The Energon Pub

Which Transformers series(cartoon or toys, or comics, or a combination) do you think was the worst and why? Please give reasons.

If i had to pick one it would have to be Beast machines. I got the series a while back and watched the whole thing through. Like i said if i had to pick one it would be BM although i did'nt mind it. I just thought the story was to spiritual and not enough action. I did'nt like the way they transformed and there was'nt enough characters in it. To me it was to different from the other series which was there intention but i think this series will be the worst TFs series they made thus far.

Beast anything.

For me personally I would have to say as a line it would be Beast Machines. even though i liked Beast Wars, i never liked this lines toys ,and thought the Tv Show had too little in common with all the other tf series

I'm gonna be hated for this.
I grew up with G1 comics and it's only now that I'm able to watch the cartoons. They are awful. The stories are ridiculous, sometimes you need to fill in bits yourself cos the script seems to be a rough draft. That episode 'Day of the Nightbird' was terrible. I'm still working my way through them though cos it does make me laugh and it's great being able to see the things I missed as a kid.

Wow...simple question...simple answer....

No contest on this one, nor any thought....

....Beast Machines.

Show was HORRID.....toy line was HORRID....everything about it was just super-dooky.




Although I thoroughly enjoy the Beast Wars TV series, even to this day, the toy line is just icky!

While the RID and Unicron Trilogy are both contenders, I would have to say Beast Machines.

It's not for what they did to Silverbolt and Rhinox, but in how the author practically tried to shovel liberal views down our throats. I believe I remember him say, during an interview, that his heroes don't use guns. I'm sorry, but first off, they aren't his heroes, they are technically Hasbro's heroes, and more importantly, they are the heroes of the people watching the show. Second, this is a show about transforming robots beating the crap out of one another; guns are practically a necessity.

Then there's the "technology is bad" deal. As stated previously, this is a show about ROBOTS. They are ALL technological! This attempt to insert Mother Earth/Hippie Guru garbage into a franchise that I have enjoyed since I was two years old annoyed me when I was a kid. Now that I'm politically aware, I absolutely hate it. It was a blatant attempt at propagandizing the youth of the time, and I am greatly thankful that Mr. Skir has not returned for Transformers Animated (which, by the way, I enjoy quite a bit).

I myself didn't really care for Beast Wars. I didn't watch it on its television run but rather with my friend who owns the series on dvd. I felt it was just lacking.

I was born into Beast era everything, so I love it.
G1: cool, but crappy by modern standards. Otherwise rocked.
RiD: great update after Bw, but would've preferred Transtech.
Armada: Mixed. Some toys were crapped, Sideswipe was not Sideswipe. Minicons were awesome, and some episodes, great.
Energon: CGI=Fail, horrible story (mostly). But toys were good, combining and such.
Cybertron: Show was so-so. Toys, epic. Great G1 homages, nice gimmick (considering) and decent CGI. Next to BW, lipsynching was meh.
Movie... Barricade. End of story.
Animated: Like G1, but cooler. Win.

The winner is....Energon. One peice of a puzzle I'd be happy to lose.

Animation-wise Cybetron was the worst, it didn't know if it was 2-D or 3-D.

Storyline wise it's easily Beast Machines. As someone mentioned earlier it really isn't Transformers, it's a leftist ideal story. I pretty much said the same thing on my Amazon review and got like 8 helpful ratings out of 30-some or something like that but it's still true.

Cartoon - Animated. Shut up and accept it.
Comics - The original Marvel US G1. UK G1 was much better and on par with DW and IDW G1.
Toys - Maximals in Beast Machines. The Vehicons had some great molds but the Maximal side of things just really well and truly sucked.

So yeah, I put Animated at the bottom. I enjoyed A/E/C and Beast Machines was all well and good until the final five mins. I liked the concept of guerrilla warfare and a truly ruthless Megatron who had no problem using the sparks his own race to further his own agenda.

Transformers Armada

Horrible Pilot, Horrible leader who constantly calls his troops by the wrong names, made the bad guys look like heroes in the end and made the good guys look evil, couldn't figure out who or what the hell Sideways was, horrible plot, completly random upgrades.

The only good thing about Armada was "Past part 2" everything else sucked.

Beast machines or GObots

For me it's a toss-up between Beast Machines and RiD.
I hated the direction BM took that characters and the planet in. I also did not care for the toys. I could however stand to watch the show.
RiD couldn't watch. I just couldn't. I hated the show. I don't know if it got better or not, but after the first 4 or 5 episodes I gave up.
The toys were nice though. I bought several of them, while offhand, I can't think of any BM figures that I own. I had the Dinobots, but I ended up selling them off.
Overall, I guess I hated BM marginally more than I did RiD, due to RiD having good toys.

Beast Machines, the whole Techno-organic & relearning to transform was stupid, and Botanica was a huge mistake.

to be honest id have to say beast wars and beast machines were the worst series ive seen, and by that, i dont just mean transformers series, i really hated it.

It seems to be turning into a Beast hating thread... I like Beast Wars (not the toys - just the cartoon).

I feel like the only onw who likes Beast Anything now....
Really. I like it more than almost every other series.
And it didn't even have cars.

Sherade wrote:I feel like the only onw who likes Beast Anything now....
Really. I like it more than almost every other series.
And it didn't even have cars.

