Rodimus Prime wrote:ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:Rodimus Prime wrote:The show had the Predacons, who were beasts, so why couldn't the good guys have beasts as well? Not call them Aitobots, but something else? Dinobots would have worked. They would have been perfect foils to the Predacons, while the Autobots faced off with the Decepticons.
You do realize that Aaron Archer had no control over who got used in the show (it wasn't a collaboration like the Unicron Trilogy) and the character was called something else ("Build Hurricane") in the original Japanese version, right?
Yeah, the Japanese version made sense. There were no Dinobots, so there shouldn't have been a character called Grimlock. Whoever was in charge of renaming them for the American version needs a kick in the ass. And I didn't say **** about Archer, I don't know why you brought him up.
Here's why I brought him up:
Reason one:
Rodimus Prime wrote:Whoever was in charge of renaming them for the American version
To the best of my knowledge that was, in fact, Aaron Archer. If it was someone else in charge of that at the time, somebody please tell me who.
Reason two:
Rodimus Prime wrote:The show had the Predacons, who were beasts, so why couldn't the good guys have beasts as well? Not call them Aitobots, but something else? Dinobots would have worked. They would have been perfect foils to the Predacons, while the Autobots faced off with the Decepticons.
Your saying this seemed to imply you thought that whoever who chose the name "Grimlock" for the character - again, to the best of my knowledge that was Aaron Archer - had control of who was in the show. If that was not in fact what you meant, I apologize.
Thinking about what else you could have meant... I will say that with the exception of Air Attack Optimus Primal (a blatant BM leftover who couldn't really be packaged as a baddy), the US toyline maintained the show's distinction of all the beasts being baddies (Bruticus, another BM leftover (and another trademark benchwarmer) who would have been a Maximal in that line, ended up a Predacon in RID). Possibly because the bad guy beasts were
already recycling Beast Wars molds and Hasbro would have had to do the same to give the good guys beasts (at least, as far as dinosaurs are concerned).
They did ultimately do a "Dinobots" sideline (that was years later declared to be part of RiD) but that took til 2003.
And, well, I don't think they were comfortable with leaving the trademark on Grimlock's name undefended in the mean time. It's what I call "trademark benchwarming" and I doubt it's ever going away.