest quick.

As far as cartoons go, I think the toys are what keep most of them alive. I remember as a kid getting whichever toy corosponded to whatever show was coming on. I'd get what TFs I had, my Wheeled Warriors, what bits of Voltron I owned, and have them watch their shows with me.

I wish I could go on with that list, but my parents didn't get me many toys as a kid, I had to wait till I got my own money before that happened.

Still, some shows do well without toys, but the ones with do the best and last the longest.

This fact makes me wish they put more effort into marketing MEGAS XLR!

Liege Evilmus wrote:I feel it would have run the same course as "VITOR, STARFIRE CHAMPION"

The origional stories where good, but with all the animation flaws, people would have lost intrest quick.

As far as cartoons go, I think the toys are what keep most of them alive. I remember as a kid getting whichever toy corosponded to whatever show was coming on. I'd get what TFs I had, my Wheeled Warriors, what bits of Voltron I owned, and have them watch their shows with me.

I wish I could go on with that list, but my parents didn't get me many toys as a kid, I had to wait till I got my own money before that happened.

Still, some shows do well without toys, but the ones with do the best and last the longest.

This fact makes me wish they put more effort into marketing MEGAS XLR!

wow great responses all of you!! Yeah Megas XLR really ddin't have a chnce figures wise, but there were alot of cartoons that i thought should have benefited from more plastic exposure.. I had tons of toys as a kid, my mother was and is a garage sale junkie, thank god!! Ofcourse ebay has destroyed the whole Garage sale gem finding experience

Liege Evilmus wrote: I'd get what TFs I had, my Wheeled Warriors, ...

Wheeled Warriors. I only had one, but it was one of my favorite shows to watch. So much so that I bought a bunch of them as an adult (thankfully there are many less compared to TFs).

I had Armed Force as a child, but I always like Spike Trike. Now I own Spike Trike, Drill Sergeant, Quickdraw, the main ones that were always used in the cartoon.

Would TFs have made it without the toys? It had a decent comic adaptation, a TV show, books. I'm sure it would have been good, but not quite as memorable. I mean afterall, one of my favorite things to do was re-enact cartoons while they were happening, and when my favorite characters transformed, having the toy there to copy it with was the BEST and COOLEST feeling.

Transformers without the toys?

Thats like living a life without sex... oh wait, far too many of us are doing that...

This is a silly question, concidering transformers was a toy line first and formost.

I think the toys are just one of those things you cannot go without for the rest of the stuff that made Transformers. In my mind the two things that made TF are the series and the toy line, I think without one the other would not opf been very popular. I also think they profiles and stats they gave for each TF made these toys stand out more as they actually gave you an idea as to what these guys were like. Although as a kid me and my friends never really read those things when we played, now that I'm older I keep around the packages or sheets that come with that information.

Like many of the people here when I was a kid I played with my TFs all the time, taking them out when the show came on and when it was over I would sometimes reenact the episode or make up my own. During G2 I remember taking some of my old beat up Autobots and spent like a month doing my own little series where I had the beat up ones rebuilt into the Aerialbots as I slowly acquired them. Now that I'm a young man making my own money I still buy them since my parents never got me the ones I wanted when I wanted them outside of my birthday and Christmas.

What would the Transformers Mythos have been without the toys?

short-lived.

I do think that if they never had a toyline, the movie would stiull have had one.. what summer blockbuster doesn't these days? But, if they never had a toyline until the movie series, I'm sure once Gundam made it's way to our shores Transformers models would have followed. Thank goodness that that never happened! There is a parallel Earth out there somewhere whicch has no Transformers toys, and I dutifully Feel sorry for them...

Thoughts like these make me cherish the fact that we have this glorious toyline and are not subject to just comics, books, and models..

skywarp-2 wrote:Thoughts like these make me cherish the fact that we have this glorious toyline and are not subject to just comics, books, and models..

Dito. I may be a grown man, but damn it I still love my toys!

In the grander scheme of things, I think it could have survived pretty well. Since it would have been looked as as something other than a means to push physical product to children, there would have most likely been a greater focus on character, a much more concrete backstory, better fleshing out of the more obscure characters, and just an over-all more cohesive franchise.

On the flipside, because of the grand convoluted mess that is
Transformers, there exist so many options for reboot, retcon and rewrite it sometimes makes one wonder how we've come as far as we have. Had things been more structured from the beginning,
we probably wouldn't be enjoying the kind of success and revival we are right now.

Without the toy line, I don't think I'd be so much into transformers.

I'd probably have bought all the comics instead.

But that is no where near as fufilling ( or expensive).

I just found out my grandad sold a 2000AD #1 a while ago at a FB in Brum.

How much is it worth out of curiosity?

Plus- wahey! I now know where a Forbidden Planet is!

I'm not sure. A lot of Transformers fiction feels like nothing more than an advertisement for the toys. If the toys hadn't existed in the Eighties, would they have bothered producing an animated film? Would they have continued the cartoon? I don't know; I certainly don't think the G1 cartoon was good enough to enter a second or third season off its own steam. Maybe the comics would have lasted a while but I never really liked them either.

Leonardo wrote:I'm not sure. A lot of Transformers fiction feels like nothing more than an advertisement for the toys. If the toys hadn't existed in the Eighties, would they have bothered producing an animated film? Would they have continued the cartoon? I don't know; I certainly don't think the G1 cartoon was good enough to enter a second or third season off its own steam. Maybe the comics would have lasted a while but I never really liked them either.

I agree with you the cartoon was a toy commercial. No toys, no need for commercials. I think the comic went similarly. Both are cool, and dear to me, but I admit that TFs is mainly about toys first, and story next, and without toys, the story probably would not have been told.