Re: The cartoon being king causing the crappy transformations of MPs nowadays... Agreed, but the comics largely used the same model sheets (at least for shared characters) so it's not like following the comics would necessarily yield better. And it might actually yield worse than animation in some cases (*cough*Powermaster Optimus Prime*cough*).
Speaking as a cartoon fan, I hate the MP39 design school (as many have probably noticed by now). Screw turning the G1 designs into needlessly-complex, toony-looking Roger Rabbit-formers, give me stuff like MP10 and MP12 that's "the character if they were in real life".
The cartoon being king is indeed to blame for characters who were only present in the comics being less well-known/well-sought. The Deluxe Insecticons got a double-whammy, since in the old days they only appeared in the
UK comics. They got more of a presence in Dreamwave and the first IDW series (though the latter is relatively small), probably because Furman, but that was later on.
But really, Bandai are the ultimate factor in the Deluxe Insecticons not getting new toys based on their old designs - Hasbro can no more do that than they can do toys of the Go-Bots characters based on the original Machine Robo designs, because the designs belong to Bandai. Hasbro are clearly
aware of there being interest in the Deluxe Insecticons and have done homages to them... but the original designs are off-limits.
Although who knows, maybe Bandai could be persuaded to permanently
sell Hasbro the rights to the Beetras designs. It's not like Dorvack or especially Macross where there's an established anime the toys tie into that Bandai can cash in on with reissues; the Deluxe Insecticons are the
only reason anyone cares about Takatoku's final designs.
Evil Eye wrote:A big part of the problem of course was the horrendously bloated cast of the cartoon resulting in everyone who wasn't a "regular" fighting for any limelight at all as the writers attempted to squeeze as many toys in as possible. So the S3 Minibots showing up to be trounced by Trypticon in one episode and then doing nothing else at all. For all of Armada's flaws, I actually feel the smaller cast was a good idea as it at least avoided "Hi, buy my toy kthanxbai!" to some degree.
This is a big reason
why shows from Beast Wars-onward have largely stuck to the small "core cast" model. This also extended to other Hasbro franchises like MLP.
I have to laugh about Nemesis saying Bumblebee was never relevant before the movies. Bumblebee was so prominent back in G1 that for a long time what I like to think of as the "Charles Dickens/Roald Dahl villain" segment of the fandom had a raging visceral hateboner for him. Bumblebee was so prominent that he was one of the 1984-5 characters chosen to be done as a Classic Pretender. The only reason there was a lack of Bumblebee for a while after a return to vehicle-based shows was that Hasbro had lost the trademark. Armada Hot Shot? Was originally going to be called Bumblebee, and has some very obvious Bumblebee elements about him. But Hasbro no longer had the trademark, and it turned out they didn't have the one for Hot Rod (their first choice of backup plan) either. And so, the new name Hot Shot was born.
Btw, this is why existing names were slapped on Mini-Cons willy-nilly - it was trademark benchwarming.
Evil Eye wrote:It's also a shame a lot of the B-listers, when they DO get an appearance, get their OG toy bios ignored or overlooked. Case in point, Tailgate thinking mundane cars are sentient would be a great starting point for some hilarious antics. But in IDW that got overlooked entirely for, uh, making him gay for Cyclonus?
In fairness, some of those OG toy bios feel like Budiansky & co. were throwing stuff at a wall to see what stuck. Plus, while it has humorous moments... the 2005-2018 IDW continuity is all too often like most 21st-century live-action DCU films; it tends to take itself too seriously for its own good, and has gratuitous edge (and some dark things that seem about as mature as the Animated creators' attitude towards Beachcomber). So... gags like Tailgate thinking mundane cars are sentient would not have really fit unless IDW had its own version of Robo-Capers. I can see the Marvel comics (which could be guilty of gratuitous edge and darkness in their own right, but were not nearly as allergic to silly. "Bonk!" anyone?) using that gag, but not 2005-2018 IDW.
Given all that darkness, I won't begrudge light spots like that romance, plus I think there should be more of that in fiction in general. </soapbox>