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william-james88 wrote:

Dr Va'al wrote:

william-james88 wrote:

Dr Va'al wrote: (from behind the scenes, at least)

It is sometimes a tad more overt than that

Visual cues and plugs are nothing compared to what Hasbro does to writers controlled by Hasbro Studios. Believe me. I'm still angry.

Now you've got me curious. Dont know if this is the right place (then again, Scotty and friends seem to like when a podcast thread starts a discussion), but I would really like to know a bit more about that and the examples that have made you quite irate.

Doubtful this is the entirety of what Va'al is referencing, but here's an example: tfcon-charlotte-panel-all-that-went-wrong-with-tf-prime-behind-the-scenes--t105568.php

Flashwave wrote:While I agree that the Brand has always been driven to sell toys, I think the fiction has always been a prevalent piece. Think about it, in G1, the toys were better than 90% NOT HASBRO. Hasbro imported them from here and there. The Cartoon, as piecemail and discontinuous as it was, is what "glued" together the Takara, Bandai, etc. toylines into a single brand. That's important in my book.

Oh, absolutely. When I was a kid, I didn't care if a toy was a Go-bot, Transformer, Knock Off, or whatever. If it was a transforming robot toy, I liked it. The strong characters of Transformers are what kept me interested over the years. Never really cared about Go-bot/etc homages because those aren't the characters I cared about.

Characters aren't everything, but they're one of the principal factors for enjoyment in this hobby.

Without the toys, the brand might still have had a run, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as big and probably would have fizzed out long ago. The other stuff is pretty much all important to make it as big as it is, but the toys are why Transformers is a household name.