Here's the thing. I liked Beast Wars, and Beast Machines really was'nt bad just the storyline to me did'nt fit with Tfs series. Beast Wars i thought was good because of the use of computer graphics and the story and characters were pretty good just different from what we were used to seeing. Beast Machines tried to get too spiritual holier than thou don't kill a tree machines are bad but we're transforming machines that turn into animals but love nature and live on a metal planet but can't transform unless we meditate in mid battle or air! That's why Beast Machines is still the worst if i had to pick one.

I'm going to go against the grain here, and defend Beast Machines - though just a little bit. I'll go with the thing about the guns, however, it wasn't just the writer it was Fox Kids in general. They didn't want their new cartoon series to portray heroes with guns. They also edited out the "overly" violent parts in Beast Wars when it aired on Fox Kids as well. But if you thought the show was about technology being bad, you missed the boat by about a couple of yards. The true goal was a balance between the tech and the organic, it was the players that brought the opposing views to the extreme. So it was really about a thinly viewed attempt to teach peace through compromise. The show really wasn't that bad, and the animation was notches above Beast Wars, however most people either won't give it a chance (the truck not monkey crowd) or already have their perceptions tainted by a decade of other people's negative viewpoints. It was overly preachy, and the plots were watered down to make it kid accessible, but that stemmed from the network more than anything, and was understandable. People got a little pampered from the Beast Wars series because they were allowed to pretty much do anything they wanted, but the series had to be reigned in when produced for Fox. I actually liked the conversion of Silverbolt and Rhinox, and I really liked Rhinox opposing Primal's viewpoints. I guess my only true grip with the series was that it suffered from "Claremont-ism" (anyone familiar was the X-Men comics would understand), the idea of taking a character and having them shoved down our throats while saying "hey, this is a cool character, see isn't he awesome!?" - i.e. Nightscream.

The one series I would vote as being the worse was RID. God awful. I honestly gave this series a chance, I really did. But it was all just too silly for words. Plots were more simplistic than the original series, and I just couldn't get into all the dopey character quirks. It's like they all suffered from Attention Deficiet syndrome and lack of self control, which I guess speaks volumes about today's culture.

Saber Prime wrote:Transformers Armada

Horrible Pilot, Horrible leader who constantly calls his troops by the wrong names, made the bad guys look like heroes in the end and made the good guys look evil, couldn't figure out who or what the hell Sideways was, horrible plot, completly random upgrades.

The only good thing about Armada was "Past part 2" everything else sucked.

when did he mispronounce his teams names

Wheelimus Prime wrote:

Saber Prime wrote:Transformers Armada

Horrible Pilot, Horrible leader who constantly calls his troops by the wrong names, made the bad guys look like heroes in the end and made the good guys look evil, couldn't figure out who or what the hell Sideways was, horrible plot, completly random upgrades.

The only good thing about Armada was "Past part 2" everything else sucked.

when did he mispronounce his teams names

Never said "mispronounce" I said he called them by the wrong name.

Mispronounce means you called them by the right name but you just didn't say it right. Example: Saying "Dark Vater" insted of "Darth Vader"

Optimus Prime called someone by the wrong name at least once in every episode. Most of the time it was calling "Sparkplug" by the name "Leader-1" Everyone else seemed to call him Sparkplug but Optimus never did. Leader-1 is Megatron's Mini-con partner so obviously Optimus thinks he's Megatron.

The Mini-cons that form the Star Saber, there's still confusion on what the hell their names are. The packaging showed Jetstorm to be the tip of the sword and Runway to be the middle part. The instructions reversed thoughs names. The cartoon, never clear who's who either.

I allso hated the "Non-talking Mini-cons" they should have been more like their comic book counterparts and actully have been able to speak. Either that or make them nameless drones that just boost power and really aren't a race of Transformers.

Energon. The figures looked mostly like tonka trucks and plastic blocks to me, though there were some good molds. Energon Megatron is my favorite Megatron figure from AEC. However, I was completely turned off by the animation style of Energon. I skipped about 90% of Energon as a whole.

Energon Scorponok was pretty kick-ass though

OK, as in TV show or toys? I'll start with my own opinion with the US shows (I saw Masterforce, Headmaster, and Victory in Taiwan, and that's separate), and talk about the toys later in a separate post.

As a twenty-something dude, when I look back in the past, I gotta say the G1 storyline were pretty cheesy, and people make fun of it on youtube (you know those clips!). And yes I would agree the shows were some kind of commercial for the toys (not all toys were on the show!).

Beast Wars was different from the G1, yes I know it got some of the G1 technical details wrong (a little bit), but it had a solid storyline and good voice acting, and the handful of characters did made a lasting impression on me (Dinobot anyone?).

Beast Machine went astray from "conventional" story by going with mysticism and naturalism, which I personally thought betrayed the whole idea of Transformers (yes, I am no fan of the Techno-Organic!). And I was eager to know what the storyline would be for Transtech.

From the Beast series on (skipping BW II & BW Neo), it goes with the US localization of the Japanese animated series, but I went with the original JP version instead of the US version. RiD was too kiddy and I think Takara was trying to jump start the "conventional" TF again with a new generation. Armada and Energon are connected together, but the overall storyline wasn't very strong; the later half of Energon was a total disaster. Cybertron did have a good story, but for the entire JP series, no characters stood out for me.

So which is the worst? For the storyline, it could be G1 or the JP animate series. For the heart and soul of Transformers, it is definitely Beast Machines.